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Another Device on the Lab Bench: Amazon Fire TV
One more device showed up in the lab recently, once again filling up the shelf space we so recently decluttered. Joining the ranks of Roku, Apple TV, and Chromecast is the long-awaited new streaming device from Amazon: Fire TV.
Fire TV’s hardware is a small box, a bit slimmer than an Apple TV but with a slightly larger footprint – not the dongle form that some early reports predicted.
Fire TV has 2 GB of RAM, roughly 4 times that of Apple TV, and a 1.7GHz quad-core Qualcomm CPU (which in theory should make it about 3x faster). While both devices are plenty fast for the moment, we did notice that Fire TV’s UI is extremely responsive, with no noticeable lag when responding to button presses on the remote. It makes quick work of scrolling through a bunch of titles, and stops scrolling immediately when you take your thumb off the button – I found myself “overshooting” a lot less on Fire TV than the other devices.
The remote control is, in my opinion, the best of the bunch. With 8 buttons plus a directional pad, it falls in between Apple TV and Roku on the button tally. It’s simple yet functional, and the size is just right – it doesn’t disappear into my hand (and the couch cushions) like Apple TV’s, and it doesn’t feel overly thick and chunky like Roku’s. The voice search button is well-placed, and actually works (more on that in a bit).
Fire TV also has 8 GB of internal storage, and works with Bluetooth gaming controllers for casual gaming. We’ve yet to try this out, but the buzz is that while it’s a solid effort, it won’t be competing with game consoles like the Xbox One anytime soon.
USER EXPERIENCE:
When we started up the Fire TV, a cartoon man immediately launched into a very thorough explanation of how to use our new device. While this might well be helpful for someone new to streaming devices, I always like to jump in and start exploring right away, so I found this really grating. Especially when I pressed the home button, thinking I could bypass the video, and the enthusiastic cartoon spiel started over from the beginning.
Once we finally got past the intro video, Fire TV has a pretty nice user interface (UI), with (of course) a big emphasis on titles offered through Amazon. The home screen intersperses Amazon titles with other apps such as Hulu and Netflix, and has a section at the top for titles and apps that you’ve accessed recently.
I did find myself wishing that I could filter some of the categories to only display content offered for free through Amazon Prime – though it’s not hard to imagine why Amazon might not want to do this. Leslie also commented that the menu items in the left pane of the home screen were hard to read when not selected, and in fact I could barely get them to show up when snapping photos of the UI.
Fire TV’s virtual keyboard is right up there with Apple TV, using shortcut buttons to switch keyboards (CAPS, special characters, etc.) so that I don’t have to scroll all over the place to put in a password.
Fire TV also wins the prize for best screensaver, knocking Chromecast’s pretty pictures out of the way with some stunning photos and a nice “Ken Burns” effect.
VOICE SEARCH:
Voice recognition technology is finally getting to the point where it works pretty well (with the exception of Siri, who doesn’t understand a word I say.) Fire TV is no exception – just say a title or actor while holding down the microphone button at the top of the remote, and it’ll pull up a list of related content.
In our tests, it recognized speech correctly about 99% of the time. However, at launch there was something notably missing with the voice search function – content from providers other than Amazon. This is changing; Hulu content is already appearing in voice search at the time of this writing — though when I searched for The Daily Show, I had to wade through several seasons of “unavailable” episodes to get to the more recent episodes that are currently on Hulu.
Clearly there are still some kinks to work out. Showtime and Crackle are integrating their catalogs with Fire TV’s voice search in the coming months, but we haven’t heard any word on Netflix yet.
If you’re self conscious about talking to your devices, you can also do a text search on Fire TV. However, for some reason Amazon doesn’t use their excellent virtual keyboard here – instead you have the painful process of scrolling through a single row of letters and numbers.
SECOND SCREEN:
Fire TV also uses DIAL for its “second screen” experience, allowing you to control the video from a compatible mobile device and read more information about what you’re watching using Amazon’s “X-Ray” feature. However, this is currently only true for Kindle Fire HD and HDX devices – our earlier Kindle Fire doesn’t give us the option to send video to the Fire TV, nor do any of our iOS devices. Amazon says that the second screen feature will be coming to more Android and iOS devices at some point in the future, but with all the DIAL-compatible devices in our lab it seems a bit short-sighted to not have that functionality working right out of the box.
We like Fire TV for its interface and responsiveness, and think it has a lot of potential. It does an excellent job of highlighting Amazon’s own content, but we’re looking forward to a more unified search experience and being able to take advantage of the second-screen features on more devices. At this point we’d have a hard time recommending Fire TV (at $99) over Roku ($50-100) or Chromecast ($35) as an all-around streamer, but it’s a great choice for anyone getting most of their streaming video from Amazon.
Amazon Apple TV Chromecast DIAL Fire TV Hulu Netflix Roku second screen Showtime
What’s Rich About the Rich Edge?
Long ago, in March of 2005, this column took on a popular term in tech-talk, at the time: “The edge.” Which one? Where is it?
And here we are, almost a decade later, still talking edges. Except something changed: The edge picked up some serious semantic bling, especially in the Prefix Department.
It’s not just “the edge” anymore. It’s “the rich edge.” “The intelligent edge.”
As a word that routinely crisscrosses between everyday talk and shoptalk, the “edge” can befuddle. There’s the edge of the counter, and then there’s the edge of the network.
Back then, we polled engineers: Where’s the edge? Responses: “It’s where RF goes to IP, or visa versa.” “After the headend, before the eyeballs.” “At the output of the set-top box.” (Still my personal favorite: “It’s where the bits fall off.”)
Our conclusion, back then, was that “the edge” is in the eye of the beholder, because different work disciplines see edges differently.
And now, those edges are rich and smart. What happened?
First of all, this is “rich” as in “having or supplying a large amount of something that is wanted” more so than “sacks full of cash.” In a connectivity sense, edges are places where stuff gets handed off: Backbone traffic to regional fiber rings; fiber rings to nodes; nodes to homes and the connected stuff within them.
The “large amount of something” is where the intelligence comes in. It’s the addition of compute and storage resources — those building blocks of “cloud.”
The quest for rich, intelligent edges is the reason why traditional cable headends are becoming headend/data centers, with racks and racks of servers adjoining the traditional functions of signal demodulation, encryption, processing, re-modulation, and combining.
It’s most evident right now in video services. Remember when VOD began? Storage was distributed, per market. Titles were “pitched” (via satellite) to hundreds (thousands?) of recipient “catchers.”
Then “CDNs” (Content Delivery Networks) happened, with big “origin” servers in the middle, and video zipping to markets over terrestrial fiber.
“Rich edges” are morphing VOD yet again: Small, nimble storage, buttressing the big servers in the middle, and designed to both anticipate and locate the most popular content closest to viewers.
VOD is but an early example of a “rich edge” transformation. It’s what happens when “connectivity” (broadband) gets gussied up with the building blocks of cloud, so that our “connected” things work better — faster, and more intuitively.
Nonetheless, our advice remains the same, when it comes to the edge: Always ask. Asking “which edge?” and now, “what’s rich about it?” does two things. It shows the speaker’s knowledge precincts, and it spares you envisioning a different edge than the one being discussed.
This column originally appeared in the Platforms section of Multichannel News.
catcher CDN edge intelligent edge origin server pitcher rich edge VOD
A Dongle Duel: Roku v. Chromecast
A Roku Streaming Stick showed up at the lab recently, so we’ve been putting it through the paces alongside Google’s Chromecast stick. While both devices have quite a bit in common (such as a dongle form factor and DIAL functionality), they are also fundamentally different. So which dongle do we like best? Read on.
PRICE: Roku’s Streaming Stick will set you back about $50; Chromecast $35.
WHAT’S IN THE BOX: Both dongles ship with a micro-USB cable for power. Roku’s Streaming Stick includes a full-size remote control, while Chromecast is controlled by mobile devices only. Chromecast also includes an extender in case the HDMI port on your TV is a tight fit.
APPS: Both dongles play content from Netflix, Hulu, HBO Go, YouTube, Vudu, and Crackle. Roku carries hundreds of other free and paid channels, including Amazon Instant Video. Chromecast’s library of compatible apps is still small, but growing. So Roku wins on content depth and breadth.
HOW THEY STACK UP: Both Chromecast and Roku’s Streaming Stick use DIAL, which means that within a DIAL-enabled app on your phone or tablet (Netflix or Hulu, for example) you can choose a piece of content, select the little antenna-looking icon, and begin playing it.
Again, this is the only way you can control Chromecast, because it doesn’t come with a remote control.
Roku includes a lot of channels (apps), but lots of them don’t yet work with DIAL — hence the physical remote. (Which is kind cluttering up our recently-decluttered lab). And, alas! The remote for Roku’s stick doesn’t come with the fabulous headphone jack, or motion control, that came with the Roku 3 remote. And while you can buy those separately, they don’t work with the streaming stick.
AUTHENTICATION: Another area where the dongles differ is authentication – signing in to Netflix, Hulu, etc. to get the content you pay for. Chromecast does all of this without prompting you, assuming you’re signed in to whichever over-the-top video app on your mobile device. It does this by sending a token from your mobile device to the dongle, over WiFi.
Not the case on Roku, where you have to sign in to each app the first time you use it. This is a bit of a hassle. Say, for instance, you don’t have HBO, your friend doesn’t have an Internet-connected TV, and you both want to watch Silicon Valley. On Chromecast, you can do this from a mobile phone without authenticating on the dongle itself. Roku makes you enter user name/password, using the onscreen remote. The stick then remembers your friend’s login unless you go in and clear it out.
MOBILE APPS: Chromecast’s app is for setup purposes only, for streaming content Google Cast is embedded into existing apps (such as HBO Go). We find that to be a good thing, because app clutter is as bad or worse than remote control clutter.
We were intrigued to see that Roku’s mobile app for iOS now includes a search feature where you can put in a title, actor, or director and see which content providers are currently streaming what you want to watch. (The feature has been on the hockey-puck Roku devices themselves for quite a while, but it’s new to the mobile app.)
In theory, putting Roku Search on the mobile app is huge, because it lets you sort through the vast amount of content from a handheld device, rather than rummaging around for the plastic remote. Then seamlessly start playing whatever you picked, on the big screen. Sounds great.
Unfortunately, in practice, it’s a bit of disaster. Here’s why. Say you search for Mad Men. You’ll see a bunch of different content providers that have the show, including Netflix. But when you tap on a season of the show on Netflix, expecting to see a list of episodes, you’ll instead find that it immediately starts playing that season from the beginning – and it doesn’t remember where you left off.
Worse, Roku’s search feature on its iPhone app doesn’t work consistently. Selecting a season of a show from Amazon or HBO Go will bring up a list of episodes on the TV screen – I’d rather browse and read episode descriptions on my phone, but at least it works. In the case of Netflix and Hulu, this feature is broken. Selecting a season on Netflix from the iPhone app sends the first episode of that season to your TV (if you’re lucky; often it just times out). It doesn’t remember where you left off and doesn’t let you browse on either screen. In the case of Hulu, this is what we got, every time:
Which begs the question: Why bring the search feature to the Roku mobile app if it doesn’t work in a way that’s consistent or actually useful? This one’s gotta be a bug.
Roku’s stick also seems to have trouble remembering state — that is, if you stop a piece of content midway through, it doesn’t start mid-way through when you resume playout. It typically starts from the beginning when you go back to resume it. Annoying. This hasn’t been an issue with Chromecast.
Another area where Chromecast beats Roku’s Streaming Stick is in CEC (Consumer Electronics Control). Chromecast will turn on your TV and switch to the correct input when you start playing a piece of content (assuming, of course, that it’s not powered from your TV’s USB slot.)
CEC is what lets you do things like control the TV volume from your mobile device. This is a very useful feature, and we wish Roku would start incorporating it into their devices already. Instead, I found myself juggling two remote controls and a mobile app while using the Roku Streaming Stick.
THE BOTTOM LINE: Roku’s devices have been my and our all-around favorite for a long time, but I find their Streaming Stick to be pretty disappointing, out of the box. While it does make any digital TV into a “connected” TV, and does bring all that OTT content in without cluttering up the TV stand, it seems to lag behind the hockey-puck-shaped Roku devices in our lab when it comes to processing power. I’d recommend it over the Roku 1 (which is also $50 but doesn’t include DIAL or dual-band WiFi), but all things considered I’d rather put a little more money and space towards a Roku 3.
Though it has less content than Roku at this point, Chromecast feels far more unified. And let me tell you, I never thought I’d prefer a TV device made by Google over one from Roku. But I found that I prefer Chromecast’s simplicity and lack of a physical remote. The huge variety of content on Roku (and multiple ways to control it) actually started to feel a bit overwhelming.
So: Roku’s Streaming Stick does some things well, but for the price I’d stick with Chromecast.
Chromecast DIAL dongle Roku
If a Broadcast Tower Is Tall Enough, Is It In the Cloud?
This week, the people of broadcast television make their way to Las Vegas, for the annual gathering of the National Association of Broadcasters.
For broadcasters in particular, it’s a weird time to be in television. The word itself — television — is equal parts strongly nostalgic, and tele-vestigial. Say “television” to a millennial, you’re a relic. Say it to any of us who grew up with that one screen as the central viewing device, it’s home.
The identity crisis facing traditional television is evident even in the show’s tagline this year: “Where Content Comes to Life.”
We took a quick poll of our favorite go-to, broadcast-side technologists over the last few weeks, to find out what’s on their shopping lists for this year’s show. Not surprisingly, 4K video, and its consumer-facing brand, UltraHD, will be the main event — but not all technologists are convinced it’s a go.
“I want to see if live TV production gear, like big production switchers, has made any progress — we’re building a big new production facility, but so far it’s only being outfitted for HD,” said one network-side technologist.
Refresher: UltraHD and 4K video is the next big thing coming from the consumer electronics side of the television eco-system — but the rest of that eco-system is still catching up. From the HDMI connectors into 4KTVs, to the physical media (Blu-Ray is arguably still “not big enough” to hold 4K video), to the bandwidth requirements, to the cameras, and whatever else we’re missing, there’s work to be done.
But! The challenges facing the rollout of 4K are nearly identical to those facing HD, when it first hit the market. And if the NAB show floor is any indication, and to use a medical analogy — there are plenty of white blood cells flooding all the problem areas, seeking to make each juncture healthy and well.
And then there’s the other stuff that typically lines the floor of a convention for broadcast engineers.
“Betcha I don’t see any transmitters or towers,” said another, who wondered when the “B” in “NAB” switches from “Broadcasters” to “Broadband.”
And, like everywhere else, “cloud” and the transition to Internet Protocol everything, from image capture to production to post-production to screen,” will crowd the exhibit hall. “It will be interesting to see how many possible functions can be stuffed into the cloud, or say that they can,” noted a content-side technologist.
Added another: “Wait a minute: If a broadcast tower is high enough, does that count as being in the cloud?”
Ah, the existential engineers in our tele-vestigial worlds. What would we do without them?
4K NAB televestigial UltraHD
Imagine Park: RDK in Action – Ericsson (The Cable Show 2013)
“User Defined Sports Ticker” Laura Oberholtzer Director, TV & Media Solutions Ericsson. Filmed June 10-12 2013. Video courtesy The Cable Show.
Comcast Ericsson Laura Oberholtzer Mark Hess RDK sports ticker Steve Reynolds user-defined
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Five Finger Death Punch Wells Fargo Arena - IA Des Moines Tickets
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Five Finger Death Punch Wells Fargo Arena - IA
Wells Fargo Arena - IA (Des Moines, Iowa)
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Vernissage Projects
Izabella Kay
IKAD
Ikad Gallery
FOULART
Foulart Gallery
Artan Gallery
Creative/Emerging
Vernissage.co.uk
© Vernissage London Ltd.
Implementation MTG Investment
"Kay is a thinking artist, whose gift is in seeing the world in a different way. A new way. Her way. The superimpositions of coloured chords transform the experience of material in to intellect. Her creative spirit turns the world upside down as she imprints her unique voice in its playfulness, creating stunning fields of bright kaleidoscopic colour that, arranged in a pattern, project from the wall, onto you, networking your space.”
Estelle Lovatt, art critic & broadcaster 2011 Art of England Magazine , September 2011
Izabella Kay (b. 1957) educated in Poland obtained her MA in “Export of Polish Art” in 1981. Based in London she trained at Heatherley’s School of Fine Art and under recognized artists. For 12 years she has sold to numerous international private collections.
Kay’s initial success culminated in a sell-out solo show – “Fifty Experiments, One Love” in 2004. Her major work to date consists of 500 oil paintings featured at Focus 2006, Chelsea Design and World of Interior Magazine. The work took over 2 1⁄2 years to complete and subsequently sold out as a rearranged show “Perception Altered” in 2007 exhibited at The Cork Street Gallery. A multimedia presentation accompanied this show which was shown separately at The Polish Underground Festival 2007. The installation “Passions, Possessions, Repetitions” (2005) is currently on show at The Polish Cultural Institute, London.In 2009 Kay was invited to show “Passionate Curiosity About Blue”, a 248 painting Installation - 40 ft. long – during the Miami Basel season. In her latest three dimensional show “Participating Presence” 2011, true to her continuous captivating visions of colour, Izabella Kay invites spectators to experience colour and space as she perceives it
Izabella was featured in “Creatives – Polish Roots”, an exhibition at the Museum of London, Oct/Nov 2009.
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Redbank Valley’s Kobe Bonanno and a couple teammates help stuff Union/A-C Valley’s Eli Penny (11) for a short gain in Friday’s game. The Bulldogs limited the Falcon Knights to 175 yards of offense and just 43 yards and three first downs in the second half.
Photo by Rich Rhoades
Redbank Valley's Joe Mansfield (2) returns an interception for a touchdown during Friday night's game at Clarion University's Memorial Stadium. He scored twice in the Bulldogs' 32-6 win.
Redbank Valley’s Ray Shreckengost breaks loose for a short gain during Friday night’s game. He ran for 113 yards on 21 carries and a touchdown in the Bulldogs’ win over Union/A-C Valley.
Playoff revenge: Bulldogs beat Falcon Knights, 32-6
By Rich Rhoades rrhoades@thecourierexpress.com
Rich Rhoades
CLARION — Rematches have not gone well for the regular-season winner in the District 9 Class A playoffs lately.
So revenge is sweet indeed for the Redbank Valley Bulldogs, who ride that trend right into this Saturday’s D9 Championship game against Coudersport at DuBois’ E.J. Mansell Stadium starting at 1 p.m.
The Bulldogs returned two interceptions for touchdowns in the first half, built a quick 19-0 lead and rode that momentum to a 32-6 win over Union/A-C Valley Friday night at Clarion University’s Memorial Stadium.
Since D9 reformed its divisional setup in football last year, things haven’t been all that easy for the team that has to beat a foe for a second time in the playoffs. That’s especially the case in Class A where teams that won in the regular season are now 3-6.
Coudersport anchored that trend last year with three “revenge” wins on its way to the district title. Now it’s the Bulldogs who are tasked with turning around another lopsided loss if they want to win their first D9 title since 1996. It was 56-0 in Coudersport back on Oct. 12, which was followed by a 28-6 loss at home on Senior Night to the Falcon Knights.
“It’s a tremendous opportunity for us,” said Bulldogs head coach Blane Gold, whose team improved to 9-2. “To be the best, you have to beat the best. For us, losing (starting quarterback) Gunner (Mangiantini) to the injury in the third quarter, at that point we weren’t going to come back from a deficit there with a freshman quarterback, but for us, we felt we didn’t do some things well that we do well and things snowballed pretty quickly.
“(Coudersport) is a tremendous football team, a state-ranked team, but we’re excited for it and meet them in DuBois Saturday.”
It’ll be the Bulldogs’ first finals berth since 2013 when they lost 53-0 to Clarion. Their only other appearance since 1996’s title season was a 42-15 loss to Brookville in the Class AA final in 2004.
Coudersport beat Smethport for the second time also Friday night in Bradford with a 35-6 win. The Falcons lost to the Bulldogs in last year’s regular-season matchup, 41-27, but two weeks later in the playoff opener, they blasted the Bulldogs on the same field in New Bethlehem, 52-7.
Two wins later against Clarion-Limestone and then Smethport, the Falcons won the district title.
Setting the tone early against the Falcon Knights, the Bulldogs needed just five plays to score on the opening possession of on Ray Shreckengost’s 20-yard run less than two minutes into the game. After trading punts, the Bulldogs got their first pick-six from Sam Hetrick who intercepted Luke Bowser and returned it 45 yards for a touchdown.
Then on the fifth play of the second quarter, Joe Mansfield tipped a Bowser screen pass up into the air and grabbed it for another interception return, this time on a 41-yard dash to make it 19-0 with still 10:46 left in the second quarter.
“Ethan (Hetrick) and Joe, what they do on the (defensive) edge is huge,” Gold said. “We had outgained Union in the first game, but a couple of big plays they hit us on were some quick screens, things we weren’t prepared for. So we drew some things up this week to put Joe in that position and however the ballots came out for all-conference, I believe the best corner in the conference wears 21 (Sam Hetrick) for us and he made that play at the beginning for the pick-six to get us going.
“Both of those guys, Sam, not just the speed but jumping ability and Joe, we laugh because he can be scatter-brained at times, but his athletic ability is just incredible and it was on display there.”
Union’s lone score answered Mansfield’s return on the next possession when Bowser hit Colton Hoffman on a 24-yard touchdown pass at the 6:42 mark of the second quarter.
The Bulldogs scored twice in the second half, Kobe Bonanno scoring on fourth-and-goal from the 2 with 4:37 left in the third quarter. That touchdown came seven plays after Mansfield blocked a punt and the Bulldogs recovered at the Union/ACV 14.
Mansfield’s 7-yard TD pass from quarterback Cam Wagner to cap the game’s scoring with 2:52 left in the game.
The Falcon Knights (7-4) fumbled away the ball on three straight offensive plays in the second half, the last one setting up the Bulldogs at the Union/ACV 7 three plays before Mansfield’s second touchdown.
“Turnovers tonight put us in a huge hole,” Union/ACV head coach Brad Dittman said. “We didn’t tackle real well at the beginning of the game and we fought back through that and I think we held our own, but too many mistakes. Offensively, jumping off sides, we haven’t done that in two weeks of practice and we do it four times tonight. Six turnovers, what can you say? You can’t do that against good teams in the playoffs.”
The Bulldogs outgained the Falcon Knights, 207-176, holding them to just 43 yards and three first downs in the second half. Shreckengost ran for 113 yards on 21 carries.
Follow Rich Rhoades
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Canadian wineries finding focus
17th May, 2013 by Rupert Millar
Canada’s wineries are becoming increasingly focused on specific grape varieties as the country’s wine industry matures.
Speaking to the drinks business at the annual Wines of Canada tasting at the Canadian High Commission, several producers voiced the opinion that there was an increasing amount of specialisation and that Canada was “more than just icewine”.
“Ontario is very similar to parts of the New World where there’s a lot of cellar door sales,” said Bill Redelmeier of Southbrook Vineyards.
“That approach rewards having a lot of varieties but it’s not good for focus. Specialisation is catching on though.”
Norman Hardie of Norman Hardie Winery added that plants are increasingly “getting to the right spot” and this was reflected in the growing quality and consistency of the wines.
He added that there was a “big emphasis” on Pinot Noir and Cabernet Franc (when it came to the best red varieties) and that Cabernet Sauvignon was much more site specific.
Stephen Gash, managing director of Malivoire, told db that Matt Kramer of the Wine Spectator had caused something of a stir a few years ago when he announced that the grape with the best potential in Ontario was Gamay – of which a little is planted (mostly by Malivoire) though plantings are apparently growing.
Nonetheless, Hardie pointed out that the long growing season meant that Canadian regions could handle a relatively diverse array of varieties.
Giving a wider overview of the tasting, Janet Dorozynski, global practice lead for beer, wine and spirits at the Global Business Opportunities Bureau, told db that while Canada had built up a “strong image for icewine, many producers see Canada as being more than that.
“We’re a modern industry, only 20-25 years old but we’re learning more, we’re a country of experimentation and, if I can use the analogy, we’re beyond the awkward teenage years.”
As well as the main varieties being shown at the tasting, Dorozynski also spoke of the potential for Canadian sparkling wines and rosé in the UK – two of the most popular and fastest growing categories – while admitting that it would not be easy to sell Canadian wine in great volume.
“The focus is the on-trade and independent merchants, not supermarkets. It’s expensive in Canada, land, labour and production costs are high. It’s not like South Africa or Chile.
“But we’re not competing in the £5 category, we can’t, but many of the wines are worth it.”
One Response to “Canadian wineries finding focus”
Konrad Ejbich says:
I would have liked to hear more from the visiting tasters than the sellers. What did they have to say about what they tasted?
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Home › News › August 2017 › Demystifying medulloblastoma
Demystifying medulloblastoma
Prof Wainwright (just call me Brandon) is the Director of the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at The University of Queensland. The Kids’ Cancer Project is currently funding a study he’s leading to discover better treatments for medulloblastoma (a type of brain tumour) while reducing the toxic effects of it. We caught up with Brandon to find out more.
What’s the current treatment of this type of brain cancer?
The current cure rate for medulloblastoma is 50 per cent, and it’s treated with surgery (to remove the tumour), radiotherapy and cycles of chemotherapy. The problem with radiotherapy and chemotherapy is that they work by killing growing cells, and in the patient’s body it’s not just the tumour that’s growing. You can think of it as like using weed killer.
How do weed killers work?
Well, it works because weeds grow faster than grass. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy don’t completely discriminate, they just mostly kill the thing that is fastest growing – in this case, the brain tumour but there is an effect on normal cells that are growing as well. The trick is to target the radiotherapy and keep a close eye on the doses and side effects of both the chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
That does sound toxic. What are some of the side-effects?
Unfortunately, some children will develop learning difficulties. Another side-effect is neuropathy - a nerve condition that can lead to pain, and loss of function in different parts of the body.
Read more: New therapies for incurable paediatric brain tumours.
The study you’re doing is to test an already approved drug that targets defective proteins in the cancer cell. How is this going to work differently to chemo?
Over the past year we identified the core genetic components that lead to the development of medulloblastoma. It was no mean feat, as the genetic network is incredibly complex. We had to search for the one critical circuit that controls the growth of the tumour but not in the normal cells. Once we found that, our hypothesis was that we’d be able to find a drug that would act as the circuit breaker.
So you found the drug?
Yes. Our repurposing strategy uncovered a drug that was originally developed to treat breast cancer.
Did your hypothesis work? Is that drug the circuit breaker?
We’ve tested it in mice bearing human tumours, and yes, it worked. Over a period of 20 days, our study showed 100 per cent survival and tumour shrinkage that was quite amazing. But in cancer, there’s no such thing as a magic bullet. And as soon as we stop the drug, some of the cancer comes back. You have to smack cancer from all different directions to fight it. This one particular drug does a great job, but it would be enhanced in combination with other therapies, like chemo. We have an 18-month plan to test complementary chemo and then get it into clinical trial.
We are going to try and answer what we believe to be the single most overlooked question in cancer research, particularly in paediatric brain tumours.
Sounds big.
It is. I’m working collaboratively with other researchers funded by The Kids’ Cancer Project such as Dr Nick Gottardo and also Professor Michael Taylor of Sickkids (The Hospital for Sick Children) in Toronto. The question we asked was, why do we focus on the current cancer, when it’s a recurrent or metastatic cancer that ends up being fatal?
Read more: In Focus: Institute for Molecular Bioscience.
Good question. We hear time and time again, ‘the cancer came back, and there was nothing that could be done.’
What has been discovered is that the exact same cancer doesn’t come back – it’s highly related and it might look similar to the first one, but it’s not necessarily. That’s why it is unlikely to respond to the same therapy. It grows and changes – cancer is like a criminal let lose in a village – they’re completely lawless having broken one law and don’t behave in any conventional ways.
What’s the answer?
There are a lot of answers needed for a big question. One is to do a very comprehensive genetic analysis comparing primary to recurrent cancer from the same patient and pair it with new genetic approaches. For example, there’s been a very exciting development called liquid biopsies. What has been discovered is the DNA of cancer cells can be found in the blood or spinal fluid in the case of brain tumours. So we can now do ‘liquid biopsies’ and look at the cancer DNA to see how it’s changing and adapt therapies to suit.
Science is incredible!
Science is a long process, but we are making headway. It’s all about asking a hard question, getting an interesting answer – discovering something, then committing to innovate and getting the results of the research to the patient.
Thank you for sharing this update with us Brandon, we’re so inspired by what you do.
Thank you for having me. We quite literally couldn’t do it without funding from The Kids’ Cancer Project and the generosity of all your donors.
Donate to research and help find more effective treatments for kids with cancer.
In Focus: The University of Sydney
Behind the science: Associate Professor Rishi Kotecha
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© Copyright 2020 The Kids' Cancer Project
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The Middle Stump's Ashes preview
In a matter of hours, England and Australia go head to head in Brisbane, and having heard everyone give their opinion on the series, we thought we would chip in with ours. The build up has been immense with Shane Warne being the most vociferous in his critical views of Alastair Cook's captaincy. Already the Aussies are crowing and we are anticipating a closely fought series, with England retaining the Ashes.
Clarke...winless in 2013
Warnie has been extremely outspoken about the perceived negativity of Captain Cook but the long and short of it, is that he has lost just one Test in eighteen. Likewise, he has been eulogising about Michael Clarke but for all of his thoughtful field placings and ambitious bowling changes, you and I have won as many Tests as the Australian has in 2013. Surely a skipper is to be judged on how many games he actually wins?? Only Miley Cyrus can usurp the blond Victorian for making outrageous comments in recent days!
The Australian press are a strange beast. The bitterness of the likes of Malcolm Conn when England players watered the Oval pitch after winning the Ashes was a strange sight to see from such a respected journalist, and Warne's comments when everyone else thinks he is talking complete bollocks, are just as bizarre.
Unlike Mitchell Johnson's bowling, this man has been in One Direction
Back to the cricket and the Aussies are in a bit of a quandary. Fearful of producing flat, decent wickets after our batting there two years ago, they also know that producing turning wickets with their lack of spin options is akin to a date with Joanna Dennehy. So generally they will produce hard, bouncing wickets or so we thought? The Gabba, albeit two days before the test and before its final haircut, looked about as green as Kermit's arse. Maybe they will try and produce seaming green tops to utilise the strength of Siddle, Harris and Co? It's a dangerous game though, especially when James Anderson lies in wait for the opposition.
As mentioned their big trump card is the Aussie pace attack, which is just as good as ours, whilst other aspects of their game I don't think are. Ryan Harris showed what a good bowler he is over here this summer, and whilst Peter Siddle may have teeth like the boyband One Direction (there's only five of them and they are all bent), he will run in all day. Talking of One Direction I think the series hinges on a man whose bowling has gone in in numerous directions in recent years, and that is Mitchell Johnson.
Johnson is seriously quick and has been getting it together recently. Bowling twenty overs in a day though in a Test match is a completely different kettle of fish from ten or twelve in a one day affair but when he gets it right, he's a handful. With Trott's perceived weakness against the short stuff, he could be a match winner and expect him to do well at Perth. When the Doctor comes in behind him, and no we aren't talking Shipman or Crippen here, but the Fremantle Doctor, he can be a right handful as he showed last time in Perth. He can bat too, but whether he can ignore the Barmy Army with their song about his wife hating his mum, and vice versa is a different matter. I'm sure every Englishman who was there that day when they sang it, will remember young Mitchell stopping as he ran in to bowl, to suggest that they were exponents of the art of masturbating!
Christmas Day in the Johnson house according to the Barmy Army!
English bowling is another key to this series and I wouldn't look too far past Anderson or Swann for the leading wicket taker. Cook will surely have a better summer than he had in England, and Carberry will be his partner at the top of the order, with Root dropping back to six.
The Aussie top order will score runs, and I can foresee this series being far closer than the one in England. With the width of a rizla paper separating these two teams, I'm going to go for a draw at Brisbane, which is 9-4 by the way, followed by a couple of wins apiece in a drawn series. Like the South African Archbishop Desmond, I am going for 2-2 with England retaining the Ashes. That is providing the Aussies have remembered how to win a game.
Our prediction for the series
The phoney media war is over. Let the battle commence...
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Does that imply that their recommendation is 100% solid? No, yet it's bound to be, than counsel from an outsider.Et20slam
Howzat? The Six Sixes Ball Mystery
Dear Jon....
Review of the First Test in Australia
England's Ashes Warm Up
The Springing Kangaroo
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IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF WW2 IN BURMA AND NE INDIA WITH INCURSIONS INTO NAGALAND by Antony Johnson of From Here to There Travel
FROM HERE TO THERE TRAVEL is a travel business set up by Antony Johnson to offer a personalised, accompanied service to small groups of dedicated travellers who want to experience the real thing, either with the person who designed the Itinerary, or on their own.
The relationship between the leader and his charges thus becomes incredibly close, and Antony revels in providing experiences which his clients simply could not find anywhere else, because he has, quite literally, travelled the world, and his preferred areas for his travel groups are South-East Asia, including Burma, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Thailand; South America, Central America, including Guatemala, Belize, and Mexico, India, several Eastern European countries, including Poland, Romania, Georgia, and Ukraine, and Turkey and Sicily.
A journey to this wide and sometimes wild section of the world needs a deal of planning all of which pays off a hundredfold if it is to be successful. So, let us first consider some of the historical background.
A Tolstoy of a Story by Antony Johnson – The Decembrist Uprising 1825 – Would Success Have Changed The Course of History?
In the middle of the 18th century the world outside Russia was not known to the vast majority of Russians. St. Petersburg was founded by Peter The Great in 1703 at the end of the Great Northern War with Sweden on swampy land that was previously Swedish. In 20 odd years the city, as it was then, was virtually completed. Architects and technicians were brought in from all over Europe but labour, although plentiful and cheap, was totally unskilled so it was an incredible achievement.
Fishing on the Roof of Africa – Don’t Wake from the Dream
Our intrepid Doctor, Bruce Dunlop has been on his travels again – this time in search of the ultimate fishing experience in Lesotho:-
It is the elephant in the room. Huge, high and imposing but few people seem to now it is there. Even in South Africa very few have noticed Lesotho.
Some facts. It sits in the middle of the Republic of South Africa, an independent kingdom and proud of its monarch. It is high. The entire country is above 1000m in altitude and as a consequence is quite cool, you can even ski after a fashion in the Maloti Mountains. Its population is about 2 million and although there is some mining for diamonds and a little industry the majority of the population lives on subsistence farming, pastoral pursuits and remittances from family members working in South Africa.
Zimbabwe – Then & Now by Antony Johnson
This quite fabulously beautiful, productive and wonderfully sensational land has, sadly, become synonymous in recent years with one of the most hated and despised abuser of all forms of human rights, torturer, genocidal maniac, destroyer of his country and all round big time baddy, Robert Mugabe. But from the ashes of destruction, the land and hope of resurrection is gradually rising like the glimmer of sunlight in an early dawn. So, let us go back a while and look at this bejewelled piece of God’s earth as it was only 130 years ago.
Strange Bedfellows by John Blashford-Snell
In 40 years of expeditioning I’ve slept on camp beds in the bush, jungle hammocks, foam rubber mats on glacier rocks, upturned inflatable boats and ‘bivvy’ bags in Tibetan snow.
As a solider I’ve made my bed in muddy trenches and even on a pile of dead goats in an Iranian helicopter carrying supplies to a beleaguered garrison in Oman.
I reckon I can sleep anywhere at anytime and I often do …. even on the back of an elephant whilst tracking giant jumbos in the remote forests of Nepal. Although a snake and a rat once chased each other repeatedly across my sleeping bag in a front line bunker it is not those who share my bed that usually bother me. However on an expedition on a South American river I did have a strange experience. My bunk was beneath the chart table in a crude wooden shack that served as our ‘Operations Room’ on the deck of a noisy Brazilian freighter. Escorting a fleet of traditional reed boats from Bolivia to Buenos Aires we were studying the ancient trade routes. In order to gather archaeological information we gave medical aid to the Indians and one grateful group presented us with a hairy, ginger, Paraguayan piglet whom we named Rocket. Thriving rapidly on leftover food from a bucket labelled “Rocket fuel” he soon became a lively pet …. especially at night.
The Patagonian wind was bitterly cold at 3am when the sound of deep breathing woke me. Wondering if the adjutant who shared the wooden hut was getting fruity, I lay still and listened carefully. Then to my horror someone began to lick my feet. “Such affection will not enhance your promotion prospects,” I growled disentangling myself from the blankets. A shrill squeal resulted and our piglet emerged. Heaving the protesting porker out I tried to sleep but he’d been gathered up by a member of the crew and popped into the bed of another. Pandemonium broke out when the occupant returned from a late night party and a tirade of curses woke me once again.
I enjoyed a much more comfortable bed in the Senate House of a university where I had gone to lecture. After an exhausting day I longed for sleep as I was ushered to my quarters in the 16th Century wing. A single table lamp cast a dull light on the enormous bed and a coal fire bathed the panelled room in a faint glow. Sinking into the deep feather mattress I only glanced at one feature of my lodging. Over the mantelpiece hung the portrait of a severe-looking old man whose eyes stared directly at me.
The fire was out and the room cold when an especially vivid unpleasant nightmare had me sitting bolt upright. Convinced I was not alone I flicked on the light. Nothing was amiss but the old man’s eyes still gazed straight at me. “A bad dream” I thought returning to my slumbers. Departing at dawn I asked the Hall Porter whose portrait it was. “Ah that be Judge Jeffreys” he said shaking his head, “you know, Sir, the hanging judge”. “Yes” I murmured, “I do know what you mean – he was my ancestor”.
Colonel John Nicholas Blashford-Snell OBE is a former British Army officer, explorer and author. He was educated at Victoria College, Jersey and at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, then commissioned into the Royal Engineers.
He found fame in 1968 when as a Captain in the Royal Engineers he led the first descent of the infamous Blue Nile. He has been making headlines ever since with intrepid expeditions and is a founder-member of the Scientific Exploration Society, the parent body for many world-wide ventures. Inspired by the spirit of Sir Francis Drake’s voyage 400 years ago, Colonel Blashford-Snell was also the driving force behind Operations Drake and Raleigh which saw thousands of young men and women from 50 nations take part in challenges and worthwhile expeditions all over the world.
In Patagonia by Antony Johnson of From Here to There Travel
Patagonia. What does the word conjure up in your mind? Its not a country, therefore has no demarcation line, no boundaries, no government or status in its own name. It does, however cover a huge area and is a most important part of two countries – Argentina and Chile. It’s really all the land roughly speaking south of latitude 42 degrees down to the Straits of Magellan.
To Infinity and Beyond- Travels with Antony Johnson
Two Humorous Anecdotes from Colonel John Blashford-Snell on his experience of leadership, motivation,communication, inspiration, team-building and problem solving.
ALMOST – THE WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD (with apologies to Apsley Cherry-Gerrard who brought the first eggs of the giant Emperor Penguin back from the Antarctic having travelled for months in perpetual darkness)
THE EARLY DAYS OF ADVENTURE TRAINING
Travels with my Doctor – Uganda Without Gorillas
If you say “Uganda” to most people, first Idi Amin and then Gorillas comes to mind.
There is more to the Pearl of Africa than this. Relegate Idi to tragic history. He has left a scar but one that has largely healed beneath the emollient touch of a more benign government.
Peregrinations in Peru by Antony Johnson of ‘From Here to There’ Travel
Most people, when you mention Peru, say “Ah, yes, Machu Picchu”. If Machu Picchu was all there was to see in Peru, it would still be worth going all that way. But it isn’t; not by a long shot.
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Review Theatre
The Case of the Frightened Lady at the Playhouse, Weston
30/01/2018 Becky Condron 1 Comment PlayhouseWeston
Produced by the tireless Bill Kenwright for ‘The Classic Thriller Theatre Company’, the Playhouse Weston brings another murder mystery to our town.
Set in 1932 (incidentally, the same year that the play’s writer, Edgar Wallace, died), The Case of the Frightened Lady feels like hundreds of years away from the edgy, provocative, bang-up-to-date shows you might catch at Theatre Tropicana just along the seafront: with its imperialism and blue blood, this production is a far cry from The Sex Workers’ Opera, say, or Trainspotting.
And that’s just fine: the number of bums on seats here proves that there’s room aplenty for it all. At 48 years of age, I am among the youngest in this audience but old enough to have clocked up my fair share of Whodunnits and I’m definitely a big fan of way too many (contemporary) crime TV programmes and books. I also like a good story, which Edgar Wallace proves to have been a dab hand at churning out and, throughout the play, I don’t miss a word of the somewhat staccato dialogue, determined not to lose the plot, literally.
Expect a rather unusual upstairs/downstairs scenario, with menacing and sometimes comical footmen (Glenn Carter’s Gilder being the most fluent and believable character), a secretary who has the chance to be a Lady and a housekeeper whose loveless marriage has her flirting and flirted with, not always to her liking. There is a suspicious doctor, a detective, tales of India and lives that entwine. Wallace’s story weaving keeps up the intrigue and, as with all good murder mysteries, we’re really not sure until the very end who among the rich and their servants has committed the fatal crime.
The entire play takes place in one room of the grand and uber-posh Marks Priory, seat of the Lebanon family – Julie Godfrey’s design opens up the stage, allowing plenty of room for the cast of 12 to enter and leave as dizzingly but cleanly as possible. If you watch soaps, you will recognise a few of the actors, particularly Gray O’Brien and Denis Lill of Corrie fame and Charlie Clements from EastEnders, while Rula Lenska has been around for at least the duration of my own memory.
What the Playhouse Weston does, it does very well and, after the offerings of all the other local theatres in Weston and Bristol, The Case of the Frightened Lady, for all its old-fashioned storyline and delivery, is surprisingly refreshing.
The Case of the Frightened Lady plays at the Playhouse Weston until 3rd February
← Finding your Feet (Preview) at Cineworld, Weston-s-Mare
A Passage to India at Bristol Old Vic →
Noughts and Crosses at Bristol Old Vic
The Little Table of Delights at Bristol Old Vic
The Old Man and the Sea at Alma Tavern and Theatre
One thought on “The Case of the Frightened Lady at the Playhouse, Weston”
Did you see the same play as I did, if so you wouldn’t have guessed it from your write up?
There was nothing refreshing about this play, unless you count the interval. I was extremely disappointed considering the pedigree of talent on stage. The unnecessary walking on and off the stage was distracting, the repeated line, ‘someone is listening’, lacked a presence and destination.
The plot was difficult to spot and it didn’t help that some of the actors forgot their lines.
Very boring!
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Title: Knecht Ruprecht
Subject: Christmas, Companions of Saint Nicholas, St Nicholas Day, German folklore, Christmas Eve
Collection: Alpine Folklore, Christian Folklore, Fictional Servants, German Folklore, German Legendary Creatures, Santa's Helpers
Knecht Ruprecht (on the left) and St. Nicholas
Knecht Ruprecht (English: Farmhand Rupert or Servant Rupert) is a companion of Saint Nicholas as described in the folklore of Germany. He first appears in written sources in the 17th century, as a figure in a Nuremberg Christmas procession.[1]
Various traditions 2
In popular culture 3
The companions of Saint Nicholas are a group of closely related figures who accompany St. Nicholas in German-speaking Europe and more widely throughout the territories formerly in the Holy Roman Empire. These characters act as a foil to the benevolent Christmas gift-bringer, threatening to thrash or abduct disobedient children. Jacob Grimm (in Deutsche Mythologie) associated this character with the pre-Christian house spirit (kobold, elf) which could be benevolent or malicious, but whose mischievous side was emphasized after Christianization.
Knecht Ruprecht is St. Nicholas' most familiar attendant in Germany. According to some stories, Ruprecht began as a farmhand; in others, he is a wild foundling whom St. Nicholas raises from childhood.
Ruprecht wears a black or brown robe with a pointed hood. Sometimes he walks with a limp, because of a childhood injury. He can be seen carrying a long staff and a bag of ashes, and on occasion wears little bells on his clothes.[2] Sometimes he rides on a white horse, and sometimes he is accompanied by fairies or men with blackened faces dressed as old women.[2]
According to Alexander Tille, Knecht Ruprecht originally represented an archetypal manservant, "and has exactly as much individuality of social rank and as little personal individuality as the Junker Hanns and the Bauer Michel, the characters representative of country nobility and peasantry respectively."[3] Tille also states that Knecht Ruprecht originally had no connection with Christmastime.[3] Ruprecht was a common name for the Devil in Germany,[1] and Grimm states that "Robin Goodfellow is the same home-sprite whom we in Germany call Knecht Ruprecht and exhibit to children at Christmas..."[1]
Knecht Ruprecht first appears in written sources in the 17th century, as a figure in a Nuremberg Christmas procession.[1]Samuel Taylor Coleridge encountered Knecht Ruprecht in a 1798 visit to Ratzeburg, a village in northern Germany. [4]
According to tradition, Knecht Ruprecht asks children whether they can pray. If they can, they receive apples, nuts, and gingerbread. If they cannot, he beats the children with his bag of ashes.[2] In other (presumably more modern) versions of the story, Knecht Ruprecht gives naughty children gifts such as lumps of coal, sticks, and stones, while well-behaving children receive sweets from Saint Nicholas. He also can be known to give naughty children a switch (stick) in their shoes for their parents to beat them with, instead of candy, fruit and nuts, in the German tradition.
In related folk traditions more closely associated with certain regions of High-Alpine Europe, particularly the snowy villages south and west of Salzburg in Austria, the Knecht Ruprecht character functions as St. Nicholas' assistant, rather than as the primary actor in the early December rituals; keeping a watchful eye on the benevolent saint during his journey. Both are, in turn, accompanied in these regions by an assortment of terrifying horned, goat-like, creatures known as the "Krampus", who seek out and terrorize misbehaving children identified by St. Nicholas for punishment. Austrian children grow up believing the worst offenders are whipped with birch switches, and sometimes stuffed in a burlap sack and thrown into an icy river for their bad deeds![5][6]
In the Mittelmark Knecht Ruprecht is known as De hêle Christ (“The Holy Christ”). He was also known as Hans Ruprecht, Rumpknecht, and in Mecklenburg, was called Rû Clås (Rough Nicholas).[2] In the Altmark and in East Friesland, he was known as Bûr and Bullerclås.[2]
In 1862 German poet/novelist Theodore Storm wrote the poem "Knecht Ruprecht".[7]
In the German version of the The Simpsons television show, the family dog is named Knecht Ruprecht rather than Santa's Little Helper.[8]
^ a b c d Phyllis Siefker, Santa Claus, last of the wild men: the origins and evolution of Saint Nicholas, spanning 50,000 years (McFarland, 1997), 155.
^ a b c d e Benjamin Thorpe, Northern mythology: comprising the principal popular traditions and superstitions of Scandinavia, north Germany, and the Netherlands (E. Lumley, 1852), 146.
^ a b Alexander Tille, Yule and Christmas: their place in the Germanic year (D. Nutt, 1899), 116.
^ , Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2010, ISBN 9780307760227The Battle for ChristmasNissenbaum, Stephen.
^ "Krampus". Monstropedia. 2009-11-05. Retrieved 2012-12-13.
^ "Devils and maidens: Austria's Krampus parades". Travel.ninemsn.com. Retrieved 2012-12-13.
^ , Llewellyn Worldwide, 2013, ISBN 9780738733340The Old Magic of ChristmasRaedisch, Linda.
^ "Mention of the name "Knecht Ruprecht" in a German "The Simpsons" episode guide".
In Christianity
Adoration of the Magi
Annunciation to the shepherds
Christmastide
Nativity Fast
Nativity of Jesus
in later culture
Badalisc
Belsnickel
Grýla
Joulupukki
Korvatunturi
Père Fouettard
Saint Lucy
Santa's reindeer
Vertep
Yule Lads
Boar's Head Feast
Carols by Candlelight
Cavalcade of Magi
Holiday parades
Meals and feasts
Moravian star
Nine Lessons and Carols
NORAD Tracks Santa
Twelve Days
Yule Goat
United States (continental)
Carols (list)
Hit singles US
Hit singles UK
"A Visit from St. Nicholas"
In modern society
Advent Conspiracy
Bronner's Christmas Wonderland
Christmas creep
Christmas Day (Trading) Act 2004
Post-War United States
Linked holidays
Christmas Mountains
Nomenclature and language
Running of the Santas
SantaCon
Santa's Candy Castle
Joulupöytä
Twelve-dish supper
Karelian pasty
Mince pie
Szaloncukor
Ponche crema
Romeritos
Roast goose
Christmas ham
Christian folklore
German legendary creatures
Alpine folklore
German folklore
Fictional servants
Santa Claus, Christmas, Carp, Advent, Toronto
Futurama, Family Guy, South Park, Matt Groening, Gracie Films
Martin Luther, Anglicanism, Bible, Lutheranism, Protestantism
Germany, Bavaria, Fürth, Prague, Munich
Christianity, Nativity of Jesus, Jesus, Eastern Christianity, Martin Luther
Companions of Saint Nicholas
Pennsylvania, Christmas, Styria, Christmas traditions, Elf
St Nicholas Day
Krampus, Province of Udine, South Tyrol, Mikulás, Christmas traditions
Germany, Elf, Scandinavian folklore, Richard Wagner, Norse mythology
Christmas, Jesus, Philippines, Christianity, Santa Claus
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Community spirit shines in ‘Local Flavor’ cookbook
CELEBRATING TRADITION: Janice Torilli, the force behind reviving the "Local Flavor" cookbook, enjoys cooking for her family and is passing on her love of cooking to her grandchildren by cooking with them whenever they get the chance.
TIME-TESTED: Recipes written on notecards are among the “Local Flavor” cookbook submissions Beacon Communications has received throughout the years.
The cover of the 2019 edition of "Local Flavor."
MAKING MEMORIES: The late Monica D’Abrosca began submitting recipes to the Warwick Beacon in the 1970s, and was featured in multiple editions of “Local Flavor.”
CIVICS COURSE: Lincoln Chafee got in on the act for the 1997 edition of “Local Flavor” while serving as Warwick mayor, offering readers his “recipe for good government.”
LOCAL TASTES: The 1994 and 1997 editions of “Local Flavor” are filled with recipes from readers. The culinary creations shared by members of the community include appetizers, entrees and even cocktails.
Posted Friday, November 22, 2019 1:50 pm
By DANIEL KITTREDGE
A favorite recipe is something special.
Maybe it’s a dish that’s been passed down through generations. Perhaps it’s one that’s a central part of an important holiday meal. It may simply be the secret to a particularly delicious dessert or cocktail, provided through a tip from a neighbor or friend.
Twenty-five years ago, Beacon Communications first sought to collect its readers’ favorite recipes in a cookbook dubbed “Local Flavor.” Advertising sales representative Janice Torilli, who helped organize that initial publication, says community spirit was at the heart of the effort – and remains so today, as the cookbook returns in this week’s edition of the Warwick Beacon, Cranston Herald and Johnston Sun Rise.
“Everybody knows how to make a grilled cheese or pancakes or something like that. These recipes are meant to be someone’s favorite thing they cook for their family,” she says.
Torilli remembers the bustle and activity of the Beacon’s newsroom in 1994, when the first “Local Flavor” was printed. That environment, she says, made the sharing of stories – and recipes – a regular occurrence.
“It was always so loud, so much noise – so interactive, a lot of conversations,” she says. “Everybody cooks.”
In that initial 1994 printing, the late Alice Stanelun, who was the Beacon’s sales manager at the time, wrote that the response to the call for recipes from readers was “overwhelming.”
“Inside, you’ll find delicious recipes from both well-known and not so well-known Rhode Islanders, each reflecting the unique flavor of our state … We loved your enthusiasm and offer you our sincere thanks for your cooperation,” Stanelun’s introductory note in that year’s cookbook reads.
Torilli says in 2018, the Beacon decided to revive the cookbook, which had been dormant for several years after the publishing of a few additional editions in the 1990s. While the newsroom is quieter now given the amount of business and communication done online or by phone, she says the hope was to rekindle some of the magic from those early days – and to “keep up a tradition of home cooking.”
“The whole reason behind doing the cookbook last year was just to get people more involved … coming into the office, dropping off recipes,” she says.
Some people who had submitted recipes for the cookbook’s initial run returned for the effort. Many, Torilli says, were happy to see “Local Flavor” get a second life.
“Emails that we got we got were like, ‘This is really good, I’m so happy you’re doing it again,’ and ‘It’s a great idea to have a repeat now, 25 years later,’” she says.
Torilli says it has been particularly rewarding to receive recipes that provide additional reminders of the initial run of “Local Flavor.” Some submissions came in the form of handwritten letters, which she says she still writes to members of her family. Others were outlined on notecards – a practice Torilli says her mother employed for many years.
“It was nice getting personal letters, handwritten recipes,” she says, noting that she retains a collection of such submissions from years past. “To actually have the cards, I thought was pretty cool.”
Torilli has especially fond memories of the late Monica D’Abrosca, who sent recipes to the Beacon starting in the 1970s and was included in the first “Local Flavor” and the 2018 edition.
An entry from the 1994 cookbook reads: “Monica D’Abrosca of Bingham Street didn’t hesitate when we suggested she might work on a salad. Out came the lettuce, cucumber, mushrooms and peppers, and only minutes later as daughter Amy bolted through the kitchen door came the inquiry, ‘what’s for dinner?’”
Some of the recipes including in “Local Flavor” over the years, Torilli says, have been “pretty different.” The names, and dishes, are indeed frequently creative.
The inaugural edition from 1994, for instance, includes Robin Barnicoat’s “Honey Curry Scallops” and Amy Parravano’s “Porcupine Balls” among the appetizers. In 1997, the cookbook included Claire Stadtmueller’s “Love a Goose Pate.”
Among the notecards Torilli keeps is a recipe for “Pink Rabbit,” a macaroni dish submitted by Phyllis Solod. And the 2018 cookbook featured Torilli’s own “Slow Cooked Cowboy Beans” and “Slow Cooked Spinach and Mozzarella Frittata.”
Many of the submissions show how much dedication and care readers put into their cooking, containing deeply detailed instructions on how to prepare a particular dish.
“They took the time to make sure you understood the recipe,” Torilli says.
Advertisers got in on the act, too. In the 1997 cookbook, Lincoln Chafee – then mayor of Warwick – ran a full-page providing his “recipe for good government.” Ingredients included one cup of honesty, one cup of “fair contract settlement,” a teaspoon of humor and a pinch of “proven leadership ability.”
“Combine ingredients and bake in an oven of public scrutiny,” the ad reads. “Add energy, dedication and ethical conduct. Stir in a fair and open government. Serve.”
“Local Flavor” will likely take another break after this year’s publication, but Torilli says the plan is for it to return. Since last year, she says she has seen new enthusiasm for it among some of her younger clients.
For now, she urges readers and others in the community to enjoy what their friends and neighbors have to offer – and to dig into their own recipe books even as they add new dishes.
As Stanelun wrote in the 1994 edition: “We hope that you’ll experiment with what you see inside and this cookbook will be one that you’ll save and use throughout the year.”
Folk-punk troubadour Jake Wasson finds a home in Cranston
Sixty years of service: At McCrudden’s Radiator & Repair in Conimicut, tradition spans decades
From Blackletter to teaching, Dave Laros finds many musical avenues
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OCFF Review: ENTERTAINMENT
Director: Rik Alverson.
Writer: Rik Alverson, Tim Heidecker, Greg Turkington.
Actors: Greg Turkington, John C. Reilley, Tye Sheridan, Amy Seimetz, Michael Cera and Tim Heidecker.
Synopsis: A depressed comedian tours the Southwest to apathetic audiences.
Comedy is a fascinating thing. It is always a point of contention in the mainstream. From Richard Pryor to even Louis C. K., there will always be an article decrying certain kinds of comedy and jokes about what is and isn't in good taste. Even the most vanilla comedian, Jerry Seinfeld is getting flack for criticizing the politically correct environment that plagues comedians. It's also a field ripe with depression, and I won't bother listing how many great comedians have passed away due to depression/suicide or overdoses.
In director Rick Alverson's second feature, we follow a fictionalized (?) version of comedian Greg Turkington as he tours the American Southwest with his "Neil Hamburger" persona. This is a comedian that is utterly depressed and sad but still performs at clubs filled with people that hate him. Given Alverson's precious effort THE COMEDIAN, which features one of the most loathsome and grating characters in recent memory, it feel like a perfect fit for this unflinching and uncomfortable look at a sad man.
On the surface, this movie is about a quiet and imposing man who can barely muster the energy to look at people in the eye who transforms into this grotesque persona that's about as confrontational as it gets. The Neil Hamburger persona is a fascinating due to his downright antagonistic attitude. Everything about him is a contradiction. He's wearing a suit to look classy, but it's ill fitting and loose, and his the purposely greasy comb over doesn't help either. He makes some insanely funny and crude jokes which sound like playground knock knock jokes but they take on a crude turn, "What is the difference between Courtney Love and the American flag? You wouldn't piss on the American flag."
The contradictions extend to the man himself. Greg (though he might be called Gene in the movies) is one of the saddest looking people. He's constantly slouching and slow. He always has a distant look in his eyes in the rare times he's interacting with other people. He also on the surface appears to be a devoted father albeit an absent one since he's calling his daughter mutiple times during the movie. The thing is he's always leaving voice mails and as the movie increasingly becomes more surreal it's possible that the daughter doesn't exist.
The movie does have something to say about art and its relationship to the audience. Greg, as a form of entertainment, watches raunchy telenovelas full of hyperbolic vaudevillian comedy, but he still watches presumably for enjoyment. This perfectly mirrors the Neil Hamburger performance where he is always seemingly at odds with his audience since you never hear a laugh from them during the entire movie. The movie seems to pose the question of the "validity" of art if it doesn't connect with its audience.
Despite how dreary the movie is, it's a beautifully shot and takes the full advantage of the wide screen as there's various scenes of Greg out on the desert in beautiful rock formations or while he's taking one of those cheesy local tours. To add to the somber mood, the score is as equally relentless and dour as the movie with a lot of bass synth tones.
The movie does derail itself a bit towards the end as it gets even more psychedelic and surreal. Greg starts imagining himself starring the telenovelas, and he starts to run into increasingly crazy characters that are outlandish even for the world that's been established.
ENTERTAINMENT is an extension of the director, and it's relentlessly punishing style. In that regard, it's a fascinating look at a depressed man full of contradiction and his place in comedy. This is a movie that is so intense and so strange that it's hard to say that it could find an audience to make its point. But maybe, that IS the point.
Rick Alverson
Writing Credits (in alphabetical order)
Rick Alverson ... (co-writer)
Tim Heidecker ... (co-writer)
Gregg Turkington ... (co-writer)
Gregg Turkington
Lotte Verbeek ...
The Chromotherapist
Tye Sheridan ...
John C. Reilly ...
Dean Stockwell ...
Amy Seimetz ...
Tim Heidecker ...
The Celebrity
Mariann Gavelo ...
Sitcom Maria
Tonantzin Carmelo ...
Kalia Prescott ...
Gregg Turkington ...
Labels: Amy Seimetz, Entertainment, Greg Turkington, John C. Reilley, Michael Cera, movie review, Neil Hamburger, Oak Cliff Film Festival, Rik Alverson, Tim Heidecker, Tye Sheridan
Other Awesome Movie Sites
Badass Digest
All Up In The Marc
We Drink Your Milkshake
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red certificate
CERTIFICATION • Rail company
RAIL COMPANIES CERTIFICATION
" China's travel growth will keep up double digit percentages for the next three years; in 2015 gross bookings will reach $128.8 billion. Chinese travelers are incredibly hungry for travel. They plan to travel more and farther in the coming years." [Source: PhoCusWright's China Online Travel Overview Sixth Edition, 2013]
The opportunity for every company in the travel sector to capture a share of this impressive market is topic. Welcome Chinese will help you be the first to understand and satisfied Chinese customer's expectations and preference so to gain a permanent advantage among competitors.
Welcome Chinese has developed a specifi certification standard for "Railways".
NEW 2016 : ONLINE TRAINING : Access to the standard online training of Lobster Ink including « food & beverage », housekeeping and front office services.
NEW 2016 : BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE : Access to standard database of our partner Canadean Tourism IC. It includes historical data and five-year forecasts on more than 70 major markets with focus on tourism demand, flows and economic impact, as well as comprehensive data covering major sectors including hotels.
NEW 2016 : DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS Digital presence on distribution channels Union Pay, Ctrip and China Southern Airlines
DIGITAL DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS Welcome Chinese create your own WeChat account. We create an exclusive QR code generated for each member under the Welcome Chinese WeChat service account and leading people directly to a dedicated page on hychinese.com. We offer to our certified members a presence on our Newsletter targeted to Chinese TA/TOs. We propose an access to our TA/TOs database.
HYCHINESE.COM Hychinese.com is a website dedicated to Chinese travellers and developed by Welcome Chinese. All members have a commercial presence on Hychinese.com. Priority recommendation to Chinese travellers when making hotel bookings on hychinese.com. Each certified member establishment has a hyperlink straight to its own website. We offer 10% advertising discount on hychinese.com to our certified members.
TRADE MARKETING We offer 10% discount on participation in all promotional and marketing events organized and/or attended by "Welcome Chinese ».Translation of 1000 words included (information, website, etc.).
UNION PAY PAYMENT : The certified member will welcome their Chinese guests, allowing them to use Chinese UnionPay cards. Union Pay is the only domestic bank card issued in the People's Republic of China for payments, ensuring convenience and reliability on every transaction.
WEBSITE IN CHINESE : The certified member must translate some pages of its website into Chinese language.
THE COSTS
CERTIFICATION COSTS RAIL COMPANIES: 30'000 Euros/year
GOVERNMENTAL BENEFIT
OFFICIAL CTA CERTIFICATE
JOINT PRESS RELEASE WITH CTA
PROMOTIONAL BENEFIT ( ONLINE )
Dedicated mini-site: fact-sheet of ¾ pages about shopping describing the service, shopping facilities, etc..
Fact sheet of 3/4 web pages about the S.Mall describing describing the services, how to arrive, etc…
Monthly promotions towards Chinese travel agents/operators via email and one dedicated article in WC newsletter
CHINESE SOCIAL MEDIA
Promotion via Welcome Chinese’s social media account (Weibo, WeChat) with quaterly posts/QR code linking to the client page on hychinese.com
PROMOTIONAL BENEFIT ( OFFLINE )
TRAVEL FAIR & ROADSHOW
Presence at travel fairs and roadshow with the logo of the client on the stand and the books distributed among visitors
TRAINING & INFORMATION
Each month “China Outbound Monthly Market Insights” and twice a year “Cotri for Welcome Chinese Market Report”
close open benefits
Some of the tourism companies certified with Welcome Chinese
Rail company - Red Certificate
NTV – Italo Treno
STRATEGIC FOUNDER Select-Holding was selected by the CTA as the official distributor of the Welcome Chinese certification. It is responsible for all of the operational and communication activities within the Welcome Chinese Program. Select-Holding is responsible for all the operational and communication activities within the Welcome Chinese program.
STRATEGIC FOUNDER & PARTNER : China Tourism Academy (CTA) is a specialized institute directly under China National Tourism Authority. By focusing on researches on basic theories, policies as well as issues concerning the development of tourism, CTA aims to establish itself as "think tank of the government, brainpower of the industry and highland of the academia specialized in promoting the development and international exchange of the China's tourism industry". The CTA directly approves and issues the Welcome Chinese Certification, which makes it the department in charge of monitoring the Chinese outbound travel trends and strongly supports all Welcome Chinese activities in and out of China.
STRATEGIC PARTNER : Union Pay is the home grown and main payment circuit in Mainland China. It has been formed in March 2002 under the authority of the State Council and the People Bank of China to promote interoperability of bank cards throughout Mainland China. The next decade has seen its service spreading at extraordinary pace, covering new cities and provinces each year. Thanks to the effort of CCTV, its channels can now be reached almost everywhere in the world. This not only is meaningful for Chinese people that travel overseas, but it is also an interesting window for the world, in order to discover this important country, sometimes so far and mysterious to many foreigners. In fact with 7 international channels broadcasted in 6 different languages, CCTV plays also an active role in the global arena. Among these channels, the most well-known is the English language news channel CCTV-News. This channel broadcasts many unique programs focusing on Asia and on developing countries’ events, but it also keeps us updated with the main news from all over the world.
STRATEGIC PARTNER : CCTV is the national television station of the People’s Republic of China and also the most viewed broadcaster in the country. It is the key news and entertainment source for Chinese population. CCTV can now be viewed almost everywhere in the world. Select Holding has been distributing CCTV Channels as part of the Welcome Chinese standards since it’s beginning, the participating Hotels receive through the CCTV ready program.
NEW STRATEGIC PARTNER China Southern Airlines Co., Ltd., member of SkyTeam, is directly affiliated with China Southern Air Holding Company. CSA operates the largest fleet, most developed route network and largest passenger capacity of any airline in The People's Republic of China. CSA transported 110 million passengers in 2015, ranking the carrier first in Asia and the 3th in the world (Data source: IATA) , topping all Chinese airlines for 37 years. Welcome Chinese’s certified members will be promoted on CSA’s frequent flyer program and profit from their distribution channels such Inflight magazine, WeChat account and the newsletter.
NEW STRATEGIC PARTNER Ctrip.com International Ltd. (CTRP) was founded in 1999 in Shanghai, China. The company is a leading provider of travel services including accommodation reservation, transportation ticketing, packaged tours and corporate travel management. In 2014, the company’s gross transaction value reached USD 24.5 billion and total commission revenue reached USD1.3 billion. Ctrip's hotel reservation network includes around 1,000,000 hotels in 200 countries and territories around the world. Ctrip’s air ticketing products cover over 5,000 cities on six continents. Currently app downloads exceed 1 billion. Ctrip gives preferential expo-sure of Welcome Chinese certified members starting with the certified restaurants.
NEW STRATEGIC PARTNER Covering more than 70 countries worldwide, Canadean produce hundreds of reports each year focusing on key issues and trends relating to tourism demand and flows, tourism economic impact, and all the key performance indicators related to hotels, airlines, car rentals and travel intermediaries. Canadean tourism-IC has been appointed as the business intelligence partner of Welcome Chinese. This is a must have for the revenue management department.
NEW STRATEGIC PARTNER Lobster Ink is an education company specialising in the hospitality industry. The company shares the same goal of improving the service standards and product knowledge in the top hospitality establishments in the world. The Lobster Ink education platform is built around the creation and delivery of detailed courses on international skills, international standards and product knowledge, using a pow-erful online learning and assessment environment to ensure ease of access and focused, quantifiable training outcomes. Lobster Ink joined Welcome Chinese in 2016 and bring its online training expertise related to hospitality services and knowledge of the Chinese culture. This is a pragmatic support to the client reception procedures.
NEW STRATEGIC PARTNER With offices in 157 countries and more than 208,000 people, PWC is among the leading professional services networks in the world. PWC help organisations and individuals create the value they’re looking for, by delivering quality in assurance, tax and advisory services. PWC is appointed to audit the certified members and ensure that services are correctly carried out for the Chinese travellers. PWC helps Welcome Chinese to maintain a high level of quality and standards.
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The Top 10 Best R&B Albums of 2018 Presented by YouKnowIGotSoul.com
YKIGS Posted on December 17, 2018
It’s that time of year again. As 2018 is quickly drawing to a close, we’re completing our annual look back at the best the R&B genre had to offer us this year.
From our point of view, 2018 was not a banner year for R&B. Fans of the traditional sound and 90’s R&B were likely least impressed with the genre’s offerings, as we move further away from those signature elements. Unfortunately, most of the genre’s big names continue to sit on the sidelines and not release new albums, so there really wasn’t a whole bunch to choose from here.
On the other hand, the younger generation continues to establish themselves and stake their claim to the future of the genre. As R&B has evolved, 2018 gave us a clear picture of exactly which artists would be carrying the flag over the course of the next few years.
Now, to the list. We decided to once again not choose an order, instead listing alphabetically. In addition to the Top 10 Albums, we also included a handful of honorable mentions who just missed the cut but deserve recognition.
Although the trend in recent years has been to release EP’s instead, we only included full length albums here. Shout out to Shawn Stockman, H.E.R. and Anna Moore who had some of the best EP’s we heard this year.
Without further ado, here is our list of the Top 10 Best R&B Albums of 2018.
Ella Mai – Ella Mai
Ella Mai elevated herself into a star and one of the faces of the new generation of R&B in 2018. That culminated with the release of her self titled debut album featuring the smash singles “Boo’d Up” and “Trip”.
Janelle Monae – Dirty Computer
A few years ago, we touted Janelle Monae for her musical masterpiece “The Electric Lady”. The singer builds on that foundation with an even more eclectic, unique, and downright special effort with “Dirty Computer”.
Jessie J – R.O.S.E.
Until now, Jessie J has been a name more commonly associated with the pop genre than R&B. However, she made a flawless transition with her very soulful and unique four part album release called “R.O.S.E.”
Lloyd – Tru
Despite the fact that we don’t want to stare at this album cover for too long, Lloyd impressed with his latest album “Tru”. The singer built on the strong foundation of his 2016 EP of the same name and crafted a gem.
Mariah Carey – Caution
While her timeless holiday single “All I Want for Christmas is You” continues to heat up the charts, Mariah Carey has more to celebrate, thanks to her latest album “Caution”. The project is easily one of the best she’s released in many years, as she gracefully evolves her signature sound into a more modern vibe.
Marsha Ambrosius – NYLA
One of our most anticipated releases of the year, Marsha Ambrosius did not disappoint. The singer has now released three solo albums and has gotten stronger with each one.
PJ Morton – Gumbo (Unplugged)
We normally don’t list live projects, but PJ Morton’s unplugged version of his “Gumbo” album is an astonishing musical masterpiece. The ambitious effort exceeded all expectations and reminded us of everything we love about R&B.
Raheem DeVaughn – Decade of a Love King
The self proclaimed “Love King” seemingly never takes a break from recording music, and he is inspired as ever on his latest album. The most exciting element is how he consistently finds way to reinvent his sound with each project.
Tamia – Passion Like Fire
While many of her peers from the 90’s struggle with how to evolve their sound, Tamia seems to have mastered that concept. Songs like “Leave It Smokin” and “It’s Yours” prove she can excitingly mesh her traditional sound with more modern elements.
Toni Braxton – Sex & Cigarettes
With her first solo album in nearly eight years, the legend did not disappoint. The album was full of the sultry and soulful sound that we crave from Toni Braxton.
Case – Therapy
Mario – Dancing Shadows
Mya – TKO (The Knock Out)
Nao – Saturn
Peabo Bryson – Stand for Love
VanJess – Silk Canvas
The Best R&B Albums of 2016 – YouKnowIGotSoul R&B Podcast Episode #36
The Top 10 Best R&B Albums of 2016 Presented by YouKnowIGotSoul
The R&B Power Rankings (March 2018 Edition) Presented by YouKnowIGotSoul.com
The Top 100 R&B Songs of 2015 – Presented by YouKnowIGotSoul X Soul in Stereo
Tagged:CaseElla MaiJanelle MonaeJessie JLloydMariah CareyMarioMarsha AmbrosiusMyaNAOPeabo BrysonPJ MortonRaheem DeVaughnTamiaToni BraxtonVanJess
J.ru says:
No leon bridges? Favorite r&b album this year hands down
Playrnb says:
Not bad. You kept it safe with this list lol.. All the artists are mostly over 35 lol
Previous PostSoulBack (featuring The Kings of R&B) – The R&B Podcast Episode 29
Next PostMarsha Ambrosius Announces the “NYLA Tour” With Special Guest Elle Varner
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Supporting Young Social Entrepreneurs
We match Fellows with professional mentors, who are successful business professionals ready to lend their expertise to help Fellows maximize their businesses’ growth potential.
Fellows receive a 6-month course in social business development. The step-by-step curriculum ensures that by the end, they will be ready to pitch to potential investors.
A Global Network
Being a Y&Y Fellow means having a support network of experts, business leaders, institutions and other like-minded social entrepreneurs around the world. If Fellows need a connection, we’ll make it happen!
Step 1: We select bright individuals with innovative business ideas that tackle the world’s most pressing problems.
Y&Y Fellows are passionate young entrepreneurs running early-stage social businesses. They are visionaries, talented, eager, and proven drivers of change determined to fight major social issues.
Step 2: Once Fellows are selected, we connect them to experienced business experts that will support them on regular one-on-one mentoring sessions providing the support they need to start up, grow, become investment ready and create sustainable social impact.
Each stage of the curriculum takes Fellows through the next step of development. Our sustainable and wide-scale approach involves sets of activities based on lean start-up principles, allowing Fellows to execute a unique and valuable strategic position.
Step 3: We immerse Fellows in a social business training ground where they receive all the resources they need to develop a strong business plan.
Entrepreneurs have access to a wide-scale online platform involving sets of activities based on lean startup principles, each stage of the curriculum takes Fellows through the next step of development.
Step 4: The Fellowship Program ends with a Virtual Pitch Competition.
Entrepreneurs have the opportunity to work on developing their pitch decks and present them to real-life social impact investors during an online competition.
“We believe that it is possible to change the world in a way that we have never seen before. We want people to dream as big as we dream!” – Igor Bonatto, Y&Y Fellow Class of 2015
“Getting advice from really smart people, honing my business skills and interacting with some amazing young entrepreneurs, helped me understand that I am capable of doing this.” – Lucas Corvacho, Y&Y Fellow Class of 2015
“I really enjoyed this experience and I feel it has changed the way I see my role as a social entrepreneur.” – Corina Angelescu, Y&Y Fellow Class of 2018
“The readily-available support my mentors were able to give me was so valuable. I never felt too shy to reach out and ask a question or set up a meeting. This kind of support meant I was able to get the most out of this experience in terms of what I could learn, and how my business could grow.” – Kasha Slavner, Y&Y Fellow Class of 2018
What you receive
You’ll be paired with a mentor who is right for you. You’ll work together to develop your social business throughout the 6-month program.
Supportive Peers
You’ll meet driven entrepreneurs from around the world. Each class cohort is made up of fearless young people who provide one another with feedback, connections and support.
Expert Webinars
We bring you experts from a diverse range of fields including social enterprise, business fundamentals, digital marketing, finance, learn start-up principals and more.
Just the Right Resources
We’ve developed a no-hassle, just-what-you need curriculum, resources, tools and exercises that will take your enterprise to the next level.
As a Y&Y Fellow, the world knows you’re a social entrepreneur destined to make a long-lasting impact.
Our network includes some of the world’s top social impact organizations, international institutions, incubators, and investors.
The Y&Y Team knows your time is valuable. We’ve structured the process to ensure that every step is as impactful as possible.
Our Fellows cite Y&Y as one of the most important and supportive experiences in shaping and growing their social businesses.
APPLY NOW FOR THE 2020 YUNUS&YOUTH FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM
Deadline: February 16th, 2020 11:59 PM EST (GMT-5)
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#360MV
Madeira | Blue Seas, Green Mountains, and The People Inbetween from 360 Media Ventures on Vimeo.
Madeira hosted the Extreme Sailing Series, which provided a great opportunity to showcase the destination as a back-drop to the event. Leading with race coverage, we developed an itinerary with Madeira Tourism that would showcase not only the sailing race and venue, but the islands other cultural and adventure activities.
To document multiple outdoor sports and settings, we had to climb, rappel, scuba dive, mountain bike, sail, and SUP. Our underwater camera was instrumental in connecting the ocean’s “blue” with the island’s “green”, which was best captured by timelapses. The shoot was done in a limited amount of time, which required sustaining a high energy level with longs days and nights.
The feature was released on World of Adventure, OutsideTV and GrindTV and shared by Maderia tourism and the Extreme Sailing Series on social media.
© 2020 360 Media Ventures.
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Germany emerge unscathed from a brutal opening day
Heil & Ploessel (GER 4) enjoying gusty conditions on Day 1 of the Worlds
Erik Heil and Thomas Ploessel opened day one of the World Championships with a stunningly consistent performance while some of the other big guns failed to fire.
Two 49er races were completed after wild weather lashed the race areas off Auckland, New Zealand. With wind speeds up to 37 knots recorded on the race course earlier in the day, the sensible decision was made to keep all sailors ashore until sailable conditions arrived. After a delay long enough to cause even the most seasoned veterans to assume they were having a day off, the 49er fleet were sent out for two rounds of qualifying races.
With over 400 athletes competing from 40 nations and with the broadest ever suite of live coverage in Olympic sailing history capturing every race, the 2019 Hyundai World Championships will be the most important event on the sailors calendars prior to Tokyo 2020.
International fans can view the racing live at 49er.org/live or on Sky Sport 9 for those in New Zealand.
Red Fleet – A solid start but soggy finish for Burling and Tuke
In the Red Fleet, reigning Olympic Champions Peter Burling and Blair Tuke showed total confidence to kick off the regatta in the best possible way in front of their home fans. They won the battle to ‘win the pin’, the favoured left-hand end of the start line. This gave them the opportunity to put the bow down, accelerate their 49er up to full upwind pace, earning the Kiwis the opportunity to tack and cross the fleet, extending from there. They took a three-boat-length lead into the windward mark. It was all the more impressive given they then gybe-set – implying the far side actually had the better breeze. Watch the Kiwi manoeuvre and the traffic jam at mark 1…
The dynamic duo from New Zealand never looked back, Burling and Tuke pulling out a massive lead – and a race win on the scoreboard.
In the second race it was Dominik Buksak and Szymon Wierzbicki (POL) who came off the left side of the course to pull away to a large lead by the first mark, again with most of the fleet heading right to the far side. The Poles extended to a sizeable lead but then almost capsized while negotiating the leeward gate, only just rescuing themselves from a watery error.
The chasing pack also suffered their spills, with second place Jonas Warrer and Jakob Precht Jensen (DEN) capsizing near the bottom marks. Burling and Tuke made a few passes to shift into second place, and then on the last downwind overtook the Polish for the lead. While the Poles overstood the layline and were struggling to keep their kite full, it was Burling and Tuke who made a rare error to capsize on their final gybe into the finish, dropping back to 11th across the line. What was so nearly a perfect start to the regatta for the home favourites – ruined at the final hurdle of day one.
49er Yellow Race 1 – French profit from huge wind shifts in opening race
In yellow fleet, the fleet was obviously eager after the long delay caused by the weather. Both the general recall first start and the all-clear second start featured boats tacking to port tack almost immediately after the gun as the post-frontal breeze tried to settle.
Louis Chambert and Hugo Fedrigucci (FRA 180) pulled out a huge lead at the top mark with a delta of 30 seconds, although a gybe-set proved to be the wrong move as the French sailed into a wind hole at the bottom of the first lap.
On the second upwind in a French battle for supremacy, Kevin Fischer/ Yann Jauvin (FRA44) showed Erwan Fischer/ Clement Piquin (FRA655) how to sail a 49er upwind. Starting from the wrong side of a loose cover position, FRA44 accelerated out from under FRA655, around the front of their bow and tacked to cross on the starboard layline to lead into the top mark second time and never looked back.
49er Yellow Race 2 – France make it 2 from 2
Lucas Rual / Emile Amoros (FRA 8) performed the classed ‘dead bird’ start; starting right on the boat end of the line and tacking immediately to the right-hand side, resulting in a fair sized lead after lap one. Sailing in phase and positioning themselves perfectly between second place and the next mark, the French never looked like giving it up, although Jakob Meggendorfer and Andreas Spranger (GER 22) had closed the gap to just 8 seconds by the finish. Meanwhile, New Zealand’s Logan Dunning-Beck and Oscar Gunn came from deep in the fleet to finish third, using all their downwind speed to get back into contention. After a 21st in the first race, it was just the Kiwi team needed before heading back ashore.
49er Blue Race 1 – Young Irish keep Olympic medallists at bay
After a general recall the Blue fleet was the last race to get going as they suffered from unstable winds. By the time racing did get going the wind started picking up quickly and many top teams got caught out on the wrong rig settings.
Some of the favourites in this fleet – such as Lukasz Przybytek and Pawel Kolodzinski (POL 42) – found themselves with a lot to do at the first windward mark. Portuguese sailors Jorge Lima and Jose Costa suffered rig damage and were forced to pull out of competition for the rest of the day, a disappointing start to the regatta with Costa also suffering an ankle injury.
Showing no hesitation were Rio Olympic bronze medalists Erik Heil and Thomas Ploessel (GER 4), but in tacking to the left side upwind the experienced Germans let slip the 2018 Junior World Champions from Ireland, Robert Dickson and Sean Waddilove, who overtook for the lead.
In a tight downwind battle, the young Irishmen held off the Olympic medallists to win their first ever race at a World Championship, a massive moment for any sailor.
49er Blue Race 2 – Heil & Ploessel bring it home
In race two, Heil & Ploessel (GER 4) got an excellent start off the pin end of the start line, giving them the control on the left-hand side of the race track. The Germans tacked and crossed the bulk of the fleet before putting in another hitch all the way to the left-hand layline. Heil & Ploessel rounded the first mark with a 60 metre lead over the Brazilians Marco Grael & Gabriel Borges (BRA 15). Germany extended the lead for the race win, putting them in first overall of the 49er World Championships after day one, a very consistent performance by Heil & Ploessel where so many other top names faltered. Brazil held on for second across the finish line, followed by Lukasz Przybytek and Pawel Kolodzinski (POL 42).
49erFX and Nacra 17 sent home without racing
Athletes and fans alike will have to wait an extra day for the 49erFX and Nacra 17 fleets to hit the water. With daylight disappearing, the 49erFX and Nacra 17 fleets were sent home before getting a shot at the water. Both fleets will be first on the roster for day 2, with four scheduled races in each fleet, to try and catch up on the qualifying series.
For all results, news, and links head to the regatta site.
For live broadcast of every race head to 49er.org/live
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6abc Weekend Action
What to do locally on Columbus Day Weekend
By Matt O'Donnell
Matt O'Donnell whips you around the region for some of the best family and fun options for Columbus Day Weekend.
LAST CHANCE TO SEE PARKWAY 100 "FIREFLIES"
It's the final weekend to see Cai Guo-Qiang's "fireflies." The illuminated lanterns propel along the Ben Franklin Parkway by a fleet of pedicabs. Rides on the pedicabs are sold out but you can still see the art display nightly through Sunday. It's all part of the Parkway's 100th birthday party.
FIREFLIES RIDES | PARKWAY 100 CELEBRATION
KINKY BOOTS STOMPS INTO KIMMEL CENTER
'Kinky Boots' is at the Academy of Music. The Tony Award-winning Broadway musical features high-heeled dance numbers, with songs by pop icon Cyndi Lauper. Performances run through Sunday.
KINKY BOOTS TICKETS | FYI VISITS KINKY BOOTS
Watch FYI Philly's 2017-18 Broadway Philadelphia special
The FYI Philly crew dives into Philly Broadway's 2017-18 season with a preview of upcoming shows and their stars.
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES WEEKEND
It's Indigenous Peoples Weekend at the Museum of the American Revolution. It features Native American storytelling, performances and films. On Sat, Oct. 7 and Sun, Oct. 8, the museum will have a presentation about wampums and Native American culture by a Mohawk member. They'll also have Oneida Indian Nation Dancers on Monday, Oct. 9 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. On Monday evening, there will be a film screening of "People of the Standing Stone" narrated by Kevin Costner and a panel discussion. Tickets to the screening and discussion are $15 for general admission, $5 for museum members and students. MUSEUM INFO
MIDTOWN VILLAGE FALL FESTIVAL (FREE)
The Festival draws in thousands of people with multiple stages of live entertainment, food and drink sampling, displays and more. The Center City event runs Saturday from noon-8 p.m. along 13th Street and surrounding blocks in Midtown Village. FESTIVAL VENDORS AND INFO
MONTGOMERY TOWNSHIP AUTUMN FESTIVAL
A zip line, scarecrow making, pumpkins, a petting zoo and more will all be at the Montgomery Township Autumn Festival. It's happening Saturday from noon to 5 p.m. at the township's Community & Recreation Center on Horsham Road in Montgomeryville. TICKETS AND EVENT INFO
ST. DAVID'S COUNTRY FAIR AND AUCTION
St. David's Episcopal Church in Wayne, Delaware County, is holding its 166th Country Fair and Auction. You can find lots of children's activities, shopping, food and drinks on Saturday from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Fair admission is $2; children under 4 are free. FOOD AND DRINKS INFO
EAGLES HOST CARDINALS AT LINC
The first-place Eagles (3-1) host the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday, with kickoff at 1 p.m. TICKETS AND GAMEDAY INFO
SIXERS BATTLE CELTICS IN PRESEASON TILT
Sixers preseason continues Friday night as they take on Kyrie Irving and the new-look Boston Celtics at the Wells Fargo Center with tip-off at 7 p.m. SIXERS TICKETS
COLUMBUS DAY PARADE (FREE)
Sunday is the Columbus Day Parade. South Broad Street will be filled with a celebration of Italian culture. You can watch it all on 6abc starting at 12:30 p.m. Sunday.
Check 6abc.com and FYI Philly on Facebook for more Weekend Action and other events going on around the region.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/6abcfyiphilly
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/6abcfyiphilly
Subscribe to our 6abc Community Newsletter: Text 6ABC to 22828 (Texting/data rate may apply.) Sign up online.
societycenter city philadelphiamontgomery townshipsouth philadelphiakimmel center6abc weekend actionkennett squarephiladelphia eaglesben franklin parkway
Weekend Action: Street festivals, New Hope Pride and more
Weekend Action: Things to do on Mother's Day weekend
Weekend Action: Broad St. Run, Chinese Lantern Fest and more
Weekend Action: Easter Promenade, Easter egg hunts, Union Kids' Day, Monster Jam and more!
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Kings NBL coach defends Bogut and Ware
Sunday, 12 January 2020 12:40 am
Andrew Bogut's form for Sydney Kings is not a concerned for coach Credit: AAP
Sydney Kings coach Will Weaver has strongly defended the form and impact of key NBL veterans Andrew Bogut and Casper Ware.
Centre Bogut was the competition's MVP in his first season in 2018-19 but is down in most statistical categories in his second year, when he's been playing significantly fewer minutes
Point guard Ware, the King's prize off-season recruit, is averaging more points per game this season than anytime since his first NBL campaign in 2016-17, but going into Saturday's game against Cairns was shooting at just 29 per cent from three-point range, down from 35 last season.
Weaver said Bogut was being managed but gave no indication whether he was battling with any fitness issues coming off a gruelling last 15 months
Bogut went from the 2018-19 NBL into the NBA play-offs with Golden State Warriors and the Boomers' World Cup campaign before starting another NBL season.
"I don't think he's struggling, if anything. I've seen him more examples lately of him looking like 27 year-old Boges," Weaver said following the 92-83 win over Cairns, in which Bogut tallied six points and eight rebounds in just under 20 minutes.
"There was stretches last week in practice that nobody could do anything with him he was totally dominant.
"We as a group, and he's part of it of course, are trying to make sure that he's growing and peaking at the right time.
"I'll have to see how he came our of this game but he's a warrior and absolutely one of the most tough minded and physically tough players I've ever been around."
Weaver was also very supportive of Ware, who was joint top scorer for the NBL ladder leaders on Saturday, when he missed six of his ten three-point attempts.
"I feel like he has, particularly in the last several weeks, doggedly played big minutes and guarded often the best perimeter player and driven and finished"' Weaver said.
"The only thing that hasn't happened is his three hasn''t gone down the way that we're used to it going down .
"I know that he's frustrated that some of those three's haven't dropped ,and what I love about him is that his approach doesn't change, he works the same way the days he makes shots and when he misses shots.
"His game is so much more than just shot making."
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The Debris of War
As he’d found riding to the village, there wasn’t a soul about. Passing the shelled out post office, butcher and green grocer, he peddled around the round about which was barely recognisable for all the rubble that cluttered its circumference. Hearing the familiar tell tale sign of a puncture, he slowed and came to a stop outside the canola processing plant. Abandoning the bike, Amir walked on, along the deserted street, following the sound that promised perhaps the presence of another person. As he got closer to it, he noticed the sound was coming from the warehouse, at the end of the cul-de-sac named Fortune Drive.
The large roller doors of the warehouse were open. A shadow cast across the boom gate, ahead of its entrance, made him quicken his pace with excitement. Now in full view, it was clear that the sound was the screech of the rusty mechanisms driving a conveyer belt. The shadow at the boom gate moved and Amir heard a heavy breath that filled him with fear, forgetting for a moment that a breath and a sign of life was what he’d been seeking. The breathing shadow emerged slowly from behind the unmanned guard’s booth. A horse. Amir allowed himself a smile, for the relief that it wasn’t what he’d feared- a man, or worse still, an armed man. The horse whimpered, just as surprised to see Amir, it shook its head and widened its eyes. Amir reached out and stroked the horse’s neck, veins bulging and what was black hair ashened by the debris of war. The horse winced and shrunk away from Amir’s touch, revealing the sticky brown residue of congealed blood. It was only then that Amir noticed the opportunistic swarm of flies along the length of the horse’s torso.
“I should have listened,” he thought, not for the first time that day. Keen to see the planes flying overhead, he’d hitched a ride, unseen, on the back of one of the lorries that carted canola between the fields and the processing plant, a 30 mile journey from home. The yellow fields, flat for miles, ensured no obstruction to a view of planes from afar. Amir loved to lie in the fields and look up at the sky and the aerobatics of the planes, their beauty not tainted by their purpose. His parents had warned him of the dangers, but having grown up with the sound of shells, rockets and screams of mothers losing their sons and husbands to war, he didn’t have a sense for what was and wasn’t danger. The farmhouse and silos beside the field where he lay had been flattened, still smouldering when he chanced upon a bicycle, the only means to make the journey to the nearest village. He’d noted how the sky above the farmhouse seemed to have lowered, turning shades of black and red, hanging like a blood soaked veil. Fighting tears and the cough brought on by the heavy smoke, he’d peddled into the village, hoping to find a way back home, perhaps on another lorry. But now he stood in the empty street, the empty village. It was just him and the horse, with its thick coat of flies. No one else around, no lorry on which to hitch a ride, no way home.
Write a story with a horse standing on an empty street near a warehouse (prompt from this site, using this Wikipedia article).
August 7, 2014 May 16, 2015 10000hoursleft
30 day writing challengeair raidcreative writingDay 10destructionhomewar
← The Gum Tree and the Magpie
Invitation to the Boardroom →
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← Undercover: spontaneous detective work with improv queen Rebecca Northan
“Doing it and enjoying it”: Slut is opening at Northern Light →
Big issues in small rooms: Atlas Theatre is back with Going To St. Ives
Posted on April 5, 2018 by Liz Nicholls
Patricia Darbasie and Belinda Cornish in Going To St. Ives, Atlas Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux Photography 2017
By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca
“As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives.…”
The thorny little two-hander that opens Thursday on the Varscona stage, the finale of the inaugural Varscona Theatre Ensemble series, invokes that classic nursery rhyme puzzle — over tea.
And what starts out as a civilized encounter in an English country house between two women — an eminent English eye surgeon and her new patient, the English-educated mother of an African dictator — gradually expands into a bona-fide tug-of-war, a deal-making negotiation between cultures, between the personal and the political, between the First and Third Worlds.
Going To St. Ives, opening Thursday on the Varscona stage (the finale of the inaugural Varscona Theatre Ensemble series) marks a return to active duty of Julien Arnold’s Atlas Theatre company. With the cunning 2005 play, by the American writer Lee Blessing (A Walk in the Woods), actor/director Arnold, a Teatro La Quindicina fave in when he’s onstage himself, returns to a play he cracked in a 2011 production.
“It’s so sharp,” says Arnold happily. Blessing “explores wider political issues, moral conflicts, the dynamics of colonialism — but cleverly, in the context of personal exchange that gradually reveal secrets.” For veteran actors like Patricia Darbasie and Belinda Cornish, returning to the production in this Atlas revival, the fun is “the doubleness,” says Arnold. “A veneer of politeness and underneath, strong feelings.”
“That’s one of the main challenges in rehearsal,” he says. “Discovering what’s happening underneath; there’s a lot of passive-aggression going on.” It’s tricky as well, he reports, “to decides when to reveal the characters’ true motives…. What should be concealed? And for how long? Yes, there’s a thriller element to it. Just when you think you have it figured out, you haven’t!” Then, in Act II, Going To St. Ives moves to Africa. And the complexities mount.
The son of English parents, Arnold spent his early childhood years in East Africa, Tanzania. His grandfather had been stationed there during World War II, and “was so drawn to it he took the family back there to live from 1949 to 1969.” He worked as a head master and Arnold’s mom and dad were teachers. They left Africa when Arnold was five.
“My grandfather was very interesting to talk to,” Arnold recalls. “Not conservative at all, of fierce English socialist stock. But a very British stiff-upper-lip way about him….” A conversation with him was an education in the persistence of, and even a certain idealistic streak in, colonialism.
Arnold maintains a dual actor/director life. Freewill Shakespeare Festival audiences have seen him onstage, in every size of role. For many years he was the quintessential Bob Cratchit in the Citadel’s production of A Christmas Carol, until he stepped up to Scrooge himself for the most recent edition. And his connections to the Varscona and its companies run deep. He’s best known to audiences there for his appearances with both Teatro La Quindicina and Shadow Theatre; he co-starred with Reed McColm in the latter’s premiere production of Slumberland Motel earlier this season.
Joining Plain Jane Theatre and Bright Young Things in the Varscona Ensemble is a welcome prospect for an indie like Atlas, which made its debut with Martin McDonagh’s The Lonesome West in 2008. “The opportunity to concentrate on the art? And share costs, marketing, box office? Wonderful! says Arnold.
And the invitation to join the series means, as well, that all three of Ensemble companies will get a Fringe slot at the Varscona, one of the festival’s leading BYOVs. From Atlas, audiences will be seeing Sirens. Arnold describes the four-actor 2011 comedy by the American Deborah Zoe Laufer as “funny, sweet, charming….”
Meanwhile, a tense, high-stakes battle of agendas for two women is happening on the Varscona stage. After Friday night’s performance of Going To St. Ives, the cast joins Edmonton journalist Innocent Madawo, who spent many years filing from Zimbabwe, in a discussion/ Q and A with the audience.
Going To St. Ives
Varscona Theatre Ensemble
Theatre: Atlas
Written by: Lee Blessing
Directed by: Julien Arnold
Starring: Patricia Darbasie and Belinda Cornish
Where: Varscona Theatre, 10329 83 Ave.
Running: Thursday through April 14
Tickets: yeglive.ca
Share the story!
This entry was posted in Previews and tagged 12thnight.ca, Atlas Theatre, Edmonton theatre, Julien Arnold, Lee Blessing, Varscona Theatre Ensemble. Bookmark the permalink.
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« What if Christians were seen like Muslims?
Stupid Things White People Say »
Thu Dec 10th 2015 by abagond
Donald Trump (1946- ), also called The Donald, is a billionaire blowhard and American television actor. He is running for US president in 2016, making naked appeals to White racism. He has been leading in opinion polls among Republican voters for the past five months, since July 2015.
His supporters are mostly Whites without university degrees. They say they like him because he tells it like it is – meaning that, instead of racist dog whistles, he makes naked appeals to their racism:
Mexican Americans:
He sees Mexicans as bringing in crime when, in fact, the first generation is less criminal than the US as a whole.
He will build a wall between the US and Mexico and kick out 11 million undocumented immigrants – along with their US-born children.
He will overturn the Fourteenth Amendment’s constitutional right to birthright citizenship.
Muslims and Muslim Americans:
He said he saw thousands and thousands of Muslim Americans in Jersey City, New Jersey cheer the fall of the Twin Towers on 9/11. Not true – but most of his supporters believe him.
Muslim Americans will be put on a government list.
He will keep an eye on certain mosques and might shut down some of them.
He will not allow any Muslims into the US, except for citizens, until, presumably, he can tell who is a terrorist and who is not.
Black Americans:
As a Birther, he demanded that President Obama produce his long-form birth certificate to prove he was born in the US. Trump has refused to provide his own long-form birth certificate.
He said 81% of Whites murdered are killed by Blacks. In fact, the FBI says it is only 14%.
When his supporters beat up Mercutio Southall, who had been shouting “Black lives matter!” at his rally in Birmingham, Alabama, Trump said:
“Maybe he should have been roughed up because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.”
No doubt worse is to come: just when you think he cannot get any worse, he gets worse.
The mainstream US press is now openly comparing him to Hitler. But they have also been giving him centre stage for months on end. It is sickening. MSNBC is almost becoming a Trump infomercial.
From the way they cover him, you would never know that Trump represents less than 10% of US voters.
His numbers, on average in national opinion polls, have been bumping between 20% and 30% of Republican voters since August. In 2014, only 26% of voters were Republican. That means Trump supporters make up 5% to 8% of all US voters. He has pulled into first place by being the most extreme of a fractured field of 14 candidates. In absolute terms, he is doing no better than Bernie Sanders on the Democratic side. The press sees Sanders as a long shot.
Trump’s views have always been present among Whites. The last person who ran for president who made such a naked appeal to their racism was George Wallace in 1968. He got only 13.5% of the vote. That is why the other candidates do not tell it like it is.
Hillary Clinton for president – my reasons for voting against Trump
More on Trump:
How Donald Trump is worse than Hillary Clinton
Trump’s sex scandal
Should Donald Trump go back to Europe?
US cable news – co-opted by Trump
Trump’s media blacklist
Trump’s Black outreach
Donald Trump quotes about Black people
Mercutio Southall
Black endorsements in the 2016 election for US president
Poll: Is Donald Trump racist?
The Trump Effect on children
Can Trump win? – as of August 18th
Trump voters – as of August 2016
White Evangelical Protestants
Russian trolls – who pose as US voters on the Internet
The incomplete list of presumed racists
2016 US elections
Mike Pence – his pick for vice president
Southern Strategy
Republican bubble
What if Christians were seen like Muslims?
The future of race in the US
on Thu Dec 10th 2015 at 06:45:10 Benjamin
Do you think that Trump will win the Republican nomination?
on Thu Dec 10th 2015 at 07:07:18 abagond
No. I do not see him consistently getting above 50% in the state primaries. Unless he can do that, the party establishment will be able unite behind one of their own.
on Thu Dec 10th 2015 at 08:54:23 darqbeauty
If he wins, the Republican nomination, I’m packing my bags. If he wins the presidency, I’m jumping on a plane with said bags. This miserable florid toupeed mangy blow harding cur makes me queasy.
on Thu Dec 10th 2015 at 09:19:45 Kartoffel
I don’t think the numbers add up for him. He consistently ranks low in second-choice polls, which make sense. He is such a polarizing figure, that whoever would consider voting for him is already on his side. There is nobody left for him to win over.
My money is on Ted Cruz.
on Thu Dec 10th 2015 at 09:35:59 lkeke35
I agree. Everyone who is going to vote for him is already there. He’s not winning over new voters with this rhetoric.
As far as I’m concerned he’s a perfect example of the Republican Party. He’s the grand culmination of all the racist rhetoric they’ve been dog-whistling for the past thirty years. He just has no filter on what he says and is in it for the ratings.
on Thu Dec 10th 2015 at 12:32:09 leigh204
Hate this turd with a passion.
on Thu Dec 10th 2015 at 13:59:38 Open Minded Observer
Trump is a narcissist. He wants to be president to feed his ego. He doesn’t care about the United State, you, me, or anyone else in the world… not even a little bit. He says he’s not racist. You know what? I believe him. A racist would see something inherently different in various humans based on their race. I believe he sees all of humanity as equally irrelevant “things” that at best are “necessary evils” with something to offer him and at worst are impediments to his success.
I believe he is playing the character of a polarizing candidate because that’s where the vacuum was. Nobody else was appealing strongly to the racist and nationalist views of what is now his “base”. These are people that are afraid, ignorant, tired and desperately in need of someone to blame. I feel he has deliberately chosen and is carefully crafting his character because he believes that, at our core, humans are irrational enough to believe his rhetoric and elect him. Why wouldn’t he think that. How many stories have been done on “the media” and how people blindly believe and react to what they’re told. (There’s irony there somewhere.)
I truly hope that he is not elected. I have mixed feelings about fleeing the country if he is. On the one hand, I wouldn’t want to be associated with a country that would elect him. On the other hand, if we all flee, there’d be nobody left to provide checks & balances. He could toss out the constitution and declare himself “king of the world” (or whatever).
The only silver lining I can see coming from his candidacy is that closet racists will self-identify with “Trump 2016” bumper stickers and yard signage. If he loses, maybe we can round them all up and send them to… I’m kidding… that would be too ironic… even for me.
on Thu Dec 10th 2015 at 14:12:30 lifelearner
Nice mirror it is showing to the Republican party. One bad apple spoils the bunch. You are as strong as your weakest link…and on and on…with the clichés!
on Thu Dec 10th 2015 at 14:25:11 Blanc2
Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” reaching fruition
on Thu Dec 10th 2015 at 14:26:44 squawk
Honestly, Trump is and has always been a narcicisstic bastard who only gives a damn about himself,period. All the fame he’s had all these years has gone to his head, and he’s actually delusional enough to think he can get anywhere near the White house talking all the BS he’s talking. He’s always been a loudmouth racist blowhard that’s full of s***. Most of the garbage that comes out of his mouth is just plain disgusting—especially when he claimed that brother should have gotten beat up just for opposing him at a rally. What the hell kind of candidate endorses that BS? I can’t wait for people to get sick of him so he can drop the hell on out of the race—he’s isn’t anywhere near qualified to be President of anything, besides his own company. The fact that there are some people who are taking him at all seriously is just plain darn sad and pathetic, and so is Trump himself.
on Thu Dec 10th 2015 at 14:30:05 TeddyBearDaddy
Let’s say Trump wouldn’t let any of his “average” supporters walk on the front carpet of the entrance to one of his many residencies if you catch my drift.
“He will overturn the Fourteenth Amendment’s constitutional right to birthright citizenship”
Did he say that? If so, it shows a lack of understanding about presidential powers since the US President cannot overturn any part of the Constitution.
@squawk
“he’s actually delusional enough to think he can get anywhere near the White house talking all the BS he’s talking”
But it is getting him closer to the Republican nomination. I wouldn’t rule him out yet. All it takes is a more crises involving immigrants like the San Bernadino shooting for him to say “I told you so” (just like the phony terrorist attack in Paris propelled the Front National to the top of the polls).
Fear mongering does work…
@ resw77
When I say, “He will do x”, I do not mean he will rule by personal edict. It is just a way of stating his intentions, the policies he favours. In practice, not all of them are workable. He shoots from the hip and does not carefully think through what he says.
on Thu Dec 10th 2015 at 15:27:15 Uglyblackjohn
I know he’s getting a bit too full of himself when even O’Reilly has to advise him to reign it in.
But in all honesty, I like that he’s running and even the way he is running.
Not that I agree with him only that it makes it easier to see who and what we are fighting against.
on Thu Dec 10th 2015 at 16:01:11 dorisjean23
I believe Trump was planted by the Dems to screw up the Republicans.
@ raimanet
Comment deleted for using untranslated French.
Good point: he could win if there is a bad terrorist attack on US soil by ISIS or al-Qaeda.
In a best case scenario Trump does not get the Repub nomination and then decides to go Ross Perot and splits the Repub vote in the next election. Keep in mind that behind Trump we have the likes of Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Carly, and even Ted Cruz. Cognitive dissonance of the day: I heard a radio interview with Ted Cruz in which Ted used Trump to make himself (Cruz) sound moderate.
…also called The Donald Seriously?
on Thu Dec 10th 2015 at 18:16:15 somaliprince
Le français est bel et bien en vie. Peut être moins au Canada qu’autre part, mais en Afrique et en Europe, le français est toujours aussi important.
(French is still alive. Maybe less so in Canada, but in Africa and Europe, it is still as important.)
OFF TOPIC: French.
This is not French Club. I already have a post on French.
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2007/07/17/french/
on Fri Dec 11th 2015 at 00:26:32 blakksage
Donald Trump is simply more proof that Amerika still have an affinity for loud mouthed, vile, un-refined, actively ignorant, totalitarian leaning men like Trump. My personal proposal for him is to read Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.” Perhaps this reading will assist him with the necessary and proper exposure to the benefits of change, where thinking or cognition is limited and idiocy is the direct result thereof.
on Fri Dec 11th 2015 at 00:50:25 somaliprince
Trump has taken a leaf out of Hitler’s book.
Rule 1: find a minority to scapegoat and use that to rally support
Rule 2: Always attack. Attack, attack and attack. Never back down, never show a weakness. Never apologise.
A lot people think apologising is the right way to go. But in politics, according to Machiavelli, it is a sign of weakness.
Trump never backs down from any of his claims and instead just moves on to make another outrageous claim.
People have short memories and eventually forget his previous claims.
He, on the other hand, keeps grabbing the headlines in order to stay on top of the polls.
As soon as his poll numbers start dipping, he makes another outrageous claim,
He is a demagogue, par excellence.
Demogagues are one of the major flaws of democratic systems.
Regardless, I don’t think he’ll win. Simply because America’s economy is not as bad as Nazi Germany’s was.
According to betfair, Hillary Clinton has odds of 1.84 to become the next president. Marco Rubio is at 5.5 and Donald Trump is at 10.5. (decimal odds).
In other words, Hillary Clinton has a 54.35% change of winning. Marco Rubio has a 18.18% chance.
Donald Trump has a 9.52%.chance of winning.
Unless something drastic happens between now and election day, Hillary Clinton will be America’s next president.
And Trump will probably just go back to making reality TV shows.
on Fri Dec 11th 2015 at 01:46:27 Linda
I hope Trump wins
this will severely crack the Republican party
and I will enjoy watching Trump get waxed by Hilary Clinton because the Latino community is waiting for him
and sorry folks, as much as most people dislike Hilary, Bernie Sanders cannot beat a Republican candidate such as Chris “Krispy Cream” Christie.
Bernie doesn’t have enough “it” power to persuade Independent voters
on Fri Dec 11th 2015 at 02:04:38 King
We need to come up with another candidate.
Abagond, Trump is not the only loud mouth a’hole with the potential to damage the USA.
have you heard what Supreme Court Judge Scalia said about black students:
“The Supreme Court was hearing arguments in Fisher v. the University of Texas at Austin.
Abigail Fisher, a white woman, sued the university after she was denied admissions, suggesting that the school’s consideration of race during the admissions process violates the 14th Amendment.
Scalia:
“There are those who contend that it does not benefit African-Americans to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a less — a slower-track school where they do well,” Scalia said, according to the court transcript. “One of the briefs pointed out that most of the black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas.”
The brief Scalia referred to said, “Students with an interest in science who are admitted to a very competitive school via a large preference tend to drop out of the sciences at a much higher rate than do otherwise similar students who attend somewhat less competitive programs.”
Now, this b’ch Abigail Fisher, go upset because she got rejected by UT and because 47 other students with lower grades than her got in.
here is the breakdown of those 47 other students:
42 white people
4 Hispanic people
1 black person
but: 168 black and Hispanic students with higher grades than Abby were not admitted
So, 42 white kids with grades lower than hers gets into Univ. of Texas but somehow, this pasty chick manages to blame
1 black and 4 Hispanic kids for her being Rejected by a top-tier University because she couldn’t cut it academically.
Abagond, this sh’t has got to stop – white Americans are officially Off the rails with their blame game!
I think it’s time black people in America took off the gloves and started hitting back hard
White America needs to be reminded why their APARTHEID laws were made illegal in the first place.
According to the latest market data, Marco Rubio has a 40% chance of being the next Republican nominee.
Trump is second, slightly edging out Ted Cruz, with 20%.
This is interesting because the polls show Donald Trump as being the clear front runner.
The Huffington Post poll for instance, last conducted on the 10th of December, shows Donald Trump as having 35.8% support among Republican voters. Marco Rubio is on 12.3%.
In other words, the markets believe that Marco Rubio will win whilst Opinion Polls place Donald Trump first.
I presume this is because people expect that ‘Trump Mania’ will eventually die down before the Iowa caucus in February and that Marco Rubio will return to the lead.
Trump basically has to make sure he keeps grabbing the headlines until February if he is to have any chance of dislodging Marco Rubio.
On the other hand, Marco Rubio, I suspect, is patiently waiting it out and will come out strong sometime next month.
Until then, we can expect to hear a lot more from Trump.
I think it’s time that affirmative action was made about income and economic inequality.
Affirmative action is precisely about that.
Parents who have gone to university tend to raise children who will themselves go to university.
A university education is one of the strongest indicators of lifetime income.
Getting a historically disadvantaged group, like African Americans, into universities raises the probability that they will themselves have children who will go to university.
This directly reduces economic inequality.
A lot of white kids end up at university simply because they had a rich parents and a private school education that a lot of African American parents can not afford.
Affirmative action is meant to correct an imbalance, not create one.
on Fri Dec 11th 2015 at 16:37:08 Mary Burrell
He is crying really? He is not sorry for what he did, he’s sorry he got caught.
^ Mary I think you might have meant to post this to the Holtzclaw thread?
on Fri Dec 11th 2015 at 22:52:43 Jacque
If Trump is nominated I will be tickled pink. I will watch Democratic s**t all over his orange face during the debates. he will be eating crow and everything else.
If he is elected , I plan to stay in the country MY ancestors built with their souls, lives and backs. …..AND I WILL OPPOSE THAT CREEP AT EVERY TURN.
Democracy…yeah.
on Sun Dec 13th 2015 at 05:53:45 Mira
Trump is seen as an embarrassing joke by many, which is one of his greatest strengths. People keep laughing at him and giving him exposure. I admit I am guilty of it myself sometimes. But it’s dangerous because it gives him exposure and treats him as a joke while he keeps earning points and spreading his venom left and right.
On Trump’s idea of registering all Muslims:
Something very much like this has already been tried. From 2002 to 2011 the US government required people coming from 24 Muslim-majority countries to register their whereabouts with the government.
It did not uncover a single terrorist.
In reference to Affirmative Action and Abigail Fischer I love what the black students at University of Texas in Austin did when they created the hashtag #StayMadAbby. I screamed like a banshee it was too funny.
Trump is thriving off the fear that’s been in the climate and he is using this to his advantage.
on Wed Dec 16th 2015 at 07:17:49 abagond
“ABC World News Tonight” has spent 81 minutes so far this year covering Trump and only 1 minute covering Sanders – even though their poll numbers, and crowd sizes are roughly the same.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/12/11/abc-world-news-tonight-has-devoted-less-than-on/207428
on Wed Dec 16th 2015 at 10:19:39 jefe
So, somehow ABC finds Sanders that boring?
Still, he should have figured somewhere into the Black Lives Matter issue, at least as much as Trump did.
At least Abagond has one on each.
on Wed Jan 6th 2016 at 12:49:35 JDLC
Hate attacks against Muslims in the US have tripled recently.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nBViG6b4xg&spfreload=10)
on Thu Jan 7th 2016 at 11:03:10 Kartoffel
I think Trumpism has to be seen in the context of similar developments in some parts of Europe. Of course there are national differences, but overall the conservative establishment in the West seems to be in crisis.
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/17/central-park-five-donald-trump-jogger-rape-case-new-york?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+main+NEW+H&utm_term=157322&subid=17864057&CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2
on Thu Feb 25th 2016 at 20:38:52 abagond
A country that can kill Dr Martin Luther King, Jr is a country that can elect Donald Trump president.
on Fri Feb 26th 2016 at 00:23:32 Jabari Jones
They keep saying he won the Latino vote in Nevada, but statistically, he only got about 7% of it. Funny huh?
on Sun Feb 28th 2016 at 07:30:27 Why YOU Shouldn’t Vote For #Hillary2016. No Matter YOUR Skin Color. – The Militant Negro™
[…] Donald Trump […]
on Sun Feb 28th 2016 at 23:18:11 J. Jones
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-david-duke_us_56d31097e4b0871f60ebbd35?m4bcsor
on Wed Mar 2nd 2016 at 03:50:02 King
Say Whaaaaaat?
Farrakhan liking Donald Trump???
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-01/louis-farrakhan-on-donald-trump-i-like-what-im-looking-at
on Wed Mar 2nd 2016 at 04:33:23 Mary Burrell
@King: I am convinced more than ever that Farrakhan may have dementia.
I’m … well, I’m shocked! It’s like a bad joke that somebody made up.
on Wed Mar 2nd 2016 at 11:07:50 JDLC
Don Trump Jr. said he would happily pay for some of his father’s black critics to leave the United States.
The Republican presidential candidate’s son appeared Monday morning with his brother, Eric Trump, on “Fox and Friends” to discuss the “Super Tuesday” primary elections and the concerted attacks on their father by his GOP rivals.
“You know, it’s sad to see,” Eric Trump said of the attacks. “We love our father. He’s an amazing guy — he would do such an unbelievable job for this country. He’s an amazing businessman, he’s an amazing negotiator. He’s funding himself, right?”
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KWgnzq2-Q8)
on Thu Mar 3rd 2016 at 17:01:28 taotesan
Orange is the new black.
Trevor Noah on Donald Trump.
This might be a tad old.
on Sat Mar 5th 2016 at 02:25:00 Mary Burrell
I have noticed that it’s mostly poor uneducated white people who support him. Lots of them are white supremacist like David Duke who Trump said he knew nothing about and everyone knows Trump lies when he says he knows nothing about David Duke. I was watching the news and Trump was talking about the size of his hands and his sex organ, that’s so disgusting. He is just deplorable. And his toupee is ridiculos and he’s orange. Why does he always look jaundiced?
on Sat Mar 5th 2016 at 03:41:13 jabari jones
Trump is also on record saying he’ll take those votes(ie the votes of white supremacists)
It is the stupid fools such as myself when thinking about the USA, that at least in this day and age, that some of most important imperatives in the world today would be addressed and righted: restoration of ALL rights and amends to the Original People of America and reparations for African Americans.
But, no. America could possibly have this monstrosity as President. Very,very frightening – for the people of America and for the rest of the world.
I can’t bear to look at his hideous face, that face reflecting the ugliness of the racial attitudes of white America. Not that much different from his female opposition, though. Devil in drag with a better hairdo and filter.
on Sat Mar 5th 2016 at 16:30:17 michaeljonbarker
This Salon article takes a look at the economics behind race in America and the rise of Trump.
http://www.salon.com/2016/03/05/some_of_trumps_strongest_supporters_are_registered_democrats_heres_why/
My sense is that Trump is going to get the Republican nomination. He has openly embraced the bigotry that lay mostly hidden within the white pooulation. Even the “Christian right” have chosen Trump over Cruz who is one of their own. It’s like the Christian right has become the Christian white.
The Republican establishment would normally not have a problem with this but I think they are worried about Trump’s economic populism which is aimed at going after the “free traiders” and Wall Street. While Bernie wants to tax them more Trump wants to renegotiate free trade agreements which will cause some economic calamity within the stock market.
I think at this point the Republican establishment would rather have Hillary as president over Trump because it’s about preserving the economic power base that both the Democrats and Republicans rely on.
on Sat Mar 12th 2016 at 23:52:22 Mary Burrell
Well Trump’s stop and go in Chicago let those miscreants know what time it was. Those folks wasn’t having none of b.s. I personally couldn’t put myself in harms way trying to protest that vermin Trump but to each his own. Trump is a cancer that needs to be eradicated he is poison and will drag this country to hell.
on Sun Mar 13th 2016 at 01:58:39 Mary Burrell
The supporters of this vermin called Donald Trump is an indication that a good part of this nation is insane.
Donald trump got run out of Chicago so glad those black folks stood up to those vermin and miscreants.
jeb was the only ‘name brand’ between trump and the primary, rubio? cruz? yeah right.
on Wed Mar 16th 2016 at 13:22:08 Herneith
http://www.madmagazine.com/blog/2016/03/04/mad-exclusive-trump-universitys-diploma-revealed
http://www.madmagazine.com/blog/2016/03/03/tale-of-the-tape-donald-trump-vs-mitt-romney
http://www.madmagazine.com/blog/2016/02/29/hats-off-to-trump-for-denouncing-the-kkk
http://www.madmagazine.com/blog/2016/01/27/9-things-donald-trump-will-be-doing-during-tomorrows-debate
on Thu Mar 17th 2016 at 03:26:12 Origin
I wrote a post here long ago, I don’t remember which thread, talking about the cyclic nature of the manifestations of American racism and how apparent gains by marginalized groups are usually followed by the intensification of overt racism. For example, political and economic gains by blacks during Reconstruction, was followed by a resurgence of the KKK.
With that in mind, I am not at all surprised by the visibility of Trump in this election cycle. We saw the narrative becoming more overtly racist during Obama’s presidency. Trump is just the Tea Party with all pretense dropped. He is explicitly saying things that others thought but would only utter in coded language, if at all. He has eschewed “political correctness” and became a hero for many who bristled at the notion that certain statements had become taboo.
Despite how extreme he seems, he has merely exposed the racist pandering of the Republican Party by stripping it of all dainty clothing and, by doing so, he threatens to win the nomination. The delegates prefer bare flesh over the excessively clad strumpet though some hypocrites protest her public immodesty even as they disrobe her in private.
President Trump would certainly be wake-up-call for those who might have read more into Obama’s Presidency than they should have.
on Thu Mar 17th 2016 at 05:45:53 Afrofem
@Origin
“…he has merely exposed the racist pandering of the Republican Party by stripping it of all dainty clothing…The delegates [and the Republican base] prefer bare flesh over the excessively clad strumpet though some hypocrites protest her public immodesty even as they disrobe her in private.”
I’m sure that explains the orgiastic displays at Trump rallies. The breaking of taboo. The adreneline jolt of naked White Supremacy. The intoxicating belief that they shall reign supreme über alles.
Yet, the base is too deep in their drugged stupor to notice that the people who point and yell, negro, negro or immigrant, immigrant are the same people who shipped their jobs overseas, destroyed local small town economies and saddled their children with crushing student loan debt.
Wealthy Whites have been looting their poor relations (and everyone else) for decades and laughing all the way to the bank. That won’t change no matter what the rightwing base does to the hated “others”.
on Thu Mar 17th 2016 at 15:13:13 Herneith
I half-jokingly say he is a Democratic plant infiltrating the Republican party in order to destroy it. A Trojan Horse if you will.
on Thu Mar 17th 2016 at 16:25:02 resw
Those were eloquent words, and certainly Trump has racist supporters just like everyone else, but I fail to see how he’s any more racist than any other candidate in the race.
The media and the Democrat establishment are up to their same old tricks of trying to label him as racist to scare away black and Latino voters. It has worked well since his support among these groups has dropped since last year.
But I believe the real reason Trump remains popular is because he is anti-establishment and unlike all the other career politicians who are running, not because he’s racist.
And when he exposes Hillary for the phony progressive she is currently pretending to be and reminds voters how she and Slick Willy actually implemented a lot of racist policies that are responsible for the high incarceration rate of blacks today, I am confident people will see that the Clintons are the real racists and Trump has been unfairly demonized by the media.
What about the actual infiltration of Democrats at Trump rallies?
Moveon.org/George Soros and Media Matters for America are huge supporters of Democrats and have paid people to disrupt Trump events. The result is the media frames it to appear that Trump people are violently attacking minorities for no reason. How much do they report the attempted attacks on Trump and others by these disruptors at these rallies?
Even though Hilary is no angel he makes her look good in comparison.
It’s easy to attack others’ record esp. when you’re relatively immune. Trump has a rather limited political record for others to criticize while Clinton has been in politics for a while so he clearly has an advantage in that department. Being anti-establishment is of little merit in itself unless what you’re promising to establish is both practical and best for the country.
I consider Trump to be a demagogue. I dont’ consider him to be the only racist; I even metaphorically suggested that the others are too. However, their appeals to the racism of the base isn’t as naked as Trump’s. This “birther” can’t really be sanitized IMO. He’s such a loose canon that he mouthed off against Latin Americans while having a pageant that is popular in those countries. He might seem “cool” for his lack of a filter, but I doubt he’d make a good president.
Trump may not have a record in politics, but the media has taken him to task for just about every questionable remark he’s ever made.
If anyone is immune, it’s Hillary Clinton. The media refuses to pick apart her questionable comments of the past or check on her blatant lies.
“Being anti-establishment is of little merit in itself unless what you’re promising to establish is both practical and best for the country”
Sure it is when the establishment has done nothing but 1) rack up deficit, 2) add to the national debt, 3) enter unfair trade agreements and 4) have not controlled illegal immigration and the drug trafficking. What Trump is promising is to address those things, and his supporters believe that would be both “practical and best for the country.”
“He’s such a loose canon that he mouthed off against Latin Americans ”
That kind of statement lets me know how just powerful the media is. I’ve never heard him say anything disparaging about Latin Americans, but I have heard the media and liberals tell me that Trump is racist against Mexicans and Latinos. I’m still waiting to see the quote.
“He might seem “cool” for his lack of a filter, but I doubt he’d make a good president”
So Americans should keep electing the same career politicians who have reduced America’s middle class, given them all a huge debt burden that can never be repaid, shipped jobs overseas, made it hard to do business, avoided investment in infrastructure and continuously entered costly wars that have destabilized the world.
Earlier this week, Chauncy DeVega posted a detailed account of the scene of Donald Trump’s rally in Chicago. What stood out to me is his description of Trump’s African American supporters and their possible motivations:
“In every crowd of Republicans there is almost always a black person who is auditioning for a role as “best black friend” and human chaff for the GOP. These professional contrarians are desperate for their five minutes of fame on Fox News; they yearn to be a 21st century version of Stephen in the movie “Django Unchained,” for it is very lucrative work if one can get it.
I saw several black conservatives at Trump’s event. One sat near me and cheered wildly at any mention of Il Duce Trump’s name. He seemed very pleased when the Black Lives Matter and other protesters were escorted out by the police.
There was a young professional black conservative in training who led one of the most spirited moments of near fisticuffs inside the UIC Pavilion. He was the black chieftain for a group of white college-age Trumpeteers who tried to pick a fight with a group of anti-Trump protesters.
The third black conservative was the most enthusiastic and dangerous one. He was outside of the UIC Pavilion. A former Marine, he chased away two high-school-age Black Lives Matter protesters and threatened to teach them a lesson via the thrashing he promised they would receive for being “disrespectful.”
I asked him about what had just transpired. I was also curious as to why he supported Donald Trump.
This well-trained black conservative responded with disinformation talking points from Fox News about a military that is weaker than it was before World War II, how Democrat-controlled cities are horrible and full of death, that Black Lives Matter does not care about “black on black crime,” young people are out of control, and no one respects the police anymore”.
http://www.chaunceydevega.com/2016/03/my-detailed-first-person-account-of.html
“…no one respects the police anymore.” That was a real kicker in the same city (Chicago) where the police and their allies in city government have sanctioned and covered up numerous cases of police torture and murder.
It seem those Black “conservatives” are little more that White Supremacists with a deep genetic suntan.
on Fri Mar 18th 2016 at 18:47:28 Origin
Trump has the ability to APPEAR antiestablishment because he is not been as involved in politics (except possibly as a lobbyist/briber) compared to Clinton, who was even First Lady. However Trump is quite a wealthy man, (and Clinton is a wealthy woman). I doubt he’s going to push policies that limit Wall Steet or his own wealth. The idea that he has a a lot in common with ordinary Americans compared to other candidates tickles me. He’s just a skilled demagogue. Businesses associated with him have also been accused of hiring undoccumented immigrants for cheap labor while he adopts the stance of being tough on immigration on the campaign trail. He has shown an inability to be diplomatic by alienating people who support one of his products (the pageant). I don’t think he has the proper temperament to be President.
I don’t like Trump (as a potential president…though his willingness to curse/fire back can be entertaining). I think he presents as divisive and irascible. I’ll own that opinion even if it happens to coincide with that of the so-called mainstream or establishment. I really don’t care about the latter point. I don’t watch much TV or consume much mainstream media.
on Sat Mar 19th 2016 at 03:00:59 Paige
Fox News has released a statement condemning Trump for his “crude and sexist verbal assaults” against Megyn Kelly. What an election season this is turning out to be!
on Sat Mar 19th 2016 at 14:01:29 resw
White disrupters get ejected from Trump rallies too. The media is so good because most anti-Trump folks I talk to only know about the black Black Lives Matter people and a couple of Muslims (who also were disrupting). Well many white Bernie Sanders infiltraters have been thrown out. Probably more than black BLM protesters.
“Trump has the ability to APPEAR antiestablishment because he is not been as involved in politics…However Trump is quite a wealthy man”
That is completely irrelevant. He is not running on his political experience like every other candidate, he is clearly running on his business acumen and telling supporters that career politicians are bad for America. That is the epitome of anti-establishment.
“The idea that he has a a lot in common with ordinary Americans compared to other candidates tickles me”
Please tell me when Trump said he has a lot in common with “ordinary Americans,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. Maybe he did, but my guess is he never said that.
And what poll shows his supporters think he has a lot in common with ordinary Americans?
Most of his supporters are probably well aware that he’s a billionaire and his father was a millionaire.
“He has shown an inability to be diplomatic by alienating people who support one of his products”
Not sure what you mean exactly, but before he decided to run, let’s not forget politicians on both sides of the aisle liked Trump.
But if you think Trump’s bad, Hillary Clinton called Republicans her enemies. How’s that for diplomacy?
on Sat Mar 19th 2016 at 16:37:40 Fan ...
“What an election season this is turning out to be!”
I doubt this (s)election season will entertain as much as the SCOTUS did when they met (12 years ago?) over the inconclusive popular vote count regarding:
hanging chads, dimpled chads, pregnant chads, unemployed chads, unregistered chads, pickled chads, shot chads, welfare chads, poked chads, tired chads, salty chads and chads with college degrees! Not to mention all those quirky voting booth machines with irregular counts.
Talk about stealing an election (for W Bush) in plain view.
Big Brother’s productions are nothing if not entertaining.
Gonna go watch some MARCH college tournament basketball madness, now… like a good little cog.
(and enjoy some pot popped popped-corn!)
on Sat Mar 19th 2016 at 21:53:00 Afrofem
I’m sure anyone who dissents from Trump and his base are subject to removal from his rallies. That in itself is extremely disturbing.
When America was a democratic society, simple dissent was expected. Politicians knew they had to face public criticism and dealt with it—-not any more. Now the political class believe they are above criticism and the law. All politicians tend to surround themselves with yes people and expect rigid obedience from the general public.
My primary focus in this comment:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2015/12/10/donald-trump/#comment-311671
was the types of African Americans who support Trump, based on DeVega’s observations at the Chicago Trump rally.
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/open-letter-trump-voters-his-top-strategist-turned-defector?akid=14118.1929437.2arXyw&rd=1&src=newsletter1053515&t=8
on Fri Apr 1st 2016 at 15:21:37 Herneith
http://www.madmagazine.com/blog/2016/03/30/the-startling-similarities-and-differences-between-donald-trump-and-burger-kings
on Tue Apr 5th 2016 at 12:51:12 Herneith
“I’m sure anyone who dissents from Trump and his base are subject to removal from his rallies. That in itself is extremely disturbing”
Same thing happens at Clinton rallies:
http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2015/11/17/man-holding-protest-sign-removed-from-clinton-event-in-dallas/
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/258704-black-lives-matter-protesters-interrupt-hillary-rally
Are you equally disturbed?
“My primary focus in this comment…was the types of African Americans who support Trump, based on DeVega’s observations at the Chicago Trump rally”
Well that’s one opinion based on a stereotype. There are other blacks who vote for Trump for different reasons:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPC4DDW_LSw)
on Tue Apr 5th 2016 at 21:56:51 Afrofem
Clinton and Trump are equally disturbing and disturbed.
DeVega’s depiction of Black Trump supporters was based on his witnessing the words and actions of people he describes as:
“…black conservatives… the human mascots and pets for a racist political organization called the Republican Party… professional “best black friends” and human racism deflecting chaff.”
http://www.chaunceydevega.com/2016/04/fun-with-right-wing-hate-emails.html#disqus_thread
Medgar Evers rightwing brother certainly fits the description. The video showed a person who seemed coerced. The closed body language, a hat obscuring his face and the mindless recitation of rightwing talking points was not a very convincing performance.
As DeVega said in the article: “Priceless. Comedy. Gold.”
I forgot to add: LOL!!!
“DeVega’s depiction of Black Trump supporters…”
We all have opinions.
I’m sure the same can be said about black Clinton supporters and black Democrats in general.
“Medgar Evers rightwing brother certainly fits the description. ”
Right, he’s so right wing he supported Obama.
Here’s what he once said about his party affiliation:
“I’m a Republican, because we don’t all need to be in the Democratic party. Thirty years ago, there was not a black person in the Democratic party. The Republicans ignore us, and the Democrats take us for granted…Most blacks are conservative whether you know it or not. We believe in prayer in school and we’re against abortion. We should be in both parties and make them what we want them to be. We can’t get anywhere pointing fingers, we have to get inside the organization and make it what we want it to be.”
LOL@ “The video showed a person who seemed coerced”
Should I assume you are a psychiatrist and it’s proper to diagnose people online?
“the mindless recitation of rightwing talking points”
You do realise that the “rightwing talking points” are decidedly anti-Trump.
“we have to get inside the organization and make it what we want it to be.”
Something I would expect a professional “best black friend” to say.
Limited thinking = Limited results
Neither Dems nor Repubs are worth the effort. Black people need their own party with an independent agenda and no allegiance to any outside group.
Trump is a rightwing zombie. The Repubs keep shooting him down and he keeps popping back up, bloody mouth and all. It would be high comedy if his supporters were not so dangerous.
on Wed Apr 6th 2016 at 12:53:00 resw
So I guess 90% of black voters who vote Democrat are “professional best black friends” too. Otherwise they wouldn’t be members of the Democrat party which is and has always been dominated by whites (and has historically been pro racist policies).
“Black people need their own party with an independent agenda and no allegiance to any outside group.”
We finally agree on something. However, unlike you, I don’t think black Republicans (or black Trump supporters) are any worse than black Democrats (or black Clinton/Sanders supporters).
“Trump is a rightwing zombie. The Repubs keep shooting him down and he keeps popping back up, bloody mouth and all. ”
If he were so “rightwing” the “Repubs” wouldn’t need to “keep shooting him down.”
My prediction back in December was spot on.
“It would be high comedy if his supporters were not so dangerous.”
They are no more dangerous than violent anti-Trump protesters.
on Sun May 1st 2016 at 16:23:16 Herneith
http://townhall.com/columnists/stevechapman/2016/05/01/trumps-feast-of-incoherence-n2155520
Even conservatives don’t like him! Not that means anything!
on Sun May 1st 2016 at 17:19:14 michaeljonbarker
Trump’s foreign policy is a bundle of contradictions.
He is against the neocon/neolibetal idea of nation building. So it is more like a scorched earth policy where we secure oil resources and the rest of the affected area be dammed.
Neocon’s both on the left (Hillary) and right belive in pre-emptive strikes which is why we are stuck in low intensity conflicts and perpetual war. It keeps the oil and other resources flowing while justifying spending trillions in the military budget.
His idea that we need to build a “stronger defense”
and that Obama has done nothing to strengthen the military aren’t factual. Apparently the Philippines has agreed to allow the U.S. to set up five new military bases their. Obama has expanded military bases in both Africa and Asia so he has been shoring up American Imperialism.
I also think Trump will do well in the general election. Hillaries disapproval ratings are higher the 50% and Americans themselves are for more bigoted then the polls show. Trump is also bringing out a whole new group of voters, some Republican, some Democrat and 100,000’s of new voters that have never voted before.
In Costa Mesa he filled a 7000 seat auditorium and their were 2000 people outside that couldn’t get in. This is in liberal California. He has found a market and knows how to sell it.
I also think this is the year the Green Party will become somewhat relevant. That is where the Bernie supporters are going to end up. The young people in this country have rejected the historical attachments their parents have always clung on too. This year they will our preform the Libertarians.
*out perform
on Sun May 1st 2016 at 20:00:15 Afrofem
“This is in liberal California”
To me, California is not liberal. It is rumored to be “liberal” by foaming at the mouth White Supremacists in the South and Midwest, but California does not make the “liberal” cut.
First and foremost is California’s expansion and maintenance of a massive prison system. Ruth Wilson Gilmore, in her book, Golden Gulag describes the origins and maintenance of this destructive system.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/111975.Golden_Gulag
According to the Prison Policy Initiative, only Louisiana and Alabama imprison more of their population (per hundred thousand residents) than California.
http://static.prisonpolicy.org/images/50_state_rates_and_select_states.jpg?
v=1
State prisons and local jails are a big part of the expansion:
http://static.prisonpolicy.org/images/state_driver_rates_1925-2012.jpg?v=1
Another clue is the concentration of White hate groups in California. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hate Map, California has a large number of hate groups for a western state:
https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map
Surprise, surprise! Most of the hate groups are clustered in the same areas of California that have large communities of non-European descent people: the Bay Area, the Central Valley and the Los Angeles to San Diego Corridor.
California is a state where the Whitopia Fortress mentality is particularly strong. Large numbers of White residents in California have developed a modern version of the “sundown town” —with or without gates—to escape areas that have burgeoning populations of:
❍ Latinos of any ethnicity
❍ Asian Americans (including West Asians from Afghanistan, South Asians from India and Pakistan and South East Asians from Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand)
❍ Any Black people including groups such as the Garifuna.
http://www.npr.org/2015/11/20/455909004/what-is-a-whitopia-and-what-might-it-mean-to-live-there/
Whitopia author, Richard Benjamin recounts that at one of the Whitopias he lived in, he attended a White Supremacist retreat which prompted this reaction from another attendee:
“…Abe, an Aryan, sidled up next to me,”… ‘He said, ‘Hey, Rich, I just want you to know one thing. We are not white supremacists. We are white separatists. We don’t think we’re better than you, we just want to be away from you.’
The prison system, the hate groups and the Whitopia fortress towns are all linked together in a system of oppression, control, violence, privilege and profit-making at the expense of California’s non-White population.
Nothing “liberal” about that.
on Tue May 10th 2016 at 04:04:39 michaeljonbarker
I’ve decided that no politicale ideology guided Trump beyond his own narcissism. Whatever pops into his head is his political position for the day.
on Tue May 10th 2016 at 05:45:09 Fan ...
Props to Brother Benjamin for taking residence (via the phone!) in modern Sundown Towns (Whitetopias).
I’m glad he didn’t get the idea of bringing 6 – 12 other Black men with him to conduct his research. Especially while he was in Idaho.
(( I think Mr. Benjamin said: one Black man is a dinner guest. Fifty Black men are [perceived as] a ghetto.))
This is the Neo-liberal!
Maybe I should have put “liberal” in quotes when I wrote “liberal California”. Most of the country views California as liberal.
It is more statist then anything else. It does a great job driving business out of the State.
The California prison guard and police unions wield a lot political power and influence here.
Do you have a link for California sundown towns that function today? I was born in one (Glendale, ca) but eventually all the whites moved out.
I don’t have a link, but Simi Valley comes to mind.
“I’m glad he didn’t get the idea of bringing 6 – 12 other Black men with him to conduct his research.”
Or a Black wife and four teenaged sons. That would be enough to freak out a gaggle of White Supremacists in a Whitopia town.
on Fri Jun 3rd 2016 at 06:01:01 jefe
Is it possible that Trump’s attitudes towards China stem from a deal with 2 businessmen from HK during the British Colonial period?
The Hong Kong deal that turned Donald Trump into a China basher
(http://www.ejinsight.com/20160602-the-hong-kong-deal-that-turned-donald-trump-into-a-china-basher/)
on Thu Jun 16th 2016 at 15:19:32 Herneith
Folks, you can’t make this stuff up. It reads like something out of a comedy show:
Donald Trump on Wednesday said he’d invite North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to the U.S. for a meeting. He dismissed criticism over his willingness to negotiate with the North Korean dictator, who is known for lashing out against the West, threatening to use nuclear weapons, and repressing his own citizens. According to Trump, there is nothing wrong with having a conversation with the tyrant—though he shouldn’t be expecting dinner. “If he came here, I’d accept him. But I wouldn’t give him a state dinner like we do for China and all these other people that rip us off,” Trump said at a campaign event in Atlanta. He also took the opportunity to praise Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying the Russian military is “much stronger” than its U.S. counterpart. “Our nuclear is old and tired and his nuclear is tippy-top from what I hear. Better be careful, folks, OK? You better be careful,” he said.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2016/06/16/trump-says-would-invite-kim-jong-un-to-u-s.html?via=newsletter&source=CSAMedition
Breathtaking in it’s stupidity.
on Thu Jun 16th 2016 at 15:53:17 gro jo
What’s so stupid about trying to end the war of aggression the USA launched against North Korea in the 1950’s? Where’s the wisdom in trying to start a war with Russia? This, to me, is the one proposal Trump makes that I approve of.
on Fri Jun 17th 2016 at 02:26:19 Herneith
Oh, I agree there’s nothing stupid about ending this longstanding war of aggression against North Korea or starting one with another country such as Russia or China. The comedy derives from the promulgator of these ideas. He’d try to sell you swamp land if he could. I don’t believe him or other politicians. Once they attain office, it’s a different story. They spout off what they think their potential constituents want to hear in order to get elected. Trump is particularly goofy though.
on Fri Jun 17th 2016 at 03:32:23 Afrofem
“He’d try to sell you swamp land if he could.”
LOL! Swamp land is exactly what he selling his angry, addled supporters. They don’t notice those hungry ‘gators gliding toward them….
(I think Obama is a much smoother and more effective swamp salesman.)
on Thu Jul 21st 2016 at 03:11:08 Michael Jon Barker
Trump is a Fascist. Their is no other way to describe it. He has tapped into this ugly Nativist undertow that’s xenophobic, racist and Islamophobic. Large swaths of the American public crave for an Authoritarian leader who will rule by executive order. This is a partial list but highlights actions that point to Fascism.
1. Trump wants to deport 11 million humans and create a special deportation force to knock down doors and check papers. He will bypass courts and Congress through executive order.
2. Trump want to force American businesses like Apple to make their products here. He wants to add special taxes and regulate companies like Amazon to break them up. He wants to punish entrepreneurship to “create jobs”.
3. Trump will crack down on the Free Press. He already banned the Washington Post by revoking their press credentials. He will use the FCC to fine his critic, Rich Lowry. He will open up libel laws to silence his critics.
4. Trump’s xenophobic descriptions of Mexican immigrants as rapists and murders collectives all Hispanics.
5. Trump has no idea what Black Lives Matters stands for nor is he interested.
6. Trump says the police are just “misunderstood” and has no empathy for the victims of police violence.
7. Trump says he opposes Hillary’s foreign policy yet he will expand it in the “war on terror” and use the military no differently then neo liberals or neo cons. Wants to send more troops to the Middle East. Somehow its O.K. if he does it.
8. Trump will bring back water boarding and torture as well as kill the family members of suspected terrorists.
9. Trump wants all Muslims to register in a national registry and will put all Mosques under surveillance.
10. Trump wants to restart warrentless searches and allow drones to spy on American citizens.
11. Trump encourages violence against protesters and has a personal business history of discriminating against Blacks.
on Fri Jul 22nd 2016 at 17:38:45 abagond
Politifact has Trump’s acceptance speech fact-checked and annotated:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2016/jul/21/donald-trumps-gop-acceptance-speech-annotated/
Some of his wilder-sounding statements are true, yet some of his more plausible-sounding ones are false or the truth is stretched and misleading.
In general, he seems to strip context, cherry pick and, worst of all, make dangerous trends out of one year’s or one city’s data. A good example of that is the Ferguson Effect, which he seems to believe in:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2015/10/29/the-ferguson-effect/
Like many a racist troll on this blog, Trump twists and cherry picks facts to fit his racist paranoia.
on Tue Jul 26th 2016 at 19:27:38 michaeljonbarker
“We’re going to put an end to that,” Trump said during a post-convention interview with The New York Times. “We’re going to federalize every police department in this country. We’re going to eliminate the red tape and it’s going to give police the ability to do their jobs effectively and, believe me, this is something that’s going to happen within my first one hundred days in office.” -Donald Trump neo facist
on Tue Jul 26th 2016 at 19:37:11 abagond
Many of Donald Trump’s views have changed, but even in 1989 during the Central Park Jogger case he was very pro-cop and pro death penalty.
on Wed Jul 27th 2016 at 23:06:54 Afrofem
Read this article for another perspective on the Trump “Russian Connection”:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/07/nsa-whistleblower-not-so-fast-on-claims-russia-behind-dnc-email-hack.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+NakedCapitalism+(naked+capitalism)
on Thu Jul 28th 2016 at 03:58:15 Afrofem
The situation in Russia and the Ukraine is extremely complex and murky. There are a lot of international players meddling in that region. Ukraine has a strategic geopolitical position and assets that certain wolves are eager to strip from the people.
The article about ties between Putin and the European Far Right shows that there are many ways to destabilize enemies. Thanks for the link.
on Sat Jul 30th 2016 at 13:45:50 Herneith
Another Trump gem:
http://www.burrardstreetjournal.com/trump-canada-independence-was-mistake/
http://www.burrardstreetjournal.com/donald-trump-claims-he-will-buy-canada/
http://www.burrardstreetjournal.com/donald-trump-on-us-womens-national-team-its-great-revenge-for-pearl-harbour/
Trump has just announced that he now wants to ban Filipinos from entering the USA.
(https://www.facebook.com/regieparulan/videos/10154320036206501/)
on Thu Aug 18th 2016 at 03:09:09 Afrofem
Just read this Guardian article about Trump supporters. It talks about how his supporters want respect and feels Trump understands their pain.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/30/what-do-donald-trump-voters-want-respect
This passage shows the delusional aspects of being a Trump supporter:
“Country is falling apart, from the bottom up. We got these lazy people freeloading off the government. Meanwhile the rich just keep getting richer, and working guys are getting screwed. We just got to break the system.”
When it came to race, he jumps to explain: “My ex-wife is black. I have hired plenty of blacks to work for me. I am not a racist. Trump is not the racist. Hillary is the racist, only standing up for women and blacks.”
So, the wealthy are sucking their lifeblood, growing obese on government subsidies and tax breaks… and they blame people three times poorer and less powerful than them for making the “country fall apart, from the bottom up”.
They are so mired in their “kiss up, kick down” politics that they can’t see that HRClinton doesn’t care any more for women or Black people than she does them. Being ignored and disrespected is such a new feeling for the White working class that it is driving them bonkers.
They need to take a ticket and get in line. They still have further to fall and Trump will only grease the skids on the way down. But they will probably enjoy the fall more if “… the N-word is thrown around with ease, and racial jokes are par for the course”.
on Thu Aug 18th 2016 at 06:34:33 Fan ...
“Country is falling apart, from the bottom up. We got these lazy people freeloading off the government. Meanwhile the rich just keep getting richer, and working guys are getting screwed.”
These so-called lazy people (code for negroes) feeding off the government didn’t sign off on political trade agreements and policies that sent American manufacturing jobs overseas to increase corporate profits.
That’s called aligning yourselves against your own interests, white folks. Could the rich get richer if they weren’t sucking the life-blood out of the common people? The country isn’t in this predicament because of lazy people. It’s because of the insatiable greed of those in power.
Idiots like this person quoted above somehow cannot see the divide and conquer tactic at work, yet they believe that they’re supposedly endowed with higher brain function and more intelligence than those they call “lazy.” Unbelievable!
@Fan
The illogical statement, “the country is falling apart from the bottom up” shows just how Orwellian their thought processes are.
Countries fall apart from the top down, not the bottom up. When you are too cowardly to deal with the people at the top, kicking the people at the bottom seems mighty empowering.
When you are too cowardly to deal with the people at the top, kicking the people at the bottom seems mighty empowering.
It’s safer too.
on Thu Aug 18th 2016 at 19:53:09 Origin
Trump appeals to white resentment. Hillary appeals to liberal sanctimony. Both only care about themselves.
“Liberal sanctimony” or naked fear?
on Mon Aug 29th 2016 at 03:27:51 Afrofem
The election is still Trump’s to lose. It’s not like he is running against an honorable opponent. Clinton is a crook.
on Wed Aug 31st 2016 at 19:39:20 resw
“He argues that the Republicans of 1860 and those of 2016 are basically the same thing, and ditto for the Democrats.”
That the Democrat platform is different does not change the fact that it is the same party that supported slavery and Jim Crow. And yes, the party and the Democratic National Committee that governs it, are the same legal entities. As you may know, there is no statute of limitations on crimes against humanity.
Both the Democrat party and DNC have never been punished for supporting crimes against humanity. They have never recompensed their victims. They have never even brought themselves to apologise to minorities because they’ve conned the public into believing that because they’re “progressive” the their past crimes against humanity are somehow absolved. Of course you’re all sadly mistaken.
on Thu Sep 1st 2016 at 07:21:34 michaeljonbarker
Tweet by David Duke after Trump’s speech on immigration.
“Excellent speech by Donald Trump tonight. Deport criminal aliens, end catch and release, enforce immagration laws & America first.”
I heard parts of Trump’s speech today. Nothing changed, it’s still fascism.
on Thu Sep 1st 2016 at 12:36:36 abagond
What a horrifying speech! Not just that he gave it, but that so many people seemed to LIKE it. But part of me is glad because, barring the unforseen, he pretty much sank his campaign for good.
on Thu Sep 1st 2016 at 17:04:08 resw
What is fascist about deporting people who go to the US illegally? It may be very nationalist or populist but I don’t see what’s fascist about it.
“But part of me is glad because, barring the unforseen, he pretty much sank his campaign for good.”
I wouldn’t count him out. This is far from over. All we need now is another major atrocity committed by an “illegal alien” or Muslim, and Trump will benefit “bigly” in the polls. You saw what happened last year. Trump’s poll numbers increased a lot after the Paris and San Bernadino attacks.
“What is fascist about deporting people who go to the US illegally? ”
Because it requires an expansion of State power. Trump himself says he will federalize all police departments across the U.S. within his first 100 days in office. That means locale police and sheriffs will have the jurisdiction to profile people who look “illegal”. It will require Hispanics and all immigrants to carry papers to “prove” they have a right to be here. Due process will not be adhered too which violates civil liberties laid out in the Constitution.
The “red tape” that Trump wants to eliminate to “free the police to do there jobs” are in fact constitutional stops to illegal search and seizure and false arrest. The Constitution is meant to protect individuals from harassment both from groups and State agents.
My friend Anthony Gregory writes that “The Constitution empowers Congress to regulate naturalization; the process by which the government determines who is a citizen. It emphatically does not empower Congress to regulate immigration; the process by which individuals freely choose to move from one country to another. There is nothing in the Constitution that allows for border checkpoints and an INS and a cumbersome process to determine whether someone can merely reside here legally. Legal residency is a natural right, not a civil privilege like citizenship and voting rights. Many people live legally within the US without being citizens. Under the Constitution—and more important, under libertarianism as well as under natural law morality—anyone who can physically get to the territory currently ruled by the US government has the right to be here without being harassed by the state. That doesn’t mean the right to vote or receive welfare. But it does mean the right to live here, get a job, and pursue happiness. Under the Constitution and moral law, someone born in Mexico or Norway has just as much right to move to California and peacefully acquire a job and place to rent as does someone who was born in Nebraska.”
“Trump himself says he will federalize all police departments across the U.S. within his first 100 days in office.”
Centralizing government functions like policing is not fascist per se. Many liberal countries have nationalized police forces. But the US President doesn’t really have the power to do that unilaterally.
“That means locale police and sheriffs will have the jurisdiction to profile people who look “illegal””
That’s a different issue than centralizing police. But as a matter of fact police already profile. They do it everyday. They’re trained to do it.
I’m not convinced local police departments are going to change their existing practices as a result of a Trump presidency.
“The “red tape” that Trump wants to eliminate to “free the police to do there jobs” are in fact constitutional stops to illegal search and seizure and false arrest”
He may think there’s red tape, but police already perform illegal searches, seizures and false arrests. And even murder. They get away with it every day. Even in the bastion of liberals, New York (city), where they overwhelmingly supported the unconstitutional racial profiling and illegal searches of blacks and browns, and where cops who murder unarmed blacks go unpunished.
And let’s not forget “progressive” President Obama’s National Defense Authorization Act which permits the indefinite detention of any suspected terrorist.
“It emphatically does not empower Congress to regulate immigration”
I tend to agree in theory, except some would say this power is derived under Article 1, Section 8, Clause 10.
on Sun Sep 4th 2016 at 02:41:46 michaeljonbarker
Donald Trump stars in Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” lol
(https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=UiPKV4sGK64&feature=share)
on Mon Sep 5th 2016 at 04:14:24 Michael Jon Barker
“But Donald Trump is for the little guy” Clueless Trump supporter.
“The War on Street Food been going on for more than 100 years.”
“When Marco Gutierrez, a founder and spokesman for the little-known and sparsely populated advocacy group “Latinos for Trump” recently tried to warn America of the grave dangers of open borders and free migration with the image of “taco trucks on every corner,” most views, Latino and Anglo alike, seem to have experienced a vision of a possible new utopia. The tag immediately trended on Twitter, not in panic but in near-universal celebration of the possibility.”
This article exposes more then that. One of the obstacles that keep immigrants and those who are not white from starting small businesses and upward mobility are city and state license fees that often times are their to favor white populations and developers.
https://fee.org/articles/why-are-there-not-taco-trucks-on-every-corner/
Trumps intent on deporting over 11 million “illegal aliens”. There is a president for this that was started under the Hoover administration and carried into FDR term over a seven year period. It is estimated that upwards of 2 million people were detained and deported without due process and about half of them American born U.S. citizens.
Funny the things that get left out of history books.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Repatriation
on Wed Sep 14th 2016 at 19:37:45 Mary Burrell
Colin Kaepernick draws ire from white Americans because he calls attention to America’s denial of white privilege, police brutality against black people and people of color, and the lack of opportunity for those same people and get demonized for protesting injustice. Meanwhile Trump can tell his crowds that America is in decline, Mexicans are sexual predators and all black people are disadvantaged living in ghettos and he gets applauded, what’s wrong with this picture?
on Wed Sep 14th 2016 at 22:02:44 resw
America was built on the double standard.
http://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/scalefit_630_noupscale/57c7589a1700001a1fc76d55.gif?cache=ohgbobx3ej
on Wed Sep 14th 2016 at 22:19:56 Fan ...
” Meanwhile Trump can tell his crowds that America is in decline, Mexicans are sexual predators and all black people are disadvantaged living in ghettos and he gets applauded, what’s wrong with this picture?”
I’ll take a stab at this: Never underestimate the power of stupidity of certain people in large groups!
Trump’s chances of being elected are looking more and more possible every day.
I heard a rumor that the DNC is thinking about substituting Michelle Obama for Clinton if Clinton’s health disqualifies her from continuing.
@resw: Precisely, that cartoon is circulating the Internet and there is much truth in it.
@Fan: I agree with that statement about the stupidity of certain people in large groups. Trump rallies are definitely where the “stupid ” happens.
on Sat Oct 1st 2016 at 02:18:21 Michael Jon Barker
Donald Trump has yet to pick up any Newspaper endorsements for president.
Gary Johnson has six, four from papers that endorsed Romney and two from papers that endorsed Obama.
Hillary has thirteen endorsements, Six from papers that endorsed Romney and seven from papers that endorsed Obama.
on Sat Oct 1st 2016 at 03:15:30 Afrofem
“It is estimated that upwards of 2 million people were detained and deported without due process and about half of them American born U.S. citizens. “
True. I never knew about those mass deportations until I saw a movie called Mi Familia. It starred Edward James Olmos and Jimmy Smits.
Armed soldiers basically rampaged through Mexican American neighborhoods, grabbed people on the streets and stuffed them on buses and trains bound for Mexico.
A movie trailer can be found here:
http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi2930573593
The movie also depicts the “Zoot Suit Riots” in Los Angeles in 1943. White soldiers and sailors attacked Chicano men who dressed in distinctive “Zoot Suits”. According to History.com:
“..the jazz-inspired outfits were particularly popular among the city’s Mexican American population. Latino youths known as “Pachucos” caused a sensation by donning zoot suits, pork pie hats and dangling watch chains, and it wasn’t long before their eye-catching garb earned them an overblown reputation as street thugs and juvenile delinquents. Tensions grew especially high between zoot-suiters and the large contingent of white sailors and Marines stationed in Los Angeles. Mexican Americans were serving in the military in high numbers, but many servicemen viewed the zoot-suit wearers as World War II draft dodgers. Since wool and other textiles were subject to wartime rationing, they also considered the oversized suits an unpatriotic waste of resources.
The racially charged atmosphere finally led to full-scale riots in early June 1943. Following a series of bloody street brawls between zoot-suiters and white soldiers, a mob of U.S. servicemen took to the streets in taxicabs and began attacking Latinos and stripping them of their suits. Thousands more servicemen and civilians joined the fray over the next several days, often marching into cafes and movie theaters and beating anyone wearing Pachuco clothing or hairstyles. Blacks and Filipinos—even those not clad in zoot suits—were also targeted. Local papers framed the racial attacks as a vigilante response to an immigrant crime wave, and police generally restricted their arrests to the Latinos who fought back. The mayhem didn’t die down until June 8, when U.S. military personnel were finally barred from leaving their barracks. The Los Angeles City Council issued a ban on zoot suits the following day. Amazingly, no one was killed during the weeklong riot, but it wasn’t the last outburst of zoot suit-related racial violence. Similar incidents took place that same year in cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago and Detroit. “
http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/what-were-the-zoot-suit-riots
on Mon Oct 3rd 2016 at 13:39:14 Herneith
https://www.icij.org/blog/2016/09/trumps-organization-did-business-iranian-bank-later-linked-terrorism?utm_content=buffer8f75a&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
on Thu Oct 13th 2016 at 05:01:07 michaeljonbarker
Some Republican women have had enough of Trump and his supporters.
“So let me get this straight: I, a conservative female, have spent years defending the Republican Party against claims of sexism. When I saw Republican men getting attacked I stood up for them. I came to their defense. I fought on their behalf. I fought on behalf of a movement I believed in.
I fought on behalf of my principles while other women told me I hated my own sex. Not only charges of sexism, but I defended @marcorubio during Go8, I fought in my state to stop the @ScottWalker recall, etc… Now some Trojan horse nationalist sexual predator invades the @GOP, eating it alive, and you cowards sit this one out? He treats women like dogs, and you go against everything I – and other female conservatives – said you were & back down like cowards.
Get this straight: We don’t need you to stand up for us, YOU needed to stand up for us for YOU. For YOUR dignity. For YOUR reputation. Jeff Sessions says that he wouldn’t “characterize” Trump’s unauthorized groping of women as “assault.”
Others try to rebuke his comments, yet STILL choose to vote for a sexual predator – because let’s be honest, that’s what he is. “What he said is wrong, and the way he treats women is wrong, but it’s not wrong enough for me to not vote for him.”
Thanks, cowards.
Various men in the movement are writing it off as normal, confirming every stereotype the left has thrown at them. So I’m done. I’m sooo done.
If you can’t stand up for women & unendorse this piece of human garbage, you deserve every charge of sexism thrown at you. I’m just one woman, you won’t even notice my lack of presence at rallies, fair booths, etc. You won’t really care that I’m offended by your silence, and your inability to take a stand. But one by one you’ll watch more women like me go, & you’ll watch men of ACTUAL character follow us out the door.
And what you’ll be left with are the corrupt masses that foam at the mouth every time you step outside the lines. Men who truly see women as lesser beings, & women without self-respect. And your “guiding faith” & “principles” will be attached to them as well. And when it’s all said and done, all you’ll have left is the party The Left always accused you of being.
Scum.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/the-tweet-storm-that-should-terrify-the-republican-party/503771/
on Thu Oct 13th 2016 at 07:17:08 Fan ...
Oh please … cry me a river!!!
Too few tears, and way too late!
The Amerikan political system had an opportunity to redeem itself during Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial. The senate decided to look the other way despite all of the evidence pointing to Clinton’s guilt. The Amerikan people also agreed with the senate’s decision.
Any (systemic) rot/cancer left remaining (untreated) within a body will eventually infect/overtake/spread into the rest of the body.
The untreated diseased body then cannot recover from its overwhelming multiple cancers. Rot can’t be permitted to remain and fester, whether it starts in the foot – or the head.
on Mon Oct 17th 2016 at 15:47:43 Herneith
https://scontent-yyz1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-0/p417x417/14695412_1246415125378927_2142578183932071144_n.jpg?oh=325d5a75295a823f225ff6e0560385e9&oe=58A0ABBF
on Sat Oct 22nd 2016 at 00:50:48 michaeljonbarker
Here is more about Donald Trump’s “Morman Problem”.
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-clinton-mormons-20161019-snap-story.html
on Wed Oct 26th 2016 at 16:03:41 Herneith
Qu qu’est fcuk?
on Sat Oct 29th 2016 at 15:40:46 Herneith
http://www.burrardstreetjournal.com/trump-v-mcgregor-confirmed-for-wwe-battleground/
http://www.burrardstreetjournal.com/trump-obama-founded-better-terrorist-group/
on Tue Nov 1st 2016 at 14:41:08 Herneith
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/01/us/politics/donald-trump-tax.html?emc=edit_na_20161031&nlid=59850509&ref=cta
That Trump v. McGregor story is hilarious! Thanks for sharing.
Ever wonder how Donald Trump has his hair coiffed?:
https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/trump_0425.jpg?quality=85&w=950
Separated at birth?:
on Wed Nov 16th 2016 at 06:43:49 Fan ...
^^^^^^^ lol
These lesser hairstyles (or snafus) reminds of boxing promoter Don King’s original classic look!
The trolls sexier and better looking in a manly, rugged way!
on Wed Nov 16th 2016 at 13:55:27 v8driver
lordie lordie lordie
Is that pic on the right an image of “Oh nooooooooooooooooooooooo…” the always accident prone, Mr. Bill of Saturday Night Live??
No, it’s a Troll doll:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_doll
I used to take them to BINGO. I couldn’t help noticing the resemblance between the two. Here’s Donald with a new hairdo:
fat bastid from austin powers!
https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS5kt-visduX-Gl_O3MSGejzsP8ho2FoVUjSPKkGcXbuCyTwrKFhw
There is a little resemblance between the troll and Mr Bill.
At least Mr Bill believes in personal grooming.
The Donald looks as if his melanin deficiency might make him a candidate for some serious skin issues…and be aware of the Sun’s effect …
on Thu Nov 17th 2016 at 00:59:18 Herneith
Mr. Bill is a hundred times better looking.
A profound question, can Donald Trump keep his hair in place on inauguration day?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/17/can-trump-s-hair-survive-inauguration-day.html?via=newsletter&source=DDAfternoon
on Thu Nov 17th 2016 at 17:31:42 Fan ...
” can Donald Trump keep his hair in place on inauguration day?”
Highly doubtful. That’s like asking Mr Potato Head if he can make any sense, or answer a simple question!
Maybe.. if he uses the most super-fortified can of hair spray known to mankind (Aquanet) and the wind is nowhere to be found!
He should probably buy a blond hair WEAVE and just be done with it!
Or sport a new look… an Issac Hayes, Steve Harvey, Mike Tyson hair (less) do. I do think he needs a tan (some coloring to offset that ghastly Eddie Muster pale …) a lot more than he needs to keep his hair in place.
on Wed Dec 21st 2016 at 01:42:14 Herneith
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbLZZ5zLwnA)
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjUDK4GqiXo)
on Wed Feb 1st 2017 at 08:41:01 Trump's Muslim ban - Bible Prophecy In The Daily Headlines
http://herneith.d.pr/l8NdK
on Fri Jul 7th 2017 at 02:31:23 michaeljonbarker
“The Racial and Religious Paranoia of Trump’s Warsaw Speech.”
It seems Trump is taking his white speak to Europe.
It got him elelcted in the U.S. so why not reach out to whites in Europe.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/07/trump-speech-poland/532866/?utm_source=fbia
on Mon Jul 24th 2017 at 00:32:13 michaeljonbarker
So Trump wanys to bring the hammer down on pot smokers. Supposedly there is a “report” that links marijuana users to violent crime. Any report that makes such a claim is schewd towards law enforcement.
Expect everybody but whites to experience the blunt of this. (No pun intended)
Edit: I forgot the link
http://thehill.com/regulation/administration/343218-trumps-doj-gears-up-for-crackdown-on-marijuana
on Wed Aug 9th 2017 at 03:46:27 michaeljonbarker
Trump gets updates twice a day about how great he is. lol
https://news.vice.com/story/trump-folder-positive-news-white-house?utm_source=vicetwitterus
on Sat Aug 19th 2017 at 04:39:45 michaeljonbarker
Impeach tbe President.
https://cohen.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/ranking-member-cohen-introduce-articles-impeachment-against-president
on Tue Sep 5th 2017 at 04:24:34 michaeljonbarker
This is a good. How Trump is producing a propaganda state.
https://newrepublic.com/article/144592/trump-creating-propaganda-state
on Sat Sep 23rd 2017 at 02:44:14 Mary Burrell
Kim Jong Un calls Trump a “dotard.” Dotard: An old senile man. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
on Mon Oct 23rd 2017 at 02:13:15 michaeljonbarker
“According to research from the nonprofit monitoring group Airwars, the first seven months of the Trump administration have already resulted in more civilian deaths than under the entirety of the Obama administration. Airwars reports that under Obama’s leadership, the fight against IS led to approximately 2,300 to 3,400 civilian deaths. Through the first seven months of the Trump administration, they estimate that coalition air strikes have killed between 2,800 and 4,500 civilians.”
“Researchers also point to another stunning trend – the “frequent killing of entire families in likely coalition airstrikes.” In May, for example, such actions led to the deaths of at least 57 women and 52 children in Iraq and Syria.”
http://www.allgov.com/news/top-stories/in-9-months-trump-has-bombed-to-death-more-civilians-than-obama-did-in-8-years-171017?news=860336
on Wed Jun 26th 2019 at 23:25:51 Mary Burrell
Watching the CBS Evening News and they showed a horrific photo of a Salvadoran and his young child face down in the Rio Grande. These are “human beings “ seeking asylum trying to escape horrendous conditions found in their country, whose problems have been exacerbated by Western polices. This is a humanitarian crisis that one person in the White House has grown with his xenophobic rhetoric plus his lack of empathy.
No President has lost as many cabinet members as Trump.
on Wed Sep 11th 2019 at 15:45:23 Open Minded Observer
That may be true, and you know I’m no Trump apologist, but that’s just one of many side effects of him being the most unqualified president ever.
People opposed to him like to point to stuff like that because they think being unqualified is something that should get him replaced whereas being unqualified is part of what got him elected in the first place. Certainly not the only thing, but it’s also not seen as detrimental to his supporters. They see him rapidly replacing staff as a form of learning and adapting. In fact, not being bogged down with the optics of replacing staff is seen as taking the kinds of quick and decisive actions that they assume business leaders take. That’s what they elected… a businessman instead of a politician. He’s free to make mistakes as long as he doesn’t allow them to linger. In marketing terms, his administration is “nimble” because it can react and change rapidly. They love that.
on Tue Sep 24th 2019 at 21:04:39 Mary Burrell
Today Speaker of The House Nancy Pelosi delivers Statement of Impeachment. We shall see what the outcome will be.
And Trump’s little orange hands are tweeting away.
on Wed Sep 25th 2019 at 10:52:40 Alberto Monteiro
We are all a bunch of idiots, they point it to us all the time, and we don’t believe.
Trump is orange. The Simpsons are orange.
Isn’t it obvious that we live in a simulation?
Even with the threat of impeachment it probably won’t make a difference with Trump’s sycophantic cult following. And I am thinking the Republicans in the Senate are not going to support an impeachment. Just like the Mueller Report it probably won’t have an effect on the election in 2020. I hope I am wrong about all of this. I would like nothing more than to see him in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs.
I’d say there’s a zero percent chance the Senate has any plans to vote in favor of impeachment unless and until we start seeing the Republican establishment promoting an alternative… i.e. Fox News suddenly running all kinds of “Hey, this guy might give Trump a run for his money” stories. They will most likely will do everything they can to delay the vote until after the 2020 elections. After 2020, whether they retain control of the Senate or not, the outcome of the election will have been determined and if Trump wins, the Republicans keep the presidency.
In other words, they’ll stick with him until he’s so toxic that many republicans start indicating that they’ll switch sides or abstain. Until then, they’ve got nothing to lose, they want a republican in the White house and they probably don’t care if it’s Pence after the election. He just doesn’t have the draw to run on his own, so they’ll stick with Trump and hope for the win.
I’ve said it before though, I think once Trump is out, the establishment, most of his base and the country in general will pile on him. His rise to power was such a media spectacle that his fall will be equally spectacular. His base will blame him for ruining their party, making a mockery of their agenda, bankrupting the economy, costing them all 3 branches of government and pretty much every other thing that goes wrong in the wake of his presidency. They will feel like they took a chance on him and he squandered it. They will have lost friendships, permanently damaged family relationships and will only have a MAGA hat to show for it. They will want revenge.
I could be wrong on that, but if I know one thing, it’s that Americans love drama and watching bad things happen to entitled rich people. I envision the finale of his reality TV presidency to be epic.
“It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” —James Baldwin
“The tot of the fish starts at the head down.” This ancient proverb is so apropos to this corrupt administration. We have a lawless president that commits crimes with impunity.
rot ^^^^
on Thu Oct 10th 2019 at 11:28:32 Mary Burrell
Today i learned Trump betrayed the Kurds. This beast needs to be impeached and removed from office.
on Thu Oct 10th 2019 at 11:39:24 Solitaire
The U.S. has betrayed the Kurds at least three times since the Gulf War in 1990. They shouldn’t trust us at all.
on Thu Oct 10th 2019 at 12:12:16 abagond
“Betrayed” is a strong word. It implies he understands what loyalty is.
I suppose you have a point about the word betrayal implying that he understands what loyalty means. Although he demands “loyalty “ from his subordinates. He has no moral compass and I suppose that is one of the symptoms of his narcissistic personality.
on Thu Oct 10th 2019 at 13:39:30 Open Minded Observer
Wasn’t betraying the Kurds inevitable? I’ll admit ignorance here, but was there ever a time that we didn’t abandon locals we’ve enlisted to assist us in whatever proxy war or destabilization effort or regime change agenda we’ve embarked upon?
2nd thought: Trump may not really have the stomach for fighting someone else’s war, but it seems to me that his actions have set the stage for us to wind up fighting a battle of his own making (one of his hallmarks is creating problems and then claiming victory when he solves them). What’s the history on re-electing presidents when actively engaged in a war? (Hint: http://www.theprogressiveprofessor.com/?p=19187)
on Thu Oct 10th 2019 at 23:38:01 v8driver
Well he’s gone up against NATO leadership with his sanctioningyenabling the Turkish push into Syria now, imnsho.
on Fri Oct 11th 2019 at 03:47:29 iamvistinginstructoreric
Reblogged this on Project ENGAGE.
Tonight at 7:00 pm Trump and the MAGA maggots are infesting the city.🤢🤬😡
on Wed Oct 23rd 2019 at 01:57:19 Mary Burrell
Trump used the word “lynching” I wonder if this was some type of dog whistle to get his zombie sycophant supporters to act out. Like much of his rhetoric he’s very irresponsible and evil. With these impeachment hearings pending, perhaps this is way to distract. I suppose this is no different from all the other irresponsible, dangerous rhetoric with.
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McDonald's fighting Heights eatery named Jus Mac
Jus' Mac serves everything macaroni. McDonald's doesn't even have macaroni on its menu, but is the name itself enough to confuse customers? Well, both sides are taking their names very seriously.
Whether topped with cheddar or jack, stuffed with meat, or broccoli, Jus' Mac, located on Yale, serves basically just one thing.
"We're a mac and cheese eatery," Jus' Mac owner Kimbery Alvarez said.
But now they've been served a side of controversy from the Big Mac, McDonalds. After the couple filed papers to trademark Jus' Mac, lawyers from the fast food giant sent them a letter, saying in part:
"We are concerned that the use and a federal registration of Jus' Mac for restaurant services is likely to confuse consumers into believing your company's services and products are sponsored by, licensed by or associated with McDonald's."
"I think I felt so disappointed when I saw this letter. I was like, I can't believe this. They're big, they're huge and we are just small mom and pop trying to make a living," Alvarez said.
Lawyers for Jus' Mac say many other companies use the term "mac." Case in point: What about makers of iPads and MacBooks?
Jus' Mac diners were surprised by the food feud.
"It has nothing to do with McDonald's. McDonald's is burgers. This is macaroni and cheese, so I think it's crazy!" diner Phyllis Bravenec said.
"I think it's silly. Why go after the little guy?" diner Darryl Hickey said.
Alvarez, though, doesn't want and can't afford a fight, hoping to find a resolution so the Big Mac and Jus' Mac can both serve their food their way.
"I think it's just ridiculous. It's not fair for the mom and pops who just want to make a living. No one can fight McDonald's," she said.
McDonald's sent ABC13 a statement saying, "It takes its trademarks to be a very important asset" but it does hope to find a mutually agreeable resolution to this matter, something both sides they agree on.
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Posted 3:57PM on Tuesday 13th August 2019 ( 5 months ago )
Top of the polls, German politician downplays far-right past
Andreas Kalbitz the Alternative for Germany, AfD, top candidate for the regional election in the German state of Brandenburg attends a news conference in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, Aug. 13, 2019. On Sunday Sept.1, 2019 regional state elections will take place in the eastern German state of Brandenburg. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
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BERLIN (AP) — A quarter century after first dipping his toes in Germany's far-right waters, Andreas Kalbitz is sailing them to one of the political faction's bigger triumphs.
Kalbitz, 46, could be the big winner in next month's state elections in Brandenburg, where he heads the anti-migrant Alternative for Germany party. He also is under scrutiny for far-right involvement dating back to the early 1990s, when Germany saw a resurgence of nationalist sentiment amid post-unification turmoil.
"One could accuse me of right-wing extremist connections, but certainly not of having (a) far-right extremist biography," Kalbitz told reporters Tuesday in Berlin.
Critics allege the disavowal is patently false. They point to Kalbitz having joined the Republikaner, a fringe far-right party that was under surveillance by Germany's domestic security agency, when he was 21.
Around the same time, he also became a member of the Witiko Association, which was founded by former Nazis after World War II. German authorities say its activities in recent decades included downplaying the Holocaust and pushing a revisionist interpretation of the war.
Gideon Botsch, a political scientist at the University of Potsdam, said Kalbitz "very clearly over long periods of his life, basically since he was a youth, was rooted in the right-wing extremist scene."
Botsch noted that Kalbitz was photographed in 2007 at an event hosted by the HDJ, a neo-Nazi youth movement that's since been banned. Until recently, Kalbitz also was a leading member of the Archive of History, an association founded by a former member of the Waffen-SS.
Kalbitz argued Tuesday that his past shouldn't be held against him.
Asked about an article he wrote in 2001 which suggested Germans faced "ethnocide" due to immigration, he replied, "it's a choice of words I wouldn't pick (anymore). That's an issue I've checked off."
Kalbitz, a former paratrooper, also downplayed his involvement in two films, one about Adolf Hitler as a soldier in World War I and another about the 1. Gebirgsdivision, a World War II army mountain division that participated in numerous atrocities.
Experts have described both as glossing over historical facts.
Until recently, Kalbitz remained largely below the radar of national political attention, in Germany.
He is considered close to Bjoern Hoecke, Alternative for Germany's firebrand leader in Thuringia state. Hoecke has called for Germany to change the way it remembers and atones for its Nazi past.
Earlier this year Germany's domestic security agency said it was stepping up surveillance of Hoecke's faction within the party, known as The Wing.
Kalbitz said he hopes that a strong result in Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia this year will "send a signal nationwide" that Alternative for Germany can win elections.
One of Alternative for Germany's few distinct policies in Brandenburg, a large but sparsely populated state of 2.5 million that encircles Berlin, is to offer each family a 25,000-euro loan ($28,000), with 5,000 euros ($5,600) of debt erased per child born.
A poll published Friday by daily newspaper Maerkische Allgemeine daily predicted that Alternative for Germany, or AfD, would get 21% of the state vote in Brandenburg on Sept. 1.
The survey, which had a margin of error of 3 percentage points, put the governing Social Democrats at 17%, behind Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union party with 18%.
The other parties say they will not form a coalition with Alternative for Germany. But the party's strength will likely complicate the formation of the next Brandenburg state government by forcing at least three other parties to band together.
"It will expand its share of the vote, that much is certain," political scientist Botsch said. "It stands a good chance of becoming the strongest party, but it's far from getting a majority in society or being able to form a coalition."
Nevertheless, the party's attacks against migrants have already had caused subtle shifts, according to Botsch. Police and news media in Brandenburg have taken to always naming a suspect's nationality in crime reports, something that's normally frowned on in Germany, he noted.
Speaking at an election rally last year, Kalbitz said if Alternative for Germany party came to power "it won't be Germans who cross to the other side of the road when hordes of young refugees walk toward them, followed by that squadron of headscarves with their double- and triple-seater strollers."
Asked about the remarks on Tuesday, Kalbitz said he was trying to "describe in a pithy election campaign fashion the feeling of unease that many people have now because some of the so-called refugees — not all of them, I don't generalize — it just feels threatening."
"There are Muslims who abide by the law, that pay their taxes, that are integrated, that speak our language and they belong to Germany too," he added.
Associated Categories: Associated Press (AP), AP World News
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(em)brace | Michelle MacKinnon
Michelle MacKinnon, knotted, neatly I
Eastern Edge Presents:
January 11th – February 22nd, 2020
Opening Reception & Artist talk, January 11th, 7 pm
(em)brace explores how the notion of home can endure and evolve, drifting between the deconstruction and adoration of things and people. Working with textiles provides a tactile link to familial memories of home–what is remembered, imagined or convinced to be. Blankets, mittens, socks and sweaters become disconnected from their more utilitarian intent, no longer serving their purposes associated with clothing and warmth, but rather act as a narrative of time and place. Through these systematically structured textiles, I calm the desire for permanence in an attempt to (re)familiarize and fit myself into a new understanding of what was, or still could be, home: an ever-evolving, restless, fragile and elusive notion consisting of many layered collections, both physical and remembered. A reminder that, as they depend on each other to exist, the self and home are inseparable.
Michelle MacKinnon is an artist and educator currently living and working in Corner Brook, Newfoundland. MacKinnon graduated with an MFA and BFA in Visual Arts from York University and has since taught at Memorial University of Newfoundland (Corner Brook, NL), York University (Toronto, ON) and Algoma University (Sault Ste. Marie, ON). She has participated in residencies and exhibitions internationally (Canada, United States and Russia), with an upcoming residency at Casa (Lethbridge, AB) and solo exhibition at the Grenfell Art Gallery (Corner Brook, NL) in 2020. MacKinnon is currently an Artist in Residence at the Grenfell Art Gallery.
Michelle MacKinnon, knotted, neatly II
Eastern Edge Gallery
72 Harbour Drive, St. John’s, NL, Canada
gallery@easternedge.ca
www.easternedge.ca
Opening reception facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/851164551983804/
Web Page for exhibition: https://easternedge.ca/embrace/
Facebook: @easternedgegallery
Instagram: @easternedgegallery
Artist: Michelle MacKinnon
Website: www.michellemackinnon.ca
Instagram: @michelleleahmackinnon
Physical Space
Eastern Edge Gallery is committed to creating a space that is as physically accessible as possible to all of our patrons and members of the arts community.
The Gallery is located on the ground floor. No entrances leading to the gallery have buttons to press to automatically open the doors and all require someone to physically (manually) open them. There is a ramp in the front of the building leading from the outside parking lot through a set of glass double doors (width of 71 inches). They lead into the main hallway of the building, where you will find the purple double doors (width of 64 inches) leading to Eastern Edge Gallery on your immediate right. The bathroom is just to the left of the hallway (width of 39 inches) down a slight ramp, and the doorways to the bathroom is 30 inches wide. The bathroom is a small space, approximately 6 feet by 5 feet – even less so with the toilet, sink, and swinging door taken into account). The building recently had a second bathroom added just beyond the first one, with more floorspace, making it more accessible to our patrons (bathroom is 7 feet by 10.3 feet, with a 31 inch doorway), this new bathroom is located down a hallway that is 104 inches long and 45.5 inches wide, and starts with a 2.5 inch lip up.
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Coca-Cola Warehouse & Chilled Manufacturing Line
85,000 SFWarehouse
$18.1M CADConstruction Cost
$2.7 CADin VE Savings
Coca-Cola North America / Minute Maid Canada Peterborough, Ontario, Canada
Major expansion for Coca-Cola North America
Phased expansion for Coca-Cola, Ltd.
Under a design-build contract, Alberici constructed an expansion of the existing warehouse facility for The Minute Maid Company Canada, Inc., a division of Coca-Cola, Ltd. We completed the project in two phases: the construction of a finished goods warehouse including process improvements, as well as equipment installation and relocation of a chilled manufacturing line.
Construction of a new finished goods warehouse
The first phase included the construction of a new 80,000 SF finished goods warehouse at the facility. Alberici constructed both a chilled storage space (0°C) and a frozen finish goods space (-20°C). Our team self-performed the erection of the structural steel frame and R-40 rated roof for the warehouse. Inside the new facility, we managed the installation of the ammonia refrigeration system.
For the second phase of the project, Alberici renovated and converted existing chilled warehouse space into a new cGMP production space. Process modifications included enhancements to the plant’s bulk storage systems, installation of a new blend system and pasteurizer, relocation of an aeseptic filler, and installation of a new casepacker. Alberici millwrights installed and relocated the new process equipment, including the installation of a new dedicated utility infrastructure.
Working with challenging weather
Alberici completed large portions of the work in the winter months, including concrete foundation pours and structural steel erection. Ground heater systems were used to allow construction to continue through the worst part of the winter months, ensuring the project remained on schedule.
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about Nock
A Superfluous Man
Isaiah’s Job
The Nockian Society
DamnYankee.us
If one does not find himself essential or integral, then he must conclude he is superfluous. In Memoirs of a Superfluous Man (1943, Chapter Five, pages 85-95), AJN appraises the system of public education in America. Within this appraisal he makes the distinction between an educable person and a trainable, but fundamentally ignorant, person. He posits that he may, indeed, be non-essential.
My life has afforded me few diversions more engaging than that of watching the progress of our educational revolution. I have viewed it from the outside for a great many years, and also from the inside for the year or two in which I made a notorious failure at going through the motions of teaching undergraduate collegians. The revolution began with a drastic purge, a thorough guillotining of the classical curriculum, wherever found. Such Greek and Latin as escaped the Reign of Terror was left to die of inanition in dens and caves of the earth, such as the school and college I attended. The elective system came in as a substitute, proposing instruction in omni re scibili as its final consummation. During a visit to Germany, the president of Harvard, Mr. Eliot, had taken note that the elective system was working well in German universities, and he saw no reason why it should not work as well in an undergraduate college like Harvard, so he introduced it there. The country promptly carried his logic to its full length. If the thing was good for the university, good for the college, why not for the secondary school, why not for the primary school? Why not try a tentative dab at its being good for the kindergarten? — surely in a free democracy the free exercise of self-expression and the development of an untrammelled personality can hardly begin too young.
So the old régime’s notion that education is in its nature selective, the peculium of a well-sifted élite, was swept away and replaced by the popular notion that everybody should go to school, college, university, and should have every facility afforded for studying anything that any one might choose. Our institutions grew to enormous size; the country’s student population exceeded anything ever known…
The theory of the revolution was based on a flagrant popular perversion of the doctrines of equality and democracy. Above all things the mass-mind is most bitterly resentful of superiority. It will not tolerate the thought of an élite; and under a political system of universal suffrage, the mass-mind is enabled to make its antipathies prevail by sheer force of numbers… In the prevalent popular view, therefore, — the view insisted upon and as far as possible enforced by the mass-men whom the masses instinctively cleave to and choose as leaders, — in this view the prime postulate of equality is that in the realm of the spirit as well as of the flesh, everybody is able to enjoy anything that anybody can enjoy; and the prime postulate of democracy is that there shall be nothing for anybody to enjoy that is not open for everybody to enjoy. An equalitarian and democratic régime must by consequence assume, tacitly or avowedly, that everybody is educable…
The worst result of this was a complete effacement of the line which sets off education from training, and the line which sets off formative knowledge from instrumental knowledge. This obliteration was done deliberately to meet the popular perversions of equality and democracy. The régime perceived that while very few can be educated, everyone who is not actually imbecile or idiotic can be trained in one way or another, as soldiers are trained in military routine, or as monkeys are trained to pick fruit. Very well then, it said in effect, let us agree to call training education, convert our schools, colleges, universities into training-schools as far as need be, but continue to call them educational institutions and to call our general system an educational system…
I do not find this altogether lamentable, however, because I am by no means sure that a return to the classics, even if it were practicable, would be desirable. I am not sure that the post-revolutionary frame of mind is so awry, not sure that any more should be done with education, properly so called, than is being done; or that the final end and aim of education, — the ability to see things as they are, — should any longer be taken into account. The question at issue obviously, is whether the educable person can any longer be regarded as a social asset; or, indeed, whether in time past his value as a social asset has not been overestimated. As I came to understand much later, the final answer must be referable to the previous question, What is man? On one theory of man’s place in nature, the final answer would be yes, and on another, no. The immediate answer, however, I should say would be in the negative. In a society essentially neolithic, as ours unquestionably is at the moment, — whatever one may hold its evolutionary possibilities to be, — there can be no place found for an educable person but such as a trainable person could fill quite as well or even better; he becomes a superfluous man; and the more thoroughly his ability to see things as they are is cultivated, the more his superfluity is enhanced. As the process of general barbarisation goes on, as its speed accelerates, as its calamitous consequences recur with ever-increasing frequency and violence, the educable person can only take shelter against his insensate fellow-beings, as Plato said, like a man crouching behind a wall against a whirlwind.
In Chapter One of these Memoirs, AJN remarks:
The net profit of my first few years of life appears to have been a fairly explicit understanding of the fact that ignorance exists… This understanding came about so easily and naturally that for many years I took it as a commonplace, assuming that everyone had it. My subsequent contacts with the world at large, however, showed me that everyone does not have it, indeed that those who have it are extremely few. They seemed particularly and pitifully few when one contemplated the colossal pretensions which, in its modesty, the human race puts forth about itself… a society by and large “too ignorant to know that there is such a thing as ignorance”!
…As time went on, I became convinced that Calvin’s idea of invincible ignorance had a validity… But why should ignorance have persisted as a fixed quantity throughout human history, as apparently it has done; and why should the direct effort at enlightening ignorance remain as inveterately impracticable and inadvisable today as it was in the days of Socrates, Jesus, Confucius, Im-hotep, or it must have been found to be by the wiseacres of the Neolitic period, if any such there were?
Against this bulwark of ignorance, Albert Jay Nock felt himself superfluous. -DAW
That Wasn't Real Socialism
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Kenney wins the war over wage discrimination bill
by Jamila Johnson
Kenney wins the war over wage discrimination...
Despite threats from Comcast that the city would be sued for the bill, Mayor Kenney shared that he will sign the wage discrimination legislation that was passed by City Council and under law review.
"We may get sued, we may not," Kenney said to a crowd outside of City Hall. "But Council passed this measure by unanimous vote, and I see no reason why I shouldn't sign it."
After a representative from Comcast sent a memo to Solicitor Tulante in regards to the legislation stating that the bill is in violation of the first amendment, the city had the legislation reviewed before Kenney officially announced he would sign the bill.
The legislation is meant to target the lower pay grades that women and non-white applicants tend to face in their initial jobs. The question of what the applicant’s previous salary was might lead to a bias that prevents the new employee from going up in their salary.
First of it’s kind to be passed in the city, and the unanimous vote shows the council is fully behind the bill. The supporters of the bill state the women make 79 cents to every dollar made and this bill may prevent that for upcoming professionals in the city.
"I think that I have responsibly to either be for something or against something and not just let it happen," Kenney said. "I'm not vetoing it, and we just wanted to make sure all the legal aspects of it were tight before we signed it."
Read more about this here.
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Perks and piss-ups – the trick is to find an acceptable way of making the public pay
Another bucket of bollocks is published in the Dom-Post today, this time on the matter of MPs’ miserable spending allowances.
Vernon Small, one of the rag’s parliamentary press gallery hacks, makes it seem like he has been talking with a whistle-blower:
MPs are secretly negotiating to award themselves more generous perks.
If they were secret – you can be sure – a bugger like Small would not get to hear of them.
But there is no whistle-blower. Rather –
The behind-closed-doors talks were revealed by Auditor-General Lyn Provost in a report that found former housing and fisheries minister Phil Heatley unlawfully spent $1402 of taxpayers’ money.
Leave a Comment » | Parliament, Politics | Tagged: Auditor-General, Geoff Thorn, Lockwood Smith, Lyn Provost, ministerial credit cards, National Party, Parliamentary allowances, Parliamentary Service, Phil Heatley, political perks, travel entitlements, Vernon Small | Permalink
It’s hard to see how co-leadership could make a blonde look more authoritative
Le roi Louis XVI ... no co-leaders in those days (but giving a failed leader the chop could be a bit bloody messy).
Alf can’t see why The Boss should give a toss about whether ACT adopts the quaint practice of having two leaders.
As it happens, The Boss doesn’t give a toss.
John Key is reported in the Herald today as saying
…it would not worry him if Act deputy leader Heather Roy became co-leader of the party with incumbent Rodney Hide.
Responding to questions at his post-Cabinet press conference yesterday, he said he would not feel any need to renegotiate the confidence and supply agreement with Act.
“The leadership of the Act Party is a matter for Act and not for National,” he said.
Leave a Comment » | Politics | Permalink
A tipple or two should not be a resignation matter – but does the mayor have a pee problem?
Alf has no problem demanding the resignation of North Shore mayor Andrew Williams for being a clown. Or any other mayor who becomes a clown.
Demanding his resignation because he enjoys a bit of wine is a different matter. If Alf were to climb on to that bandwagon, he would be in grave danger of having his disparagers in Eketahuna (there are two or three) demand he do likewise.
Alf, of course, regards the capacity to sink a scuttle of suds as the mark of a red-blooded Kiwi bloke. Most critically, however, a red-blooded Kiwi bloke should never run amok, or become violent, abusive or otherwise anti-social as a consequence of imbibing.
Mayor Williams, maybe, fails that test.
1 Comment | Local government | Tagged: Andrew Williams, Cr Jan O'Connor, drink drinking, drinking problem. GPK bar and restaurant, Glenfield Community Board, John Brockies, Nick Kearney, North Shore Mayor, Rodney Hide, Super City | Permalink
Fair enough – we’ll scrap the tasers if we can deal with bad buggers as they do in Morocco and Algeria
Alf was jolted from his slumbers by a Radio NZ report about tasers.
Nope. It wasn’t that some bad bastard had been zapped by one during a weekend in which our police officers have run into more violent stuff from drunken young people.
This time, the Government has been zapped.
The United Nations was reported to be urging the New Zealand Government to consider giving up the use of tasers.
Actually, it turns out that just one laughable bit of the UN, its UN Human Rights Committee, is doing the urging.
The committee has “18 independent experts who are persons of high moral character and recognized competence in the field of human rights.”
The countries from whence they come include great upholders of civil liberties and human rights such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritius, Colombia and Egypt.
Leave a Comment » | Human rights, Law and order | Tagged: anti-smacking law, civil unions, Greg O'Connor, Human Rights Commission, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Peace Movement Aotearoa, Police Association, private prisons, Simon Power, tasers, Treaty of Waitangi, UN Human Rights Committee | Permalink
Sex with children: let’s zap our offenders and leave law enforcement overseas to their police
Alf despairs (often) about the inability of his fellow politicians to think clearly.
A good example of his colleagues going seriously off the rails has popped into the headlines today.
People who travel overseas to have sex with children will face a “strike” towards life imprisonment under new proposals that widen the net of the three strikes bill.
Alf wasn’t around, when the Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill – under which criminals would be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole on third conviction for any of 40 qualifying offences – was reported back from select committee yesterday.
Leave a Comment » | Law and order | Tagged: David Garrett, Law and order, Sentencing and Parole Reform Bill, sex with children, three strikes law | Permalink
Give the OIC rubber stamp to a chimp but first let’s take a harder look at the buyup of the Crafar farms
Alf is bound to agree with the xenophobic Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa on this occasion.
Cafca regards Federated Farmers as “unbelievably naive” in its reaction to news of a mysterious Chinese company hoping to spend a few billion on dairy farms.
The feds described the wheeling and dealing in dairy farms as an “unintended consequence” of the NZ/China Free Trade Agreement. ”
Pull the other one, says Cafca.
There’s nothing unintended about this consequence, this is how “free” trade agreements are supposed to work. They all come with embedded investment agreements which protect the rights of investors from the countries which are party to the Agreement, and those foreign investors’ rights are backed up by the force of legal sanction.
Leave a Comment » | Agriculture, Economy | Tagged: Bill English, Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa, conservation estate, Dairy industry, Federated Farmers, Fonterra, Gerry Brownlee, Natural Dairy, NZ/China Free Trade Agreement, Overseas Investment Office, Trans Pacific Partnership, transnational corporations | Permalink
Welfare reforms hit a snag – but only a woofter would want blokes to be treated the same as sheilas
Social Development Minister Paula Bennett is showing she can match it with Crusher Collins, when it comes to the size of her ministerial balls.
She has admitted part of her welfare reforms breach the Bill of Rights Act. Then she has given the champions of human rights the fingers, upwards thrust, saying it would not bother most people.
“I think that is a discrimination that most New Zealanders will see as being fair and reasonable.”
Alf is not quite so convinced by Attorney-General Chris Finlayson, who denies he deliberately withheld a report advising that part of the Government’s welfare plans breach the Bill of Rights Act.
He puts the delay in its presentation to Parliament as an “administrative error”.
As he was telling us this, did Alf see something porcine flying over Parliament Buildings?
Leave a Comment » | Human rights, Legislation, Social welfare | Tagged: Annette King, Bill of Rights Act, Chris Finlayson, Crusher Collins, domestic purposes beneficiaries, Paula Bennett, Social Assistance (Future Focus) Bill, welfare reforms, widow's benefit | Permalink
You are currently browsing the Alf Grumble blog archives for March, 2010.
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British forces hand Sangin district to Americans
British troops will pull out of the notorious Sangin district of Afghanistan's Helmand province to allow U.S. Marines to take over, British Defence Secretary Liam Fox said Wednesday.
The British forces will redeploy to the central part of Helmand, leading the task force with Danish and Estonian troops there, while U.S. troops are positioned in the northern and southern parts, Fox said.
"This will simplify current command arrangements," Fox told the House of Commons. "The result will be a coherent and equitable division of the main populated areas of Helmand between three brigade-size forces."
NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) closely consulted Britain about the plan, and British officials "fully support" it, Fox said.
"In Sangin, U.K. forces have made huge progress in the face of great adversity," he said. "The district center has been transformed. Helmand as a whole is a safer place as a result of our endeavors and sacrifices there."
Filed under: Daily Developments • Helmand • Troops
The Brits should come home from your war and a Royal Marine commando sent to your house to drag your sorry ass from your computer and have you sent out there to serve as a sandbag.
August 8, 2010 at 11:45 pm | Report abuse |
Daniel-2
Stop using my name and making ridiculous statements.
He is fluent in many languages including gibberish and balderdash.
Response to Daniel-2
He is studying Confucius he is already confused
Yes we must study gibberish and balderdash. It is the way of enlightenment.
naser
See this guys:
http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2008/04/british-army-and-child-abuse-and-murder.html
I watched both and preferred your one.
Jesse Cook
I see that you keep trying to make a joke out of our war.Cut it out,please.Incidently,are you Funny boy???
WOW, do you all realize what you are saying? The Americans and British work together to fight this war. If you havent seen the amount of casualties taken from both ends and the amount of progress they have done, then maybe you should look before speaking. This is ridiculous. YOU PEOPLE TALKING BAD ABOUT EITHER SIDE SHOULD BE ASHAMED! THIS WAR IS BEING FOUGHT BY PARTNERS IN COALITION, NOT BY TWO SEPERATE SERVICES! THERE ARE MORE THAN JUST THE AMERICANS AND BRITISH FIGHTING THIS WAR! HOW ABOUT SUPPORT AND RESPECT RATHER THAN STUPIDITY AND RUDENESS???? LETS GROW UP AND SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, whether they be American, French, Polish, British, whatever they may be!!!! LOOK AT THE FACTS INSTEAD OF SAYING THE WRONG THINGS BEFORE YOU KNOW!!!!!!
July 9, 2010 at 6:31 pm | Report abuse |
Once again i concur.
Oh for goodness sake, both the American & British Soldiers are doing & have done a fabulous job in Afghanistan, All soldiers cope daily with everything that is thrown at them over there, so stop trying to divide them, They are all heroes and as such they deserve admiration and respect for their courage, How many of you people would risk your lives for people you do not know? Think before you try to belittle those poor soldiers who are fighting for a better world to live in..
Didn't the Russians do the very same thing there 30 years ago?They never got the respect they deserved so why should the British and Americans and other NATO forces???
Genni
I thank the Briish forces for all they did in Sangin.
July 9, 2010 at 12:08 am | Report abuse |
Well I don't,Genni.Don't you know that the British Empire was built on sheer greed?Read your history books!
I am an american soldier in afghanistan and I just want to say I give it up to the british. They go out there with less protection and less weapons then we do and they get the damn job done. Im proud to be fighting this war along side all of the other countries especaially the british.........
That made no sense at all try harder.
naser from afghanistan
Britons are poor in trainings and equipments. Their casualties are so high. They don't have enough helicopters and armoured vehicles. They just bring civilians vehilces and paint it military way. They are so cowards.
July 8, 2010 at 1:20 am | Report abuse |
I'm sorry, But we have one of the best trained militaries in the world. Admitedly we don't fly our troops everywhere like the Americans BUT that's because we do not have as many Chinooks or Land Vehicles. We have suffered 300 casualties in Aghanistan I wouldn't call that a lot! Cowards, No one enters the military if they are cowards, and they don't rob civilian vehicles either, Our army is suficiently equiped, If they wanted more vehicles they would ask for them!
You Brits may not be cowards but you definately are greedy.In fact,your own empire was built on sheer greed as history points out.That's the very reason the Revolutionary War was fought here in the U.S. between 1776 and 1783.
Not to mention the simple fact that they have absolutely no business whatsoever in Afghanistan in the first place!!!!!!!
Neither did the Russians,so quit chastising NATO!
Smith in Oregon
Notorious? Does that mean there isn't a danish hockey ice ring built by American taxpayer dollars there? Does that mean there is no TIG nor Burger King's to feed the troops? Here in America the homeless veterans and their children sleep under bridges and eat moldy bread, but Republican Potty'ticians can fund ice hockey rinks for the troops in Afghanistan as shown by Rachel Maddow last night. A utter disgrace and corrupt use of American taxpayer dollars.
Tom Posey
Actually,the British have no more business there than the rest of us nor the Russians before them and that's that!
BUBBA--ALABAMA STYLE!!!
What do you mean us? Pakistani forces are not deployed in Afghanistan. Keep your nose out of other peoples business.
That was very funny,Funny boy.Now please stop posting under my name.Your cooperation will be appreciated to the fullest in this.After all this obnoxious war is no joke.
Onesmallvoice
Just stop it will you. This stupid bickering with yourself is foolish and completely tasteless.
BuckBlack
"Does this mean that we'll have to fight Britain's battles,too?Can't they hold their own anymore?"
"The Brits cant take the heat, so just send the Americans to do there work for them!"
If I had my way, British forces would leave altogether (instead of merely being redeployed). If you can't fight your own damned wars, you shouldn't start them.
Shifty P.
Oh great, thats just perfect. The Brits cant take the heat, so just send the Americans to do there work for them ! thats BS. at least they know who to call on to get the job done.
I volunteer you to take the heat. The Royal Marines just can't do it because they don't have a man of your courage.
August 9, 2010 at 12:15 am | Report abuse |
Does this mean that we'll have to fight Britain's battles,too?Can't they hold their own anymore?
That's outragous! We have fought and died there! We have completed our task and since you have 20,000+ Troops where as we have 8000; It makes sense for you to go and hold the fort while we go and secure the remaining part of Helmand!
How can you be so rude and disrespectful, we are Fighting this war together, Just because we have fewer men doesnt mean that we are any less than you! I hope the rest of America isn't as Ignorant as you!
And I also don't understand how you think America always has to save the day where as America in reality is a tyrant and SOME of it's people (you're one of them) Are just so oblivious and overly patriotic, open your eyes, you're blinkered to what happens beyond you'r eown coastline; the world could plot Amricas down fall and you would wouldn't even know it!
Why can't some of your Americans open your eyes. The Brits have only 7,000 men in the area so althought they are constantly on patrol pushing thr Taliban out of areas they do not have enough personel to hold the ground they take. The Brits have been fighting in the most troublesome spots for the last 5 years its about time the Yanks took on some of the fighting! The fact is the Americans when they move in will have 3 times as many troops so will be able to saturate the area with men. The anti british comments on here are a kick in the teeth to the 300 men and counting who have lost their lives in Afganistan. The Brits are merely leaving one area to go and fight in central Helmand which may be a smaller land area but is as 'hot' a place as any in Afganistan and will be doing just as much fighting as the Americans.
" WE'LL have to fight." I highly doubt YOU'LL be fighting anyone. The Brits should come home from your war and a Royal Marine commando sent to your house to drag your sorry ass from your computer and have you sent out there to serve as a sandbag.
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Top Employer UK 2018
It is the 15th consecutive year that Wetherspoon has been certified by the Top Employers Institute, the independent organisation behind the Top Employers project, for its exceptional employee offerings.
The annual international research, undertaken by the Top Employee Institute, recognises leading employers around the world – those which provide excellent employee conditions, nurture and develop talent throughout all levels of the organisation and which strive to continuously optimise employment practices.
The Top Employers Institute undertook stringent research into Wetherspoon – and the company had to meet the required standard, in order to achieve the certification, with all answers independently audited.
Wetherspoon was assessed on: talent strategy; workforce-planning; on-boarding; learning and development; performance management; leadership development; career and succession management; compensation and benefits; culture.
The Top Employers Institute’s chief executive officer, David Pink, said: “Our comprehensive research concluded that Wetherspoon provides an outstanding employment environment and offers a wide range of creative initiatives, from secondary benefits and working conditions to performance-management programmes – a range which is well thought out and truly aligned with the culture of the company.”
Wetherspoon’s commercial, legal and personnel director, Su Cacioppo, said: “We are extremely proud to be named as a Top Employer UK 2018.
“The recognition comes from an independent organisation which researches numerous companies; so, it is very pleasing that we are considered to be among the best across the UK.
“Wetherspoon employs more than 37,000 staff across its pubs and head office.
“We are committed to offering each and every one the best opportunity to succeed and grow with the company.
“This is evident in the number of staff who have risen through the ranks at Wetherspoon.”
Gin palace
NEW Kopparberg Premium Gin Strawberry & Lime and Whitley Neill Raspberry Gin.
Why not place your next order with the newest team member: your phone?
Recipe tweak makes beans vegan friendly
Great news for our vegan customers – our vegan breakfast is now available with baked beans.
New-size pizzas, eight inches in diameter, are available as part of our small-plates offer.
Grab a free refill
Keep your coffee (or tea) cup fully charged as you enjoy a bottomless brew at our pubs.
Tim's Viewpoint
"Leaving the EU without a deal will leave the UK significantly better off than it is today, provided that a sensible free trade approach is adopted."
Wetherspoon’s pubs are synonymous with real ale – and the resulting awards and recognition received are testament to the company’s passion for serving a great pint.
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Home // Gear // Lifestyle
Top 10 Week 3 Fantasy Football Performers
Some surprise names joined the list of usual suspects of fantasy football leaders in Week 3.
As is always the case in the NFL, there were many surprises during Week 3. Whereas some highly touted and normally high-producing players were kept in check, others recorded phenomenal performances.
Here were the top 10 fantasy football performers for Week 3.
1. Tom Brady (QB, NE) – 44.5 points
Perennial fantasy football stud Brady went 25-for-35 for 378 yards and five—yes FIVE—touchdowns in the Patriots' last-minute 36-33 victory over the Houston Texans. Brady recorded an impressive 146.2 quarterback rating.
2. Russell Wilson (QB, SEA) – 38.25 points
Despite losing 33-27 to the Tennessee Titans, Wilson had a productive outing with 29 completions for 373 yards and four touchdowns, as well as seven rushes for 26 yards.
3. Case Keenum (QB, MIN) – 37.25 points
No longer just a backup, Keenum managed 25 completions on 33 attempts for 369 yards and three touchdowns in the Vikings' 34-17 victory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
4. Kirk Cousins (QB, WAS) – 35.45 points
Cousins was on fire versus the Oakland Raiders who the Redskins routed 27-10. He tossed three touchdowns for 365 yards on 25 completions.
5. Jacoby Brissett (QB, IND) – 32.35 points
Andrew who? Just kidding. Even in Luck's absence, second year QB Brissett was elevated above Scott Tolzien and received the start Sunday versus the Browns, where he went a respectable 17-for-24 for 259 yards and a touchdown, as well as five rushes for 14 yards and two touchdowns. Is there a quarterback controversy brewing in Indianapolis?
6. Stefon Diggs (WR, MIN) – 32.3 points
Top fantasy wide receiver for the week Diggs recorded eight receptions for 173 yards and two touchdowns with Keenum's help.
7. Todd Gurley (RB, LAR) – 31.9 points
Gurly carried the ball a whopping 28 times and amassed a superb 113 yards with two touchdowns, as well as snagging five balls for 36 yards and another score in Thursday's close 41-39 win against the San Francisco 49ers.
8. Brandin Cooks (WR, NE) – 29.1 points
Well, Tom Brady had to throw his five touchdowns to someone, right? Cooks caught two of them on five receptions for an impressive 131 yards.
9. Kareem Hunt (RB, KC) – 27.3 points
This remarkable rookie had his way with the Los Angeles Chargers in the Chiefs' 24-10 win to keep Kansas City—along with Atlanta—the only undefeated teams remaining this season. Hunt carried the ball 17 times for a whopping 172 yards with one touchdown.
10. Marcedes Lewis (TE, JAX) – 24.4 points
This week's top tight end honors go to the Jaguars' Lewis who caught five balls for 62 yards and scored three times in Jacksonville's surprising decimation of the Baltimore Ravens, 44-7 in London.
Honorable Mentions—Kickers and DST
Kickers need some love too. Both Matt Prater (DET) and Stephen Hauschka (BUF) scored a respectable 21 points. Both were 4-for-4 on field goal attempts and 2-for-2 in extra points. Whereas Detroit lost to the Atlanta Falcons 26-3030-26
Let's not overlook top defenses either. The Houston Texans' DST racked up an impressive 25 points in their heartbreaking loss to the Patriots. This squad recorded five sacks, four forced fumbles, one fumble recovery, and one defensive touchdown.
Additionally, the Cincinnati Bengals' DST earned 22 points on one interception, six sacks, and one defensive touchdown in their 27-24 loss to the Green Bay Packers.
Just remember, these numbers aren't necessarily indicative of future performance. If you don't believe me, just take a look at my horrible predictions for Week 3 fantasy football players. Whoever you choose to start, I wish you the best of luck.
Topics: FANTASY SPORTS | FANTASY FOOTBALL
Natalie Faulk - Natalie Faulk is a freelance writer and blogger, and the author of several books.
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Arizona Gamer
Flub Fighter Heads to Phoenix Comicon
May 23, 2015 Alex Ferri Leave a comment
Local multiplayer games hold a special place in the heart of many. Past generations grew up on games like Goldeneye, Mario Party and Super Smash Bros.
But splitscreen and party games have fallen out of favor recently in favor of online multiplayer.
Flub Fighter hopes to recapture the magic of local multiplayer. It’s one of the games that will be featured at the Arizona Video Games Showcase at Phoenix Comicon May 28-30.
Developers Todd Enyeart and Andrew Rabbe have spent eight months working on the game with the rest of their team. They called Flub Fighter a “mash up” of Super Smash Bros. and Gang Beasts.
“We needed some kind of twist,” Enyeart said. “We decided to have it so you can only be injured or killed by the environment.”
That made level design an important and challenging part of the game. Five levels have already been completed, and five more are in the works.
“A lot of it’s about flow,” Rabbe said. “We needed to have something everywhere that you can punch an enemy into.”
That includes a map with a giant disco ball of death that descends midway through the game and shoots lasers in every direction.
Continue reading Flub Fighter Heads to Phoenix Comicon →
arizona gaming newsFlub FighterIndiePhoenix ComiconSteam Greenlight
Sketchcross aims to fill void in PS Vita market
March 2, 2015 Alex Ferri Leave a comment
When Sudoku and crosswords collide, the result is Sketchcross.
The logic puzzle game for the PlayStation Vita from Tempe-based Spiky Fish Games, led by Kendal Cormany. He’s hoping to fill a void in the Vita market for a nonogram-based puzzle game with multiple game modes and a wide array of puzzles.
He said he was encouraged to make the game in part due to the success of a similar title, Picross 3D, for the Nintendo 3DS. That game sold more than 140,000 units in 2010, its first year of release, according to VGChartz.
“There’s a market for this type of game, and there wasn’t a type of game like this for the Vita,” he said.
Sketchcross uses nonogram puzzles, which feature cells in a grid that must be colored or left blank according to numbers at the side of the grid. When complete, it reveals a hidden picture.
The numbers are ordered to correspond with number of unbroken lines of filled-in squares in any given row or column. So a clue of “3 5 2” would mean there are sets of three, five and two filled squares, in that order, with at least one black square between each group.
Continue reading Sketchcross aims to fill void in PS Vita market →
arizona gaming newsGame CoLabIndieSketchcrossSpiky Fish Games
Reflections: Bringing choice to story adventure games
February 18, 2015 Alex Ferri Leave a comment
Update: Reflections has been Greenlit!
In Reflections, story mirrors your decisions.
The real-world adventure game from Broken Window Studios is rocketing to the top of Steam Greenlight, having already cracked the top 100 after going live last week. It’s targeting an April release on PC, with a PS4 and Xbox One version confirmed to be in the works.
Reflections‘ similarity to titles like Gone Home and Dear Esther is clear, which developer Tristan Moore acknowledges.
However, Reflections separates itself by giving you more impact on the story, a dimension past titles have lacked, Moore said.
“It’s almost like a personality quiz,” he said. “Your choices say something about where your priorities are.”
The game puts you in the shoes of a young adult getting ready to leave home and start life as an adult. You have until the end of the day to pack your things, say your goodbyes or simply go exploring. The choices you make on how to spend your time will shape the rest of the game through Reflections‘ unique Storyteller engine.
“We’re focusing on actual interactions with the space rather than a dialogue tree or something like that,” Moore said. “It’s an abstract game because it’s not about traditional gameplay mechanics.”
The game allows you a set time to interact with the environment, meaning you can’t do everything in one playthrough. Much like life, you’ll have to make sacrifices, and those choices will define you.
“It’s not the kind of game that waits for you to finish,” Moore said. “There’s a timetable for each act… and the game moves on whether you’re ready for it to or not.”
Reflections uses color to highlight interactions you make with the environment. A black and white scene will fill with life as the story progresses, with a basketball turning orange after being shot through a hoop or a family photo gaining vibrancy once it’s placed back on the shelf.
Continue reading Reflections: Bringing choice to story adventure games →
arizona gaming newsBroken Window StudiosIndie
In Deathly, you can’t escape mortality
January 19, 2015 Alex Ferri Leave a comment
The main character of Deathly, AbstrAKT Games‘s work-in-progress, thinks he can escape death by living in a remote mountain cottage with his loved one.
Alex Uithoven, who runs AbstrAKT with his brother Kyle, says he’s wrong.
“He’s just so scared of all the things that he can’t control in the world, so he puts himself in a situation where he thinks he can control everything in the world.”
Deathly is a 2D platformer with an emphasis on exploration. Although visually similar to Terraria, Uithoven said it’s inspired by a game from his childhood.
“It’s not Terraria in the sense that you can dig up the ground and build,” he said. “It’s more along the lines of classic Metroid.”
He’s designing the game to focus on exploration because that kind of depth something other platformers struggle with. He thinks too many 2D games follow the prototype of Super Mario Bros., only traveling “from point A to point B.”
Continue reading In Deathly, you can’t escape mortality →
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Phoenix Global Game Jam 2015: Jan. 25
January 6, 2015 Alex Ferri Leave a comment
Teams are already organizing for the world’s biggest collective game jam.
The Phoenix branch of the event is kicking off at 6 p.m. Friday, Jan. 23, at Arizona State University. It’s hosted again by Game CoLab and will last all weekend at ASU’s Digital Culture Studio.
Teams of amateurs and veterans alike will have 48 hours to make a game following a to-be-announced theme. It’s a great opportunity for developers to make friends, work together and learn about making video games.
There were no prizes at last year’s event, but Game CoLab is looking for interested sponsors.
The event will wrap up on Sunday at Endgame Bar with a demo night for game jam entries and other titles from local developers.
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Sandbox MMORPG Dwell hits Steam Greenlight
November 1, 2014 Alex Ferri Leave a comment
Gather resources, craft tools, find shelter and survive the night – that’s the typical experience in most creative sandbox games like Minecraft and Terraria. But the sense of danger on that first night is soon forgotten as strongholds grow more and more impenetrable over time.
Dwell: The Drifting World, from Tempe-based developer Brady Welch, adds a new variable to the sandbox equation to keep things exciting: organized player-versus-player combat. The game hit Steam Greenlight on Oct. 25 and, if approved, should be released in early access by early 2015.
Welch, a student at Arizona State University, calls Dwell a creative sandbox MMORPG. While the game is clearly influenced by Terraria and Minecraft, Welch knew the game would need something new to avoid being just another clone.
The X-factor for Dwell, Welch said, is a PvP system that pits entire villages of players against each other in a fight for supremacy.
After surviving long enough to build shelter, players can invite others to build near them and eventually create a village. Players can then build defenses and use the “claim” system to help protect the village further.
“The level of complexity is pretty high in terms of village creation,” Welch said. “You can create your own walls, allow different permissions for players and you can basically have any style of government you want.”
Continue reading Sandbox MMORPG Dwell hits Steam Greenlight →
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UAT pulls Gamasutra ads over #GamerGate
October 7, 2014 Alex Ferri Leave a comment
The University of Advancing Technology has reportedly joined Intel in pulling its advertising from news site Gamasutra, citing the organization’s “negative journalism” regarding the #GamerGate movement.
Twitter user @Jayd3fox posted the following image Oct. 4 of an email, supposedly from Alan Hromas, UAT’s marketing and communications director.
The email reads, “UAT ceased advertising on Gamasutra as soon as we became aware of their (sic) being an issue with negative journalism,” he wrote. “Having one of the oldest game programs in the nation, we are very sensitive to issues of this nature.”
UAT hasn’t responded to requests for more information or to verify the email’s legitimacy.
Intel pulled advertising from Gamasutra Oct. 1 following complaints from #GamerGate supporters about an editorial the site had published that declared “‘Gamers’ are over.”
Continue reading UAT pulls Gamasutra ads over #GamerGate →
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Daredevil Season 2 Review: Lost in the Dark
I’ve Got A Bad Feeling About ‘The Force Awakens’
Wait, why can’t Zelda be a main character?
IGDA Phoenix
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Leadership of Arts and Science
Centers, Institutes, Intl. Houses
Jun Zhang
Professor of Physics and Mathematics
Ph.D. 1994 (physics), Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.
Areas of Research/Interest
Physics of fluids, which include biomechanics or bio-locomotion (organism swimming and flying), geological fluids (thermal convection, continental drift), solid-on-solid friction, and self-organization phenomena at microscopic scales.
Newbolt J, Zhang J, and Ristroph L. Flow interactions between uncoordinated flapping swimmers give rise to group cohesion, PNAS 116, 2419 (2019)
Zhang J. Footprints of a flapping wing, Journal of Fluid Mechanics 818, 1-4 (2017)
Ristroph L, Liao J, and Zhang J. Lateral Line Layout Correlates with the Differential Hydrodynamic Pressure on Swimming Fish. Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 018102 (2015)
Takagi D, Braunschweig A. Zhang J. and Shelley M. Dispersion of self-propelled rods undergoing fluctuation-driven flips. Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 038301 (2013)
Ristroph L, Moore M, Childress S, Shelley M, and Zhang J. Sculpting of an erodible body by flowing water. PNAS 109, 19606 (2012)
Liu B, Ristroph L, Weathers A, Childress S, and Zhang J. Intrinsic stability of a body hovering in an oscillating airflow. Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 068103 (2012)
Shelley M. and Zhang J. Flapping and bending bodies interacting with fluid flows. Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics 43, 449 (2011)
Liu B, Shelley M, and Zhang J. Focused Force Transmission through an Aqueous Suspension of Granules. Phys. Rev. Lett. 105, 188301 (2010)
Ristroph L, and Zhang J. Anomalous hydrodynamic drafting of interacting flapping flags. Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 194502 (2008)
Liu B, and Zhang J. Self-induced cyclic reorganization of many bodies through thermal convection. Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 244501 (2008)
Zhong J.-Q, and Zhang J. Dynamical states of a mobile heat blanket on a thermally convecting fluid. Phys. Rev. E 75, 055301R (2007)
Jung S, Mareck K, Shelley M, and Zhang J. Dynamics of a deformable body in a fast flowing soap film. Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 134502 (2006)
Shelley M, Vandenberghe N and Zhang J. Heavy flags undergo spontaneous oscillations in flowing water. Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 094302 (2005)
Vandenberghe N, Zhang J, and Childress S. Symmetry breaking leads to forward flapping flight. Journal of Fluid Mechanics 506, 147 (2004)
Alben S, Shelley M, and Zhang J. Drag reduction through self-similar bending of a flexible body. Nature 420, 479 (2002)
Zhang J, Childress S, Libchaber A, and Shelley M. Flexible filaments in a flowing soap film as a model for one-dimensional flags in a two-dimensional wind. Nature 408, 835 (2000)
Zhang J, Libchaber A. Periodic boundary motion in thermal turbulence. Phys. Rev. Lett. 84, 4361 (2000)
Zhang J, Childress S, Libchaber A. Non-Boussinesq effect: Thermal convection with broken symmetry. Phys Fluids 9, 1034 (1997)
Zhang J, Zhang Y.-C., Alstrom P, and Levinsen M. T. Modeling forest fire by a paper-burning experiment: a realization of the interface growth mechanism. Physica A, 189, 383 (1992)
Professor of Physics and Mathematics jun@cims.nyu.edu 726 Broadway, Room 834
Lab Homepage
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Air New Zealand cancels flights, impacting thousands
November 18, 2019 Madison Williams
The airline said the changes are necessary due to ongoing global issues impacting some Rolls-Royce engines on its Boeing 787-9 aircraft, the NZ Herald reports.
Flights within New Zealand will not be affected.
The airline said as many as 14,000 customers would be affected by the scheduling changes, and it would be in contact in coming days to arrange alternative flights.
If flights were booked through a travel agent, the agent would be in touch, it said.
The most significant change announced today is the suspension of its twice-weekly seasonal Christchurch-Perth service, resulting in the cancellation of 62 flights.
The airline will also cancel its second daily Auckland-Perth service from 10 December 2019 until 5 January 2020.
Outside the Perth route, a limited number of international cancellations will also take place from 10 December to 2 January.
Thousands of customers will be affected by changes to Air New Zealand’s flight schedule.Source:Supplied
The airline said would start processing customers’ bookings this week and then contact affected customers directly.
Customers have been urged to go to Air New Zealand’s Travel Alerts section for updates on the issue. The airline will also be using social media to keep customers informed.
Air New Zealand senior manager of customer care and communications Doug Grant said that while the airline never expected to still be facing issues with Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines, it’s focused on minimising impact to customers.
“Going into the holiday season we’re acutely aware how important travel is to our customers, and our schedule changes are designed to keep cancellations to a minimum,” Grant said.
“Unfortunately, around 14,000 customers will be impacted by cancellations and we thank them in advance for their understanding.”
Air New Zealand has been struggling with issues related to the Rolls Royce Trent 1000 engines since December 2017, when it first secured lease aircraft capacity to help maintain its timetable.
WHAT’S THE PROBLEM WITH THE ENGINES?
There are in fact two engine issues.
Two parts of about 380 Rolls-Royce engines on Boeing 787s that have potentially serious problems. The “Package C” variants of Rolls-Royce Trent 1000s are on some planes used by airlines including Air NZ, Norwegian, ANA, British Airways, LATAM and Virgin Atlantic. There’s been concern about corrosion of turbine blades towards the back of the engines since 2016 and a replacement program has been in place.
In December 2017, turbine blades on an Air New Zealand flight to Tokyo failed, forcing an engine shutdown. Another engine abnormality the next day forced the airline to ground planes and send engines to Singapore for repairs.
A Transport Accident Investigation Commission preliminary report out last year found the failures happened before they were predicted by Rolls-Royce modelling, but found actions taken since mean extra recommendations are not needed.
HOW SERIOUS IS THIS?
Potentially, very serious.
That’s why a conservative approach has been taken following the compressor alert.
Twin-engine aircraft are designed and certified to fly safely for hours on just one engine if the other fails.
But with the Rolls-Royce engines under scrutiny, there are concerns that if used at full power, the good engine may also suffer damage and the Federal Aviation Administration has warned there is an increased likelihood of it failing before a diversion can be completed.
This story originally appeared on the NZ Herald and is reproduced here with permission
US singer Amber Liu slammed for racism in huge Twitter pile-on
Cricket 2019: Australia v Pakistan
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Home » Call for essay submissions: "Beyond Invisible Committees, Autonomist Zones and 'The Commune'"
Call for essay submissions: "Beyond Invisible Committees, Autonomist Zones and 'The Commune'"
Call for essay submissions: "Beyond Invisible Committees, Autonomist Zones and “The Commune”: A Few Essays on Individualist Anarchy"
In the era of "rising Communes" and neo-marxism a few of us have decided to put together a compilation zine.
We are searching for essay submissions that critique communization theory, tiqqun, the invisible committee and other forms of "Commune"ism currently trending in anarchist spaces.
Ideally these critiques would come from individualist, nihilist anarchist, egoist perspectives.
French critiques translated to english are also welcomed!
Please submit essays to:
no_tiqqun_no_communes@riseup.net
tiqqun
invisible committee
individualist anarchy
WTF … what "rising communes"?
WTF … what "rising communes"?! The hell are you talking about? Are we talking about in the US? Cause holy shit, are you ever smokin all the crazy pills if you believe that "neo-marxism" is the problem.
This must be that distinction between anarchy as pertains to the real world and stupid little turf battles within the subculture.
https://anarchistnews.org
https://anarchistnews.org/content/state-shutdowns-commune-rises-j20-even...
trollsplainer (not verified)
just because the IGD larpers
just because the IGD larpers use the word, doesn't make it real
you should get out of the
you should get out of the house once in a while. visit your local "autonomous social center".
you should learn the
you should learn the difference between a few nerds and armies of reds about to seize power. Pretty damn different
Well, "armies of reds" don't need to "seize power"...
...when a few Appeliste nerds are running the most affluent social hubs of your milieu. This is called breaking the egg before it's laid.
In a way you're right... there's no huge looming threat of massive commie takeover, because the commies have already taken over at a small scale, and even at social media scale.
"In a way" as in, I'm
"In a way" as in, I'm speaking from the real world, to someone who's preoccupied with completely irrelevant local scene drama.
So … a pre-emptive strike,
So … a pre-emptive strike, huh? What sketchy company you're in, using such logic ...
Also! "Breaking the egg
Also! "Breaking the egg before it's laid" conjures up images of you pushing pregnant chickens down the stairs!
No wait....
don't tell me you're pulling this shit? Critics of Appelistes are with the military/police apparatus? Really!?
No, it can't be. You gotta be just another troll... *walking away, while shaking head in shocked disbelief*
ffs no, not "with the police"
ffs no, not "with the police" … it's just bad logic. The logic of "pre-emption" is a very slippery slope. Throw in anti-communist paranoia in the US context and you're deep, deep in crazy town. Not because you're deliberately acting on behalf of the state, more conveniently aligning with it against the phantom red menace. This would be very unfortunate for the anarchist space, imo.
"anti-communist paranoia"
There's no need for paranoia... Just go do a survey on Reddit and other social media on who, among these so-called anarchists, are okay associating with communism. The discrete presence of Reds in anarchist milieus is overwhelming, but that ain't even a cryptic presence; they'll loftily admit it. The context of widespread chastization of the radical Left by the mainstream U.S. society gives it a kind of rebellious appeal, now only challenged by the whole Alt Right and their "anti-PC" dick-waving.
Where does that also differs from McCarthyism: it's about authoritarian factions. Not much about Left progressives and their values, who rather turn out to be starkly regressive Left these days. Identity politics, closet antisemitism, cultism, blind following of internal authority figures, "movementism"... you name it.
and why are you so adamantly
and why are you so adamantly opposed to people on reddit being "ok with communism"? Why zero in on these particular undercurrents of an objectively marginal set of political tendencies? Is this an age gap thing? I just don't get it. You can't relax unless everybody has an extremely hostile reaction to wealth redistribution narratives? Are you rich or something?
They represent no tangible threat to you, or power or anything except maybe the near-total hegemony of public discourse that capitalism has enjoyed for decades. Individualism in the anarchist space isn't under any credible ideological threat … it's such a strange hill to decide to die on. I mean … that's just my opinion but yeah.
"it's such a strange hill to
"it's such a strange hill to decide to die on."
Compiling a zine is hardly dying on a hill
Single answer to all of your questions...
"They represent no tangible threat to you" Ah yeah... got that sweet ol' leftie externalization logic. As long as it ain't "capitalist robber barons", they're all fiiine. Kinda like... there's no such thing as people being ostracized, shamed, and deprived forever of their friendships or more intimate relations with some people due to the Party's politics. Nah! Just them capitalist fat cats doing that thing. Coz you know the 1% is the source of all evil. And the cops too... just not those Red cops, because they're on our side. Coz revolution n shit.
HERE we go … so if this is
HERE we go … so if this is the same person I've been talking to … if you're making a zine because people were mean? That would put this firmly in the stupid-anarchist-ghetto-turf-battles category, which is fine. I'll leave it up to the readers to decide which parody of our respective positions is more fukin ridiculous.
It's I'm-an-individualist-with-HURT-FEELINGS vs the classic everything-is-class-red-anarchist.
PLACE YOUR BETS, WHICH IS MORE BORING?!
Your local autonomous social center
So this is going to be relevant to like...3 cities in the US? Awesome good use of effort.
I think there is a lot of use in the writings you’re critiquing , especially tiqqun - not that there’s no use in critiquing them. But I suggest a look at Sedgwick on “paranoid vs. reparative reading”
lol 3 cities? Try all of them
lol 3 cities? Try all of them sucka!
I have no problem with Tiqqun. Some stuff is better than others. But I know quite a few cities where IC stuff has been successful in expanding US anarchism. I...don't understand why some of you are so against them? It's GREAT that they are reaching new audiences! Good luck with your project but jesus take it easy!
"I...don't understand why some of you are so against them?"
Maybe you didn't read about what happened in the ZAD? They took part in the repression of green anarchos in there... but their nasty cultist, elitist politics, in France and beyond, have become a real issue over the years. Like most known squats in France got intoxicated by their network, same as the tons of local collectives and scenes in NA.
"All cities in the US have autonomous social centers"
yeah i think it's safe to assume you live in nyc, pdx or the bay
zombietroll (not verified)
Yeah … maybe if we had those
Yeah … maybe if we had those sweet kremlin, soros dollars. Do you think social centres just grow on trees??!?!
I GAVE YEARS OF MY LIFE TO THAT FILTHY BASEMENT SPACE AND THE PUNK KIDS JUST COMPLAINED ABOUT IT
*uglyface crying*
Autonomous social centers in NYC!?
Which? I thought the last one died off back in the early '00s, and it was itself a remnant of the '90s.
Or perhaps you mean "infoshop"... tho this doesn't mean an autonomous social center by default. Nothing, in itself, makes a library being anything more than a library.
mu (not verified)
you're wrong. there are a
you're wrong. there are a number of autonomous social centers in nyc. the rest of your points are pointless.
ThereIsAlwaysPizza (not verified)
Rssing Communes
Link doesn't explain term as far as I can see.
Indiviidualist ... (not verified)
Do you accept original
Do you accept original artwork? Will there be profit sharing with contributors? A flat honorarium? How many contributor copies will contributors receive? Is this an online-only zine or will it be printed? What other zines have you made and what is your distribution reach?
no_tiqqun_no_co... (not verified)
Hmmm well, the zine will be
Hmmm well, the zine will be free online and free to download and distribute freely. This is an anti-capitalist project so there will be no profits to be made or shared. We have made only a few zines but are capable of printing and shipping 25-50 copies to those who contribute. Hope that helps!
I thought it was 'autonomous'
I thought it was 'autonomous' zones, not autonoMIST zones
Whoops! Good point!
Whoops! Good point! Appreciate it!
relevant to your interests:
relevant to your interests: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/conspiracy-of-cells-of-fire-comm...
Thanks rfa! This is, indeed,
Thanks rfa! This is, indeed, an excellent critique! We already have a few submissions that are wonderful. We are just looking for a couple more.
no problem! good luck with
no problem! good luck with the project. insist on anarchy’s blackness!
Wow - thanks! Finally
Wow - thanks! Finally somebody that gets it! Feel free to shoot that email a message. Would love to connect online and irl projects if it goes that far!
to the customers
if you haven't seen this already,
To the Customers, Insurrection and Doublethink, 2016
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-to-the-customers
a part of the object of
a part of the object of critique of this compilation could include the “Cinema Committee” and its proposal to build communes summarized with the three step program/slogan of: 1. find each other 2. establish hubs 3. become resilient. in congruence with the Invisible Committee’s dictum of “spread anarchy, live communism”.
an initial critique of this proposal could be suggested by an alternative inverted proposal one could imagine a less red and more black @ putting forth: 1. become resilient (skill building, self-reliance) 2. find each other (interacting with others/reaching out as you may) 3. do whatever you want (instead of an imposed program or goal). this coukd be rephrased with fancier words as 1. action 2. rendezvous 3. emergent strategy.
this can be critiqued as well, but one can see the difference between both approaches, not necessarily incompatible or diametrically opposed, but there’s plent room for conflict and disagreement
Regarding this Central
Regarding this Central Burning Issue of Our Time: my money is on the ones with the nifty Mister Spock ears and the Starfleet uniform costumes -- they have phasers. Of course, I am somewhat biased here, since I have always wanted to have sex with Lieutenant Uhura.
i am the prettier color power
i am the prettier color power ranger
Le Way (not verified)
A critique has to delve
A critique has to delve deeply into the psychology of the herding instinct within human nature and conclude that total freedom must begin firstly the arduous individuating process of overcoming the fear of solitary existence. It also must be scathing of the lazy submissive luxury of collective gatherings, of their ego-bonding and smug democracies, and their discreetly disguised hierarchies.
An honest description would mention the success of the primitive communized nomadic indigenous clan system structured around biologically related extended family lines, which allow for the fruition of individual agnostic consciousness.
Le Way
Want to contribute to this zine compilation? That is a neat perspective ya got there.
Yes I am a giver of things ;)
i retract any/all perceived
i retract any/all perceived encouragement!
. (not verified)
Encouragement = naive fawning
Encouragement = naive fawning adoration ;)
go home Zombie, you're drunk!
go home Zombie, you're drunk! the vanguard needs you!
That's not me rfa! Swear on
That's not me rfa! Swear on me mum! My trolling is more meta
fine! i retract my perceived
fine! i retract my perceived accusation! until next time!
Retraction = flacid response
Retraction = flacid response !
it was only a perceived
it was only a perceived retraction of a perceived response to a meaningless quip! your predictability and insinuation of response-flaccidity is just meaningless as your life is meaningless, as you yourself are meaningless. welcome to your freedom.
interesting people should come chat at: https://anarchistnews.org/irc
I am poor = I am flacid = I
I am poor = I am flacid = I am incapable of revolutionary zeal = I have no internet credit left ;)
no_LeWank_no_Fa... (not verified)
Srsly, if you're honest in
Srsly, if you're honest in including this troll to your publication, then this project is D.O.A. Was about to propose my insight, but just count me out.
Do not confuse "open-mindedness" with idiocy.
Death of the author I say! To
Death of the author I say! To let an alleged reputation cause you to withdraw or retract your own contribution only goes to show the feeble and shallow depth of your critical imagination. As you wish, submissions will not be lacking or impotent.
What? Rfa you should def
What? Rfa you should def contribute to this piece!
Let him calm down, he's prone
Let him calm down, he's prone to sink into a sulky self-righteous animosity.
it's true. when i write mean
it's true. when i write mean things people get sad and frustrated and e-puff their e-chests and flee. like 21:54.
perhaps when i find my calm center, like so many delicious tootsie pops, i'll reconsider.
21:54 returning now after
21:54 returning now after relaxing sex, its somewhere in there. Good luck!
Ok GOOD! You got the email.
Ok GOOD! You got the email. You seem cool. Enjoy those tootsie pops :D
SirEinzige
Oh Let Le Way in
He's basically a USian Jun Tsuji type Stirnerian dilettante and I regard Tsuji as perhaps the greatest anarchy affectual person of the 20th century.
Thanks but I'm indifferent to
Thanks but I'm indifferent to any external or internal judgments, there is only NOW.
Also, I have contemplated a
Also, I have contemplated a parallel arrangement akin to an agnostic Amish clan with a kinship economy similar to the indigenous one. Some ideas to ponder upon no_tiqqin_no_co. There seem to be very few imaginative proposals emerging from the comments here other than slanderous negative verbal projectiles.
The closest thing to an
The closest thing to an anarchist proposal above is just explicitly a remix of the appeliste proposal. Isn't that disturbing? Can't you all come up with a positive, anarchist path forward that isn't just fear of an "invisible other?" Seems like it's not a small appeliste network (which mostly have momentum because they have ideas and proposals) that's holding us back, but our own lack of ideas.
It is their authoritarian
It is their authoritarian model and drive for control and domination that put them in our cross hairs. Our ideas are the same: destroy those who attempt to subjugate individualism with their collectivist project.
You sound like you are blatantly defending them, making them out to be some innocent low-grade problem. The fact that they exist, have already done shit like they have in ZAD, and are getting comfortable in (non-confrontational) anarchist spaces, is a problem on its own.
different commenter, I also
different commenter, I also think you're tilting at windmills a bit and that doesn't mean we're defending those power plays that happened in the ZAD.
It'd be interesting to read
It'd be interesting to read these critiques, not least because all the IC shit is vague ramblings in subculturally inspiring language that in the end doesn't give any real form.
Ultimately I'm wondering if you'd be critiquing a small group of people who identify with this thread and their actions at the ZAD that ur very hung up about, or if you'd be critiquing a theory that has gained popularity worldwide and certainly does not represent a homogeneous or thorough dogma, as far as I can see.
We definitely need more self
We definitely need more self-important booger-picking competitions among people who groove on crank "theories." A pompous prose style drives home the world-shaking substance of this Mighty Morphin Power Rangers stuff mighty nicely, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MalLny7MT6E
relevance of IC
A lot of commenters seem to be upset about this project because appelistes do seem power hungry but are basically irrelevant, which is a fair point. I'm not in a big city and haven't seen much sign of the party, to be honest. I think it's worthwhile, though, because it does seem that the slow collapse of the post-war global order is under way, and times may shortly become very interesting. It's hard to say what may seem prescient 10 years from now.
I hope it's irrelevant, but your basic (and I do mean basic) anarchist bro is so immersed in anti-capitalism and antifa that they use the word "comrade" unironically and will defend Maoists as "fighting the good fight." Things are bleak out there.
I can see where you'd get
I can see where you'd get this impression but as I've been saying, are we worried about a handful of maoists and reds because they're encroaching on the anarchist ghetto with their marxist language or because they represent some sort of actual threat? In other words, is this cool kid bullshit on the playground or should it actually interest me?
If you're right about the next 10 years and I suspect you are, then that'll mean being in the streets next to maoists, among others if you're in the streets at all. Look at france, basically the entire left-right spectrum is in the streets, sometimes coexisting in a hostile manner, sometimes openly attacking each other, whatever.
If you're not completely isolating yourself in an echo chamber then you'll be sharing space with all sorts of folks and only cybernetic delusion would conclude otherwise. So i'm standing there and I'll be expecting physical harm from the cops and maybe the far right, not the maoist nerds. The rest is just noise to me.
atropy (not verified)
It's definitely important to
It's definitely important to avoid the echo chamber effect. I don't want to draw ideological lines or anything. And yes Maoists will exist; not much you can do about that. They're not a physical threat, but they are good at finding confused young people and promising them black and white answers to all their problems, as well as exploiting interpersonal tensions within groups. That's been my experience anyway, which is why it's disheartening that something as obvious as a bunch of beret wearing acronym enthusiasts have any kind of appeal to kids in the milieu.
So you're dismayed to watch
So you're dismayed to watch capitalism's deterioration lead to the old pied pipers taking up the flute again? Me too I suppose but if we're talking about demagogues, I would argue there's far worse examples currently active, recruiting and kicking the overton window around at will. Authoritarian anti capitalist narratives have to swim upstream against a very strong current, they aren't making significant gains anywhere in the western world right now imo.
Antifascists have had to listen to a LOT of critique about overestimating threats in the last few years, I'm still confused as to why doesn't that apply to this in equal measure.
*skeleton waiting meme*
Here's another example of a
Here's another example of a post where it's really fukin obvious that this is an ego thing for you. Apparently, everyone is personally attacking you and should kill themselves.
Hmm. Anews censored/deleted
Hmm. Anews censored/deleted our response to j. I didn't realize there was a non-violent policy here. Oh well.
Anyway, you all have been great. We have plenty of submissions now!
Thank you for your time etc.
Stay tuned for when this zine is finished and will be posted here on Anews for free download!
Why would anyone need to be
Why would anyone need to be an individualist anarchist? In the not-so-good-old You Ess Aye, we{ve got all the alu
Why be an individualist
To reject reified collectivity of course. This has been an issue for anarchy and anarchism since Bakunin.
What's more important then critiquing these tendencies
Is to come up with new distinct ideas of your own, hell you can even crudely borrow from some of these discourses without being structured by them. I for instance have been influenced sub-structurally by Friere Dupont's ideas. What matters is for anarchy to develop its own theoretical density that is an answer to the Marxist, Communist, Materialist stuff. For me obviously it's Stirner, egoism and a psychological conception of reality not a materialist one.
You already have the founding 4 of post left-anarchism(Black, Landstreicher, Bey and McQuinn) who have not been given proper successors. In my own way I'm trying to build on these ideas with my ideas of anarch-egoist-anarchy. I haven't much read this French stuff so I can't give much if anything to this project.
What you might want to consider is the discursive biome that makes up spaces related to anarchy. It might be time, for instance, to ditch the current diminishing return milieu and look into returning to philosophical, poetic, aesthetic, literary spaces as was the case just before and after WW2. Staying in THIS milieu would be tantamount to staying in old rotting syndicalist milieus in the 1930s. The milieu is a tertiary development of 1968 radical dialect and that dialect has run its course just like 1886 radical dialect ran its course heading into WW2.
Wayne (not verified)
By all means, individualist anarchists should publish more material to clarify their viewpoint. This is useful for all anarchists. Just one thing. Please be care when referring to "communists" to distinguish between anarcho-communists (from Kropotkin onwards) and Marxist-Leninists (advocates of totalitarian state capitalism). Of course, individualists shouldt express their theoretical opposition to communist (or socialist) anarchism, but they should not mush this up with all anarchists opposition to Stalinism and all forms of capitalism. (This is a different issue from whether or how to work with M-Ls in popular movements.)
No Way As Way (not verified)
No such thing as 'state
No such thing as 'state capitalism' by definition. It's a contradiction in terms.
"No such thing as 'state
"No such thing as 'state capitalism' by definition. It's a contradiction in terms."
wow, one might think that there might also be no such thing as 'arrogant ignorance' but alas, it's not an oxymoron, especially among anti-intellectual anarchoids...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_capitalism
(for those of you with incredibly short attention spans and a fear and loathing of actually doing research, here's the tl;dr excerpts:
It has been suggested that the concept of state capitalism can be traced back to Mikhail Bakunin's critique during the First International of the potential for state exploitation under Marxist-inspired socialism...
Perhaps the earliest critique of the Soviet Union as state capitalist was formulated by the Russian anarchists as documented in Paul Avrich's work on Russian anarchism.[29]
This claim would become standard in anarchist works. For example, the prominent anarchist Emma Goldman in an article from 1935 titled "There Is No Communism in Russia" said of the Soviet Union:
Such a condition of affairs may be called state capitalism, but it would be fantastic to consider it in any sense Communistic [...] Soviet Russia, it must now be obvious, is an absolute despotism politically and the crassest form of state capitalism economically.[30])
I know you already know this
I know you already know this boles but it's pretty likely that you're trying to talk sense to halfwit quasi alt right trolls and their shrivelled little brains recoil at anything with more nuance than socialism = EVIL and capitalism = not socialism, therefore all that is true and good in this world.
Neither you nor Boles Job can
Neither you nor Boles Job can comprehend the nuances within the Left-Right binary social order. The economic model of capitalism began with the industrial revolution and can function in a variety of ideological societies and under the management and ownership of States, collectives, syndicates or by private individuals.
Capitalism actually began
Capitalism actually began before the industrial revolution, during and following the protestant reformation. It began to flourish in the Medici mercantile dynasty of Italy and spread to the rest of Europe and England. There are also nascent elements of capitalism within hunter gatherer cultures along the west coast of California who used forms of money/currency (i.e. mostly shells) and traded extensively for goods.
What many anarchists (at least on here) don't seem to understand is that capitalism is essentially defined by the private individual or private group ownership and control over the means of production. When this is allowed and fostered by the state, it's called capitalism. When the state itself owns and controls the means of production, it's called socialism or communism.
To describe something as 'state capitalism' is thus an oxymoron. There was no individual private ownership of the means of production in the Soviet Union (except for a few private retail stores, barber shops, etc). There was no stock market, no way to invest in industry (except for a few foreign investment schemes), and no way for individuals or groups to 'own' a workplace. nearly everything was owned and controlled by the government. In other words, there was no capitalism as we know it in the Soviet Union.
It doesn't matter whether Bakunin said otherwise or not. We don't need Bakunin's authority on this, we just need to look at the actual meanings of the words.
I am getting sick and tired of always having to correct people on this.
That's nice and concise. How
That's nice and concise. How would you describe China?
Preceding these pedantic
Preceding these pedantic explorations into currency types, you neglected the Sumerian culture. But even precding these ancient Semitic and Egyptian hordes there existed ancient proto-capitalist societies along the Nile river who traded in slaves, gold and ivory!
https://www.africaresource
https://www.africaresource.com/rasta/sesostris-the-great-the-egyptian-he...
The interesting thing about
The interesting thing about the early Nilotic civilizations, including the Ancient Egyptians, was that the proto-capitalism practiced by the elite priesthood, these methods of keeping records and ledgers, of using the abacus to determine percentages, these systems of commerce were adapted by the ancient Judean tribes and evolved into a clanned community of business units specializing in a trade or product. Families developed into wealthy dynasties and formed the first Jewish proto-capitalist tribal system. This is what irked Jesus, the uneven distribution of wealth and the division of labour within the Judaen culture.
state capitalism, not state socialism
No Way uses common "American" definitions of "capitalism" and "socialism." He or she does not take into account that in the Soviet Union and similar societies a small minority of collectivist bureaucrats "owned" (that is, controlled and used for their own benefit) the industry and wealth of the nation "privately" (that is, separately from the rest of the population). They produced commodities which they sold on the internal and international markets. They exchanged goods among enterprises, using banks as intermediaries. Using a labor market, they hired and fired workers (as opposed to using slaves or serfs). The workers produced the commodities which they bought with money on the domestic market. The whole system was in competition with the rest of the capitalist world (USSR Inc.). The overall drive was to accumulate, grow, and expand, as it is under traditional capitalism. A surplus was squeezed out of the workers and peasants. But this surplus was distributed among the bureaucrats in a fashion different from the way it is done among the traditional bourgeoisie. Otherwise the relationship between the workers and their exploiters was essentially the same. You can call this anything you want, but I find it most useful to use the label "state capitalism."
Meanwhile No Way explicitly rejects the history of anarchism which from its founding as a movement by Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, etc., has regarded itself as a variety (the most left-wing variety) of socialism (or communism). By this they meant the rejection of capitalism and its replacement by a cooperative society with production for use and self-managed industry and communities. Why don't you just say that you reject anarchism and advocate something else entirely?
The British East India
The British East India Company is an example of privately owned capitalist industry sanctioned by government licence.
Yes in the Soviet Union, the
Yes in the Soviet Union, the state (i.e. government bureaucrats) controlled the means of production. They did not produce for the benefit of themselves. Anyone in the Soviet Union could buy these products. Most people had food, clothing, shelter, transportation, education, health care, etc. These were not privately owned and controlled. These were owned and controlled by the state. For many things one had to actually apply to the government (Communist Party) to acquire them. Of course there were still people who were wealthier than others and could afford more.
Wayne seems to be trying to conflate the state with privately owned enterprises. They are quite distinct conceptually and practically. The mere existence of money, commodities, trade, etc does not make a society 'capitalist', for many non capitalist, and even nonindustrial societies have these elements. Extracting surplus also existed in feudal times before full blown Western industrial capitalism.
Whether Wayne likes it or not, capitalism has a precise meaning: the privately owned and controlled means of production. As distinct from a state owned and controlled means of production. The products may be the same, the relations of production may be the same, etc. but who actually owns and controls what makes a difference, both semantically, and practically.
This is why a term like 'state capitalism' make no sense, and only confuses matters. It conjoins two different and opposing owners and controllers of the means of production. Capitalists want to own and control production, they don't want the state to. As soon as the state owns and controls production, it is out of the hands of capitalists. There can be no 'state capitalism' by definition. It's absurd.
I used the terms socialist and communist loosely. I understand these are concepts in opposition to capitalism. But since the Soviet Union was not capitalist (state or otherwise) I used the common vernacular, and after all, the soviets did insist on calling THEMSELVES socialists and communists.. Modern anarchism comes out of early forms of socialism. Marx was the one who used the term communism. Perhaps it is best to call the USSR simply totalitarian and leave it at that.
OK, here's all you need for capitalism
A controlling financial investment class with marginal re-callable powers related to state and other forms of corporeal control and a controllable working class. That's it. In that regard the USSR checks out as capitalist. Capital as such is surplus extraction from labour, capitalism is an extension of that driven by state monopoly power. Capital plus profit motive, state monopoly power and controlled access to the means of production along with finance are what complete capitalism. The difference between the USSR and the US is simply that there is more financing done and operated by the state, that's it.
It's financial logic stupid. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finance
LMAO! You just made up your
LMAO! You just made up your own definition of capitalism. It's not merely extraction of surplus value from labor. If it were, then feudalism would also qualify as capitalism. In fact, every society would be capitalist, including hunter gatherer bands who had hunting parties that shared the meat with non-hunters --- (i.e. who extracted value from the hunter/workers).
"The difference between the USSR and the US is simply that there is more financing done and operated by the state, that's it."
Good grief, what an ignorant comment.
That's not what I said NWAW
What I did say in terms of a solvent definition of capitalism is that you need the interplay of a controlling FINANCIAL INVESTMENT CLASS combined with a mobile controlled labour force. Surplus value from labour is obviously not sufficient as that can be anything from feudalism to libertarian socialism. Capitalism on the other hand is best characterized by financial money management and a profit motive.
As I said, it's finance capital stupid.
okay, No Way, i'll bite. at
okay, No Way, i'll bite. at least for a little while. only someone with an ideological disposition geared toward wanting capitalism to be inherent to human nature could say what you said about "hunter gatherer [sic] cultures along the west coast of California" exhibiting "nascent elements of capitalism." your highlighting of shell currency and trade as any sort of element of capitalism is a fucking stretch, mate. one of the defining aspects of capitalism is the monopoly on a recognized and exclusive currency, which is enforced though legal mechanisms. capitalist currency is both substantial (gold, for example) and abstract (banknotes or checks or bonds, for example), but both types are recognized as having specific value, and therefore enforceable. archaeological finds of items thousands of miles from their places of origin is a long-established fact, indicating extensive and established trade routes from at least the time of the Neolithic; all that proves is that humans from different areas and cultural groups have interacted with each other for thousands of years -- and all without developing anything that resembles capitalism, because capitalism is about property and ownership, and gatherer-hunters and pastoralists have very different ideas about ownership than capitalists. it's ludicrous to describe a culture that never developed into capitalism as having "nascent elements" of something that never emerged. the presumption of using the word "nascent" is that eventually these "elements," as an integral aspect of the culture, would have created actual elements of capitalism. absurd. unlike the enforceable and monopolized forms of currency known under capitalism, the accumulation of shells doesn't confer wealth.
but to get back to more basic aspects of capitalism. what must exist in order for an economic and social and political system to be called capitalist? the concept of property/ownership must be present. so too, must the concept of value inherent in concrete objects, in time/labor, and in the medium of enforceable exchange (aka currency). perhaps one of the most important aspects of capitalism is the process of generating profit from the exchange of goods and the providing of services. this is much more than "trade" although certain forms of trade are certainly a characteristic of capitalism, especially those that are based on the purchase of goods and services by using the local currency. but it's another stretch to refer to barter, for example, as capitalist, since even if there's a clear division of ownership as well as a way to recognize the time/labor that went into creating particular goods and services, there's no way to generate a consistent profit though it (although there might be temporary and ad hoc profit), and barter takes place outside the realm of currency. barter could be called casual or informal capitalism if you insist on characterizing it as capitalist, but again, it makes little sense to me to describe it that way without the well-known capitalist profit motive, to say nothing of an actual profit. the last aspect that defines capitalism is wage labor, the payment of enforceable currency for the time/labor of those involved in the production of manufactured goods and those who provide services to those who own the means of production. in short: the legal status of ownership; the ideology of value; an enforceable means of exchange (currency); wage labor. for you and other vulgar capitalists, the issue is who owns the means of production, while for those of us in the actual anti-capitalist camp, that's irrelevant. to use just one perhaps not well-enough known example, when the CNT-FAI implemented worker control/management over much of the industry of Catalonia and agriculture in Aragon from the summer of 1936 until the Stalinist counter-revolutionary offensive in the spring of 1937, many anarchists critiqued those experiments as "self-managed capitalism" since workers were still being paid wages in currency with the aim of generating profits (sure, to reinvest in the means of production rather than for personal wealth, but still).
anyway, if you put the state in control of the means of production, you can call it socialism or communism using a pro-capitalist dictionary all day every day until the cows come home, and you'd still find anarchists, socialists, and communists who will dispute that definition. because those of us who have a more nuanced, sophisticated, and historical understanding of how capitalism developed, how it became institutionalized, and what its actual characteristics are all share a common analytical framework. when the state is responsible for the manufacture and distribution of goods and services, for the payment of wages to workers, and for the reinvestment of profits, that's a system we will definitely call state capitalism. as opposed to private or corporate capitalism, but it's still capitalism because that's how radical anti-capitalists define capitalism.
my invocation of Bakunin and Goldman wasn't meant to rest my opinions on their authority, but to show you that the use of "state capitalism," far from being understood as a contradiction, has a long pedigree among anarchists. i agree that we need to look at the actual meanings -- and perhaps, more importantly, on the usage -- of the words, but just as we shouldn't rely on Bakunin, we also shouldn't rely on capitalists to define their own system for us. i'm not quite sick and tired of always having to explain what capitalism really is and what characteristics of it are salient for anti-capitalists. but i am sick and tired of people who invoke a single self-congratulatory Cold War pro-capitalist dictionary definition they learned in high school.
I don't "want" capitalism to
I don't "want" capitalism to be inherent in human nature. The definition of capitalism doesn't imply in any way or presuppose any ideas about human nature.
There are several different elements that capitalism are based on, two of which are trade and money. But these elements alone do not define capitalism. Many noncapitalist societies have had these. My example was some of the coastal California complex hunter gatherers who had a primitive form of money. I would also include the Pacific Northwest where many salmon streams along the coast were 'owned' by certain families and clans, who in turn 'owned' the fish they harvested and traded with. However, other people could fish these streams, they just had to ask permission. I am not saying these were capitalist societies, only that they had certain nascent forms or elements of capitalism. It's certainly not a 'stretch' to describe the facts this way. But boles seems triggered by this.
I really don't give a shit how radical anti-capitalist anarchists living in their own tiny micro-ghettos define capitalism, I am simply going by the actual dictionary definition and the way that 'capitalism' is used by 99% of the English speaking world.
MY MOM IS A CAPITALIST
MY MOM IS A CAPITALIST MONSTER WHO INVESTED IN ME AS A PROFITABLE INVESTMENT AND DOMESTIC SLAVE!
I GIVE A SHIT ABOUT MY MICRO-DEFINITION OF THE MOST GREEDY MATERNAL AUTHORITARIAN SLAVE MASTER IN MY MINISCULE UNIVERSE OF DOMESTIC SLAVE LABOUR!
My dad is an individualist
My dad is an individualist capitalist who works me in his garden growing vegetables and flowers which he sells in the local market. He keeps 100% of the proceeds. I am a slave who receives 1 meal a day and sleeps in the barn. I work 16hrs/day 7 days a week.
He is a solitary private owner of the means of production and is inherently capitalistic in nature. He read Dawkin's The Selfish Gene and says capitalism is in the selfish gene!
reading comprehension: fail
imposition of european values on non-europeans: fail
turning opinion into fact: fail
appeal to authority of pro-capitalist dictionary: fail
appeal to majority: fail
Funny how none of those
Funny how none of those things on your bogus list applies to anything I've written.
I'm appealing to the actual meaning of the words....Whereas you are appealing to your own personal idiosyncratic fantasy world hatched inside your own mind.
Different commenter, you seem
Different commenter, you seem pretty hostile and your style of debate makes me think you're maybe just here to congratulate yourself for semantics but you understand that such politically loaded terms are going to involve a lot of misrepresentation, right?
Like, you're unlikely to apply precise definitions to real world economic systems. Huge propaganda machines are basically shifting the definitions around constantly as a way to attack each other and warp everybody's perceptions.
Not hostile, just tired of
Not hostile, just tired of having to constantly correct this ridiculous oxymoronic meme about 'state capitalism'. Semantics is the linguistic term for the meaning of words. Obviously there are various degrees of government control and/or ownership in almost every modern state, so technically, every country could be called a state capitalist society. But if we're going to go down that road, we're going to end up without any conceptual economic distinction between the Soviet Union and the US, for example. "It's all just capitalism", the only difference is the degree of state control. Chomsky has described the US itself as 'state capitalism' based on all the subsidies, bailouts, and other public support for large corporations.
So the misrepresentation of a politically loaded term like capitalism is only coming from the established dictionary definition of capitalism that has been in use by sociologists, economists, historians, and anthropologists, for over 100 years, and not coming from some anonymous anarchist trolls on the internet quoting Bakunin or Engels? Fascinating.
Yes … and my point had a lot
Yes … and my point had a lot to do with how much of your spiele is paper thin pedantry … like when you felt the need to explain what semantics is to me, just now ;)
Hey 14:51, you are completwly
Hey 14:51, you are completwly correct, and no way has bigger Mr Spock ears than you, though you don't care about the size of ears, only about the grey matter between ;)
Well 14:51, obviously you
Well 14:51, obviously you didn't know what the word semantics meant or you wouldn't have made such an idiotic comment that I'm just here to "congratulate myself on semantics". If we're not talking about what the word 'capitalism' means then what the fuck are we arguing about? Of course it's about semantics, what else is it about?
Like I said, you seem hostile
Like I said, you seem hostile and uninterested in anything besides hairsplitting over semantics, which is boring to me. You're boring.
So if I don't agree that
So if I don't agree that there is such a thing as 'state capitalism' I'm "splitting hairs"? lol..
The meaning of words is boring, I want to make up my own meanings!
I am sorry you feel I'm being "hostile". Perhaps you are sensitive to microaggressions and need a safe space?
Wheels (not verified)
No, the issue is how
No, the issue is how incredibly dull you and your little semantic crusade are, remember?
Do try and keep up, you make a rather poor know-it-all when you lose track of the discussion so easily. ;)
When you don't have an
When you don't have an argument, just call someone dull and boring. Classic.
Ah but here's the thing,
Ah but here's the thing, other posters have politely offered you quite compelling, cogent arguments and you just rejected those too. But I read you like a book so all you'll get from me is what you deserve.
Maybe the problem is you.
Appealing to the herd. What
Appealing to the herd. What "quite compelling cogent arguments" would those be?
I didn't ignore anything. I answered other people's objections. Go back and read through my comments. Or quit lying....your choice.
What am I "lying" about?
I was responding to 'anon'.
I was responding to 'anon'. Who the fuck are you?
No way says Le Way. There are
No way says Le Way. There are a plethora of social dynamics and needs which form themselves into systems of production, divisions of labour, surplus profit and bonus exchanges and pseudo-currency value objects which have capitalist tendencies. Even the humble ant empire or bee colony have monarchist / capitalist hierarchies controlled by desires triggered by olferenomes.
Capitalism isn't an ideologically guided system but rather, a physiologically libidinal process of living and surviving with the least amount of intelligence. One is not smart if one becomes a capitalist billionaire, but rather, a greedy selfish fool. The story of Thales and the olive presses comes to mind.
Just to keep the pedantic
Just to keep the pedantic baiters from jumping on a minor misspelling of pheromones, I mistakenly juxtaposed " ol " from olfactory (to do with smell senses) onto pheronomes which I spent with an "f" . Anyway, pheronomes, which has some relationship to fart-bongs, but I'm not exactly sure what that is!
papalagui (not verified)
"elements of capitalism
"elements of capitalism within hunter gatherer cultures" that is a ridiculous assumption and you are contradicting yourself.
How is it "ridiculous"?? I
How is it "ridiculous"?? I pointed to examples and explained how they were capitalist-like elements. And where is the "contradiction"?
sure, i know it's pro-Ayn
sure, i know it's pro-Ayn Rand and pro-capitalist trolls who say the darnedest things... it's clear that halfwits and dimwits overpopulate the innerwebz, but ever since the days when Engels destroyed the dunderhead Dühring, it's been almost required for anti-capitalists to make our own points sharper by pointing out the various idiocies of our intellectual inferiors
Ah, I see! Then by all means,
Ah, I see! Then by all means, grind that axe to your hearts content!
No_tiqqun_no_co., you've
No_tiqqun_no_co., you've probably noticed that the thread has drifted away from interesting individualist and nihilist submissions and been hijacked by boring hacks reciting doctrine from tomes of ideological manuscripts. The same old ideologues like Wayne the whining wobbly and Boles the belligerent binarist.
If you are going to include them in your zine be sure to purchase extra ink for printing out the walls of verbose text!
This is the usual battle
This is the usual battle royal over who has the coolest Mister Spock ears at the sci-fi fan convention.
Not sure if the crowd or
Not sure if the crowd or collective behind that project aren't related to this other, smaller faction that's been parasiting U.S. anarchism for a while... even since Keith Preston and the likes. There's a new trend of Alt Right fools who pose as -even believe themselves to be- anarchists. This trend has got big ever since the MAGA movement. In a way, the autonomous, non-State character of today's neonazi and other Far Right groups makes them compliant with some anarchist ontology, and becomes even more conductive if you add this whole anti-Left fixation (as if the Left was the biggest problem in the U.S.).
I bet some of these "anarcho-fascists" were allowed to hang around Thecollective and LBC, which is perhaps why this crowd go so much hate coming from the PNW and beyond, for how the predominant discourse is not as much anti-Alt-Right as it is post-Left... After all Preston and National-Anarchism has been allowed for a lot of tribune on the Brilliant, even if that failed. And there's also the myriads of commenters and chatters who've been allowed to openly discuss topics such as the Holocaust in some highly problematic manner.
But that said, I am not denying how increasingly parasitic and invasive this other Appeliste crowd has been over the last 10 years; only that the authors of this project seek to be throwing a funnel-shaped oversimplification of the rather diffuse and multi-dimensional clusterfuck within the anarchosphere, with authoritarian political recuperation coming from both Left and Right.
"Not sure if the crowd or
"Not sure if the crowd or collective behind that project aren't related to this other" but i'm gonna bad-jacket them anyway!
way to be an enormous, moralist piece of shit, buddy.
mu i agree with your point
but encourage you to find other ways to flesh out or make your point besides just calling someone/thing moralist. it's a meaningless term at this piont, since it's getting used for and by every rando driveby.
(some options are... dualist, binary, simplistic, ignorant, purist, or, you know, sentences!)
Indeed, words are cheap
Up against the accumulating evidence of the neofascist creep having found its den on this site, its IRC and perhaps even more in real life. Most recent event I witnessed, and I quote:
"The reason the jewish genocide is awful is not because of bad things being done. That happens all the time. It is because we aren't sharing in the monstrosity of horror, thus leaving massive victims of an enemy that disappeared, the Nazis. Thus the reason we are always hunting for them. The horror was not shared enough, I suppose.
I'm using "victim" in the contemptible way, not in the way leftists like"
- Wombat, in an @anarchyplanet convo
Interesting. So what shame we didn't have the Third Reich to come to North America so this guy would have had the privilege of taking part in the ethic cleansing for the Master Race to be restored... so that'd we'd KNOW how it is to genocide people and we'd stop being moral hypocrites chasing the defeated "Nazis" forever. Poor Nazis, right... will we ever leave them alone, just like these MAGA kids?
Coming from people who confuse "spooks" for "the spectre of Nazism". I might have known!
"ethnic cleansing". No this
"ethnic cleansing". No this wasn't a freudian slip.
The term "ethnic cleansing "
The term "ethnic cleansing " is passe because it was never really about race but about political economy. Hitler didn't reign down on Judaism because of race, that was just a convenient excuse in an era where racial superiority was accepted by most of the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic gene possessing people. European Jews were the most pure genetic strain of people worshipping Judaism, but there were just as many Germans with the Europ3an Jew strain of genetic lineage who were Nazis. It was a gigantic conspiracy by the white leaders of capitalist industry in America, Britain and other allied nations to take control of the world finances and the Jews were the first on the block because they held the lnext largest capital holdings after the US, British, and Russians. Japan also threatened their dominance so they picked a fight with Japan.
It wasn't genocide, it was economicide!!
OOOMG!! It was only a matter
OOOMG!! It was only a matter of time before the Godwin's Law came into play, so damn predictable blogging event!
more like Godwin non-event
Godwin is the best logic fallacy for neonazis to use in defending their home on the internet, as per "you call us Nazis after x numbers of comments? GODWIN LAW! Uh-huh-huh!". Very dumb way to attempt shutting off what appears to be the valid exposure of trolls that are indeed Alt Right or neonazis.
If people have 1 neuron of
If people have 1 neuron of common sense they will not reply to this ridiculous Godwin event!!
14:39 just validated 12:26's claim
Denial of ethnic cleansing by claiming that it was just the Third Reich overthrowing the political economic oppression of the evil Anglo-Saxon imperialists, who, like EVERYONE KNOWS BY NOW, are the ones who invaded the entire Europe and wanted to subjugate the planet to an ethnostate, Dah-UH! Killing 6 millions of Jews was to protect against a much bigger genocide, right?
Srsly, Womb-bat, stop pretending being legit or relevant in any sort of way. Fuck off and die, shitbag.
That wasn't Wombat who made
That wasn't Wombat who made that comment, just saying.
Also the Keith Preston stuff
Also the Keith Preston stuff was all couched in a very hostile, critical way, as it should be. If you can't tell, that's because subtlety is wasted on you. Plus anyone can come in to the IRC, using almost any name and say anything, so this method of lurking in the irc until you can say AH HA! NAZI, would be very easy to abuse.
You want the whole paste? Tho I cannot tell if he was logged in with his usual password, but SUDS appeared to have recognized him...
20:52, do you know what ARA
20:52, do you know what ARA is? if so then shut the fuck up. if not, google it then shut the fuck up. your accusations are idiotic.
ARA + Womb-bat?
Show that to me, you fucking coward. Just show me that some ARA guy can spout such filthy Alt Right crap in a supposedly anarchist chat room, without at least a clear hint of sarcasm.
you're like a sad cartoon
you're like a sad cartoon detective always getting it wrong. keep at it, sport. accuse enough people and eventually you'll catch a bad guy!
Srsly I'd like you to show me
Srsly I'd like you to show me that this quote by Wombat came from somewhere/somebody else. I want you to show me that there's something I missed and that's just some really some absurd misunderstanding of astronomic proportions.
I meant it wasn't Wombat who
I meant it wasn't Wombat who made the 14:39 comment, just to clear up that to reduce the chance of confusion between the numerous disgusted and hysterical antifa commenters who are going to blow up the 'ethnic cleansing fallacy " comment.
Then if "public image" is all
Then if "public image" is all that matters to you, perhaps you could clarify that really problematic statement by Wombat, or make him clarify? But also the irc mods -starting with SUDS- could clarify why I was kick-banned from the chat room immediately -like about 2 seconds- after asking him wtf is he doing "contemptively" addressing the Holocaust victims (unlike how Leftists are... whatever that means), and that happened just as he went on taking the exact same stance than Breitbard on the whole MAGA kids debacle (so to say, the claim that it was an entire Leftist fabrication, that made the White conservative kids being the targets of nasty antifa nation-wide).
Grammarian (not verified)
You know, if you take the
You know, if you take the quote above (that is attributed to Wombat) and edit it with proper grammar, it might actually be the opposite of what your critique is implying. Could an emdash in place of a comma alleviated the hurt in your buttocks? Is English your first language, 12:26? Is it the supposed authors? Do these dastardly IRC nihilists not articulate themselves properly, as we do?
Ok let's do that together.
Yes you are right, fucker! There was a point missing in the end after "like".
What else you got?
Dear 23:48,
Let me break this down for you since you are clearly struggling.
What the quote's author could likely be saying (when articulated through proper grammar and intelligence) is that what is also terrible about the Holocaust is the fact that society continued to allow the Nazis (and fascist behavior in general) to exist, instead of completely stamping out. This was because the "monstrosity of horror" was not shared enough by those in society that were able to turn their backs on those directly impacted. Society should have done better job in destroying this monstrous enemy but it failed because society is terrible.
Do you see? Don't beat yourself up about it. Grammar is hard.
be still, my heart...
No-nononono...
You are forcefully twisting the syntax to some patched, extraneous meaning, and are pretty mediocre at it.
"The reason the jewish genocide is awful is not because of bad things being done. (...) It is because we..."
Those two prepositions are expressing a mutual exclusion, by the negation of the first option, and the assertion of the second. It is not a "this or that", but a "not this, but that".
"This was because the "monstrosity of horror" was not shared enough by those in society that were able to turn their backs on those directly impacted."
Except that's not what he said, but ONE of the potential connotations of that sentence, and not the most obvious.
- "The horror was not shared enough"... so what does it mean in the real world? That more Germans, Europeans, and Americans should have taken part in this genocide, so that they'd have an experience of the horror, OR that North Americans should have known the horror of the Wehrmacht coming on their soil?
- "I'm using "victim" in the contemptible way, not in the way leftists like."
"Comtemptible" towards the designation of Jews as victims, or towards Jews themselves?
If there's anyone here who needs to put brains into syntax, it's Wombat, not me. That counts especially when discussing such intense subjects, on the internet and through text, no matter if it's for communicating intelligent ideas, or for covering his repugnant ideas.
I think all you've
I think all you've demonstrated here is the hysterical minefield that makes discussion about this stuff impossible for most people. Ever heard of zygmunt bauman? He says a lot of similar things to the point being made here, AS A HOLOCAUST HISTORIAN OF JEWISH ANCESTRY.
to no-nononono etc
i agree with zombietroll, and regretably, with grammarian here as well. your read on this betrays more about you looking to be pissed off rather than to understand someone's point.
not saying wombat is a good or careful writer, he's usually not. but that doesn't mean you need to start fires.
good for you for actually quoting though (so that people could address the actual point) instead of just talking bullshit like so many do.
On the contrary 10:12, it is
On the contrary 10:12, it is your misreading that is anti-Semitic.
Lastly, there are a number of Jewish, anti-racist/anti-fascist anarchists in the chat room that you are bad-jacketing simply because of your poor understanding and bigoted misreading. It is beyond unacceptable. It is detestable.
Good day, sir.
Poor misreading... but whose?
It's interesting that with all these insults, and after me showing you how this quote by Wombat is more like to have a fascistic, antisemitic meaning, all you got to provide is zero argument whatsoever, along with unfounded claims on the antifascist sensibilities of some IRC users including Wombat. I don't know any of those people and most likely you don't know me neither, so in that case, peer validation produces a blank check.
Then you got Zombietroll telling me, without any quote or reference whatsoever, how Zigmunt Baumann had a similar stance on the Holocaust and its perpetrators... but how and where did he say that, through his extensive load of work? We gotta accept that because Baumann would have apparently agreed with Wombat, then Wombat not a fascist. Right!
Look friendo, the burden of
Look friendo, the burden of proof is on the one hurling nazi accusations for obvious reasons. I'm not required to cite and source as if I'm seeking your approval, quite the opposite, you're being pretty shady imo! Care to keep doubling down?
Proof of what?
Over Nazi accusations I didn't even make?
Where is the Nazi accusation in my comment at https://anarchistnews.org/comment/404#comment-404 ? This problematic quote might be the expression of someone who's some Alt Right antisemite, OR just some "shady" character who doesn't give a damn about the principle of clarity in his online posts, not even when it's talking about something as bad as the Holocaust.
But there's wording being used in here that, **especially in conjunction with his few other comments on the MAGA kids story**, may imply that he could be worse than some guy with dubious internet rhetoric.
I may stop doubling down if you'd provide with any solid argument on my way.
But I don't care about any of
But I don't care about any of this that much. Does your stupid theory survive occam's razor? No. Do I care about you or what you think? No. Does anything that takes place in @news comments matter at all? No. No no no and no. And more no.
You seem like you might need a different hobby? Possible yes.
The principle of clarity? You're grasping at straws here. Look, I'll always recognize that fash bashing is an unfortunate necessity, but if a lack of clarity were a crime than at least 50% of antifa I've met would have been sentenced to death for near total incoherence. Nothing to see here, folks.
Appeliste here
I am a part of the so called appeliste networks of the US.
We are mostly anarchists and antifascists and communists.
you are in a debate with yourself because what unites us is not critiques and ideologies but PRACTICAL DESTRUCTION OF CAPITALISM.
we want to be more anarchic than you, and more communist than the marxists, and more wild than the greens
we really mean to destroy this society.
sorry you had some student talk down to you or something sounds annoying
now reply that to all the
now reply that to all the anti-appeliste comments of the past year.
btw, why did you personally destroy la ZAD and ruin anarchism forever?
"btw, why did you personally
"btw, why did you personally destroy la ZAD and ruin anarchism forever?"
I won't be putting words in this other commenter's mouth, but I'm pretty sure that all they've been doing is "building power", and just building the commune... By now we know what that means from the outside. Game of Thrones shit all over.
I'm surprised they haven't already moved to the real estate industry in NA by now. It's highly-profitable as "dual power" scheme! Hollywood knows.
"what unites us is not
"what unites us is not critiques and ideologies but PRACTICAL DESTRUCTION OF CAPITALISM"
BITCH PLEASE!
Your worship of Empire's Joker Deleuze and Commie Pimp Guattari sez otherwise. But also more seriously your politics of building communal capital are equally reactionary and conductive to the broader creation of social capital and Soft Power schemes. Identity politics, admonishing of the much-vilified Individuals, those shitty elite gang dynamics, call-out culture... this reeks sub-capitalism.
On the other hand, I can point you to a few local capitalists who've shown more support to progressive projects that benefit the poor than the Appelistas crowd would never dream of... yet upfront, these few people would be instantly identified as "bourgie right-wing" or something.
As Lao Tse said (with different wording of course)... doing good is something that is much better achieved in spite (of regular conditions), rather than by design (as a regular condition). The records of both Christanity and socialism have show this to be right; as they mostly failed at spreading their justice through the world, but rather imposed everywhere the political conditions for the perceived realization of their justice.
The same applies to your clan... since after all you're just a newer brand of socialists.You have imposed a burden of political conditions in the ZAD that have been oppressive, invasive and destructive, more than they helped. I have seen your crowd destroying two forests over there, and attack green anarchos, all in the name of the machine. Your interpersonal ruthlessness is the same than that of the dominant system, the same than the bureaucracy an its police, only a ramification of it; and your inability to overcome it is your central failure.
but also maybe that was not this one person, but others.
some anon (not verified)
Maybe?! Seems pretty damned
Maybe?! Seems pretty damned unlikely.
pardon my deadpan sense of
pardon my deadpan sense of humor, it’s barely readable in person, i understand if it’s not readable in text. the “well said.” part was completely sincere though.
Yes, your sarcasm comes
Yes, your sarcasm comes across fine. Im just still calling don Quixote on this whole thing and using your joke as a spring board.
There's no goddamn commie conspiracy of any real size, or any real threat to anarchists, anywhere near France or the US. Full stop.
"There's no goddamn commie
"There's no goddamn commie conspiracy of any real size, or any real threat to anarchists, anywhere near France or the US. Full stop."
Says the commie.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xSVqLHghLpw
Nice...you should contribute to this compilation zine. And everyone else who thinks tiqqunists etc ruined anarchy.
It's called "copy-paste". It
It's called "copy-paste". It's some sophisticated technique invented back in 1997 by some l77t geek I think, when they found out how to use a computer mouse. So since there's no copyright on this comment, I suppose you can reuse it as you will for your publication.
feral child (not verified)
Well, have fun building (your
Well, have fun building (your communes) while we set the world on fire. When you see us coming, duck!
Almost nobody is doing either
Almost nobody is doing either of those things! Except maybe the oil companies for the latter.
Why must you LARP in la la land? Why?!
because they’re presenting as
because they’re presenting as a self-stylized badly written cartoon character, but deep down there’s a real person that craves an adventure down a path through which i might take a few steps as detour, as a means of procrastination, diversion, stalling and escapism.
we’re sad people to regard, but don’t take pity on us, it’s a lost case, and there’s no reward in ameliorating it.
Fauvenoir (not verified)
Sad? Humanity is.
We're a kind of mirror image of mankind... a fucked up species riddled with their self-hatred and deceitful authoritarian gimmicks that make the vast numbers falling prey to the spooks set up by a thin minority of parasites, and reified by the larger numbers of cowardly normies. And to a smaller scale, impressionable people falling prey to manipulators, despots and other insecure minds. Like that dude who convinced a bunch of young women to come to his country prana cult, that led several of his disciples to suffer the consequences of extensive starvation. This shit's real. I know the guy and he's still in charge of a famous café in Mtl. Young women are still coming to him like he's their best confident. Dog knows if he ever paid for what he did, as people across generations forget their history. Unrelated to Appelistes, tho.
Humans are sick animals. Their future is either through the eschatological healing by some superhuman entity-ies; or their self-destruction, after taking most other (innocent) species in their demise. Pick one
Or Raddle for added moralist 1 hour 29 min ago
"Children of Men" is pretty 2 hours 20 min ago
go to reddit if u want non 2 hours 26 min ago
"Browse zine makers and 3 hours 4 min ago
09:48 3 hours 7 min ago
21;25 3 hours 33 min ago
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Single Cell Profiling of Circulating Tumor Cells: Transcriptional Heterogeneity and Diversity from Breast Cancer Cell Lines
Ashley A. Powell, Amir Ali H. Talasaz, Haiyu Zhang, Marc A. Coram, et al
http://www.mendeley.com/research/single-cell-profiling-circulating-tumor-cells-transcriptional-heterogeneity-diversity-breast-cancer-1
Is referenced by
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{"title"=>"Single cell profiling of Circulating tumor cells: Transcriptional heterogeneity and diversity from breast cancer cell lines", "type"=>"journal", "authors"=>[{"first_name"=>"Ashley A.", "last_name"=>"Powell", "scopus_author_id"=>"7202501725"}, {"first_name"=>"Amir Ali H.", "last_name"=>"Talasaz", "scopus_author_id"=>"16176403700"}, {"first_name"=>"Haiyu", "last_name"=>"Zhang", "scopus_author_id"=>"8859827000"}, {"first_name"=>"Marc A.", "last_name"=>"Coram", "scopus_author_id"=>"14065755100"}, {"first_name"=>"Anupama", "last_name"=>"Reddy", "scopus_author_id"=>"24559491100"}, {"first_name"=>"Glenn", "last_name"=>"Deng", "scopus_author_id"=>"7101932147"}, {"first_name"=>"Melinda L.", "last_name"=>"Telli", "scopus_author_id"=>"16064818700"}, {"first_name"=>"Ranjana H.", "last_name"=>"Advani", "scopus_author_id"=>"7003342788"}, {"first_name"=>"Robert W.", "last_name"=>"Carlson", "scopus_author_id"=>"35274579200"}, {"first_name"=>"Joseph A.", "last_name"=>"Mollick", "scopus_author_id"=>"6603027680"}, {"first_name"=>"Shruti", "last_name"=>"Sheth", "scopus_author_id"=>"55209076200"}, {"first_name"=>"Allison W.", "last_name"=>"Kurian", "scopus_author_id"=>"56730290700"}, {"first_name"=>"James M.", "last_name"=>"Ford", "scopus_author_id"=>"7402915714"}, {"first_name"=>"Frank E.", "last_name"=>"Stockdale", "scopus_author_id"=>"7005205252"}, {"first_name"=>"Stephen R.", "last_name"=>"Quake", "scopus_author_id"=>"7004146463"}, {"first_name"=>"R. Fabian", "last_name"=>"Pease", "scopus_author_id"=>"57197500248"}, {"first_name"=>"Michael N.", "last_name"=>"Mindrinos", "scopus_author_id"=>"6603048545"}, {"first_name"=>"Gyan", "last_name"=>"Bhanot", "scopus_author_id"=>"7004654825"}, {"first_name"=>"Shanaz H.", "last_name"=>"Dairkee", "scopus_author_id"=>"57189963791"}, {"first_name"=>"Ronald W.", "last_name"=>"Davis", "scopus_author_id"=>"36012646500"}, {"first_name"=>"Stefanie S.", "last_name"=>"Jeffrey", "scopus_author_id"=>"23569502400"}], "year"=>2012, "source"=>"PLoS ONE", "identifiers"=>{"issn"=>"19326203", "scopus"=>"2-s2.0-84860601923", "sgr"=>"84860601923", "pui"=>"364751107", "isbn"=>"1932-6203 (Electronic)\\r1932-6203 (Linking)", "pmid"=>"22586443", "doi"=>"10.1371/journal.pone.0033788"}, "id"=>"01957967-3870-38ee-94a9-810f5f58a382", "abstract"=>"BACKGROUND: To improve cancer therapy, it is critical to target metastasizing cells. Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are rare cells found in the blood of patients with solid tumors and may play a key role in cancer dissemination. Uncovering CTC phenotypes offers a potential avenue to inform treatment. However, CTC transcriptional profiling is limited by leukocyte contamination; an approach to surmount this problem is single cell analysis. Here we demonstrate feasibility of performing high dimensional single CTC profiling, providing early insight into CTC heterogeneity and allowing comparisons to breast cancer cell lines widely used for drug discovery. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We purified CTCs using the MagSweeper, an immunomagnetic enrichment device that isolates live tumor cells from unfractionated blood. CTCs that met stringent criteria for further analysis were obtained from 70% (14/20) of primary and 70% (21/30) of metastatic breast cancer patients; none were captured from patients with non-epithelial cancer (n = 20) or healthy subjects (n = 25). Microfluidic-based single cell transcriptional profiling of 87 cancer-associated and reference genes showed heterogeneity among individual CTCs, separating them into two major subgroups, based on 31 highly expressed genes. In contrast, single cells from seven breast cancer cell lines were tightly clustered together by sample ID and ER status. CTC profiles were distinct from those of cancer cell lines, questioning the suitability of such lines for drug discovery efforts for late stage cancer therapy. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: For the first time, we directly measured high dimensional gene expression in individual CTCs without the common practice of pooling such cells. Elevated transcript levels of genes associated with metastasis NPTN, S100A4, S100A9, and with epithelial mesenchymal transition: VIM, TGFss1, ZEB2, FOXC1, CXCR4, were striking compared to cell lines. Our findings demonstrate that profiling CTCs on a cell-by-cell basis is possible and may facilitate the application of 'liquid biopsies' to better model drug discovery.", "link"=>"http://www.mendeley.com/research/single-cell-profiling-circulating-tumor-cells-transcriptional-heterogeneity-diversity-breast-cancer-1", "reader_count"=>424, "reader_count_by_academic_status"=>{"Unspecified"=>8, "Professor > Associate Professor"=>25, "Librarian"=>1, "Researcher"=>109, "Student > Doctoral Student"=>21, "Student > Ph. D. Student"=>126, "Student > Postgraduate"=>14, "Student > Master"=>40, "Other"=>19, "Student > Bachelor"=>33, "Lecturer"=>11, "Lecturer > Senior Lecturer"=>6, "Professor"=>11}, "reader_count_by_user_role"=>{"Unspecified"=>8, "Professor > Associate Professor"=>25, "Librarian"=>1, "Researcher"=>109, "Student > Doctoral Student"=>21, "Student > Ph. D. Student"=>126, "Student > Postgraduate"=>14, "Student > Master"=>40, "Other"=>19, "Student > Bachelor"=>33, "Lecturer"=>11, "Lecturer > Senior Lecturer"=>6, "Professor"=>11}, "reader_count_by_subject_area"=>{"Unspecified"=>15, "Agricultural and Biological Sciences"=>178, "Veterinary Science and Veterinary Medicine"=>1, "Chemical Engineering"=>3, "Chemistry"=>26, "Computer Science"=>8, "Engineering"=>53, "Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology"=>54, "Nursing and Health Professions"=>1, "Materials Science"=>1, "Mathematics"=>5, "Medicine and Dentistry"=>63, "Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutical Science"=>2, "Physics and Astronomy"=>8, "Psychology"=>1, "Social Sciences"=>2, "Immunology and Microbiology"=>3}, "reader_count_by_subdiscipline"=>{"Materials Science"=>{"Materials Science"=>1}, "Medicine and Dentistry"=>{"Medicine and Dentistry"=>63}, "Social Sciences"=>{"Social Sciences"=>2}, "Physics and Astronomy"=>{"Physics and Astronomy"=>8}, "Psychology"=>{"Psychology"=>1}, "Mathematics"=>{"Mathematics"=>5}, "Unspecified"=>{"Unspecified"=>15}, "Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutical Science"=>{"Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutical Science"=>2}, "Chemical Engineering"=>{"Chemical Engineering"=>3}, "Engineering"=>{"Engineering"=>53}, "Chemistry"=>{"Chemistry"=>26}, "Immunology and Microbiology"=>{"Immunology and Microbiology"=>3}, "Agricultural and Biological Sciences"=>{"Agricultural and Biological Sciences"=>178}, "Computer Science"=>{"Computer Science"=>8}, "Nursing and Health Professions"=>{"Nursing and Health Professions"=>1}, "Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology"=>{"Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology"=>54}, "Veterinary Science and Veterinary Medicine"=>{"Veterinary Science and Veterinary Medicine"=>1}}, "reader_count_by_country"=>{"United States"=>13, "Japan"=>2, "United Kingdom"=>5, "Switzerland"=>2, "Portugal"=>1, "Spain"=>3, "Saudi Arabia"=>1, "Austria"=>1, "Netherlands"=>1, "Sweden"=>1, "South Korea"=>1, "Belgium"=>1, "Iran"=>1, "China"=>1, "Italy"=>1, "South Africa"=>2, "Mexico"=>1, "Israel"=>1, "France"=>2, "Nigeria"=>1, "Germany"=>2}, "group_count"=>25}
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Europe PMC Citations 11419 Mar 06:14 UTC
PubMed Central 408 Apr 08:52 UTC
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Journal Comments 227 Oct 10:02 UTC
Journal Comments | Further Information
{"type"=>"COMMENT", "annotationUri"=>"info:doi/10.1371/annotation/2901486b-a1da-4d86-bcbe-77b455c31ba4", "title"=>"Maybe this will finally kill some old ideas.", "body"=>"It is amazing to me that this idea is taking so long to accept. People seem desperate to hang onto the idea that all cancer cells are alike, even though that assertion was falsified decades ago. We have spent billions of dollars trying to cure primary tumors that surgeons remove and have spent very little trying to kill the cells that actually kill patients. Perhaps this paper will finally kill the idea that we can learn much of interest from the primary tumor. All the \"targeted therapy\" designed to target the primary tumor is doomed to failure. This is a beautiful and elegant paper.", "isRemoved"=>false, "created"=>"2012-05-08T20:15:07Z", "lastModified"=>"2012-05-08T20:15:07Z", "creator"=>{"userId"=>"265521"}, "highlightedText"=>"", "competingInterestStatement"=>{"creatorWasPrompted"=>true, "hasCompetingInterests"=>false}, "parentArticle"=>{"doi"=>"info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0033788", "state"=>"published", "journals"=>{"PLoSONE"=>{"journalKey"=>"PLoSONE", "eIssn"=>"1932-6203", "title"=>"PLOS ONE"}}}, "replyTreeSize"=>0, "mostRecentActivity"=>"2012-05-08T20:15:07Z", "replies"=>[]}
{"type"=>"COMMENT", "annotationUri"=>"info:doi/10.1371/annotation/30ffc32d-a039-4f49-97ce-d1fd5212762a", "title"=>"Media Coverage of This Article", "body"=>"The following article represents some of the media coverage that has occurred for this paper:\n\nPublication: Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News \nTitle: “GEN | News Highlights:Transcriptional Diversity Found in Circulating Tumor Cells from Individual Breast Cancer Patients”\nhttp://www.genengnews.com/gen-news-highlights/transcriptional-diversity-found-in-circulating-tumor-cells-from-individual-breast-cancer-patients/81246738\n\nPublication: Health Canal \nTitle: “Health News - Not all tumor cells are equal: Study reveals genetic diversity in cells shed by tumors”\nhttp://www.healthcanal.com/cancers/29176-Not-all-tumor-cells-are-equal-Study-reveals-genetic-diversity-cells-shed-tumors.html\n\nPublication: Health Day News \nTitle: “Cancer Cells in Bloodstream Show Great Diversity: Study”\nhttp://consumer.healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=664463\n\nPublication: Stanford University School of Medicine \nTitle: “Not all tumor cells are equal: Study reveals genetic diversity in cells shed by tumors - Office of Communications & Public Affairs - Stanford University School of Medicine”\nhttp://med.stanford.edu/ism/2012/may/jeffrey.html\n\nPublication: Stanford University School of Medicine Scope \nTitle: “Study finds huge genetic diversity in cancer cells - Scope - medical blog - Stanford University School of Medicine”\nhttp://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2012/05/study-finds-huge-genetic-diversity-in-cancer-cells\n\nIf you see any additional coverage of this paper in the press or blogosphere, please reply to this thread and add the link to the article. ", "isRemoved"=>false, "created"=>"2012-05-11T21:40:21Z", "lastModified"=>"2012-05-11T21:40:21Z", "creator"=>{"userId"=>"80539"}, "highlightedText"=>"", "competingInterestStatement"=>{"creatorWasPrompted"=>true, "hasCompetingInterests"=>true, "body"=>"PLoS ONE Staff"}, "parentArticle"=>{"doi"=>"info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0033788", "state"=>"published", "journals"=>{"PLoSONE"=>{"journalKey"=>"PLoSONE", "eIssn"=>"1932-6203", "title"=>"PLOS ONE"}}}, "replyTreeSize"=>1, "mostRecentActivity"=>"2012-05-18T22:08:19Z", "replies"=>[{"type"=>"REPLY", "parentID"=>49597, "annotationUri"=>"info:doi/10.1371/reply/1f391159-4688-452c-99a5-7c3f246c4f0c", "title"=>"RE: Media Coverage of This Article", "body"=>"The following articles represent some of the media coverage that has occurred for this paper:\n\nPublication: BioTechniques \nTitle: “BioTechniques - No Two Cancer Cells Are Alike”\nhttp://www.biotechniques.com/news/biotechniquesNews/biotechniques-330295.html\n\nPublication: GEN Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News \nTitle: “GEN | News Highlights:Transcriptional Diversity Found in Circulating Tumor Cells from Individual Breast Cancer Patients”\nhttp://www.genengnews.com/gen-news-highlights/transcriptional-diversity-found-in-circulating-tumor-cells-from-individual-breast-cancer-patient/81246738\n\nPublication: Der Spiegel \nTitle: “Krebszellen in einem Tumor unterscheiden sich genetisch stark - SPIEGEL ONLINE”\nhttp://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/medizin/krebszellen-in-einem-tumor-unterscheiden-sich-genetisch-stark-a-831999.html\n\nIf you see any additional coverage of this paper in the press or blogosphere, please reply to this thread and add the link to the article. ", "isRemoved"=>false, "created"=>"2012-05-18T22:08:19Z", "lastModified"=>"2012-05-18T22:08:19Z", "creator"=>{"userId"=>"80539"}, "highlightedText"=>"", "competingInterestStatement"=>{"creatorWasPrompted"=>true, "hasCompetingInterests"=>true, "body"=>"PLoS ONE Staff"}, "parentArticle"=>{"doi"=>"info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0033788", "state"=>"published", "journals"=>{"PLoSONE"=>{"journalKey"=>"PLoSONE", "eIssn"=>"1932-6203", "title"=>"PLOS ONE"}}}, "replyTreeSize"=>0, "mostRecentActivity"=>"2012-05-18T22:08:19Z", "replies"=>[]}]}
Research Blogging01 Aug 08:55 UTC
Research Blogging | Further Information
{"id"=>"215473954926755840", "text"=>"#PLoS: #Single-Cell Profiling of Circulating Tumor Cells: Transcriptional Heterogeneity an... http://t.co/uGYMZAVT #li", "created_at"=>"2012-06-20T15:59:28Z", "user"=>"SiMarge", "user_name"=>"Simon Margerison", "user_profile_image"=>"http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/1782207969/image_normal.jpg"}
{"id"=>"237985280529952769", "text"=>"Single cell profiling of circulating tumor cells shows how diverse the population is that has left the primary site. http://t.co/9150f5xL", "created_at"=>"2012-08-21T18:51:27Z", "user"=>"jillagal", "user_name"=>"Jill Gallaher", "user_profile_image"=>"http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/2438237354/jep6xfggmbpb2du8h715_normal.jpeg"}
{"id"=>"264279821029363712", "text"=>"fumfumfum......\n#PLOSONE: Single Cell Profiling of Circulating Tumor Cells: Transcriptional Heterogeneit... http://t.co/ppSpUjWN", "created_at"=>"2012-11-02T08:16:34Z", "user"=>"40yrsoldbaby", "user_name"=>"40 years old baby", "user_profile_image"=>"http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/2569327643/h17xetq3tyducepcr2a2_normal.jpeg"}
{"id"=>"275746049338007552", "text"=>"#PLOSONE: Single Cell Profiling of Circulating Tumor Cells: Transcriptional Heterogeneit... http://t.co/HZ6kzht1", "created_at"=>"2012-12-03T23:39:15Z", "user"=>"mctrebo", "user_name"=>"Monika C. Trebo", "user_profile_image"=>"http://a0.twimg.com/profile_images/2494374655/vhevke0ejah91c4nko87_normal.jpeg"}
{"month"=>"5", "year"=>"2012", "pdf_views"=>"1239", "xml_views"=>"17", "html_views"=>"2826"}
{"files"=>["https://ndownloader.figshare.com/files/332037", "https://ndownloader.figshare.com/files/332087", "https://ndownloader.figshare.com/files/332159", "https://ndownloader.figshare.com/files/332205", "https://ndownloader.figshare.com/files/332245"], "description"=>"<div><h3>Background</h3><p>To improve cancer therapy, it is critical to target metastasizing cells. Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are rare cells found in the blood of patients with solid tumors and may play a key role in cancer dissemination. Uncovering CTC phenotypes offers a potential avenue to inform treatment. However, CTC transcriptional profiling is limited by leukocyte contamination; an approach to surmount this problem is single cell analysis. Here we demonstrate feasibility of performing high dimensional single CTC profiling, providing early insight into CTC heterogeneity and allowing comparisons to breast cancer cell lines widely used for drug discovery.</p> <h3>Methodology/Principal Findings</h3><p>We purified CTCs using the MagSweeper, an immunomagnetic enrichment device that isolates live tumor cells from unfractionated blood. CTCs that met stringent criteria for further analysis were obtained from 70% (14/20) of primary and 70% (21/30) of metastatic breast cancer patients; none were captured from patients with non-epithelial cancer (n = 20) or healthy subjects (n = 25). Microfluidic-based single cell transcriptional profiling of 87 cancer-associated and reference genes showed heterogeneity among individual CTCs, separating them into two major subgroups, based on 31 highly expressed genes. In contrast, single cells from seven breast cancer cell lines were tightly clustered together by sample ID and ER status. CTC profiles were distinct from those of cancer cell lines, questioning the suitability of such lines for drug discovery efforts for late stage cancer therapy.</p> <h3>Conclusions/Significance</h3><p>For the first time, we directly measured high dimensional gene expression in individual CTCs without the common practice of pooling such cells. Elevated transcript levels of genes associated with metastasis <em>NPTN, S100A4</em>, <em>S100A9</em>, and with epithelial mesenchymal transition: <em>VIM, TGFß1, ZEB2, FOXC1</em>, <em>CXCR4,</em> were striking compared to cell lines. Our findings demonstrate that profiling CTCs on a cell-by-cell basis is possible and may facilitate the application of ‘liquid biopsies’ to better model drug discovery.</p> </div>", "links"=>[], "tags"=>["profiling", "circulating", "transcriptional", "heterogeneity", "cancer", "lines"], "article_id"=>125549, "categories"=>["Biological Sciences", "Biotechnology", "Cancer", "Molecular Biology", "Cell Biology", "Genetics"], "users"=>["Ashley A. Powell", "AmirAli H. Talasaz", "Haiyu Zhang", "Marc A. Coram", "Anupama Reddy", "Glenn Deng", "Melinda L. Telli", "Ranjana H. Advani", "Robert W. Carlson", "Joseph A. Mollick", "Shruti Sheth", "Allison W. Kurian", "James M. Ford", "Frank E. Stockdale", "Stephen R. Quake", "R. Fabian Pease", "Michael N. Mindrinos", "Gyan Bhanot", "Shanaz H. Dairkee", "Ronald W. Davis", "Stefanie S. Jeffrey"], "doi"=>["https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0033788.s001", "https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0033788.s002", "https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0033788.s003", "https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0033788.s004", "https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0033788.s005"], "stats"=>{"downloads"=>4, "page_views"=>13, "likes"=>0}, "figshare_url"=>"https://figshare.com/articles/Single_Cell_Profiling_of_Circulating_Tumor_Cells_Transcriptional_Heterogeneity_and_Diversity_from_Breast_Cancer_Cell_Lines/125549", "title"=>"Single Cell Profiling of Circulating Tumor Cells: Transcriptional Heterogeneity and Diversity from Breast Cancer Cell Lines", "pos_in_sequence"=>0, "defined_type"=>4, "published_date"=>"2012-05-07 01:32:29"}
{"files"=>["https://ndownloader.figshare.com/files/641641"], "description"=>"<p>A. Heatmap of single cell gene expression of 87 genes within seven individual cells isolated from three primary tumor-derived (pink: CCdl054, orange: CCdl672, gold: CCdl675), and four metastatic effusion-derived (red: MDA-231 plum: SKBR3, dark green: MCF7, and bright green: T47D) breast cancer cell lines. Yellow indicates high gene expression; gray is median expression; blue indicates low expression; and black represents undetectable expression. All cells showed expected expression patterns. The breast cancer cell lines used represent a spectrum of cell differentiation, e.g., from less differentiated and more mesenchymal/stem cell-like ER-negative (basal-like) cells (MDA-231 and SKBR3) to more differentiated ER-positive (luminal-like) cells represented by CCdl054, CCdl672, CCdl675, MCF7, and T47D.</p>", "links"=>[], "tags"=>["dimensional", "cells", "cancer"], "article_id"=>312109, "categories"=>["Biological Sciences", "Biotechnology", "Cancer", "Molecular Biology", "Cell Biology", "Genetics"], "users"=>["Ashley A. Powell", "AmirAli H. Talasaz", "Haiyu Zhang", "Marc A. Coram", "Anupama Reddy", "Glenn Deng", "Melinda L. Telli", "Ranjana H. Advani", "Robert W. Carlson", "Joseph A. Mollick", "Shruti Sheth", "Allison W. Kurian", "James M. Ford", "Frank E. Stockdale", "Stephen R. Quake", "R. Fabian Pease", "Michael N. Mindrinos", "Gyan Bhanot", "Shanaz H. Dairkee", "Ronald W. Davis", "Stefanie S. Jeffrey"], "doi"=>"https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0033788.g003", "stats"=>{"downloads"=>0, "page_views"=>2, "likes"=>0}, "figshare_url"=>"https://figshare.com/articles/_High_dimensional_analysis_of_single_cells_from_breast_cancer_cell_lines_/312109", "title"=>"High dimensional analysis of single cells from breast cancer cell lines.", "pos_in_sequence"=>0, "defined_type"=>1, "published_date"=>"2012-05-07 00:35:09"}
{"files"=>["https://ndownloader.figshare.com/files/641977"], "description"=>"<p>Heatmap of single cell gene expression for 31-gene subset data derived from seven breast cancer cell lines and 105 CTCs isolated from patients with primary and metastatic breast cancer. Yellow indicates high gene expression; gray is median expression; blue indicates low expression; and black represents undetectable expression. The samples reveal two robust clusters for CTCs (lavender: Cluster I; turquoise blue: Cluster II) and two clusters representing primary (pink: CCdl054, orange: CCdl672, gold: CCdl675) and metastatic cell lines. Note dendrogram branches that cluster ER-negative cell lines (red: MDA-231; plum: SKBR3) and ER-positive cell lines (dark green: MCF7, and bright green: T47D).</p>", "links"=>[], "tags"=>["cancer", "ctc"], "article_id"=>312437, "categories"=>["Biological Sciences", "Biotechnology", "Cancer", "Molecular Biology", "Cell Biology", "Genetics"], "users"=>["Ashley A. Powell", "AmirAli H. Talasaz", "Haiyu Zhang", "Marc A. Coram", "Anupama Reddy", "Glenn Deng", "Melinda L. Telli", "Ranjana H. Advani", "Robert W. Carlson", "Joseph A. Mollick", "Shruti Sheth", "Allison W. Kurian", "James M. Ford", "Frank E. Stockdale", "Stephen R. Quake", "R. Fabian Pease", "Michael N. Mindrinos", "Gyan Bhanot", "Shanaz H. Dairkee", "Ronald W. Davis", "Stefanie S. Jeffrey"], "doi"=>"https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0033788.g005", "stats"=>{"downloads"=>0, "page_views"=>5, "likes"=>0}, "figshare_url"=>"https://figshare.com/articles/_Combined_breast_cancer_cell_line_and_CTC_clusters_/312437", "title"=>"Combined breast cancer cell line and CTC clusters.", "pos_in_sequence"=>0, "defined_type"=>1, "published_date"=>"2012-05-07 00:40:37"}
{"files"=>["https://ndownloader.figshare.com/files/642147"], "description"=>"<p>Phenotype of Primary Tumors in CTC Clusters.</p>", "links"=>[], "tags"=>["tumors", "ctc"], "article_id"=>312611, "categories"=>["Biological Sciences", "Biotechnology", "Cancer", "Molecular Biology", "Cell Biology", "Genetics"], "users"=>["Ashley A. Powell", "AmirAli H. Talasaz", "Haiyu Zhang", "Marc A. Coram", "Anupama Reddy", "Glenn Deng", "Melinda L. Telli", "Ranjana H. Advani", "Robert W. Carlson", "Joseph A. Mollick", "Shruti Sheth", "Allison W. Kurian", "James M. Ford", "Frank E. Stockdale", "Stephen R. Quake", "R. Fabian Pease", "Michael N. Mindrinos", "Gyan Bhanot", "Shanaz H. Dairkee", "Ronald W. Davis", "Stefanie S. Jeffrey"], "doi"=>"https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0033788.t001", "stats"=>{"downloads"=>0, "page_views"=>2, "likes"=>0}, "figshare_url"=>"https://figshare.com/articles/_Phenotype_of_Primary_Tumors_in_CTC_Clusters_/312611", "title"=>"Phenotype of Primary Tumors in CTC Clusters.", "pos_in_sequence"=>0, "defined_type"=>3, "published_date"=>"2012-05-07 00:43:31"}
{"files"=>["https://ndownloader.figshare.com/files/641384"], "description"=>"<p>A. MagSweeper device showing magnetic rods sheathed in plastic above the capture, wash and release stations. B. A diagrammatic view of MagSweeper cell isolation protocol. C. A controlled shear force produced by the movement of the magnetic rods in the wash station releases non-specifically bound blood cells. For cells with attached magnetic beads (black circles), the magnetic rod produces a magnetic force in z proportion to the nonuniformity (dB2/dz) of the magnetic field, thus imparting momentum in z proportional to (dB2/dz) and to a dwell time that depends both on the sweep speed and on the velocity distribution across the boundary layer that extends into the fluid from the surface of the sheath, optimizing capture of labeled cells and release of contaminating unlabeled cells. D. Photomicrograph (200X) of a CTC labeled with 4.5 µm immunomagnetic beads isolated from a patient with metastatic breast cancer. Magnetic beads are small dark spheres; the CTC appears as a translucent cell surrounded by clusters of beads.</p>", "links"=>[], "tags"=>["genetics and genomics", "molecular biology", "biotechnology", "Computational biology", "cell biology", "oncology"], "article_id"=>311842, "categories"=>["Biological Sciences", "Biotechnology", "Cancer", "Molecular Biology", "Cell Biology", "Genetics"], "users"=>["Ashley A. Powell", "AmirAli H. Talasaz", "Haiyu Zhang", "Marc A. Coram", "Anupama Reddy", "Glenn Deng", "Melinda L. Telli", "Ranjana H. Advani", "Robert W. Carlson", "Joseph A. Mollick", "Shruti Sheth", "Allison W. Kurian", "James M. Ford", "Frank E. Stockdale", "Stephen R. Quake", "R. Fabian Pease", "Michael N. Mindrinos", "Gyan Bhanot", "Shanaz H. Dairkee", "Ronald W. Davis", "Stefanie S. Jeffrey"], "doi"=>"https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0033788.g001", "stats"=>{"downloads"=>1, "page_views"=>36, "likes"=>0}, "figshare_url"=>"https://figshare.com/articles/_MagSweeper_instrumentation_and_cell_isolation_steps_/311842", "title"=>"MagSweeper instrumentation, and cell isolation steps.", "pos_in_sequence"=>0, "defined_type"=>1, "published_date"=>"2012-05-07 00:30:42"}
{"files"=>["https://ndownloader.figshare.com/files/641802"], "description"=>"<p>Heatmap of single cell gene expression for 31-gene subset data derived from 105 CTCs isolated from patients with primary and metastatic breast cancer. Yellow indicates high gene expression; gray is median expression; blue indicates low expression; and black represents undetectable expression. The samples reveal two robust clusters for CTCs (lavender: Cluster I; turquoise blue: Cluster II). In addition to epithelial markers, these genes include pathways associated with EMT, metastasis, and AKT/mTOR signaling.</p>", "links"=>[], "tags"=>["dimensional", "clustering", "ctcs", "patients"], "article_id"=>312267, "categories"=>["Biological Sciences", "Biotechnology", "Cancer", "Molecular Biology", "Cell Biology", "Genetics"], "users"=>["Ashley A. Powell", "AmirAli H. Talasaz", "Haiyu Zhang", "Marc A. Coram", "Anupama Reddy", "Glenn Deng", "Melinda L. Telli", "Ranjana H. Advani", "Robert W. Carlson", "Joseph A. Mollick", "Shruti Sheth", "Allison W. Kurian", "James M. Ford", "Frank E. Stockdale", "Stephen R. Quake", "R. Fabian Pease", "Michael N. Mindrinos", "Gyan Bhanot", "Shanaz H. Dairkee", "Ronald W. Davis", "Stefanie S. Jeffrey"], "doi"=>"https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0033788.g004", "stats"=>{"downloads"=>0, "page_views"=>8, "likes"=>0}, "figshare_url"=>"https://figshare.com/articles/_High_dimensional_single_cell_analysis_and_clustering_of_CTCs_isolated_from_patients_with_breast_cancer_/312267", "title"=>"High dimensional single cell analysis and clustering of CTCs isolated from patients with breast cancer.", "pos_in_sequence"=>0, "defined_type"=>1, "published_date"=>"2012-05-07 00:37:47"}
{"files"=>["https://ndownloader.figshare.com/files/641520"], "description"=>"<p>A. Gene expression heat maps of C<sub>T</sub> measurements of 15 genes by microfluidic qRT-PCR assays performed on single MCF7 cells before and after labeling and capture by the MagSweeper. Each gene is measured in triplicate for each single cell. Some single cell expression variation is inherent among individual cells, but the overall pattern showed no marked effect by our isolation protocol. B. Average plating efficiency (percent of single cells that formed colonies after seven days) of MCF7 cells; either control, labeled with beads, or labeled and captured by the MagSweeper, performed in triplicate. This demonstrates that cell viability was not affected by our purification protocol.</p>", "links"=>[], "tags"=>["viability", "magsweeper"], "article_id"=>311986, "categories"=>["Biological Sciences", "Biotechnology", "Cancer", "Molecular Biology", "Cell Biology", "Genetics"], "users"=>["Ashley A. Powell", "AmirAli H. Talasaz", "Haiyu Zhang", "Marc A. Coram", "Anupama Reddy", "Glenn Deng", "Melinda L. Telli", "Ranjana H. Advani", "Robert W. Carlson", "Joseph A. Mollick", "Shruti Sheth", "Allison W. Kurian", "James M. Ford", "Frank E. Stockdale", "Stephen R. Quake", "R. Fabian Pease", "Michael N. Mindrinos", "Gyan Bhanot", "Shanaz H. Dairkee", "Ronald W. Davis", "Stefanie S. Jeffrey"], "doi"=>"https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0033788.g002", "stats"=>{"downloads"=>1, "page_views"=>10, "likes"=>0}, "figshare_url"=>"https://figshare.com/articles/_Unperturbed_gene_expression_and_cell_viability_of_MagSweeper_isolated_tumor_cells_/311986", "title"=>"Unperturbed gene expression and cell viability of MagSweeper isolated tumor cells.", "pos_in_sequence"=>0, "defined_type"=>1, "published_date"=>"2012-05-07 00:33:06"}
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"A Deadpan Hillary Clinton Visits ‘Between Two Ferns.'"
That's the NYT headline, which mutes what I think is really a criticism of what blatantly deserves criticism. Check it out:
The Times piece, by Katie Rogers, begins carefully:
Hillary Clinton, a candidate who has gone to great lengths to showcase the playful side of her personality, apparently wanted to prove that she can take not only a joke but a full interview of nonstop lampooning when she appeared on the mock celebrity interview show “Between Two Ferns.”
If you read far enough, you'll see that Hillary was trying to do something Obama had done, but she didn't copy his approach:
While Mr. Obama had playfully laid into Mr. Galifianakis during his 2014 interview — “What’s it like for this to be the last time you ever talk to a president?” — Mrs. Clinton appeared mostly deadpan, letting her host do most of the comedic legwork....
At one point, she was actually asked a policy question. But while she was explaining her hopes for improving the economy, she was interrupted by a Trump ad. Mrs. Clinton played along: “Why would you play a commercial from my opponent in the middle of our interview?”
“He paid me in steaks,” he replied, adding a scatological joke. (This is the one that got a loud laugh out of Mrs. Clinton.)
Wait! The "scatological joke" — at 5:13 — is "It's a good cut of meat. I think it's part of the asshole." And Clinton doesn't laugh at all. She keeps a flat, glum face. How do you get "loud laugh" out of that? I'd remembered that the joke was about "the asshole," so I was curious to see Mrs. Clinton bust a gut over "asshole." Why did the NYT get that wrong — in an article that highlights that Clinton was "deadpan"? She was just as "deadpan" over "asshole" as she was about everything else.
Tags: dirty words, Donald Trump, Hillary 2016, Hillary and pop culture, meat, Obama and pop culture
Fernwood Tonight.
Boy, he's lost a lot of weight.
Is it possible the linked video is edited? I remember you posted a video of a fake Clinton interview that had me fooled almost to the end. I kind of got the same impression of this video. Of course, I have always had the impression that Hillary! is humorless, so that is why the first video had me fooled so long into it- it rang true to me.
That was as close to a Press Conference as Queen Hillary has permitted in a year. I bet somebody got fired over accepting that gig.
YoungHegelian said...
While I think HRC may have been a nasty bee-yatch to those around her for many years, I don't think she has been a humorless scold.
I think the poor woman is physically ill, & is being held together with bailing wire & duct tape. This clip does nothing but re-enforce that belief.
I sure as hell ain't voting for her, ever, but I'm starting to feel sorry for her. Her family needs to put a stop to this, even if she wants it more than anything else. It's cruel to her & unfair to the American people.
Ok, I watched the entire video rather than just the 5:13 bit, and I think maybe The Times is actually wrong all around. I think Hillary! didn't play deadpan at all- the entire thing is edited to make it seem that way. She couldn't even pull that off.
Hillary Clinton, a candidate who has gone to great lengths to showcase the playful side of her personality.... (my emphasis).
Beth B said...
Maybe the NYT doesn't expect anyone to actually watch it. So, they're giving her the best spin they can muster?
dreams said...
That was Hillary in person. " Don't tell me what to say..." was a command straight out of The Devil Wears Prada
And, uh, "Why did the NYT get that wrong"-- because the whole thing was scripted.
You know that, don't you?
HoodlumDoodlum said...
Biased and inaccurate...the NYTimes gettin' it done.
Oddly enough the local sportstalk radio station played a clip from that interview. I laughed at the joke about "the younger younger generation" but the Obama coffee joke was painful, which is why I think it got the airtime.
The poor thing wasn't deadpan, she was practically catatonic. Was her reduced affect a comic styling or was it the result of medication, her brain injury or clinical depression (and who could blame her)?
khesanh0802 said...
This the first I've heard of this show. Galifianakis is no Martin Mull.
FullMoon said...
Watched vid and thought it a bad imitation of Borat. Really not funny at all, just stupid. Clinton looked terrible, really pissed off, not playing along.
Look at the difference between this interview and Kelly Ann Conway and Bill Maher. Ms. Conway smiled all the way through , was energetic, put up with Maher's BS and came off the winner. I am overwhelmed by Clinton's bubbly personality here, her ability to laugh at herself, to breathe. Clinton does, as Ann says, look dead or close to it.
Zeroes and ones are not funny.
I saw this on my Facebook feed last night. I'm really surprised my reactions were so much different than many of the other commenters here.
1) I laughed. A lot.
2) I thought Hillary was a good sport playing dead pan.
3) at first I thought it was edited to make her look like the straight man to his Jerry Lewis routine. But then at the end I got the impression the whole thing was scripted, which is why I thought she was a good sport to play along.
It takes a certain character to allow yourself to be teased and mocked like that. Good for her.
P.S. This is probably the only nice thing I'll ever say about Hillary.
samsondale said...
I read that she did that 'interview' the day she supposedly was diagnosed by her Westchester-based physician with pneumonia.
Joseph Angier said...
“She really set us at ease early on by being so game to do it,” Mr. Aukerman said, “and one of the first few jokes she laughed really loud at, so we had to reset.”
The article should have been clearer. What Aukerman is saying with the "reset" reference is that the plan was for her to dead-pan the whole thing, and that the laugh was out of place.
What kind of presidential candidate will submit herself to this degradation? God, I almost* feel sorry for her.
mezzrow said...
Well, Katie laughed enough for both her and Hillary, and besides, solidarity.
Everybody reading this will article be on her side anyway, so why does it matter?
Go State.
After her weird, medicated union video speech, I think deadpan was what her team felt safe with.
michaele said...
It was like she was trying to out-deadpan him...not a flattering or winning demeanor for her. And, how strange that the NYTimes completely fabricated a lively response from her over the asshole joke. Whew, if they can't even get that right...
BarrySanders20 said...
That was only successful if her intent was to come across as awkward and cold.
Is she having fun yet? NYT tries to show she is.
1992 GHWBush: "MESSAGE: I care."
2016 Hillary: "MESSAGE: I am having fun."
MAJMike said...
Interesting. An effete douchebag interviewing a corrupt, failed lawyer. Truly, we, as a nation/culture are on the down-ward slope of civilization.
Todd said...
Or did they literally mean "reset" as in reset the computer? Maybe Hillary has a memory leak from poor coding (from her last upgrade) and occasionally needs to be reset to make the unused, allocated memory available cause the OS runs low?
jacksonjay said...
I get the feeling she will conduct a green screen campaign from here til election day. One, maybe two debates, Twitter and lotsa videos. Maybe a few short public appearances, just to prove she's alive.
Deadpan or punch drunk? Choices. It's all comedy.
What's this hole in my rump steak? - 1959 dining hall joke.
The joke I heard was asking madam secretary how fast she could type. She was offended.
Typical feminist.
I type very fast myself, enough to get interesting consciousness-free finger memory mistakes, but nobody asks me.
Xmas said...
The last joke was really funny. The Trump ad in the middle of her response was good for a laugh. Uncomfortable comedy isn't my bag, but Zach Galifianakis's dumb act can be fun.
There's a silly little kerfuffle on Twitter about this. The Federalist did a column complaint about the lack of tough questions for Hillary. Each of the lines, however were direct quotes from columns criticizing Jimmy Fallon for going easy on Trump, but substituting HRC and ZG.
The left reacted exactly how you would expect.
I find this sort of stuff really uncomfortable to watch. First of all, there's a clear goal with these sorts of things: Make the candidate appear more natural, affable, and generally more appealing. In order to do this, jokes have to be made at the candidates expense. We like it when people are able to take a joke. So the whole thing is desperately contrived to begin with, which makes it that much worse when it fails.
Unfortunately for Hillary, she's just not that likeable. She's usually comes off as stiff and robotic. It also makes the decision for her to behave in a deadpan fashion seems a bad one. If your goal is to change peoples impression of her to a less robotic one, then maybe it's a bad idea for her to play it straight. That said, I don't know what the right move would be other than to not do it at all. I think the fact that they've done this is a measure of just how desperate they are.
Some people enjoy watching people they dislike fall on their faces. I generally don't. I tend to dislike "cringe comedy". I find myself empathizing with the target too much.
MadisonMan said...
I watched it. I feel like I wasted time. Back to work.
D.D. Driver said...
Wow. Tough crowd.
How does President Obama like his coffee? Like himself...weak?
That's does funny stuff.
She went the Margaret Dumont route. She made fun of her lack of humor. She's a pretty good straightman. I think she would really be good playing the part of Deuce Gigolo's perplexed client. If worse comes to worst, she can always pursue a career in Hollywood.
Etienne said...
Urban Dictionary says:
stuck up - person or animal who thinks they are above the rest, but who should really take a dose of their own shit.
I know this is probably a dated term, as my generation used it in the 5th grade. We'd have these girls who wouldn't come to our record party because they thought we dressed funny, were hoodlums, or worse, wanted stick our tongues in their mouth.
All of which were true, but besides the point...
If worse comes to worst, she can always pursue a career in Hollywood.
...where people love her.
I give her credit for the attempt at humor. Zach G is definitely funny, too.
But, she isn't funny and isn't a good straight "man" either.
To the extent her recent medical issues have impacted her public persona, she's never been likable, never. My basic response is that she's fake in these presentations, beyond just scripted.
That was -- odd. Not in the good way, either.
mockturtle said...
A.A. naively asked: Why did the NYT get that wrong
Wake me if the NYT prints a retraction because that would be hilarious.
bleh said...
Her physical condition doesn't even look good in a scripted, controlled environment. Watch her face and hands after the Trump ad came on. Tell me that doesn't scream "confused nursing home resident."
I am worried about the way Clinton is sitting unbent at the waist. There's a huge pillow against her back.
This cannot be good. My sympathies.
damikesc said...
That screenshot for this post makes it look like one of the most awkward interviews eve with somebody who is in the tank for her as thoroughly as humanly possible.
Zach G is definitely funny, too.
I've seen his stand-up. Can't agree. He took a joke about all of his ex-girlfriends forming a singing group and killed it.
Not killed it good. Killed it dead.
His close was very funny. Indeed she didn't laugh at that joke.
I only watched snippets but she did often look to be drolly amused to me -- much better than in that 50 points ahead ad. Imagine how Rubio would have acted and you see she actually handled the interview with some skill.
The woman has really bad posture and almost no energy. There's no light behind those eyes. She's fading.
MacMacConnell said...
Obama says, "She should just be herself". WTF!
Gusty Winds said...
Was that funny? Seemed more like a train wreck in an attempt to get Bernie voters enthused.
For Hillary, its hard to fake that your laughing your way to the Presidency, when Trump is actually laughing his way to the Presidency.
wildswan said...
All the real questions can only be presented as tasteless jokes.
As for how Hillary looked I'm thinking she must look awful most of the time and so her staff see this as OK and very funny. Like going into a bad clothing store and thinking you see something OK. But when you get out you realize your taste was ruined by the awfulness around you and the Hawaiian floral tent is not amusing.
Watched it a second time . Just not funny. Watched him with Charlize Treron, still not funny.
For contrast, Sascha Baron Cohen, who sets up people for "serious interviews" and makes them look foolish. > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLK1aQsOKfg
And, Cohen tries to punk Donald Trump https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUTnu1MaeX0
bigkat said...
You don't get south of the border humor. NYT is Mexican now/ Press 2 for Anglo Edit
Deadpan, Bedpan, whatever.
Rogers writes: “She really set us at ease early on by being so game to do it,” Mr. Aukerman said, “and one of the first few jokes she laughed really loud at, so we had to reset.”
I think that's what is being referenced later on in the article. That is, they wanted her to appear deadpan throughout and she laughed at the steaks joke and they had to do it over.
The LameStream Media© is all in. They'd drag her rotting corpse over the finish line if it comes to that...
eric @ 12:17
If she hadn't driven Vince Foster to suicide it would probably be funny.
Birches said...
@ nanopod
Agreed. When I watched it, I was thinking that she wanted to pull off the Brad Pitt Between Two Ferns. She is no Brad Pitt, therefore it seems awkward in spots. Zach was great though.
Here's the Brad Pitt one for anyone interested in how these things usually go.
"Who's your designer? I want to look like a librarian from outer space." That was a good line. Attention: Marc Jacobs and Elon Musk, get on it!
If she loses the election will she start pushing Chelsea to run for office?
I watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith last night. They don't seem made for each other. It's possible Aniston is a bitch too, of course. She's an actress.
Hillary will never have piles--she's a perfect asshole. That's my take.
Wow. Not funny at all. She will regret doing that interview.
Is this her Nixon-on-Laugh-In moment?
I think that both this clip and the one where she asks why she isn't 50 points ahead are very illuminating. I find the "50-points" clip interesting because it shows her blind spot to the fact that many people don't like her. She literally cannot understand why anyone wouldn't support her over Donald Trump; I think that she thinks they would have to be either stupid or evil not to back her, because from her perspective, she is a manifestly good person.
Like most people, Hillary sees herself as the heroic figure in her own personal narrative. Sure, she's done some sketchy things, but she tells herself that she's done them in the service of the greater good. What we see as criminality and deception, she sees as necessities done to advance her cause, and indirectly, all of the people that she wants to help (Her definition of "help" might not be the same as ours). She, like most of us, tells herself little white lies about her actions and motives. Nobody views herself as the villain in the narrative; if she did, she would slit her wrists, unless she was a psychopath. Even truly evil people like Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc., whose actions resulted in the deaths of millions, did not see themselves as villains, but rather as heroes doing distasteful things to help their people. This is not to say that I agree that villains are actually heroes, only that they see themselves that way.
One way or another, this election is going to be a Hillary Clinton tragedy. Either she loses, which would be a personal tragedy for her, or she wins, which would be a tragedy for the country, and perhaps for Clinton herself, as she would likely be exposed as unsuited for the job and would face the withering effects of the world's most stressful job. She already seems old, and likely would seem a lot older very, very quickly.
Just_Mike_S said...
apparently the writer of the article, like most Americans, couldn't bear the prospect of watching yet another unveiling of "the human Hillary".
As noted, I can see her as a Margaret Dumont type straight woman. The jokes are funnier when she purses her lips at them. I could see her in "Ace Ventura and Hillary Meet The Mummy". Jim Carrey and Hillary Swank have a lot of chemistry together, and our Hillary was born to play the mummy. She would bring credibility to any undead role. Hollywood beckons.
@Birches -- thanks for the Pitt link. I recommend the end when Pitt represents the audience and acts out our every desire.
I can't believe ZG has been doing this since at least 2009.
It's clear this has become a place where HRC haters like to hang out. What is also clear is how desperate some people are to express their HRC hating. Wow: she did not laugh at an asshole joke. If she had, would the analysis be
HRC agrees that Trump is an asshole? Do we want presidential candidates calling each other asshole?
Must be a slow anti HRC-news day.
Karen of Texas said...
Wow. If I missed it upthread, Ted Cruz endorsed Trump. Gave six very cogent reasons why. This should get even more interesting. Many #nevertrump peeps were vocal Cruz supporters. What say they now?
Cruz is a sellout of course.
darrenoia said...
Wow. I can’t stand Hillary. I would never vote for her. But I actually was expecting her to do a lot worse based on the description. She clearly went for the straight woman role.
I’m amazed that Galafianakis zinged her as much as he did. The email comment at the end in particular. Amazed.
@Karen of Texas, this may surprise you but politicians do politics. The latest RCP "no learners" electoral college map has Hillary at 272 electoral votes to Trump's 266. Trump wins by holding the states that lean in his direction and taking away any of the following states currently leaning towards Hillary: New Hampshire, Colorado, Michigan, Wisconsin, or Pennsylvania. There other states Trump can win to go up over 269, but New Hampshire is more likely than New York, for instance.
This is the point where it makes political sense for Cruz to do the obvious.
Big Mike:
Tell Governor Kasich. And the entire Bush family.
Thuglawlibrarian said...
Ted Who?
@Big Mike - politicians gonna politic - never doubted that for a moment. My "wow" I guess is for the inevitable blowback. Reading the comments, many Cruz diehards were sure he was cut from a different cloth, so to speak. They were positive he would never "play politics". I wonder how many of his followers who were going to stay home because he isn't the nominee will now still stay home because he's just like all the others.
I'm somewhat surprised he finally came out but agree now is the time to make a move. Cruz has proven he can be pragmatic. And he sees what a disaster Hillary would be. Good for him. He's playing ball the way the democrats do.
sane_voter said...
Pretty much every Funny or Die I have watched has fallen into the Die category.
Mary Beth (the commenter) said...
It shouldn't need explaining, but obviously it does. The point was, why did the NYT feel the need to say that she laughed loudly at that joke?
If it's okay for her to call Trump supporters names, it's no worse for her to call him names.
@Birkel, I don't think the Bush family is paying much attention to ordinary working stiffs like me (well, I used to be a working stiff -- I retired last year).
Karen of Texas says: I'm somewhat surprised he finally came out but agree now is the time to make a move. Cruz has proven he can be pragmatic. And he sees what a disaster Hillary would be. Good for him. He's playing ball the way the democrats do.
I agree! You can't hold grudges in the political game without cutting your own throat. Smart move. I was also pleased that Rand Paul is at least voting for Trump.
Aunty Trump said...
Is her eye wandering in that screen grab? Looks like it to me.
Char Char Binks said...
Lame. Neither one is funny.
Laslo Spatula said...
I really like this bumper cars of tags:
Hillary and pop culture; meat.
It's already haiku without any unnecessary extra syllables.
I am The Replacement Laslo.
dunce said...
She might have been been more sedated than sedate by Dr Jack Daniels.
Bad Lieutenant said...
Serious question, dunce, and also for Dr. K and any medical people. Alcohol is contraindicated with a lot of medications. But we know, it is not in dispute, that Hillary likes to pull a cork. Could she be in actual danger? Contrariwise, if she is walking the line, could her erratic behavior be caused by withdrawal symptoms?
Jonathan Graehl said...
Clinton deadpan over "asshole" - brutal humor. Scott Adamsian.
Zach said...
If she was intentionally trying to be the straight woman, I think it was a poor choice. The straight man has to set jokes up, or make them funnier by reacting to them. The Brad Pitt interview looks like he's being unresponsive, but he's actually participating a lot -- a lot of the jokes have the form of set up, response, punch line, so that Pitt's response is a scripted part of the joke. The gum gag involves the gum starting with Pitt, going to Galifianakis, then going back to Pitt for the big finale.
Hillary doesn't look like she's in on the joke, mug for the camera, or get off any funny lines. She looked a million times better on Jimmy Fallon.
NYT masturbation aside, she did surprisingly well in this..albeit edited pop culture "nugget"/turd.
Zach was nice enough to point out her attendance at the latest Trump wedding as well as the ongoing hang between Ivanka and Chelsea.
...., ....
(Btw, Zach G mentions if she loses, "country goes to shit")
Unknown @ 4:55
Hey! You have the Daily Kos and the Democrat Underground and all that lame ass occupy shit. OK? Intelligent conservatives got this.. Deal with it.
Nah. Trump was, undoubtedly, an asshole to Cruz. But Hillary is still worse, in every conceivable way. Voting for the worst option out of spite is stupid and Cruz, say what you will, is not stupid.
I'm late to this party but must say, I give Clinton credit for playing along and Galifianakis credit for delivering zingers ... real zingers. It reminded me of the Jeb bit as an Uber driver for Jimmy Kimmel: kind of amusing but kind of self-abasing. And one last thing: Hillary looked old.
mikee said...
I remember a time, not so long ago, before Nixon appeared on Laugh-In in a desperate attempt to appear "with it" to American youth, who knew better, when the US president and candidates for that office chose venues for appearances wherein the dignity of the office was upheld, not degraded.
Coolidge in an honorary Indian feathered headdress is not undignified; he treated the occasion with the dignity the Native Americans deserved, and was treated with dignity by them.
Bill Clinton playing sax on late night TV - popular, but undignified.
"Plastic Turkey" and "Mission Accomplished" by GW Bush - both perfectly respectable, but endlessly hammered as horrible by the lying press.
Dukakis in a tank - perfectly good fun for him, but endlessly hammered as horrible by the Republicans.
Kerry in a cleanroom - well, it was Kerry, his presence as a candidate for President was as degrading to the office of President as was Ted Kennedy's candidacy, and almost as much as Hillary's candidacy.
I loved it when the Federalist did a parody of the Left losing their shit over Trump on Fallon by using similar wording for a critique of this...and they completely didn't get the mockery.
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What’s Behind a Good Night’s Sleep?
Researching placebo effects in insomnia treatment.
Global HIV Response
Reprioritizing the local
Honoring A Legend
The 18th Annual Founders Day event in April honored the contributions of Donald “Coach” Knowlan, MD (R’60, W’82, H’04), doubling as a 90th birthday celebration with 200 of his closest friends, former...
Research and Education: Synergy in Community
Since its launch eight years ago, the annual MedStar Health-Georgetown University Research Symposium brings together researchers, residents, academics, and collaborative partners from across the...
What’s (not) in my white coat?
I spend every day in the cath lab, wearing scrubs and a surgical gown or lead apron, doing heart catheterizations and valve replacement procedures, with no outpatient or hospital duties.
Cons of Probiotic Labels
Shopping for a good probiotic? Reading the labels may not provide enough information to weigh the options, according to a research team led by Georgetown University Medical Center.
Reflections on medicine with Julie Silver, MD (M’91)
Associate Professor and Associate Chair, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Harvard Medical School
Priming Cells for Better Cancer Treatment
New research has uncovered a mechanism thought to explain why some cancers don’t respond to a widely used form of immunotherapy called “checkpoint inhibitors” or anti-PD-1.
I found a home at Georgetown
When he finished high school in 1951, the fastest kid on Long Island had track scholarship offers from top schools around the country, allowing him an education his family could otherwise not afford.
The Long Walk
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Books & Boots
reflections on books and art
All posts in category Theatre
Sheppey by Somerset Maugham (1933)
Sheppey is a stoutish, middle-aged man with a red face and twinkling eyes. He has a fine head of wavy black hair. He has a jovial, well-fed look. He is a bit of a character and knows it.
(Cast description)
Sheppey is unlike the other four Maugham plays I’ve read in that it is about working class characters. Or maybe lower-middle-class is a better description, the same class as H.G. Wells’s ‘counter-jumpers’, the cheeky shopkeepers who feature in the British movies of the 1930s and 40s – like the sharp-tongued bottle blonde who keeps the tea room in Brief Encounter or the working class types from In Which We Serve.
Sheppey is a cockney barber. His real name is Miller, but he was nicknamed after the Isle of Sheppey where he was born and has kept it. He doesn’t work in any old barbershop but in Bradley’s, a high toned barbers’ in Jermyn Street.
Act One is set in Bradley’s shop. Sheppey is shaving a customer while Miss Grange does his nails, both of them chattering and bantering away. The proprietor Bradley pops in and out, as does the pushy young assistant, Albert. The subject of horse-racing comes up, among others, and Sheppey banters with the customers about winning and losing bets. There’s a little bit of comic business as his customer, a Mr Barton, swears he’ll never buy one of these fancy new hair products but Sheppey works on his vanity and eventually manages to flog him one.
Throughout the act customers and characters make passing references to times being hard. It is the period of the Great Depression. Sheppey has had the start of the morning off work because he had to go to court to testify against a man he saw breaking into his neighbour’s car to steal his coat. ‘Decent chap he was, too,’ according to Sheppey. Waiting in the lobby of the court he got to see a number of plaintiffs being brought in, many of them respectable-looking folk. ‘It’s hard times out there,’ sighs the man being shaved. ‘Ah yes,’ Miss Grange agrees. ‘But that’s no excuse to start taking other people’s belongings. If everyone did that society would be in a right state.’
Then all this mundane activity is eclipsed with the surprise news that Sheppey has won a bet on the horses, and not just any old bet but a ‘residual’ winning, which amounts to all the winnings not otherwise claimed on the day. A type of jackpot.
When Sheppey’s wife phones the shop in a fluster to tell them the news, his boss Mr Bradley, Albert and Miss Grange all wonder if he’s won maybe £100, a decent bit of money, can’t complain etc.
But then a reporter from the Echo knocks and enters, having tracked Sheppey down for his front page story, and tells the flabbergasted staff that Sheppey has won £8,500!
The odd thing is that, when he’s told, Sheppey’s really not that bothered. He already has an idea how to spend it: pay off the mortgage on the house in Camberwell which he shares with his dear lady wife and then buy a cosy little cottage down in Kent, where he comes from. Possibly buy a little baby Austen car.
Of course the others congratulate him and, as it’s nearing the end of the working day, Sheppey nips out to buy a decent bottle of champagne from the pub across the road. To the others’ surprise, he returns with the rather seedy and over-made-up Bessie. Miss Grange takes Sheppey aside to complain that she’s a well-known prostitute, but Sheppey says all he knows is that she’s often in The Bunch of Keys pub at closing time (where he stops in for a pint before heading home) and she was looking sort of lonely, so he invited her back to the shop.
The champagne is opened, everyone has a glass, toasts Sheppey, natters and chatters, then one by one they leave till it’s only Sheppey and Bessie.
I know what you’re thinking but the ‘inevitable’ doesn’t happen. Instead Bessie bursts into tears at how friendly and cosy all the barbershop staff are, and how lonely and sad she is. And hard-up. What a difficult life it is walking the streets, specially in the rain, how worried she is that she won’t be able to afford the rent and’ll be kicked out of her flat if she doesn’t get a client – if she doesn’t ‘click’ – this evening. Her hard luck story picks up on the theme of the Depression which we’d been hearing about earlier. Times are hard all round.
To our surprise Sheppey collapses to the ground in a dead faint. Bessie kneels over him, unfastening his collar as he slowly regains consciousness. Drunk? No. Stress? Surprise? heart attack? Stroke? Nobody knows. He slowly gets to his feet and feels a bit better.
Given the chat earlier about the hard times of the Depression, and the evidence we’ve had in his gentle chat of Sheppey’s soft heart – once he’s recovered himself after a drink of water and is feeling alright again, the audience is not surprised when Sheppey gives Bessie five bob to buy herself a decent dinner. And so they go their separate ways. Kind man.
It’s a week later and we are in Sheppey’s cluttered, over-decorated, upper-working-class living room in Camberwell where we find his kindly wife and his daughter, Florrie.
Florrie is teaching herself French. She is engaged to a nice boy, Ernie, who’s a teacher at the County Council School and wants to take him to Paris on honeymoon and surprise him with her command of the language. Mrs Miller is not so sure. ‘You know what them Frenchies are like, Florrie.’
In comes Florrie’s young man, handsome Ernest. Over the course of the scene we hear him impressing Florrie and Mrs M with cheapjack literary quotations. He also has ideas about going into politics. What the people need is a leader, a strong leader with personality. (The play was first performed in the year Hitler came to power). He insists he isn’t a snob but asks Florrie to start addressing him as Ernest. No Prime Minister was ever called ‘Ernie’. And from now on he’ll call her Florence. ‘Ooh Ernie, I do love you,’ simpers Florrie.
Mr Bradley, Sheppey’s employer, calls in to ask if they know where Sheppey is. He’s called round to make the significant step of offering Sheppey a partnership in the firm. Immediately Mrs M and Florrie start imagining what they’ll do and how they’ll live with Sheppey’s name up over the frontage of a Jermyn Street boutique. They’ll hire a cook and a proper cleaner to do the place twice a week.
At which point Sheppey enters and delivers the thunderbolt that he’s not only refusing the partnership but he’s quit the barbershop. After 15 years.
He explains to Mr Bradley, his wife, Florrie and Ernie that he’s been a-readin’ of the Bible and was knocked all of a heap by that bit when our Lord says:
‘Sell all that thou ‘ast, and distribute it to the poor, and thou shalt ‘ave treasure in ‘eaven; and come and follow me.’
Incredulous, his family try and talk him out of this mad decision with a welter of counter-arguments: the rich have more money, let them start charity; random charity harms the recipients, it needs to be organised by the government; anyway there’s the survival of the fittest (pipes up half-educated Ernie); if some people go to the wall, that’s all the better for society. Best to leave ’em be.
But all these arguments and pleas bounces off Sheppey. Seeing the state the plaintiffs at court were reduced to the other day, while he was in the waiting room, made him reckon something is wrong, and if he can help a bit, well – why not.
After a muttered exchange with Florrie and Mrs M, Ernie pops out to fetch the doctor. Sheppey clearly isn’t well.
Then there’s a knock at the door. It’s Bessie the prostitute. Sheppey has invited her to come and stay. Then another knock and it’s Cooper, the man caught trying to steal the neighbour’s coat who Sheppey saw in court. Turns out Sheppey has invited him to stay as well. He’ll share a bed with him.
By the time the doctor – Doctor Jervis – arrives, his family are convinced Sheppey has gone mad, but the doctor finds his answers to his questions perfectly reasonable. Sheppey has money and food and he knows Bessie and Cooper are homeless and hungry. Sheppey’s plan, he tells the doctor, is to feed the hungry and clothe the naked and shelter the homeless. Just as our Lord suggested. The doctor shakes his head in surprise but has to concede that Sheppey isn’t actually mad.
Florrie plumps down into the nearest chair and bursts into tears.
Same setting – the Camberwell front room – some time later.
Bessie catches Cooper sneaking out with Sheppey’s snuff box and bars his way. They have a stand-off with her accusing him of letting down their benefactor, while Cooper says Sheppey won’t miss it.
Then Sheppey strolls in, asks very good naturedly for it back and when Cooper makes a bolt for it, trips him up and is swiftly on top of him rifling his pockets till he finds the snuff box. ‘Why did he want to steal it?’ ‘Why to pawn it for a few bob for some drinks.’ ‘Well, why didn’t he say so?’ and Sheppey gives him a few shillings. Cooper is genuinely mystified. He thinks the whole set-up is screwy and says he’s not coming back.
Bessie also tells Sheppey that she won’t be staying. Turns out she’s bored. She likes the excitement and the company of the streets.
Sheppey has just come back from seeing the doctor. What the rest of the family know but he doesn’t, is that Dr Jervis had arranged for a psychiatrist to sit in on the session.
Now Dr Jervis arrives on the scene to announce that Sheppey’s heart is a bit weak and he ought to go in to ‘hospital’ to rest. The rest of the family know that by ‘hospital’ he really means a mental home, but Sheppey cheerfully refuses, saying he’s never felt better.
Florrie and Ernie leave to go to the pictures. Sheppey apologises to his wife for disappointing her, for not using the money to get a servant as she had hoped. She says it’s alright. They kiss and are reconciled. Sheppey sits in the old armchair and the lights go down to suggest the passage of time.
It is now the evening: There’s a knock at the door and it opens. It’s Bessie except… now she speaks correctly, in BBC English, not cockney. Something’s wrong.
Sheppey wakes from his doze and starts groggily talking to her. He realises it’s not the Bessie he knows. She tells him she is Death. She has come for him. He’s as relaxed and cocky about this as he was about winning the £8,000. They chat for a bit. He’ll feel kind of bad leaving his poor wife a widow. Still he imagines Florrie and Ernie will be happy to get the money.
Death responds in the same neutral factual tone. ‘You will come with me now.’ Sheppey admits he’s been feeling tired recently, he was looking forward to a rest in the home the doctor had recommended. ‘What’s on the other side?’ he asks but Death says she doesn’t know. It’s not her job to know. Sheppey admits he feels ready to go now. They exit through the back door.
The lights go up and Mrs M, Ernie and Florrie return. His wife has been to buy the kippers she promised Sheppey to nip out and fetch. She asks Ernie and Florrie to lay the table, which they do. Then Ernie pops a record on the gramophone and they have a bit of a smooch. Mrs M comes in with dinner on a tray and asks them to call up to Sheppey. He isn’t there. Then they notice him in the old armchair. Mrs Miller goes up to him and realises he’s sone dead.
It’s a comedy, it has a humorous tone and some sharp comic lines.
FLORENCE: Ernie’s very respectable. And when you’re very respectable you always believe the worst of people.
MRS MILLER: Florrie, whatever are you doing of?
FLORENCE: Praying to God.
MRS MILLER: Not in the sitting-room, Florrie. I’m sure that’s not right.
But like most Maugham there’s a sting in the tail and a sliver of seriousness throughout. I don’t really know the plays of George Bernard Shaw but I imagine this is what they’re like – dominated by a thesis – in this case the conceit of what happens when an ordinary bloke wins the lottery but decides to take the advice of Jesus about loving your neighbour quite seriously.
The prospective son-in-law, Ernie, in particular seems more like a type than a person – the half-educated, incredibly earnest but worryingly confused would-be political activist, trotting out half-understood quotes from literature, along with a mish-mash of ideas from Darwinism to socialism, with a dash of worrying eugenics thrown in.
The opening scene where Sheppey shaves the customer while Miss Grange does his nails isn’t particularly funny. Sheppey fainting dead away at the end of Act One isn’t the result of a funny line or plot development – he just faints. Similarly, him inviting two poor people to his house isn’t intrinsically funny – any humour is very dependent on the actors playing Mrs M, Florrie and Ernie being able to pitch their hypocritical and half-educated outrage at just the right note.
Beneath it all there is a serious issue.
Or is there? The idea of the man who takes Christianity seriously and so embarrasses everyone around him by showing up their hypocrisy and self-interest in fact feels very old. And it isn’t really developed very far – charitably taking in two guests isn’t exactly earth-shattering. Specially when they both promptly decide to leave.
The final scene featuring Death was overshadowed in my mind by more or less the same scene which features in two movies of my youth, Woody Allen’s Love and Death (1975) and Monty Python’s Meaning of Life (1983), particularly the latter where Death leans over the table at a dinner party and taps the home made pate as the reason why all the guests have died of food poisoning, and are now coming with him.
Except Maugham was there 50 years earlier.
In fact, apart from some of the comedy lines, and the amusingly repellent character of the priggish young Ernest, the thing I liked most in the play was Sheppey’s conversation with Death, and particularly when Sheppey admits how tired he feels.
SHEPPEY: Fact is, I’m so tired, I don’t seem to mind any more.
DEATH: I know. It’s often surprised me. People are so often frightened beforehand, and the older they are the more frightened, but when it comes to the point they don’t mind really.
Maugham was only 60 when Sheppey was staged but I wonder if that was how Maugham felt about age and death. Relaxed. Detached.
In fact Maugham was to live (rather shockingly) for another 32 years. I hope I feel that relaxed when it’s my time to go. If I’m even in a position to understand what’s going on, that is.
Sheppey was revived in London in 2016.
Guardian review of Sheppey
Selected Plays by Somerset Maugham on Amazon
Sheppey Wikipedia article
Somerset Maugham’s books
This is nowhere near a complete bibliography. Maugham also wrote countless articles and reviews, quite a few travel books, two books of reminiscence, as well as some 25 successful stage plays and editing numerous anthologies. This is a list of the novels, short story collections, and the five plays in the Pan Selected Plays volume.
1897 Liza of Lambeth
1898 The Making of a Saint (historical novel)
1899 Orientations (short story collection)
1901 The Hero
1902 Mrs Craddock
1904 The Merry-go-round
1906 The Bishop’s Apron
1908 The Explorer
1908 The Magician (horror novel)
1915 Of Human Bondage
1919 The Moon and Sixpence
1921 The Trembling of a Leaf: Little Stories of the South Sea Islands (short story collection)
1921 The Circle (play)
1922 On a Chinese Screen (travel book)
1923 Our Betters (play)
1925 The Painted Veil (novel)
1926 The Casuarina Tree: Six Stories
1927 The Constant Wife (play)
1928 Ashenden: Or the British Agent (short story collection)
1929 The Sacred Flame (play)
1930 Cakes and Ale: or, the Skeleton in the Cupboard
1930 The Gentleman in the Parlour: A Record of a Journey From Rangoon to Haiphong
1931 Six Stories Written in the First Person Singular (short story collection)
1932 The Narrow Corner
1933 Ah King (short story collection)
1933 Sheppey (play)
1935 Don Fernando (travel book)
1936 Cosmopolitans (29 x two-page-long short stories)
1937 Theatre (romantic novel)
1938 The Summing Up (autobiography)
1939 Christmas Holiday (novel)
1940 The Mixture as Before (short story collection)
1941 Up at the Villa (crime novella)
1942 The Hour Before the Dawn (novel)
1944 The Razor’s Edge (novel)
1946 Then and Now (historical novel)
1947 Creatures of Circumstance (short story collection)
1948 Catalina (historical novel)
1948 Quartet (portmanteau film using four short stories –The Facts of Life, The Alien Corn, The Kite and The Colonel’s Lady)
1949 A Writer’s Notebook
1950 Trio (film follow-up to Quartet, featuring The Verger, Mr. Know-All and Sanatorium)
1951 The Complete Short Stories in three volumes
1952 Encore (film follow-up to Quartet and Trio featuring The Ant and the Grasshopper, Winter Cruise and Gigolo and Gigolette)
1963 Collected short stories volume one (30 stories: Rain, The Fall of Edward Barnard, Honolulu, The Luncheon, The Ant and the Grasshopper, Home, The Pool, Mackintosh, Appearance and Reality, The Three Fat Women of Antibes, The Facts of Life, Gigolo and Gigolette, The Happy Couple, The Voice of the Turtle, The Lion’s Skin, The Unconquered, The Escape, The Judgement Seat, Mr. Know-All, The Happy Man, The Romantic Young Lady, The Point of Honour, The Poet, The Mother, A Man from Glasgow, Before the Party, Louise, The Promise, A String of Beads, The Yellow Streak)
1963 Collected short stories volume two (24 stories: The Vessel of Wrath, The Force of Circumstance, Flotsam and Jetsam, The Alien Corn, The Creative Impulse, The Man with the Scar, Virtue, The Closed Shop, The Bum, The Dream, The Treasure, The Colonel’s Lady, Lord Mountdrago, The Social Sense, The Verger, In A Strange Land, The Taipan, The Consul, A Friend in Need, The Round Dozen, The Human Element, Jane, Footprints in the Jungle, The Door of Opportunity)
1963 Collected short stories volume three (17 stories: A Domiciliary Visit, Miss King, The Hairless Mexican, The Dark Woman, The Greek, A Trip to Paris, Giulia Lazzari, The Traitor, Gustav, His Excellency, Behind the Scenes, Mr Harrington’s Washing, A Chance Acquaintance, Love and Russian Literature, Sanatorium)
1963 Collected short stories volume four (30 stories: The Book-Bag, French Joe, German Harry, The Four Dutchmen, The Back Of Beyond, P. & O., Episode, The Kite, A Woman Of Fifty, Mayhew, The Lotus Eater, Salvatore, The Wash-Tub, A Man With A Conscience, An Official Position, Winter Cruise, Mabel, Masterson, Princess September, A Marriage Of Convenience, Mirage, The Letter, The Outstation, The Portrait Of A Gentleman, Raw Material, Straight Flush, The End Of The Flight, A Casual Affair, Red, Neil Macadam)
2009 The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham by Selina Hastings
by Simon on April 14, 2018 • Permalink
Posted in Books, play, Theatre
Tagged 1933, Ada Miller, Albert, Bessie LeGros, Dr Jervis, Ernest Turner, Florence Miller, George Bernard Shaw, Great Depression, Jermyn Street, Miss Grange, Monty Python, Sheppey, Somerset Maugham, Woody Allen
Posted by Simon on April 14, 2018
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2018/04/14/sheppey-somerset-maugham/
The Sacred Flame by Somerset Maugham (1928)
You’re everything in the world to me, Stella. People have been most awfully kind to me, and it’s not till you’re crocked up as I am that you find out how kind people are. They’ve been simply topping. (Maurice in The Sacred Flame)
This is the first Maugham play I’ve read which isn’t a comedy. It’s set in the same spiffing topping simply ripping upper-middle class milieu as the others but has a serious theme. The central male figure, Maurice Tabret, was badly injured in a plane crash six years ago. He has been bed-ridden ever since and will never walk again. He is looked after by a live-in nurse and his mother, kind Mrs Tabret, also lives with him. Dr Harvester has dropped by to check up that Maurice is alright and Maurice – from his bed – is enjoying thrashing the doctor at chess. All of them are waiting up for Maurice’s brother, Colin, to return from the opera with Maurice’s wife, Stella.
When they arrive there’s much faffing about with taking Maurice out of the room to be changed into his pyjamas: the nurse goes off to make bacon sandwiches, Colin goes down into the cellar to find champagne and ice and Mrs Tabret takes the doctor for a stroll round the garden (it is a fine evening in June), leaving Maurice and Stella together.
Their dialogue is bright and jaunty in Maugham’s stiff-upper-lip way, with Maurice telling Stella she’s been simply spiffing to stand by him since the accident and Stella all tearful for her dear, kind husband. But then the dialogue pierces this bright smiling surface and Maurice admits he knows he will never be better, never be able to walk, will never be a proper husband to her, never (it is hinted) have sex with her again – and he bursts into tears. Stella cradles his head and herself weeps tears of love and devotion and says she isn’t worthy of his love etc.
The other characters return to the stage, the nurse with the sandwiches, Colin with the champagne, Mrs Tabret and the doctor from the garden. Maurice has wiped his eyes and tells everyone he is feeling very tired. The nurse wheels the bed (all this time Maurice has been is lying in a bed with castor wheels on the legs) into the other room, the doctor takes his leave and Mrs Tabret retires to bed, leaving the stage to Colin (Maurice’s brother) and Stella (Maurice’s wife).
Once they are completely alone she bursts into tears and cries ‘What have we done? What have we done?’ It becomes clear to the audience that they are having an adulterous affair and Stella feels wretched at betraying her poor husband.
Same setting i.e. the living room, on the next morning. A family friend, Major Liconda, has dropped by to see Colin, and we learn the Maurice died in the night! What! That’s quite a bombshell.
Doctor Harvester arrives, then other family members enter. Dr Harvester is bluffly assuring everyone that Maurice must have died of heart failure when the nurse, unexpectedly, intervenes.
The entire act is dominated by the nurse’s personality and by her stubborn insistence that the death was not an accident. Suddenly we are in an Agatha Christie whodunnit. Major Liconda and Dr Harvester are both sceptical and become angry with the nurse’s insistence that there should be a proper post mortem on Maurice’s body, and that she will speak to the coroner if Dr Harvester refuses to go himself.
At first they all think she is talking balderdash, but slowly she wins them over with her case: Maurice was being prescribed chloral, a new painkiller. There were five powerful pills in his tablet bottle last night. This morning they were all gone. Whodunnit?
Major Liconda now assumes a weightier role. He was in the colonial police force out in India. He reluctantly agrees with the nurse that there is evidence of something amiss, and that the authorities must be informed. The characters then discuss (with varying expressions of disbelief) the possibility that a) someone murdered Maurice or b) that Maurice committed suicide. As in an Agatha Christie, the author gives each of the characters a possible motive:
Doctor Harvester knew the pain Maurice was in and maybe wanted to ease his passing
Stella held him during his agonised outburst so feels pity for his suffering – but, on a more cynical reading, might have wanted Maurice out of the way so she could marry Colin
Colin wanted him out of the way so he could marry Stella
Just possibly his sweet old mother also wanted to put him out of his misery
Working all this through takes up most of Act Two. But right at the end comes another bombshell. The nurse had become progressively more unpleasant to Stella, bitterly pointing out how unaware she was of Maurice’s true suffering; how all Maurice’s medicines had to be cleared away whenever she came by so as to avoid upsetting her; how Maurice always put on a brave face for Stella – while only she, the nurse, saw the real Maurice, his despair, his black moods, his constant pain, his agonies.
During her monologue Stella realises that the nurse was secretly in love with Maurice.
But this isn’t the bombshell: the bombshell is that the nurse tells the assembled cast that Stella is pregnant. Stella had fainted briefly in the first act: only the nurse drew the correct conclusion.
Since Maurice was crippled and impotent, this can only mean she has been unfaithful to her ‘much-loved’ husband. The entire cast stand frozen in horror at this revelation. And it is just at this point that the housemaid comes in, announcing that lunch is served, bursting the tension, and allowing the audience to go off to the theatre bar buzzing with speculation about what will happen next!
Half an hour later, after a very strained luncheon, the same cast assembles in the drawing room and resumes battle. Colin quickly steps forward and admits he is the father of Stella’s baby. To everyone’s surprise, Mrs Tabret says she’s known about it all along.
Even more surprisingly, she gives a long speech about how she approved of Stella taking Colin, her other son, as a lover: she approved it on the grounds of sexual health. Stella was a healthy sexual young woman and Mrs Tabret could see her pining for lack of physical intimacy. She worried that in time it would make her hate Maurice. Therefore her motherly love for Maurice made her wish Stella to take a lover so that she would remain loving and kind to Maurice.
But it’s also an opportunity for the Author to insert the Message which comes over so strongly in most of Maugham’s stories and all of his novels – a plea for tolerance and understanding. People, and life, are more morally complex than we give them credit for. We should help, support and love each other, not rush to narrow, moralising judgement.
Alas, that is precisely the attitude the nurse takes. She is stung into paroxysms of disgust by Mrs Tabret’s attitude and then turns her scorn on Stella, who she calls a fake wife and a deceiver, contrasting her life of pampered ease with the hard work the nurse has always had to carry out. This rises to a kind of hymn of love, where the nurse describes how much she loved and reverenced Maurice, washing his wasted limbs, caring for his toilet needs, putting up with his despairing moods. The nurse despises Stella. The two women, from different classes, with different life experiences, square off over their different forms of ‘love’ for the dead man.
After this emotional climax, the nurse goes to pack her bags and is replaced centre stage by Major Liconda. He now adopts the Inspector Poirot role, questioning Stella and bringing home to her how bad her position will appear in court: pregnant by an adulterous lover, had some kind of upsetting argument with husband last thing at night, was the last person to see him etc.
Things are looking ominous when Mrs Tabret sagely and gently steps forward. She did it. She killed her son.
Maurice often couldn’t sleep and she would tiptoe down to chat to him, with the lights off, long after both Stella and the nurse had gone to sleep. They talked about his childhood in India. Soon after his accident Maurice made Mrs Talbert promise she would help him if the pain ever became too much to bear.
Mrs Talbert makes the simple point that we are not mono-people – we are all made up of multiple facets and aspects, and have complex relationships with the numerous people in those around us. She saw a Maurice no-one else did. And when she saw how much he was suffering, and when she realised that Stella was pregnant with Colin’s child and would sooner rather than later begin to betray Maurice emotionally, eventually revealing that she loved him no longer – well, as a mother, Mrs Tabret couldn’t bear the thought of the pain this would cause her son.
Maurice couldn’t sleep and so it was Mrs Talbert who got the extra pills of Chloral, dissolved them in his water, watched him drink the whole thing at a gulp, and held his hand as he fell into his last sleep.
The cast are shocked into silence, as I imagine the audience would be. Even the nurse. The nurse is all dressed and packed and on the verge of leaving, but now – she relents. She abandons her shrill demand for an inquest. She tells the doctor to go ahead and sign the death certificate saying that Maurice died peacefully in his sleep. She will swear in court that the pills were by Maurice’s bedside i.e. no-one else was involved in his death. She has learned her lesson.
The doctor and Major Liconda are emotional at the nurse’s change of heart and mercy to the old lady. She embraces Mrs Tabret. They are reconciled. They must both learn to live without the man they loved but, as Mrs Tabret points out – so long as they continue to love him, he will live on in their hearts.
All the characters talk in the dated manner of a vanished class. All the characters are at pains to keep up appearances and maintain a stiff upper lip. At its worst the play descends (or rises) to heights of melodramatic bombast – the shrill competition between Stella and the nurse about who loved Maurice most feels melodramatic and there are quite a few other passages of over-ripe emoting (‘No, I loved him best’).
And at all the moments when the question of law, murder, the evidence and so on become dominant, it feels like we have dropped into a hammy episode of ITV’s Poirot. I doubt this play could ever be reasonably revived on a modern stage.
And yet, despite all these drawbacks, the overall effect is intense and harrowing. As in so many of Maugham’s short stories, the flimsy, 1920s, upper-class scenario in which the scene is initially set, fades into the background as the psychological intensity of the situation takes grip of the reader’s imagination.
If analysed rationally, all of the characters and the whole set-up seem hopelessly artificial – and yet, by the end of the play, you feel you have been on an exhaustive tour of all the human emotions and responses aroused by the plight of a bed-ridden paraplegic in those closest to him.
Despite everyone talking like characters out of Jeeves and Wooster, when I put the play down I was shaking.
In fact the play was revived in 2012. The Guardian reviewed it:
Guardian review of The Sacred Flame
I am struck by Michael Billington’s last line: ‘Whatever Maugham’s flaws, he certainly knew how to write for women.’ All four of the Maugham plays I’ve read give the strongest parts to women.
The Sacred Flame Wikipedia article
Posted in play, Theatre
Tagged 1928, Colin Tabret, Dr Harvester, Major Liconda, Maurice Tabret, Mrs Tabret, Nurse Wayland, Somerset Maugham, Stella Tabret, The Sacred Flame
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2018/04/12/the-sacred-flame-somerset-maugham/
The Constant Wife by Somerset Maugham (1927)
CONSTANCE: I’m tired of being the modern wife.
MARTHA: What do you mean by the modern wife?
CONSTANCE: A prostitute who doesn’t deliver the goods.
Another spiffing comedy of manners in three acts. As usual it is a cynical-amoral-witty take on modern marriage making comic capital from the way the professional upper-middle classes talk lightly about fidelity and infidelity and make sweeping comic generalisations about husbands and wives; but The Constant Wife is distinguished from the other two Maugham plays I’ve read by the surprisingly blunt and unillusioned viewpoint of the central character.
Constance is married to the successful surgeon John Middleton. After 15 years of marriage he is as attentive and loving as ever but often absent at work. Constance’s mother (Mrs Culver) and sister (Martha), come to visit her, both of them bursting with the news that Constance’s husband is having an affair with her best friend, Marie-Louise.
Also visiting is Constance’s friend Barbara, a successful businesswoman, head of an interior design consultancy, who is offering to take Constance into partnership.
Both Mrs Culver and Martha ask Constance probing questions about her relationship with John, with Barbara chipping in. This adds up to a quartet of women all making sweeping and witty generalisations about men, women and marriage designed to prompt knowing chuckles from the audience. Maugham is never as sparkling as Wilde but his ‘sophisticated’ drawing room banter, and the jaded air with which the women discuss men, men’s nature, men’s simplicity, men’s guilelessness and so on, is often quite funny.
‘Do you really think that men are mysterious? They’re like children.’
‘They’re like little boys, men. Sometimes of course they’re rather naughty and you have to pretend to be angry with them. They attach importance to such entirely unimportant things that it’s really touching… I think they’re sweet but it’s absurd to take them seriously.’
‘Men go off so dreadfully, don’t they? He may be bald and fat by now.’
And much more in the same vein.
More striking to me was the moment when Constance dismisses one of her mother’s generalisations about women with, ‘You are not what they call a feminist, mother, are you?’
I knew we had the New Woman in the 1880s and 90s, that the Edwardian era was the Age of the Suffragettes, the 20s the decade of the Flapper – in other words women have been in process of rising up and speaking out in more or less every decade since the 1880s – but I was surprised to learn that our contemporary word ‘feminist’ was in sufficiently widespread use that Maugham could deploy it in what is designed to be an accessible, middle-brow comedy to raise a laugh.
Similarly, I was very struck by the way Barbara is portrayed quite simply as a no-nonsense businesswoman who approaches her friend to join the firm (seeing as Constance has a good sense of interior decoration and design). Struck that here on the popular stage in 1927 – 91 years ago – women are presented as perfectly capable businesswomen with no irony or humour:
CONSTANCE: I don’t think John would like it. After all, it would look as though he couldn’t afford to support me.
BARBARA: Oh, not nowadays, surely. There’s no reason why a woman shouldn’t have a career as much as a man.
Modern feminism gives the impression that pioneering women only broke into the world of business in the last few decades and are still struggling for equal pay and senior positions. (On the same theme, it’s notable that the wife of Charles Strickland, the painter who runs off to Paris then the South Seas in Maugham’s novel, The Moon and Sixpence, in order to support herself sets up her own typing agency which becomes a great financial success – all this sometime in the Edwardian decade.)
Anyway, the four women discussing how awful men are, and husbands in particular, with lots of hints about the state of John and Constance’s marriage, are interrupted by the arrival of the very same John and – by a coincidence – of pretty little Marie-Louise. There’s polite chat for a bit, then Marie-Louise complains of a knee injury and John invites her into his consulting room to ‘examine’ it. The other women all look at each other. I think we are pretty much meant to realise that John is having a fling with Constance’s best friend. The other women depart.
Having established the framework of Constance’s friends, and the main issue – John’s adultery – the second part of Act One introduces an old flame of Constance’s, Bernard Kersal, who has just arrived back from Japan, where he runs a business.
There is some preliminary comedy – Constance had kept her mother with her in case Bernard turned out to be fat and awful, so she could quickly dispense with him; but since he turns out to be tall with a good figure, Constance bustles her mother out of the room so she can recline graciously on the divan and listen to his charming compliments.
Bernard says he has always loved her and that is why he never married. ‘Really, darling, how frightfully sweet of you,’ Constance drawls. After she’s enjoyed Bernard’s adulation for a while, John re-enters the room to say he’s just off to his club. Constance introduces him to Bernard and John suggests Bernard come round that evening to keep his wife company for dinner, while he’s out, unintentionally setting them up for further romantic dalliance…
Two weeks later in the same setting, in the same room at Constance’s house.
Martha is alone with Bernard and takes the opportunity to tell him that Constance’s husband, John, is having an affair with Marie-Louise. Bernard can’t believe it, they seem like the perfect couple, John is such a gentleman etc.
Martha leaves as Constance comes in and Bernard tells her he loves her with all his heart while Constance puts him off with amused witticisms.
Bernard and Constance exit as Marie-Louise arrives in a tizzy to see John. She is in a panic because she thinks her husband, Mortimer, suspects their affair, John tells her to calm down.
Martha and Bernard return, then Constance and Mrs Culver (Martha and Constance’s mother) so that the cast is pretty much all there when Marie-Louise’s husband – and John’s best friend – Mortimer Durham bursts into the room red in the face with anger. In front of everyone he accuses Marie-Louise of having an affair with John, on the basis of finding his cigarette case under her pillow.
At which point Constance, gripping Marie-Louise’s hand and looking meaningfully at John to stop him saying anything, performs an absolute tour de force of creative lying, swearing to Mortimer that it is her cigarette case, that it is there because Marie-Louise came round for dinner with her and John last night, then she (Constance) accompanied her on the walk back to her (Marie-Louise’s) house, went up to her rooms to chat while Marie-Louise got ready for bed, then sat chatting to her for a while: she’d been wondering where the dratted cigarette case had got to. Her explanation is a lot longer than this, but this is the gist, along with offering to call in her servants to confirm the whole story.
Very slowly Mortimer is talked out of his fury until he ends up puffing and gasping and eventually meekly apologises to Constance and to Marie-Louise for making this baseless assertion. Marie-Louise now speaks for the first time and finds herself having to act the Aggrieved Wife, dissolving in floods of tears and saying what a beast Mortimer has been, humiliating her in front of all her friends etc. Eventually Mortimer begs to make it all up to her, and goes off with Constance’s strong recommendation that he buys his wronged wife the fine pearl necklace at Cartier’s which she’s been pining for.
So Mortimer leaves and the assembled cast breathe a great sigh of relief. Then all the follow-ups take place, most notably both John and Marie-Louise are forced to confess that they have in fact been having an affair. Constance calmly and adroitly deals with John and Marie-Louise in turn, then with her sister and her mother.
Constance puzzles all of them by being so matter of fact about it. In fact she shocks husband and mother by bluntly stating her rather cynical position: being a modern wife in the upper classes means being a kept woman, supported in a life of luxury in return for sex and running a disciplined and respectable household.
She stuns John by telling him what a great relief it was to her when, ten years ago, at the same time that she realised she had stopped loving him, she realised that he had stopped loving her too. Since then she has kept up all appearances but has no illusions about men; if John wants to have his little dalliances, well, why not?
‘But he’s having an affair with your best friend!!’ squeals her mother. All the better replies Constance. She knows Marie-Louise is a woman of good character who won’t corrupt her husband; comes from a good home, so won’t want to steal him; and has lots of money, so won’t bankrupt him – she is the Perfect Mistress.
Many of the ways Constance phrases her rather breath-taking cynicism are very funny and have something like the real Wildean bite.
CONSTANCE: I think most married couples tell each other far too much.
I particularly liked the way Constance complains about how she’s had to spend six months fighting off the hints her mother, sister and other friends have been dropping like crazy about John’s affair in order to give the appearance that she didn’t know. ‘It really is so tiring trying to keep oneself in the dark, you know!’
One by one the others leave, until she is alone with her old boyfriend, Bernard. He too is stunned by the stark cynicism of her beliefs:
CONSTANCE: When the average woman who has been married for fifteen years discovers her husband’s infidelity it is not her heart that is wounded but her vanity. If she had any sense, she would regard it merely as one of the necessary inconveniences of an otherwise pleasant profession.
CONSTANCE: Even if I did [love you], so long as John provides me with all the necessities of existence I wouldn’t be unfaithful. it all comes down to the economic situation. He has bought my fidelity and I should be worse than a harlot if I took the price he paid and did not deliver the goods.
The Act ends with everyone having left the stage except Constance, who phones her friend Barbara to say that, Yes, she would like to go into business with her.
Exactly the same setting, one year later. Martha and Barbara bring us up to date, explaining that immediately after the scene we just saw in Act Two, Marie-Louise persuaded Mortimer to take her on a year-long holiday round the world. Now Constance announces to them that she is taking a six-week holiday in Italy. She’s been working hard for her friend Barbara’s company, and is now taking a well-earned break.
There is then a sequence of broad comedy: John learns that Marie-Louise is on her way round to see her oldest bestest friend (Constance) and so hesitantly asks Constance if she could tell Marie-Louise that their affair is absolutely positively over. Alright says Constance. He exits. Then Marie-Louise arrives, all smiles and gifts from round the world and stories about how she quite made it all up with Mortimer (‘For a man, he’s really quite clever’) before hesitantly asking Constance if she thinks she could possibly tell John that their affair is positively definitely over. Constance promises to break it to him gently, while the audience chortles at the way both lovers are saying the same thing to Constance.
But knowing her best friend pretty well, Constance knows this can only mean one thing: sure enough, Marie-Louise confesses that she and her husband met a simply charming colonial officer on the ship back and she’s now madly in love with him. Which is where Constance gives another demonstration of her point-blank unsentimental honesty, which upsets Marie-Louise and still has the power to unnerve a modern audience. She calls Marie-Louis a tramp to her face.
CONSTANCE: You take everything from your husband and give him nothing that he pays for. You are no better than a vulgar cheat… I think you a liar, a humbug and a parasite… but I like you.
Marie-Louise departs understandably miffed. John re-enters and asks whether Constance told her what he asked her to. Oh yes, she told her alright.
Now commences the most surprising part of the play, for it turns into a bit of a feminist tract. Constance explains to John why she has been working really very hard in her friend’s business. It’s not because she was bored, it was to earn money. Why? Because only money can make women really free.
CONSTANCE: There is only one freedom that is really important and that is economic freedom.
And now she drops the bombshell: she is going away on holiday, yes, but she is going with Bernard. Why? Because she wants to feel loved again, one last time before she becomes middle-aged. She forces John to concede that she and he don’t really love each other any more, they just live in companionable partnership. Why shouldn’t she enjoy her prime while it lasts?
John is understandably miffed but Constance keeps wryly pointing out how understanding, indulgent and forgiving she was of his affair with Marie-Louise, so why can’t he be as tolerant of her little peccadillo. And this is where her financial independence comes in:
JOHN: What makes you think that I am going to allow you to go?
CONSTANCE [good-humouredly]: Chiefly the fact that you can’t prevent me.
At this point Mrs Culver (Constance’s mother) enters, is apprised of the situation, and delivers the social wisdom of the older generation, namely that men are biologically made to be unfaithful and women just have to put up with it:
MRS CULVER: Men are naturally polygamous and sensible women have always made allowances for their occasional lapse from a condition which modern civilisation has forced on them. Women are monogamous. They do not naturally desire more than one man and that is why the common sense of the world has heaped obloquy upon them when they have overstepped the natural limitations of their sex.
And much more in the same vein. Constance is equally cynical but in a new, improved, liberated way. She replies that modern wifedom is a form of parasitism and prostitution. A wife exchanges her freedom for room and board. Well, she has just paid John for her estimated room and board for the previous year and so is morally in the clear.
CONSTANCE: [Women in the past] were dishonest [if unfaithful] because they were giving away something that wasn’t theirs to give. They had sold themselves for board, lodging and protection. They were chattel. They were dependent on their husbands and when they were unfaithful to them they were liars and thieves. I’m not dependent on John. I am economically independent and therefore I claim my sexual independence.
I dare say the West End audience was meant to exit the theatre and discuss and argue about these ideas all the way home. I don’t really understand the Daily Telegraph critic when he called Maugham a misogynist: for the third play in a row it is a woman who comes out on top as the cleverest, shrewdest, free-est agent in the play, while the men appear – and are explicitly described as – vain, narcissistic, emotionally shallow and easy to manipulate.
Constance [to John]: A man thinks it is quite natural that he should fall out of love with a woman, but it never strikes him for a moment that a woman could do anything so unnatural as to fall out of love with him. Don’t be upset at that, darling, it is one of the charming limitations of your sex.
Comic climax
The final scene reverts from this rather serious debate to a more obvious comedy of manners: John becomes more outraged the more Constance calmly describes her intention to spend six weeks with her old flame touring Italy, but Constance has a clever riposte to each of his protestations and underlying all of them the threat that she will reveal to ‘society’ everything about his fling with Marie-Louise. This would ruin his reputation and jeopardise his career (demonstrating that it wasn’t only women who were oppressed by the social mores of the times).
Instead, Constance forces John to grit his teeth and greet Bernard who now arrives to collect her. At this point Maugham squeezes more comic potential out of the scene, because Constance hasn’t told Bernard that she’s told John everything. Bernard thinks that he and Constance going away together is a great big secret and so he makes a big thing of saying an elaborate and fake Goodbye to Constance, purely for John’s consumption, even though we – the audience – know that John knows everything.
Why? Constance had explained to John that it would hurt Bernard’s sense of ‘honour’ if he felt John knew he was spending six adulterous weeks with his wife: therefore, to salve his ‘manly’ sense of ‘honour’ both Constance and John must pretend to Bernard that she hasn’t told John anything.
Thus Constance plays a final game on her lover, making him appear foolish, and on her husband, making him appear and feel even more foolish. Men are so silly, aren’t they?
And so it is that when he is shown into the room by the butler, Bernard makes a big show of asking whether Constance is definitely travelling alone (she says yes) and then casually remarks that he, too, has planned a little trip abroad – maybe they’ll bump into each other in Naples, which is where he’ll have to catch his ship back to Japan? ‘Yes, perhaps,’ Constance says, pretending to be surprised.
Throughout which John, her husband, is forced to nod and smile and say ‘Yes dear’ to this gruesome charade, all the time knowing she has him wrapped round her little finger!
The Constant Wife has the last laugh.
The Constant Wife Wikipedia article
Guardian review of a 2011 revival
Review of the 1975 revival starring Ingrid Bergman
Tagged 1927, Barbara Fawcett, Bernard Kersal, Constance Middleton, Feminism, John Middleton, Marie-Louise Durham, Martha Culver, Mortimer Durham, Mrs Culver, Somerset Maugham, The Constant Wife
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2018/04/11/the-constant-wife-somerset-maugham/
Our Betters by Somerset Maugham (1923)
This is another of Maugham’s well-made comedies. Apparently it was written during the Great War, in 1915, but not staged in England until 1923 because it was thought that it might alienate American public opinion, which we were trying to persuade to enter the war.
It is set in the cynical but stylish High Society we are used to from Maugham, but this time concerns a group of Americans, not posh Brits – Americans who have married into British or European ‘Society’.
There is a sort of chorus of three mature American matrons who have married British, French or Italian aristocrats:
Pearl, Lady Grayston who married George Grayston, a baronet
Minnie Hodges who married and then divorced the Duc de Surennes and now is always in love with some beautiful young man or other, currently the gorgeous pouting young Tony Paxton
Flora van Hoog, who married an Italian aristocrat to become the Princess della Cercola but, when he began taking mistresses, abandoned him to come and live in London and now pursues philanthropic causes and charities which she pesters her friends about.
There is also a couple of older American men who have made their way in British society: the brash, loud and over-dressed Thornton Clay, and the corrupt 70-year-old American Arthur Fenwick who made his fortune selling poor quality food to the American working classes and is now opening stores to do the same here in London.
Together these five represent a variety of ways older Americans have integrated and exploited their position. Set against them are the Younger Generation who are trying to make their life decisions, namely whether to marry for love or money (a dilemma which would have been familiar to Jane Austen a century earlier).
Young Bessie Saunders is heiress to an American fortune staying with her older sister, Pearl. Pearl’s husband, Lord George Grayston, very conveniently doesn’t live with her, allowing her to conduct her gay social life and numerous flirtations in London’s High Society without hindrance. All three acts are set in her houses – Act One in her grand town house in Grosvenor Square Mayfair, and Acts Two and Three in Pearl’s country retreat at Abbots Kenton, Suffolk.
Bessie has only recently arrived from America and been swept off her feet by the giddy whirl of London society. Back in the States she was engaged to a nice, unspoilt, young American gentleman, Fleming Harvey when she was 16 and he 18. Soon after arriving in London and seeing the wider world she wrote him a letter breaking off the engagement. She is being wooed by an English aristocrat, Lord Harry Bleane. Now Harvey has arrived in London and, understandably, commences trying to woo her back.
Meanwhile Act One introduces the love triangle between the good looking, slender, immaculately dressed but poor young Brit, Tony Paxton, with whom the ‘Duchesse’ (original name Minnie Hodgson, daughter of a Chicago millionaire who made his money in pork) is besottedly in love. It only slowly emerges that Tony is revolted by the desperation of the Duchesse’s passion and has become smitten with Pearl, precisely because she is so playfully unavailable.
Comedy is extracted from the interaction of all these types – the three cynical ladies, the earnest and easily shocked young American boy Harvey, the sincere English Lord Bleane, the spoilt brat Tony Paxton, with Bessie playing her part: only slowly does it emerge that the play hinges on Bessie’s choice of whether to stay in England and marry an English lord in order to join the kind of amoral if stiflingly ‘correct’ lifestyle the three ladies live – or whether to reject European corruption and return to pure and innocent America (the subject of many of Henry James’s novels).
And there is something deeply comic about the way all these amoral characters pursue their cynical schemes against the backdrop of the impeccable formality of the grand house in Grosvenor Square Mayfair and at Pearl’s country retreat at Abbots Kenton, Suffolk, with their silent servants, especially the butler, Pole.
Just the existence of a dutiful and obedient butler, overhearing all their selfish schemes with complete discretion, is itself funny. ‘Very good, m’lady.’
Speaking of Funny, Maugham isn’t Oscar Wilde. His bon mots don’t ring and dazzle. But the play does have quite a few moments of brightly comic dialogue.
Bessie: Does George know?
Pearl: Who is George?
Bessie: Don’t be absurd, Pearl. George – your husband.
Fleming: Has it occurred to you that he wants to marry you for your money?
Bessie: You could put it more prettily. You could say that he wants to marry me with my money.
Clay: Some of these American women are strangely sexless.
Fleming: I have an idea that some of them are even virtuous.
Pearl [with a smile]: It takes all sorts to make a world.
Duchesse: I know he’s lying to me, there’s not a word of truth in anything he says. But he’s so slim I can never catch him out.
Pearl: You’re the very person we want, Thornton. An entirely strange young man has suddenly appeared on my doorstep and says he is my cousin.
Clay: My dear Pearl, that is a calamity which we Americans must always be prepared for.
Duchesse: He makes me so miserable but I love him… He wants to marry me, Pearl.
Pearl: You’re not going to!
Duchesse: No, I won’t be such a fool as that. If I married him I’d have no hold over him at all.
In Act Two, at Pearl’s country house, various interactions give us a deeper sense of the characters – of the three older women’s American backgrounds, the men they married, how they’ve coped with divorce and separation and so on.
Fleming is still really sweet on Bessie but she is agonising over whether to accept Lord Bleane. Fleming would like to hate Bleane but is disappointed to discover that he’s actually a good guy who tells Bessie he was originally attracted to her money (the fact that she was rich being broadcast all over London by her elder sister, Pearl) but that now he really is in love with her.
Their story is, for this middle part of the play, eclipsed by the passion with which pretty young Tony Paxton a) is revolted by the cloying over-attention the lurid Duchesse lavishes on him b) is powerfully attracted to Pearl. Against the latter’s better judgement Paxton persuades her to accompany him to the tea-house in the garden. Duchesse, in her violent jealousy, suspecting something is up, despatches innocent little Bessie to fetch her handbag from the same tea-house where Bessie sees… something so horrible that she rushes back into the drawing room where all the other characters are playing cards (are the couple having just a snog or actually having sex??). When Minnie provocatively asks what on earth is wrong with her, it prompts the tear-filled admission that she has seen Pearl and Tony… together!
When Pearl and Paxton make a nonchalant entrance to the drawing room it is to discover that everybody knows (know what? were they having a snog? a grope? full-on sex? it is never explained).
Tony has blown his relationship with Duchesse. More fatally, the doting old millionaire Fenwick has all his fond illusions about Pearl being pure and romantic utterly burst. ‘The slut, the slut’ he repeats, in angry despair. Given that he substantially funds her lifestyle this is a major blow.
Act Three takes place in the same drawing room on the afternoon of the following day. The atmosphere is very strained, Pearl didn’t come down from her bedroom for either breakfast or lunch, the innocent menfolk (Clay and Fleming) and women (the Princess) tiptoed around the furious fuming Duchess while Fenwick was purple with rage. Their conversation informs us that the previous evening turned into a blazing row with words exiting the dementedly angry Duchess’s mouth that none of them had ever heard before, as she screamed her rage at Tony and Pearl.
The Duchess is pouring her heart out to the Princess when Tony sidles in looking for cigarettes. There is a comic scene where she turns on him, all outraged pride and anger, insisting he leave the house immediately and will be booted out of the flat in London which she pays for him to live in, while Tony is all sullen pouting. But the comedy is in the slow insinuating way in which their positions shift until the Duchesse is begging Tony to be nice to her and, eventually, she makes the Grand Concession of relenting and saying she will marry him – to which Tony’s only response is ‘Does that mean I’ll be able to drive the Rolls-Royce?’ By this stage we have grasped the depths of the Duchess’s helpless infatuation and the true extent of Paxton’s shallow selfishness.
The remaining scenes showcase Pearl’s brilliantly scheming to redeem a tricky situation: it will take all her wiles and cunning.
First she makes an entrance looking fabulous. Then she holds tete-a-tetes with Bessie, Clay, the Duchess and Fenwick. She reveals all her cunning ploys to Clay (and thus, to us, the audience).
1. To the Duchess she reveals that she has been phoning all her contacts that morning and has managed to get Tony a job in the government, nothing too demanding. Over the course of feline dialogue she is slowly able to win the Duchess back round to being her friend.
2. Then she explains to Clay how she is going to play the little-girl-lost for Fenwick whose self-image is of a Strong Masterly Man; she will play weak to encourage his narcissistic sense of his own masculine resilience, and so it pans out. After five minutes she has him back eating out the palm of her hand under the delusion that he is magnanimously forgiving her.
Only Bessie, her sister, sees straight through her and indeed through the lifestyle of all these Americans-in-Europe.
She has a big scene where she begs Lord Blaine to release her from their engagement. At the centre of the scene is the Author’s Message: Bessie has seen that English girls are bred up to responsibility and dignity and so know how to handle and manage their wealth; whereas the American women who marry into the British aristocracy have no sense of noblesse oblige or duty, but simply see it as an opportunity for frivolous pleasure, hence their silly flirting and superficial romances. It is not them, it is the niche they move into, which turns them into monsters. As Bessie has seen at close quarters how her beloved elder sister Pearl has become a monster of manipulation. Bessie is determined not to become like that.
The play ends with her witnessing her sister’s pièce de resistance – first thing that morning Pearl had sent her Rolls to London to collect the most fashionable dancing teacher in London and beg him to come down and stay the night. When he enters all the guests who swore they would leave in disgust at her behaviour (Fenwick, the Princess, but especially the Duchesse and Paxton) all confirm that they will stay for dinner and dancing. Despite committing just about the worst social crime imaginable (being caught red-handed being unfaithful to her elderly lover and stealing her best friend’s lover) Pearl has manipulated everyone into forgiving and forgetting.
Bessie watches all this with disgust and, in the last line of the play, vows she will be returning to America at the first opportunity.
So it’s a brittle social comedy of comically amoral, upper-class behaviour among rich American title-hunters in England – with just enough of a sting in the tail to elude the censorship but have the more high-minded critics admitting that it does have a sound moral message. It is, in other words, a clever and entertaining theatrical confection perfectly suited for its times.
The play was turned into a Hollywood movie in 1933, directed by George Cukor. Here’s a clip.
It was adapted for BBC radio in 1998.
It had previously been revived at the Chichester Theatre in 1997, with the throaty American actress Kathleen Turner playing Pearl and Rula Lenska as the Duchesse. The fact that Turner plays the same role in the radio broadcast suggests that one led on to the other. The Daily Telegraph reviewed the stage play. I am puzzled why Patrick O’Connor casually calls Maugham misogynist since a) all the strongest characters are women, the men being just foils and pretexts b) the women themselves cover a wide range from the strong, clever, scheming Pearl to the genuinely innocent but, ultimately decisive, Bessie.
Daily Telegraph review of Our Betters
Posted in literature, play, Theatre
Tagged 1917, 1923, Arthur Fenwick, Bessie Saunders, Fleming Harvey, Flora van Hoog, George Grayston, Grosvenor Square, Harry Bleane, High Society, Lady Grayston, Maugham, Mayfair, Minnie Hodges, Oscar Wilde, Pearl, Princess della Cercola, Suffolk, the Duc de Surennes, Thornton Clay, Tony Paxton
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2018/04/10/our-betters-somerset-maugham/
The Circle by Somerset Maugham (1921)
Elizabeth: Everyone knows you’re very intelligent.
Clive Champion-Cheney: They certainly ought to by now. I’ve told them often enough.
Maugham wrote 25 plays, the first one, A Man of Honour, performed in 1903, the last one, Sheppey, in 1933. He was spectacularly successful, at one point having four plays on in the West End at the same time.
The Circle was his twelfth play, premiered on 3 March 1921 at the Haymarket Theatre. It’s a social satire in three acts, all of them set in the drawing room at ‘Aston-Adey, Arnold Champion-Cheney’s house in Dorset’.
Arnold Champion-Cheney is phenomenally upper class, a handsome 35-year-old man who is the local MP and plans to make a career in politics. He is obsessive about collecting and placing antique furniture in his house just so, and woe betide anyone who moves it out of place. He has been married to fresh, young twenty-something Elizabeth for three years and they have no children.
The main plot element in the play is that thirty years previously, when Arnold was a little boy, his mother, Lady Catherine (or ‘Kitty’) ran off with his father’s best friend, Lord Porteous (or ‘Hughie’). They went and settled in Italy, since polite society in England would not have accepted them. As soon as Arnold was of age, his father left the big house to him and moved into a cottage in the grounds from where he often went travelling. This weekend, learning through the grapevine that Hughie and Lady Kitty are visiting England, Elizabeth has invited them down to stay at the old house.
When she tells her husband he is appalled and angry. But they are both disconcerted when Arnold’s father turns up from one of his trips. The stage is set, as they say, for various encounters between old Clive Champion-Cheney (the father), Lady Kitty (his wife who abandoned him), between lady Kitty and her son, and between everyone and gruff bad-tempered Lord Porteous.
So that’s the setting or set-up. The plot or events which create an action are that Elizabeth herself is unhappy with Arnold’s boring life, with his obsession with antiques, with having no children and being stuck in the country.
A few other guests are down staying for the weekend and they include a dashing young chap, Edward Luton, who’s a planter in the F.M.S. or Federated Malay States. Early on in the play he tells Elizabeth that he’s hopelessly in love with her. Initially reluctant to even listen to him, as the play progresses and Arnold is frequently sharp and angry with her about inviting his mother and Porteous, Elizabeth comes to think she hates her husband and so, finally, in a big scene, agrees with pleading Edward to run away with him.
So that’s why it’s called The Circle, because the disastrous event in the father’s life (his wife Lady Catherine running off) is about to be repeated in the son’s (his wife Elizabeth running off).
The ‘interest’ of the play (such as it is) is whether the example of the bickering and unhappy couple she sees before her will put Elizabeth off, or whether her lover’s ardent (if naive) pleas and Arnold’s abrupt and rather insulting talk, will encourage her to elope. Over the course of the play we get to hear from both Lady Kitty and Lord Porteous about how their elopement ruined both their lives: Lord Porteous, a Cabinet minister at the time, was often mentioned in high-toned circles as a possible next Prime Minister, but the elopement ended his political dreams; while Lady Catherine found herself outcast from upper-class circles in England, and forced to live in much reduced circumstances amid fake Italian princes and people of dubious reputation. Both are eloquently bitter about how one rash decision ruined their lives.
The scenario could have been written to bring out the bitterness and unhappiness of almost all concerned, but instead it is played for laughs and is often very funny. The fundamental comic strategy is the way all these upper-class chaps and chapesses are so well bred that they all accept the deeply embarrassing situation with impeccable manners. Or try to. Part of the comedy is in them trying to restrain their feelings and preserve a placid manner even when we know they are provoked or angry.
Combined with the preposterously high opinion they all have of themselves. It is particularly funny when Lady Kitty insists that, had Porteous become Prime Minister he would doubtless have made Clive Governor of some colony: Barbados, Hughie suggests? Barbados!!! Lady Catherine storms –
LADY KITTY: Nonsense! I’d have India.
PORTEOUS: I would never have given you India.
LADY KITTY: You would have given me India.
PORTEOUS: I tell you I wouldn’t.
LADY KITTY: The King would have given me India. The nation would have insisted on my having India. I would have been a vice-reine or nothing.
I imagine the sight of upper-class twits arguing about who should govern which part of Britain’s far-flung empire would have struck a 1921 audience as every bit as preposterous as it strikes us now. Maugham, throughout all his chronicles of Malaya, Borneo and Burma, is repeatedly struck by the ridiculousness of the British Empire.
Plus there’s some basic physical comedy, for example the way that every time Lord Porteous gets angry (which is quite often) his false teeth comes loose and he has to beat a hasty retreat. You can see why this kind of thing would have made a reliable, ludicrous, not-too-demanding night out at the theatre in 1921. At a pinch I can see it being revived today and enjoyed in the same way that P.G. Wodehouse novels continue to sell or be adapted for TV, as absurd period pieces which were well aware of their own absurdity even when they were written.
A BBC radio adaptation
Reading plays in silence is a little dry. Actors and directors always put more expression, stage business, coughs, footsteps and other sound elements which bring dialogue and action to life, so I welcomed the fact that The Circle was made into a radio adaptation by the BBC back in 1993.
However, there’s some kind of digital crackle or interference with a lot of the sound and, worse, following it in the book, I noticed that quite a lot of text has been cut to make the plot more streamlined. What was cut was often a lot of the contemporary satire or social references which are precisely what I read old books for. So I listened to enough of the dramatisation to get an aural sense of the characters, then abandoned it and kept their voices in my head as I finished with just the script.
The Circle online
by Simon on April 9, 2018 • Permalink
Posted in Books, literature, play, Theatre
Tagged 1921, Somerset Maugham, The Circle
Posted by Simon on April 9, 2018
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2018/04/09/the-circle-somerset-maugham/
Dirty Hands by Jean-Paul Sartre (1948)
How you cling to your purity, young man! How afraid you are to soil your hands! All right, stay pure! What good will it do? Why did you join us? Purity is an idea for a yogi or a monk. You intellectuals and bourgeois anarchists use it as a pretext for doing nothing. To do nothing, to remain motionless, arms at your sides, wearing kid gloves. Well, I have dirty hands. Right up to the elbows. I’ve plunged them in filth and blood. But what do you hope? Do you think you can govern innocently? (Act V)
This is by far the longest of the four plays in the Vintage collection of Sartre’s plays – Huis Clos is one continuous act of forty pages; The Respectful Prostitute is even shorter at 30 pages – whereas Les Mains Sales has seven acts and is 120 pages long! And I think it’s also the most enjoyable because the characters have time to breathe and expand and become believable.
It is 1944 in the fictional East European country of Illyria and the Russian Army is coming closer. Olga is in a flat used by the Illyrian communist party. Hugo arrives. He has just been released from prison. He is young, handsome, talkative. He has just served two years for the murder of the communist leader, Hoederer. A knock at the door and he hides. Olga opens the door to representatives of the Party, tough guys with guns. They’ve come to kill Hugo, they’ve trailed him here, he’s a liability, a loose cannon, he must be liquidated. Olga pleads for his life and says, ‘Give me till midnight to find out what really happened.’ The tough guys grudgingly relent and leave.
Hugo comes out the bedroom where he’d been hiding. Olga explains he must tell her everything; maybe she can protect him, persuade the others he is trustworthy after all. ‘Tell me everything, right from the start.’ The stage darkens and now begins the majority of the play, which is told as a long flashback detailing the events leading up to the assassination of Hoederer.
(Setting up the threat of Hugo’s ‘liquidation’ in the present is a Hitchcock-like trick, like seeing the bomb being placed on the bus: everything that happens subsequently is charged with menace and suspense. Simple but effective.)
So the rest of the play shows in detail the build-up to the assassination and explores the very mixed motives of young Hugo the assassin.
It is 1942, Hugo has broken with his rich bourgeois family to join the People’s Party. As a callow young intellectual, he has been given the task of editing the party paper and is horribly intimidated by the ‘real men’ of action who surround him.
After a turbulent meeting of the party heads Louis explains to him and Olga that the party’s general secretary, Hoederer, is planning to sell the party out. He is persuading the central committee to go into an alliance with the Fascists and the bourgeois party after the war to create a government of national unity.
Olga and Hugo can’t believe he is a sell-out. Louis hesitates then lets them in on a plan to assassinate Hoederer. Hugo will get a job as Hoederer’s personal secretary. On a night to be arranged he will open the door to the assassins. Hugo bridles: he wants to be a man of action. Let him assassinate Hoederer. Louis hesitates but Olga speaks up for Hugo: let him. OK, says Louis. Pack your bags and take your new young wife, Jessica, with you (oh, he’s married, we realise). Move into Hoederer’s house. Become his secretary. Await orders.
The next few acts introduce us to the shrewd watchful Hoederer, surrounded by tough guy bodyguards (George, Slick and Leon). But by far the most interesting character is Jessica, Hugo’s attractive flighty nineteen-year-old wife. She and Hugo play baby games, play act, role play and neither are sure when the game is over or when they’re playing. This could have been a tiresome embodiment of Sartre’s ideas about people playing roles for others’ consumption, but in fact their young married flirting and flyting is done with a surprisingly light touch and I found very believable. It is Huis Clos but in a comic mode. When Hugo swears Jessica to secrecy then whispers that he’s here to assassinate Hoederer, Jessica bursts out laughing. Hugo’s plight is that no-one will take him seriously. He can’t even take himself seriously.
HUGO: Tell it to me now.
JESSICA: What?
HUGO: That you love me.
JESSICA: I love you.
HUGO: But mean it.
HUGO: But you don’t really mean it.
JESSICA: What’s got into you? Are you playing?
HUGO: No, I’m not playing.
JESSICA: Then why did you ask me that? That’s not like you.
HUGO: I don’t know. I need to think that you love me. I have a right to that. Come on, say it.
Say it as if you meant it.
JESSICA: I love you. I love you. No: I love you. Oh, go to the devil! Let’s hear you say it.
HUGO: I love you.
JESSICA: You see, you don’t say it any better than I do. (Act III, p.156)
The next scene is set in Hoederer’s office, the representatives of the two other parties arrive, the Fascists and the Liberals. There is some interesting political analysis as Hoederer points out to the other two that, with the USSR on the horizon, the Proletariat Party, though numerically in a minority, will soon be supported by the conquering Reds: so they’d better do a deal now. At which point Hugo jumps to his feet, outraged that Hoederer is prepared to do a deal with the bourgeois he so despises, with the bourgeois party leader (Karsky) who actually knows Hugo’s own father and made a point of mentioning it to Hugo on the way in.
Hugo is on the verge of pulling out his revolver and shooting Hoederer then and there, when a bomb goes off in the garden, shattering the window, throwing the characters to the floor. The political leaders are ushered into a safe room, leaving Hugo, the bodyguards and a terrified Jessica. There is now some dramatic irony because Hugo had blurted out ‘the dirty bastards’ just as the bomb went off. He was describing the cynical politicians making this stitch-up, as he worked himself up to shooting, but now has to pretend to Hoederer’s suspicious bodyguards that he was referring to the ‘dirty bastards’ who threw the bomb. In fact Hoederer had already (unwisely) given Hugo a few drinks before the politicians arrived, and now he has a few more to recover from the shock with the result that he gets hammered and starts drunkenly skirting round the fact that it is he who has been sent as an assassin.
They’re not particularly subtle, but these scenes where the callow Hugo teeters on the brink of giving himself away, unhappily revealing himself to be precisely the over-talkative intellectual he’s trying to stop being, while his quick-witted wife covers for him, are more dramatically complex and satisfying than anything in Sartre’s previous plays, whose characters have tended to be schematic and one-dimensional.
In particular, Jessica’s innocent quick-wittedness is a joy to behold. In an earlier scene, when Hoederer’s goons had insisted on searching the new arrivals’ room, Jessica had quick-wittedly hidden Hugo’s revolver in her dress and brazenly invited one of the bodyguards to search her who was, as a result, so red-faced that he only did a cursory job, not finding the gun.
Now Jessica quickly interprets Hugo’s drunken babblings as anger against the ‘dirty bastards’ who threw the bomb and devises other ways of masking what Hugo’s saying. In fact she encourages him to drink more, lots more, until he passes out and Slick and George just laugh at him, thanking their lucky stars they didn’t have a rich privileged upbringing.
Olga in the summerhouse
Cut to the summerhouse which is Jessica and Hugo’s quarters, and Olga is tending the unconscious Hugo, when Jessica returns to the room with a cold compress for his head. The two women confront each other over Hugo’s unconscious body – the scheming, hard, political woman versus the politically naive but sensuous and sharp woman. They wake a groggy Hugo and Olga tells him it was she who threw the bomb. The party’s getting impatient. It’s been ten days and Hoederer’s still alive. She came to finish the job off but botched it. Hugo’s got till tomorrow, then they’ll come en masse. Anyway, whatever happens, the party thinks Hugo’s sold out – he is in big trouble. Being blown up by the bomb would have done him a favour. Olga leaves, climbing over the wall and escaping.
Jessica confronts Hugo with the reality of what he’s promised. For the first time they’re not playing. Hugo admits he can’t believe it, can’t believe he’s a killer, can’t believe that Hoederer’s bright quick eyes will go dull, that blood will seep into his suit, all because he, Hugo, has pulled a trigger. He is over-thinking and over-imagining the deed. But Jessica is no Lady MacBeth; the opposite, she begs Hugo to reconsider and, instead of just murdering Hoederer, discuss the issues, arguing him out of whatever it is that Hugo so vehemently opposes.
At which moment there’s a knock on the door and Hoederer himself enters, to check up on his secretary. The goons told him he’s drunk himself unconscious: is he alright? Having made certain, Hoederer makes as if to leave but Jessica jumps up before him. Now, now is the time for Hugo to do it? For a moment we the audience and Hugo are flabbergasted: what? shoot Hoederer now? No, Jessica means now is the time for the two men to talk, to thrash out their differences, for Hugo to find out if it’s really necessary to kill Hoederer (Jessica obviously doesn’t say this out loud, but we know from the previous dialogue with Hugo that’s this is what she means).
Hoederer explains Realpolitik to Hugo
And this is the lead-in to a very enjoyable scene where Hoederer a) explains the political situation in Illyria b) explains why a political deal with the other parties is necessary c) taunts Hugo with his naive intellectual purity. He’s more interested in principles than men, Hoederer taunts. He doesn’t want to get his pretty little bourgeois hands dirty. Well, Hoederer’s hands are dirty all right, covered in blood and filth.
This works very well as drama; it is written really effectively with Hoederer’s arguments battering Hugo’s feeble denials. When Hoederer has left, even Jessica can see that his arguments were right and, worse, that Hugo knows it, despite all his denials, despite his intention to stay true to his original mission, Hoederer converted him.
But I was also fascinated by Hoederer’s analysis of the situation in this fictional East European country because it closely parallels the analyses of the post-war communist takeover of Europe I have just read in Anne Applebaum’s brilliant history, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-56. Hoederer argues that:
The Proletariat Party cannot take power by itself; the proletariat only make up 20% of the population and not even all of them support the party. Hugo naively says, ‘Let’s seize power’. Hoederer replies that if they seized power, they would quickly be suppressed by the Peasants Party which represents 55% of the population, in alliance with the Fascists who control the army and police.
Hence the need to enter power peaceably in a national coalition.
Hoederer has suggested to the leaders of the Fascists and Bourgeois parties that they set up a national government with six on the fulling council and the Proletariat Party will have three of those delegates. He even – and this chimes exactly with Applebaum’s description – wouldn’t want most of the ministries, just two: the interior and defence, because those are the only two that matter.
But, Hugo says, the Red Army will be across our borders in weeks: why don’t we ride their coat-tails to power? Because, my naive friend, replies Hoederer, they will still have to fight their way across the country and many will be killed; the Soviets will be blamed. Because they Party will forever after be thought to have been imposed by a foreign power rather than rising up to represent the people. Because, even for the national unity government, the country will be a wasteland when peace finally comes, difficult decisions about law and order will have to be taken; the Party can represent itself as a natural outgrowth of the nation and people, and can present itself as opposing these unpopular policies from within government. With control of key industries it can slowly isolate the leaders of the other parties and wait till the time is right to stage a coup.
Hugo hates all this because it is messy and unprincipled and yuk. Hoederer laughs at his naivety and bourgeois prissiness.
Act VI
Next day, the day of the deadline Olga told Hugo he must act or else. Before the working day begins Jessica comes into Hoederer’s office and after a little flirting reveals that Hugo has a gun, and has been tasked with assassinating him. Hoederer knew it all along. Hugo knocks at the door, Jessica exits through the window (reminding me of all the ins and outs through windows in The Respectful Prostitute).
Now Hoederer toys with Hugo, continuing the discussion over whether Hugo has it in him to be an assassin or whether he is too much of an intellectual. Because assassins don’t think at all, have no imagination, just kill. Whereas Hugo has too much imagination, can not only picture the dead body and the blood, but has grasped the political consequences, the cause of the Party set back, no single leader to greet the Red Army, its chance for power maybe irrevocably lost. He deliberately turns his back and fixes a cup of coffee, while Hugo gets the gun out his pocket and holds it trembling, very obviously struggling with himself. Hoederer turns, faces him, says ‘Give me the gun’ and takes it. Hugo collapses, virtually in tears, and says, ‘You despise me.’
Hoederer says he remembers being a naive principled young man. He can help Hugo to maturity, guide him, mentor him. Hugo is almost in tears. But he won’t give up his opposition to the political pact. Don’t worry, says Hoederer: he’ll go to town tomorrow and square it all with Louis (the guy who sent Hugo in the first place). Go back to writing, it’s what you do best; and he dismisses Hugo.
Re-enter Jessica who’s been perched on the window ledge all this time (!) She heard everything. She thinks Hoederer is noble. In fact, she’s realised she’s not in love with her silly immature husband, she realises she wants a ‘real man’ (p.232). Oh dear. The 21st century reader’s heart sinks a little. They look at each other in silence. She’s never thrilled to a man’s touch, sex with her husband makes her giggle. ‘Are you frigid?’ Hoederer asks. ‘I don’t know,’ Jessica replies. ‘Let’s find out,’ says Hoederer and embraces and kisses her.
At just this moment Hugo re-enters the office. Oops. Incensed, he accuses Hoederer of lying to him and stringing him along and sparing him and promising to make him a man because all along he’s just wanted his wife. Hugo springs for the desk where the revolver was left, seizes it, Jessica screams, Hugo fires three shots at Hoederer who crumples in his chair. Enter the bodyguards, George and Slick with guns aimed at Hugo but Hoederer with his dying breath tells them to spare him, it was a crime of passion, that he – Hoederer – was sleeping with Hugo’s wife. And dies.
Act VII
Lights go up on the setting of the first act, as Hugo finishes pouring his heart out to Olga. She keeps asking, ‘So did you assassinate him because of our orders,’ and Hugo honestly doesn’t know. In a typically Sartrean way, Hugo isn’t even sure that he did it: or was Chance the key agent? If he’d opened the door two minutes later or earlier, it wouldn’t have happened. In fact, he was coming back to ask for Hoederer’s help.
It was an assassination without an assassin. (p.234)
Hugo is crushed by a characteristically Sartrean sense of his own unreality. But Olga is pleased. She thinks she can fend off the men who want to kill him. And here comes the punchline, the cynical climax of the play. For Olga explains:
The party line has changed. When they despatched Hugo to murder Hoederer communications with Moscow were poor. Later they discovered that Moscow did, in fact, want the party to go into a government of national unity with the Fascists and bourgeois parties. It would mean saving many lives among the Illyrian army (which would immediately lay down its arms). It would save Moscow embarrassment with the Allies (Britain and the US). The new plan is for the party to join a 6-man government, and the party to have 3 delegates. Hugo is amazed and then bursts out laughing. This is exactly what Hoederer intended, what we saw him proposing to Hugo just a few moment (two years) ago down to the last detail.
Yes, Olga explains, but Hoederer was ‘premature’ in his policy. Meanwhile, another man, now dead, has been officially blamed for Hoederer’s assassination. Now Hoederer has been rehabilitated and… Hugo joins in, ‘You’re going to put up statues to him after the war. You’re going to make him a hero of the party?’ Hugo collapses into helpless tear-filled laughter of despair.
Olga tells him to snap out of it, the Party killers are about to arrive. She is ready to tell them he is a new man, rehabilitated, he will go along with the party line, he will lie about Hoederer’s assassination, he will forget all about and never mention to anyone that he did it. He will live a life of deceit and lies for the greater good.
But Hugo refuses. The only thing that kept him going in prison was that he fired – maybe for personal reasons – but in accordance with the party line. To learn that the line has changed and the act become completely meaningless is too much to bear. He thought that killing someone would make him feel real, give him weight and substance – but he carried on feeling horribly unreal and contingent. Now, now he has the chance to stand up, to act for himself, to make himself real. Olga begs him to stop but as the killer’s car draws up outside, Hugo stands up and walks to the door. He will proclaim his guilt and force them to kill him. It will be his final, defining acte.
Apparently the big and powerful Communist Party of France disliked the play. You can see why.
In purely political terms, this was the decade when Moscow’s concept of Socialist Realism came to be enforced all across the Eastern Bloc. Art, music, literature, all had to be high-minded and inspiring, showing happy workers exceeding their quotas and merrily bringing in the harvest. It’s hard to imagine a more nihilistic, defeatist, cynical and plain anti-communist narrative than Les Mains Sales, hard to imagine anything more completely contrary to the spirit of Socialist Realism, focusing as it does on the amoral political manoeuvring, the lying to its membership, the cynical alliances with its class enemies, and the pointless infighting and murders of the communist party.
Politics aside, the communist party of Illyria comes over as a mob of gangsters, little different in terms of threat and violence from Al Capone and Chicago gangsters of Prohibition. Time and again I am reminded that Sartre and Camus were writing their intense, man-holding-gun fictions during not only the rather obvious violence of the Second World War, but also during the heyday of Hollywood films noirs which they both hugely enjoyed. Camus cultivated a Humphrey Bogart look with his collar turned up and a Gitanes cigarette permanently smouldering in his mouth. The romance, the glamour of being the dude with the shooter, calling the shots. Specially if you yourself are mostly the chap in the library with the pipe and the thick glasses.
As a specimen of intellectual French film noir, as a dissection of the worldview of communist politics in 1947 and 1948, and as pure entertainment, I think les Mains Sales is by far the best of these four plays.
Jessica and sexism
All the male characters utter contemptuously sexist comments either about Jessica in her absence, or to her face, which would get you locked up nowadays. They casually refer to her political naivety, her inability to do anything significant for the Revolution and her liability as distracting ‘bait’ for all the male characters. This was, after all, 25 years or so before the birth of Women’s Lib.
It is, for example, offensive to modern readers when the bodyguards make remarks about Jessica’s attractiveness in the first scene in the big house, and Hoederer is no better, dismissing her as a distraction, saying why doesn’t she ‘scratch her itch’ with Slick or George.
More to the point, there is something sexist about the entire conception of the play which sets the world of passive sensuality (Jessica) against the ‘active’ network of male politics and action (Hugo and Hoederer). With crashing stereotyping the main woman character represents Sex, anti-Politics (although, to be fair, she is balanced by clever calculating Olga, who is smart enough to try and save Hugo, and who, after all, throws a bomb in the middle of the play.)
But despite what we nowadays would describe as the #everydaysexism of the text, Jessica is, by and large, the most attractive character in the play. She is the least hoodwinked, the least deceived. She knows nothing about politics but she knows more about life than her over-intellectual husband, tricks the bodyguards with her nimble-wittedness, and is quite a match for Hoederer. She is the only one who sees through the men with all their high-handed rhetoric to ask the real questions, specifically; why does Hugo want to murder a man he respects and, by the end of the play, has come to love? Why? Fool!
Although it’s ostensibly a play about tough guy men politicking and conspiring, Jessica is – for me – the star of the show.
Despite being ‘the philosopher of the century’ it’s damn difficult to get hold of the movie versions of Sartre’s plays. The Respectful Prostitute seems impossible to track down in any shape or form. Here’s a print of the film version of Les Mains Sales, made in France in 1951. There are no sub-titles and the sound is out of synch for a lot of it, but it gives a stark sense of how stagey the story is. And how French.
Apparently, the French Communist Party were so angry about the play that they tried to organise a boycott of cinemas where the film was showing.
Les Main Sales by Jean-Paul Sartre was first performed in Paris in April 1948. This English translation – Dirty Hands by Lionel Abel – was published in the United States in 1949. All page references are to the 1989 Vintage paperback edition.
No Exit, and Three Other Plays on Amazon
Dirty Hands online
Dirty Hands Wikipedia article
Jean-Paul Sartre Wikipedia article
Reviews of other books by Jean-Paul Sartre
The Flies (1943)
Huis Clos (1944)
The Age of Reason (1945)
The Reprieve (1945)
Existentialism is a Humanism (1945)
The Respectful Prostitute (1946)
Dirty Hands (1948)
Iron In The Soul (1949)
The Last Chance (1)
by Simon on October 24, 2017 • Permalink
Posted in France, French literature, Theatre
Tagged 1948, Dirty Hands, French literature, Hoederer, Hugo, Illyria, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jessica, play, Slick, theatre
Posted by Simon on October 24, 2017
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2017/10/24/dirty-hands-jean-paul-sartre/
The Respectful Prostitute by Jean-Paul Sartre (1946)
A slender play which is hard to take seriously and more a testament to the chronic anti-Americanism of 1950s French intellectuals than any kind of ‘analysis’ of the race issue in America. Like many of Sartre’s plays it presents a plight, a fraught and melodramatic situation, designed to bring out his eternal themes of freedom and responsibility.
It’s a short piece, one act comprising two scenes set in the same rundown front room. Lizzie is a prostitute. There’s a ring at the doorbell. It’s a big black guy in a panic. The lynch mob is coming for him. They’re saying he raped her on the train. ‘Please promise to tell them it ain’t true.’ She promises. He runs off.
Last night’s ‘client’ comes out of the bathroom where he’s been freshening up during all this. He’s a repellently arrogant young white man named ‘Fred’ who treats Lizzie roughly, at one point nearly strangling her, telling her she’s a sinner and the Devil and their bed smells of ‘sin’. That kind of self-hating sex addict. She reminds him that he was kind and loving last night. He violently denies it and contemptuously gives her just ten dollars for her night’s work.
Anyway, this hard-edged conversation reaches a revelation when Fred asks Lizzie if she was raped by the black man on the train last night. His pal, Webster, told him (Fred) that she (Lizzie) was raped. To be precise, Webster told Fred that two black men were raping a white woman when a bunch of white men went to her help, one of the blacks flashed a razor and a white man shot him dead, the other black escaping and jumping off the train. They’ve been chasing him ever since.
Ah. Now we know why the black guy turned up in such a panic at her door just a few minutes ago.
Except that – startled – Lizzie denies this entire story and describes what really happened. Four white guys got on the train pissed as farts, began touching her up, two black guys intervened to protect her, and a drunk white man shot one, the other escaped i.e. the one we just saw knocking on her door.
Fred now asks if that’s the story she’s going to tell (blacks intervening against whites) when she’s brought before the judge tomorrow? Because he – Fred – comes from a famous family, the Clarkes, his Dad is a senator, and he knows the white man accused of the shooting, Thomas, and ‘let me tell you, he is a fahn upstanding member of the community’, and he doesn’t deserve to go to gaol.
Fred offers Lizzie $500 if she’ll tell the judge his version of the story, i.e. lie to incriminate the black man. In fact, he now reveals that he has her testimony to this version of the story already printed out and ready for her to sign. In fact – it now emerges – that’s the main reason he came to visit her last night, to get her to make a false statement. The rest (having sex) was just a, er, distraction.
Lizzie for her part is no angel and fairly racist. She says (in the extremely blunt language of the play) that she doesn’t like blacks (‘I don’t like n******’ p.269) and wouldn’t sleep with no black man. But she insists she can’t lie, she won’t lie, so Fred threatens her some more.
At which point the police knock and enter. They accuse Lizzie of being a prostitute, which is illegal. When she denies it, Fred points to the money on the table which he says he has just paid her i.e. far from meaning all his sweet words of love last night he has utterly used and compromised her in order to blackmail her, and force her to sign the false testimony. And now, we realise, the racist police are in cahoots with him.
Thus the cops swing in behind Fred’s demand that she lie to the judge: they tell her she’ll go to prison for 18 months unless she incriminates the black man before the judge at today’s hearing.
Lizzie still refuses to sign and Fred gives a vile speech asking what value the life of a two-bit whore has in comparison with a ‘fahn upstanding gennelman’ like Thomas? He grabs her and is physically forcing her to her knees to reverence a photograph of fine young Thomas, when his father, Senator Clarke, walks through the door. Intimidated, the cops step aside and Fred lets Lizzie go.
The handsome, soft-voiced Senator then does his spiel, gently reassuring Lizzie that it’s fine, just fine, to tell the truth about what really happened on the train, he admires her, he really does… but maybe she should stop and think, just for a minute, about fine old Mary, his dear old sister, a fine old grey-haired lady, mother of this poor unfortunate boy, Thomas, and how – if Lizzie goes ahead and incriminates him and he gets sent to gaol – well, it’s going to break fine old Mary’s heart.
Furthermore – and at this point the play begins to move from the realm of the extreme into the realms of fantasy – the Senator then does an impersonation of Uncle Sam, speaking kindly to little ole Lizzie and asking her, as with the voice of America itself:
“Here are two men I have raised in my bosom, young Lizzie – a fine upstanding white boy who comes from one of our oldest families, went to Harvard and owns a factory which employs 2,000 workers, ‘a leader, a firm bulwark against the Communists, labour unions and the Jews’ (p.264).
And on the other hand, here is a black man who chisels and dawdles, sings and ‘wears pink and green suits’. Now, which of these should we save, which one is the better American?”
Bamboozled and confused by the Senator’s gentle but grand and domineering manner, by his fine noble appearance and his stirrin’ patriotic tones, Lizzie finds herself in a daze signing the fake testimony — at which point the Senator, Fred and the cops drop all pretense of kindness and concern and simply sweep out. At the last moment Lizzie repents and runs to the door… but it’s too cotton-picking late!
The much shorter second scene is set in the same dingy living room, 12 hours later, the evening of the same day.
The Senator returns to say that Thomas was let off and has been reunited with his dear old mother who has kindly sent her a letter. Lizzie opens the ‘letter’ to find a hundred dollar bill enclosed – not even the $500 which Fred had at one stage promised her – and not even a note of thanks. She is crushed by the contempt, the ingratitude.
The Senator is not fazed by her visible scorn and marches respectably out. Next moment the desperate black guy from scene one climbs in through the window. (I know it’s meant to be dead serious, but all these panic-stricken entrances and exits kept reminding me of the Keystone Kops.) A lynch mob is closing in on him. Just in case we don’t know what that means Sartre spells it out. the lynch mob will tie him up, whip him across the eyes to blind him, then pour gasoline over him and set him on fire (p.269). Maybe castrate him first, you can never be sure.
Lizzie gingerly admits to the black guy that she did reluctantly sign the false testimony confirming that he raped her — but she bitterly regrets it now and she promises to hide him from the mob. She offers him a revolver so he can shoot his way out, but he repeatedly refuses to take it. ‘Ah can’t shoot white folks,’ he repeats, piteously. ‘Hide in the bathroom,’ she tells him.
A couple of lynchers knock on the door and demand to search the place, until Lizzie reveals, to their surprise, that she is the woman who was raped and is the pretext for the hue and cry.
Sartre twists the knife by giving stage instructions that the lynchers are not only shocked, but look at her with fascination and desire, too. Filthy white American hypocrites! Daunted by her claim, they run off to search the rest of the building but kindly promise to come fetch her when they catch the varmint so she can watch them torture him to death.
The black guy comes out of hiding in the bathroom and there’s a brief dialogue. Lizzie is overwhelmed: the whole town, all the men she’s met, the police, the senator and Uncle Sam, the entire country is saying he’s guilty and that she was raped, so insistently that she’s beginning to doubt her own experience. And the black guy, too, admits that he’s feeling guilty, despite having done nothing. Why? Because, as he puts it, ‘they’re white folks’. Thus he is shown as being not just a physical victim, but – worse – a psychological victim of white racism, which uses every institution and implement in its power to convince him he is inferior and guilty.
There’s another knock on the door and the terrified black guy runs back into the bathroom. Enter Fred who excitedly tells Lizzie that they’ve caught and lynched and burned to death a black guy. Admittedly, it was the wrong guy, but hell, all black people are guilty of something, right? Anyway, the point is that watching a black guy being burned alive has made Fred feel horny as hell. He’s run all the way over here not knowing whether he’s going to murder Lizzie or rape her, but now he’s here he’s got a good idea which, and he grabs her and she starts to scream.
In response the black guy comes running out the bathroom. Fred draws a revolver but the black guy pushes him out the way and runs out of the door. Fred runs after him and we hear two gunshots. Lizzie takes the revolver she tried to give to the black guy earlier on, and hides it behind her back as Fred re-enters. She points the gun at him, threatening him. Convinced she’ll do it, the cowardly Fred starts begging for his life.
There then happens a frankly astonishing thing. You might expect a man faced with a gun held by an angry woman to beg for his life or try to coax her round. Instead, Fred gives a long speech pointing out that she can’t shoot him because the Clarke family he comes from are the embodiment of American history and American values!
The first Clarke cleared the forest hereabouts and killed all the Indians. His son was friends with George Washington and built this town and died fighting for American Independence. His great-grandfather saved a bunch of people during the great fire of San Francisco. His granddaddy came back to town and built the Mississippi Canal and was elected Governor. His daddy is Senator and Fred aims to become Senator, too.
In other words, Sartre makes this vile, hypocritical, bullying, psychopathic racist into a proud epitome of American history and culture, placing his disgusting personality at the centre of the American narrative.
You can’t do it, Fred says. ‘A girl like you can’t shoot a man like me’ (p.275) and, in fact… she can’t.
Fred walks up to Lizzie and takes the gun out of her hands. He tells her that in fact he missed the black guy with those two gunshots she heard, but, what the hell, here’s what he’s going to do for her. He’s going to set her up in a nice place of her own, with plenty of black servants and more money than she ever dreamed of and he’ll come and ‘visit’ her three times a week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and the weekend. Will she be happy with that? A happy little ole girl?
And, come on now baby, tell papa the truth – Did he really give her a thrill last night when they were making love? ‘Yes,’ she meekly replies. ‘That’s my girl,’ he says patting her cheek.
And that’s the end.
The Wikipedia article says this play ‘explores the theme of racism in the American South in the 1940s’. I’d suggest it doesn’t ‘explore’ anything, it hits you over the head with the crudest characters and bluntest plotline Sartre can conceive in order to ram home the shockingly corrupt, hateful and racist situation in the American Deep South of the 1940s. All it lacks is actually burning a black man to death onstage – and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if modern, digitally-enhanced productions didn’t include old footage of lynchings, where they exist – to ram the point home.
The ‘n’ word
Putting aside the Keystone Kops entrances and exits, and the cartoon racism of all the white characters, in a way the most shocking thing about the play for a modern reader is the extremely frequent use of the ‘n’ word. This makes it problematic to quote and I wonder how it is handled in modern stagings.
If you search the online text you find the ‘n’ word is used 39 times in the text (somehow it seems like much, much more, maybe because of the word’s poisonous power) – but what really comes over is the hatred and contempt the white characters pour into their use of it.
More than the hokey plotline, it’s the virulence of the racist attitudes displayed by absolutely all the white characters which is so hard to take, to read, to cope with.
Anti-American
Apparently, when staged in the States the play produced a backlash among critics and audiences claiming it was anti-American. Well, it is. Massively, deliberately, contemptuously, calculatingly. It chimes with what I’ve been reading in Andy Martin about Sartre’s time in New York i.e he hated America, really profoundly hated everything about it.
And it gives substance to something else I’ve read about Sartre. Although he never actually joined the Communist Party, Sartre became steadily more of a Marxist as the Cold War progressed, supporting revolutionary communist aims and devoting his later writings to trying to integrate orthodox Marxist beliefs with his theory of existentialism.
So the way America treated its black population gave him a permanent argument against any claims for the moral superiority of the West vis-a-vis the communist bloc.
Whenever he was quizzed about the horrifying repressiveness of the communist regime in Russia which it was imposing during this period on all the countries of Eastern Europe – namely Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Yugoslavia – Sartre and his fellow Marxists were always able to respond with examples of the appalling racism, the Jim Crow laws, the discrimination and racist violence in America.
Twenty years later, they would be able to throw in the Vietnam War for good measure.
Intuitively, you’re inclined to think that there’s no comparison between, on the one hand, the communists systematically imposing totalitarian rule over an entire society, giving no-one any freedom of speech, assembly or publication, systematically clamping down on any dissent, sending people to labour camps for speaking out of turn, and so on – and the state of contemporary America where most people were free to assemble, speak, write, sing, publish and perform how they wanted to. During this period plenty of black entertainers got very rich – from jazz performers like Duke Ellington and Count Basie through singers like Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, Sammy Davis Jnr. I.e there was a perfectly liberal, anti-racist cosmopolitan white America which was as appalled by the Deep South as any person of colour, and which campaigned and lobbied against racism.
But then again, maybe this is a hopelessly white point of view. Maybe – although I’ve read about it, seen art exhibitions and documentaries and movies about it – maybe I still can’t properly imagine how appalling it must have been to be a black man or woman, particularly in the systematically racist South, but even in many other places in the States, and subject to almost universal derision, discrimination, humiliation and violence, for most of the twentieth century.
A theatrical production
This trailer to what I think is a modern live stage production gives a sense of how scary and intense a really well-staged production of the play might be – though surely some of the hammy plot devices would have to be eliminated to bring out a real sense of terror.
The clip also gives a sense of the how much better the French language is suited to tragedy, to intense emotion and fear, than English, which is an intrinsically farcical language.
There’s also a French movie version of the play dating from the 1950s, which looks like it substantially expands the action, starting as it does in a nightclub. Alas, it seems this movie is not available on YouTube or via Amazon and so has, effectively, vanished from the face of the earth. Quel dommage.
The Respectful Prostitute was first performed in Paris in November 1946. This English translation by Lionel Abel was published in the United States in 1948. All page references are to the 1989 Vintage paperback edition.
The Respectful Prostitute online
The Respectful Prostitute Wikipedia article
Posted in America, Books, French literature, philosophy, politics, Theatre
Tagged 1946, America, Jean-Paul Sartre, play, racism, The Respectful Prostitute, theatre
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2017/10/23/the-respectful-prostitute-jean-paul-sartre/
Huis Clos by Jean-Paul Sartre (1944)
There’s a whole nest of pitfalls that we can’t see. Everything here’s a booby-trap… (p.30)
Sartre’s most famous play is just one act and forty pages long. A man is ushered by a perfunctory ‘valet’ into a closed room, tastefully decorated with Second Empire furnishings. Shortly afterwards the valet ushers two more guests in, both women. The door is locked behind them. Polite and embarrassed, slowly the trio realise that they have died and are in hell.
Hesitantly, they reveal their stories.
Joseph Garcin is a man’s man, big and burly, a journalist in Brazil, who wrote for a pacifist newspaper. He was a brute to his wife, reeling home smelling of wine and women. One time he brought home a girlfriend and made love to her deliberately loudly so that his wife (in the spare bedroom) could hear them. Next morning he had his wife bring them coffee in bed. When war came and he was called up, Garcin fled to Mexico to evade conscription but was caught, brought back, and shot by firing squad for cowardice.
Inèz Serrano is a lesbian. She is arch and manipulative. She admits she seduced a woman (Florence) away from her husband, turning her against him. He was killed in a tram accident and the wife felt so guilty she gassed herself and Inèz in their sleep. ‘I can’t get on without making people suffer’ (p.26).
Estelle Rigault is posh and dim. She married a man three times her age for his money, but then had an affair with a man her own age, Roger. He got her pregnant and she could afford to go on an extended holiday to a hotel in Switzerland to sit out the pregnancy and birth. After she’d borne the child, with her lover watching, she attached the baby to a stone in a pillow and threw it into the lake to drown. Appalled, her lover committed suicide.
So the fun, the entertainment, the interest of the play is how these three characters set about torturing each other, slowly, one by one, forced to relinquish any hopes that their time together might be bearable or redeemable, slowly coming to the awful conclusion that l’enfer, c’est les autres = hell, it’s other people.
Having just read Andy Martins’ book about Sartre. The Boxer and the Goalkeeper, I now know that Sartre thought there were only two ways for humans to relate to each other, as sadists or masochists; and that he confessed to having a sadistic attitude towards his fictional creations. It shows. Over the hour and a bit of the play they combine every possible way of irritating, upsetting and flaying each other, emotionally.
The play can very easily, then, be seen as an example of the Theatre of Cruelty which was popular after the war.
For example, towards the end shallow Estelle offers herself sexually to Garcin: she is only real when she has ensnared a man. This plays to Garcin’s sense of himself as a manly man but he discovers he can’t do it, get it up, unless Estelle really genuinely tells him that she respects him. He needs this because he has become – over the course of the hour – increasingly filled with self-loathing and self-doubt caused by reflecting on his cowardice. But neither of them can really rise to the occasion because it is taking place in front of Inèz, with her sharp tongue and cutting comments. Inèz, by virtue of her lesbianism, is revolted by big hairy Garcin – but can’t have Estelle, who she is strongly attracted to, because she is a dippy dolly bird who only fancies rough tough men.
Ensnared in a cobweb. Caught in a net. If any of them moves the other two are yanked along into further depths of mutual contempt and hatred. It is a terrifying triangle of eternal frustration and torment.
Or at least, it is if you’re French. From Racine in the 1660s, to Les Liaison Dangereuses in the 1780s, to Zola in the 1890s, the French take love, love affairs, affairs of the heart, with a staggering, baroque and ornate seriousness. Setting his play with rather dull modern-day characters is a Sartrean joke on this Grand Tradition but the seriousness with which they take their silly emotions is unmistakably French.
No longer a troubled teenager, and cursed by being English, I wasn’t remotely moved by Huis Clos, I was interested in details and themes.
Catholicism For example, it tends to confirm what I’d observed from Sartre’s novels, that his entire worldview only makes sense against the enormous backdrop of Roman Catholicism. You can only feel abandoned in a godless universe, if you at any time felt at home in a god-filled universe i.e. if you were a believer. Both Camus and Sartre only make sense as rebels against a stifling Catholic orthodoxy. But we Protestant English lack that intense religious background and so miss the intensity of the rebellion against it.
The gaze A more specifically Sartrean trope is the important of ‘the gaze’ and ‘the look’. Again, from the Martin book I know that Sartre was hyper-self-conscious from an early age of his appalling ugliness. Thus the act of looking is central in his fiction and his philosophy. People are engaged in an endless warfare of looking. To some extent people behave as they do because other people are watching: they want to conform to the watchers’ expectations or defy them but they can’t ignore them.
In another way, people watch and observe themselves acting and behaving, especially if there are mirrors around. So, in Huis Clos Estelle needs mirrors to reassure herself that she exists: she has six big mirrors in her house. But here, in the well-furnished room, there are no mirrors at all, not even hand mirrors. In a particular sequence she goes to put her lipstick on but has no way to see her reflection and so has to trust Inèz to tell her she’s doing it correctly. Except that half way through Inèz cruelly asks, what if I’m deceiving you? What if I’m deliberately making you look stupid? Which makes Estelle distraught but also clarifies how horrible life is going to be in hell where she will never be able to see herself. Already she feels herself, somehow, fading away…
[Estelle] When I can’t see myself I begin to wonder if I really and truly exist. I pat myself to make sure, but it doesn’t help much… When I talked to people I always made sure there was [a mirror] nearby in which I could see myself. I watched myself talking. And somehow it kept me alert, seeing myself as others saw me… (p.19)
And then again, people control and intimidate others through their gaze, as Inèz spitefully promises to watch Garcin wherever he goes, whatever he does:
[Inèz] Very well, have it your own way. I’m the weaker party, one against two. But don’t forget I’m here, and watching. I shan’t take my eyes off you, Garcin; when you’re kissing her, you’ll feel them boring into you…
In an interesting twist, that isn’t much reported in the summaries of the play I’ve read, all three characters can continue, for a while at least, to see how their partners and colleagues are continuing to live back on earth. Thus Estelle sees the mourners walking away from her funeral, while Garcin has a particularly vivid vision of all his colleagues at the newspaper lolling around and discussing what a coward he was. This makes him all the more want Estelle to SEE him, to bring him to the present with her gaze, to rescue from his inner consciousness with the power of her look.
[Garcin] Come here, Estelle. Look at me. I want to feel someone looking at me while they’re talking about me on earth… (p.38)
Women as slimy It’s a small detail, really, but having read the four novels of The Roads to Freedom involved reading lots of descriptions of slime and mucus and vomit. Sartre wants to debunk the smoothness of the traditional ‘bourgeois’ novel by including lots of bodily functions, but also just likes being revolting. So it’s a small but telltale moment when Garcin, in despair, makes for the bell by the door (which doesn’t work), Estelle goes to hug him and tell him everything’s OK, and Garcin pushes her away with:
[Garcin] Go away. You’re even fouler than she. I won’t let myself get bogged in your eyes. You’re soft and slimy. Ugh! Like an octopus. Like a quagmire. (p.41)
Andy Martin, in his book on Camus and Sartre, says the threatening symbol of the octopus appears in a number of Sartre’s writings as the terrifying threat of being sucked in, absorbed and digested by other life forms, part of Sartre’s ‘biophobic tendency’. Like the tree whose boley roots almost give Roquentin a nervous breakdown in Nausea. Like women who threaten to drown and swallow men in their gloop.
The BBC TV adaptation
In which the staggering thing, almost impossible to overcome, is the breath-taking poshness of the actors, in particular the ludicrously upper-class voice of renowned playwright Harold Pinter, here playing Garcin. To some extent many of the moments, the phrasing, the thoughts and the similes only really make sense when voiced by essentially very restrained middle-class characters. My kids watch Breaking Bad and The Wire. I showed them a snippet of this and they fell about laughing.
Academics have to continue solemnly judging that this kind of thing is ‘a searing tragedy of the human condition’ and so on – while the rest of us, who live in normal-people-land, can actually relax and admit that the whole thing is pompously ridiculous.
Huis Clos was first performed in Paris in May 1944. This translation by Stuart Gilbert was published in Britain in 1946. All references are to the 1989 Vintage paperback edition.
Huis Clos online
Huis Clos Wikipedia article
Tagged 1944, Catholicism, drama, Estelle Rigault, existentialism, French literature, Harold Pinter, Huis Clos, Inèz Serrano, Jean-Paul Sartre, Joseph Garcin, play, theatre, tragedy
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2017/10/22/huis-clos-jean-paul-sartre/
The Flies by Jean-Paul Sartre (1943)
Sartre had been interned in a German prisoner of war camp (Stalag 12D) immediately after the fall of France, in the summer of 1940. There he wrote and staged a play (with a surprisingly Christian theme, set on Christmas Eve and titled Bariona, or the son of thunder).
After nine months he was released in April 1941 and returned to his job in Paris, teaching philosophy while also writing fiction and essays, but he had caught the theatre bug. More precisely, he had seen how theatre could dramatise a plight shared by the author and audience. However, no play which even remotely criticised the German occupation could get past the censors, so he had to look for a subject which would be officially acceptable, but still provide a vehicle for his sentiments.
Historical subjects were safe, the classics even more so. Sartre settled on the ancient Greek legend of Orestes, the centre of a cycle of stories which had been dealt with in plays by the famous ancient Greek playwrights, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.
The original myth
The Trojan prince Paris is asked to judge which of the three great goddesses is most beautiful. Hera (goddess of power) promises him kingdoms and empire, Athena (goddess of wisdom) promises him wisdom and Aphrodite (goddess of beauty) offers him the most beautiful woman in the world.
He gives the award to Aphrodite who then helps him undertake a friendly tour of the Greek kingdoms. In In Sparta he is entertained by the city’s king, Menelaus, whose wife, Helen, just happens to be the most beautiful woman in the world. That night Paris, with Aphrodite’s divine aid, steals Helen down to the ship and he and his comrades sail back to Troy.
Next morning Menelaus is outraged and contacts his brother, Agamemnon, chief among Greek kings. Agamemnon calls for an alliance of all the Greeks to sail 1,000 ships to Troy and besiege it till the Trojans return Helen.
The entire fleet is assembled and ready to sail but there is no wind. A soothsayer tells Agamemnon he must sacrifice his own daughter, Iphigenia, to please the gods and so – shockingly – Agamemnon does, a wind arises and the fleet sails to Troy, which they besiege for ten long years.
The Greeks eventually win the war due to Odysseus’s clever ruse of the Trojan Horse and Agamemnon returns to Mycenae. But his wife, Clytemnestra has never forgiven the murder of her daughter and so, along with the lover she has taken in Agamemnon’s absence – Aegistheus – she murders Agamemnon.
Before he left for the war, Agamemnon and Clytemnestra had had three children. Iphigenia was, as we saw, sacrificed. Electra has stayed with her mother. But their son, Orestes, by now a young man, was not present in Mycenae for the murder of his father. When Orestes does return some years later, he avenges his father by killing his mother and Aegistheus. He is then pursued by the Furies, who hound all evil-doers.
In the last of the trilogy of plays on the subject by Aeschylus, the goddess Athena intervenes between Orestes and the Furies to institute the first ever trial, in which Orestes is spared. It is a fascinating text in which the playwright uses the story to examine and defend the social structures of his day.
Sartre’s play
The outline of the plot is the same. Orestes turns up in the city ruled by Aegistheus and Clytemnestra 15 years to the day after Agamemnon’s murder. He quickly bumps into his sister, Electra, who is fed up with being forced to skivvy for the raddled and haunted queen. After initial hesitations Orestes proceeds to kill Aegistheus and Clytemnestra, then flees with Electra to seek sanctuary in the temple of Apollo.
There are two key differences: the city has been plagued by an infestation of flies ever since the murder; and Aegistheus has instituted a religious festival, the Day of the Dead, in which the town’s dead are meant to rise from their graves and haunt the living for 24 hours. This encourages the living to fall on their knees and acknowledge all their crimes and sins. Act two takes place at the mouth of the cave where these dead ghosts appear, in a ceremony overseen by king Aegistheus in his pomp, to which a reluctant Electra has to be dragged.
That’s the action, but the play actually consists of a lot of dialogue and discussion between the characters, thus:
Zeus king of the gods is a leading character (unlike the ancient versions) who introduces himself as ‘Demetrios’ to both Orestes and Aegistheus, before dropping his disguise and speaking openly about the nature of kingship and rule.
Orestes’ slave is also his tutor, meaning the pair can be left alone to have philosophical dialogues, allowing Orestes to speak his thoughts out loud – the same function as Horatio to the prince in Hamlet.
Electra is initially reluctant to acknowledge Orestes as her brother, then becomes keen to kill the king and queen, then suffers fierce remorse, ageing overnight.
In the final and third act the Furies appear and speak, as in the original plays, explaining their role and the punishments they have in store for the errant children.
There’s a lot of words about murder, killing, justice, revenge, retribution and so on, which could keep moralists talking for days.
But the central ‘existentialist’ message seems relatively straightforward. Orestes ‘develops’, ‘evolves’, ‘changes’ from a hesitant and curious visitor to his home town, to a man reluctant (in conversation with Zeus or Electra) to intervene, into his final position of a free man who Strikes For Justice.
In a pivotal scene between Zeus and Aegistheus, the god explains what they both know, that the great secret of kingship is that men are free but are frightened of their freedom. This is just as well as he and Aegistheus both like Order. It explains why Aegistheus has instituted the utterly bogus Day of the Dead – it helps weight people down with their guilt, it makes them look backward, it makes them feel in thrall to their past actions and incapable of breaking free.
Zeus also offers another vision of unfree human nature to Orestes when he paints himself as the god of Nature and Good. Orestes defies him, in a sequence of speeches which, I think, we can be confident are the Author’s Message:
Neither slave nor master. I am my freedom.
Suddenly, out of the blue, freedom crashed down on me and swept me off my feet. Nature sprang back, my youth went with the wind, and I knew myself alone, utterly alone in the midst of this well-meaning universe of yours. I was like a man who’s lost his shadow. And there was nothing left in heaven, no right or wrong, nor anyone to give me orders.
Zeus tempts him: come back to me, believe in me, I will give you peace and forgetfulness. But Orestes is having none of it.
Outside nature, against nature, without excuse, beyond remedy, except what remedy I find within myself. But I shall not return under your law; I am doomed to have no other law but mine. Nor shall I come back to nature, the nature you found good; in it are a thousand beaten paths all leading up to you – but I must blaze my trail. For I, Zeus, am a man, and every man must find out his own way. (p.119)
That’s the existentialist message: man is hopelessly, irredeemably, unavoidably free. He has no excuses but bears full responsibility for all his actions. Full acceptance of this crushing weight is the only authenticity.
Zeus says, ‘tut tut I won’t give up without a fight,’ and exits. Electra is distraught at the plight her brother has thrown her into, and runs after Zeus begging his forgiveness i.e. she gives in to religious belief.
The slave enters to tell Orestes that the mob is at the door baying for his blood. Orestes heroically declares that he murdered Clytemnestra and Aegistheus to set them free, to abolish silly superstitions like the Day of the Dead which are meant only to keep them in their place. Orestes confronts the mob and says he will willingly, consciously bear the responsibility and the guilt of the deaths and take away the punishment, the ghosts and the flies. And so Orestes exits pursued by the Furies.
That’s the end, so we never find out what the reaction of the puzzled populace is.
You can see how, not far at all beneath the superficial classical storyline, is the narrative of a man who freely and fully accepts the responsibility for committing murder in order to free his people.
On a philosophical level, it is about a man who rejects all the consolations of false beliefs and ‘bad faith’ in order to act out his freedom.
And, on a political level, about a man who is a Resistance fighter prepared to accept the guilt of murder in order to free his people from the plague of flies i.e. the German occupation.
The diagrammatic nature of Sartre’s intent explains his changes to the traditional story, the most obvious of which is the downplaying of Clytemnestra’s role; in the myths she is the prime mover for the murder of Agamemnon and it is her murder – the terrible crime of matricide – which triggers the advent of the Furies to torment Orestes. But Sartre has no interest in the ‘crime’ of matricide which carries with it a huge freight of basic emotional, let alone Freudian, overtones.
He is more interested in political philosophy and so Aegistheus – a shadowy figure in the myths – is much more prominent in this play: as the figure of the (Nazi) tyrant, as the figure of the man imposing a spurious superstition on the people (the Day of the Dead), as the king Zeus debates the arts of kingship with, and then as the representative of all the repressive forces in the play (and occupied France) which Orestes must slay.
Thus Orestes kills Aegistheus onstage and it takes several blows with a sword during which they continue to have a philosophical dialogue; whereas Clytemnestra is slain off-stage: we only hear her piercing screams while Electra gives us a running commentary on her own feelings.
I’m no feminist but Sartre’s play is much more masculine that the original. In the Aeschylus plays, Clytemnestra, the Furies and the goddess Athena all play key roles in a text which explores femininity, law and society. Two and a half thousand years later, for Sartre, justice and freedom are essentially men’s talk.
Clytemnestra [having just murdered Agamemnon] (1882) by John Collier. Image courtesy Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London
Les Mouches was first performed in Paris in 1943. This translation by Stuart Gilbert was published in Britain in 1946. All references are to the 1989 Vintage paperback edition.
The Flies Wikipedia article
Posted in French literature, philosophy, Theatre
Tagged 1943, Aegisthus, Agamemnon, classics, Clytemnestra, Electra, Jean-Paul Sartre, Orestes, Philebus, play, The Flies, theatre, Zeus
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/the-flies-jean-paul-sartre/
The Just by Albert Camus (1949)
It is 1949. War-torn Europe lies in ruins. Across Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe communist regimes are intimidating and executing their way to power. The Cold War between America and Russia is well-entrenched, epitomised by the Berlin Airlift, which began in June 1948.
Which side should you choose to be on? American capitalism exploiting its workers, repressing its Black population at home and spreading its neo-imperialism abroad? Or the worldwide communist movement which, despite much evidence to the contrary, at least holds out the possibility of a fairer world, where workers are liberated from an exploitative system and the vast populations of the imperial colonies are freed?
But joining the communist movement means accepting the need to get your hands dirty, to join in with its culture of conspiracy, revolution and political murder. Is this acceptable?
In the late 1940s Camus was working through these issues in the long philosophical essay which would be published as L’Homme révolté in 1951. This book addresses head-on what Camus regarded as the big issue of the day, namely — Is it morally justifiable to commit political murder for what you regard as a just cause? Does the hope of achieving freedom for an entire society in some hypothetical future justify killing a handful of actual people in the here-and-now? To use the phrase so many intellectuals used throughout the communist period – Do the ends (the workers’ state, complete human freedom, utopia) justify the means (conspiracy, terror, murder)?
Alongside the politico-philosophical approach of L’Homme révolté, Camus set out to dramatise these questions in this five-act play. Its title can be translated as The Just, The Just Assassins or, maybe, The Righteous.
The play follows the activities and impassioned arguments of a small group of revolutionary socialists in Russia, in 1905, who are planning to assassinate the Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, the fifth son of Tsar Alexander II of Russia. All but one of the characters are real historical personages and the events really took place as described. Camus based the play on Memoirs of a Terrorist by one of the group, Boris Savinkov. (In fact, Camus devotes several pages of L’Homme révolté to Savinkov’s book, giving thumbnail portraits of the group and quoting their reported conversations – a passage which sheds light on the play, and certainly on Camus’s fascination with this brand of ‘fastidious assassins’, as he calls them.)
Plot & characters
At the first attempt to throw a bomb in the Grand Duke’s carriage the would-be assassin Kaliayev at the last minute backs down, because he sees that there are children in the carriage (this is historical fact). On returning to the group and making the excuse that he wants to kill the ‘guilty’, but not the ‘innocent’, Kaliayev is rebuked by the unflinching revolutionary Stepan:
Not until the day comes when we stop being sentimental about children, will the revolution triumph and we be masters of the world. (p.136)
The only woman in the group is Dora who is as unbendingly revolutionary as the rest of them. In the middle of the play her role changes, though, as we see her developing ‘feelings’ for Kaliayev, until, in a central scene, she surprised me by suddenly dropping the revolutionary jargon and turning into a fully-fledged ‘love interest’, telling Kaliayev that she wants to be loved as a woman, asking whether he loves her, and asking why all of the group can’t they choose human happiness over murder? Possibly we are meant to be moved by this, although I saw it as just part of Camus’s programme of wringing every possible permutation of argument, moral, political and psychological, from his situation.
But Kaliayev ignores her please and summons up the determination, two days later, to be back in the street when the Arch Duke is on another carriage drive, and to throw a bomb which blows the old man to smithereens. (All this happens off stage; we only hear the sound effects and see the excited faces of the characters looking out a window onto the scene of the murder in the street below.)
In the final acts the play becomes increasingly schematic. Kaliayev was captured by the police after he threw the bomb and is now in prison. He has a brief, ironic dialogue with a fellow prisoner, who, it turns out, is actually the prison hangman and will be killing him.
And then in a long, excruciatingly pretentious scene, Kaliayev is confronted by the Grand Duchess, the wife of the man he blew to smithereens. She is, with heavy predictability, a devout Christian and she wants, of course, to forgive him, and for him to join her in prayer to the Lord of All.
This meeting of murderer and victim’s wife allows Camus to write a long Dostoyevskian dialogue contrasting divine love and earthly love, divine justice and human justice, sin and forgiveness, and so on.
KALIAYEV: When they’ve pronounced the sentence, and they’re all ready for the execution… then… at the foot of the scaffold… I shall turn away from you and this vile world… And at last my heart will be filled with love!… Can you understand?
GRAND DUCHESS: There is no love except with God.
KALIAYEV: Yes, there is… Love for people… Love for mankind! (p.161)
With every fresh text of Camus’s that I read I become more convinced that Christian theology was central to his worldview, in particular the Christian dichotomy of crime and punishment, sin and salvation, damnation and salvation, repentance and forgiveness. Although the play contains much rhetoric about revolutionary ‘freedom’, it is the fundamentally Christian dynamic of sin and forgiveness which underpins the text.
After Kaliayev has spurned the Grand Duchess’s offer of praying for forgiveness and she has left, the sleek Chief of Police Skouratov tries to blackmail Kaliayev. Skouratov says he will put it about that Kaliayev begged to see the Grand Duchess, begged for her forgiveness and renounced his revolutionary views – i.e. he will discredit him, unless Kaliayev admits the whereabouts of his fellow conspirators. End of act four.
In the last act we are back with the conspirators in their shabby apartment, setting of the first three acts. As in a Greek tragedy, a messenger/eye-witness arrives to describe Kaliayev’s last moments as he stepped up to the scaffold to be hanged. This is how we learn that he rejected Skouratov’s offer to betray his comrades, he didn’t flicker in the face of death, and so on. A stern Roman virtue.
Then follows the climax of the play as Dora, Kaliayev’s lover, half-weeping, half-shrieking, announces that she wants to be reunited in sacrifice with her man and insists – against the group’s sexist code that no woman can actually take part in an act of terrorism – that she will be the one to throw the next bomb. Shamed by her ‘revolutionary’ intensity and ideological fervour, her colleagues acquiesce.
And so the torch is handed on. There will be more assassinations, more murders. The cycle will never end.
What is most striking about the play is the starkly simplistic attitudes of the characters. They are like diagrams or caricatures. One is a poet who hates lies but is forced to lie in order to be a conspirator, and justifies it because once he has thrown his bomb ‘all lies will end’. One thinks they are ‘killing to build a world where there will be no more killing’. One thinks you can’t just talk about the revolution, you must be part of it. One thinks no individual can be free until all people in the world are free.
The turns of event mainly exist not to provide drama in the broad sense, but to introduce new topics of debate. Thus Kaliayev’s refusal to throw a bomb into a carriage containing the Arch Duke’s children introduces the issue: ‘Should you – are you permitted – to murder a few young innocents in order to bring about a Just Society in which all innocents will be protected?’
The trouble with such a schematic approach is that it sacrifices psychological depth or emotional plausibility. Thus Kaliayev’s ‘temptation’ by the head of the police to betray his comrades is a) very brief, amounting to a page or less of dialogue b) doesn’t lead anywhere at all – I was expecting it to have some kind of dramatic consequence in the final act but it is forgotten, eclipsed by the eye witness account of Kaliayev’s execution.
Compare and contrast its throwaway brevity with the searing psychological intensity of the interrogation scenes in Nineteen Eighty-Four or the prolonged breaking down of Rubashov in Darkness at Noon. Camus isn’t in the same league.
The heavy-handedness of the ‘debate’ with the Grand Duchess about God in Act Four alienated me from the play by its predictability and its superficiality; and when Dora, in Act Five, becomes the focus of the action with her distraught alternation between tearful love for her man and steely determination to strike the next blow for ‘freedom’, I had switched off.
If you had never thought about these issues before, the play might just about be a good 6th form or maybe undergraduate resource with which to prompt discussions about the morality of revolutionary violence – in the same way that Frankenstein might, at a pinch, be used to trigger discussion about the ethics of genetic engineering or Heart of Darkness about imperialism. But it’s neither a serious in-depth analysis, nor an emotionally believable one.
Terrorists may be at work all over Europe as I write, but I don’t think the guys we have to worry about think or talk like this nowadays.
The uselessness of morality
My son the Philosophy A-Level student tells me that, in terms of moral philosophy, I am a ‘consequentialist’. I had to look it up to find out what he meant. It means I don’t believe in grand moral or ethical principles (a position I sometimes provocatively express as, ‘I don’t believe in morality’). I don’t invoke general moral axioms or principles to help me decide whether to act this or that way. I judge by outcomes. I am interested in what works.
For me, there is no particular ‘moral’ principle involved in the question ‘Is political murder ever justified?’ The only criterion is, ‘Does it work?’ And all the historical evidence we have is that almost all political assassinations a) don’t change anything or b) make repression worse.
It doesn’t work, so don’t do it.
Holding this position explains why I found almost everything the characters say in this play superfluous and irrelevant. Their interminable debates over their conflicting moral codes, worrying about their sensitive scruples, their agonised discussion of ethical principles and so on seem to me either adolescent navel-gazing or windy metaphysics. They kill the Duke. They are arrested. There is no revolution. Tyranny is not overthrown. Freedom does not come for every person in Russia. They resolve to carry out another terrorist atrocity. And so on. And they will continue to carry out individualistic assassinations until their entire ‘revolutionary’ ideology is swept away by the grand state terrorism of the Bolsheviks.
In other words – Fail. It is a failed way of thinking.
Only in a declared state of war can killing a clearly-identified enemy be justified, because it stands some chance of success i.e. of winning the war. In all other circumstances, killing is just killing. The Baader-Meinhof group shooting German bankers and industrialists. The IRA blowing up pubs in England or murdering Protestant workers. ETA assassinating Spanish officials. ISIS machine gunning people at a rock concert. Did they achieve their stated aims of overthrowing the system, country or values they detest? No. They failed. In the end they were just killers.
And more often than not they found themselves trapped in the role of terrorists. Committed to a ’cause’ they couldn’t quit because they had already burned their bridges, psychologically and legally. Hard to return from the excitement of clandestine meetings, smuggling arms, and planning atrocities to working 9 to 5 in an office.
Moreover there is an unavoidable inflationary logic to terrorism. As small terrorist acts fail to achieve their ends, many terrorist groups find themselves forced to stage bigger and more destructive ‘spectaculars’ in order a) to get some kind of reaction and b) to justify their ’cause’, their existence, to themselves and their supporters and c) to justify their life decisions to themselves.
And all, in the end, for nothing.
The best explanation I’ve read of the grim logic of modern terrorism is the relevant sections of Gerard DeGroot’s popular history, The Seventies Unplugged.
Historical innocence
Back to the play – by setting it in 1905 Camus’s makes sure Les Justes is largely innocent of the history of bloodshed which followed the Russian Revolution of 1917. The characters exist in a kind of pre-lapsarian phase of political terrorism. Although Russia had had a healthy track record of terrorism for at least a generation previously – the Grand Duke’s father, Tsar Alexander II, survived no fewer than five assassination attempts before himself being blown up in 1881 by terrorists (like father, like son) – the grotesque, continent-wide super-violence of the Great War and its aftermath had not yet occurred. The thirty years of bloodshed, terror and state terrorism sprawling from 1917 to 1947 was undreamed of.
(It is, for example, interesting to learn that the real-life Grand Duchess was murdered in 1918 by revolutionaries during the Russian Civil War – but by that time we were used to mass murders and killing on an industrial scale: she was just one among millions who met a violent end. The play is set in an essentially bourgeois world where individual lives – where the complex moral dilemmas of individuals – still matter.)
Thus, by choosing 1905 Camus has stripped away the contemporary and complex historical context of his own time (1949) and returned to a much simpler, more innocent age, in order to bring out the ‘issues’ with greater clarity.
Maybe this is why Les Justes sometimes feels more like an excerpt from BBC Bitesize or an over-the-top school play than a drama for modern grown-ups. It is full of cardboard characters adopting histrionic and above all, very simple-minded poses. Take a characteristic outburst from the most unflinchingly revolutionary character, Stepan:
For us who don’t believe in God, there is nothing between total justice and utter despair. (p.148)
This is not only childishly, petulantly melodramatic, it is also plain wrong. There is no such thing as total justice or utter despair, these are tiresomely writerly abstractions. In fact there is a whole world of life and love for everyone to enjoy, whether they believe in God or not. Watch The Great British Bake-Off: are these people fussing about their soggy bottoms trapped between total justice and utter despair?
There is absolutely no need to live in this hysterical, Dostoyevskian state of mind unless you want to.
It’s their unrelentingly histrionic simple-mindedness and their wilful neglect of the real, actual world of happy people, which makes the characters in this taut little melodrama difficult to care for and a lot of Camus’s political writings so difficult to read.
Ivan Kalyayev, real life assassin of Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich of Russia, and lead figure in Les Justes
But judging a play from just reading it is a dicey thing to do. Plays are not meant to be read cold on the page, but animated by flesh and blood actors, in real productions in front of live audiences in particular times and places.
All of these factors came together favourably in the first production of Les Justes, which opened in Paris in December 1949, was well received by the critics, and ran for over 400 performances. In that time and place this drama of ideas obviously spoke to a large audience who presumably a) enjoyed the moral debates b) found it dramatically satisfying.
Les Justes by Albert Camus was published in France in 1950. This translation by Henry Jones was published by Hamish Hamilton in 1965. The Just was brought together with the other plays, Caligula, Cross Purpose and The Possessed, in a Penguin edition in 1984. All quotes & references are to this Penguin paperback edition.
Caligula and other plays on Amazon
The Just Wikipedia article
Reviews of other Camus books
L’Étranger (The Outsider) (1942)
Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus ) (1942)
Essays from The Myth of Sisyphus
Le Malentendu (The Misunderstanding, or Cross Purpose) (1944)
La Peste (The Plague) (1947)
Camus’s style in The Plague
Les Justes (The Just Assassins) (1949)
L’Homme révolté (The Rebel) (1951)
La Chute (The Fall) (1956)
L’exil et le royaume (Exile and the Kingdom) (1957)
Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (1961)
Camus by Conor Cruise O’Brien (1970)
Edward Said on Albert Camus (1994)
Reviews of books by Jean-Paul Sartre
The Algerian war of independence
A Savage War of Peace by Alistair Horne (1977)
by Simon on September 23, 2017 • Permalink
Posted in Books, France, French literature, Theatre
Tagged 1949, 20th century, Albert Camus, Alexander II, Boris Savinkov, Dora, French literature, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, Ivan Kalyayev, philosophy, play, politics, Skouratov, The Just, theatre
Posted by Simon on September 23, 2017
https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2017/09/23/the-just-albert-camus/
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Relaxo rebrands after 40 years for a new India
The footwear brand decided to refresh its brand image to stay abreast with the dynamic consumer preferences. The new logo reflects the brand’s aspirations to look young, contemporary and stylish
Akansha Mihir Mota | Mumbai | January 11, 2017
Footwear brand Relaxo, for the first time in 40 years, has decided to refresh its image and identity with a new logo. The move comes as competition in the footwear market has increased and consumer preferences and market is also changing dynamically.
The company currently has five brands under its key brand Relaxo -- Hawaii (slippers), Flite (women footwear), Sparx (sports shoes and sandals), Bahamas (trendy slippers) and Schoolmate (school shoes).
Need for rebranding?
Talking about the need to revamp and rebrand Relaxo after so many years, Rajeev Bhatia, AVP Marketing, Relaxo Footwear, said, “To rebrand Relaxo has been a very delicate and deliberate decision, since it is a brand that has been there for generations. The company initially started its functioning with the manufacturing of (hawai slippers) flipflops of good quality. The world is changing and in last 7-10 years, the speed of change has been very rapid. Therefore, we are also changing and adding new product line, catering to a new segment of consumers. While all this is happening, it is also imperative that we must change the corporate image to a more modern and forward looking organisation and not remain a single product company. We wanted to assure people that this company has moved ahead with time and taking in view this new generation’s requirements. So the company took this bold initiative to refresh the brand identity.”
The company that has undertook the logo design change is Elephant Designs. The creative agency working on Relaxo campaigns for decades is Arm Communications.
Gaurav Dua, ED, Sales and Marketing, Relaxo Footwears, said, “The footwear market is exploding with new global and domestic brands to meet the demands of the young and discerning Indians. Relaxo has a compelling story to inspire generations and believes in evolving with changing times, trends and ideologies of today’s youth. The idea behind new brand identity is to introduce Relaxo as a future-ready company in sync with changes and challenges of a new and vibrant India. The new Relaxo visual identity signifies effortless movement towards progress. It represents the positive spirit of Relaxo as an enabler to progress.”
New logo has a fresh and young look
The new logo reflects the brand’s aspirations to look young, contemporary and stylish. The fresh look carries the hint of existing logo. As the company says, the swoosh stands for wave of transformation, optimism and positive growth.
Bhatia added, “The refreshed palette of berry blue and sunny yellow symbolises transformation, optimism and positive energy and growth of the brand.”
Ashwini Deshpande, Co-Founder and Director, Elephant Design, said, “The rebranding exercise involved validation of current values of being reliable and approachable while seeking newer dimensions to reiterate the brand’s leadership. In keeping with evolving consumers and new-age products, we built the new visual identity with a wave of positive transformation.”
Why ads mostly with celebrities?
One doesn’t get to see much ground-breaking creative ads in the category like footwear. The category mostly has ads that have celebrities talking about the qualities or the style factors that these footwear brands have. It is about time for Indian footwear brands to come up with something really creative to break the ice in the category.
Bhatia added, “To create ads in the category is a creative challenge. I would not say it is difficult but people try to take an easy way out. Footwear industry is mostly unorganised and home-grown and people easily relate to celebrities. And hence people choose celebrities to place in the footwear ads.”
If one sees the trend and pattern of advertisement that Relaxo uses, it mostly used celebrities in them. In one of its earlier campaigns, the brand used Dara Singh as an ambassador because he reflected strength, quality and dependence. The company had also used Ashok Kumar, Sonakshi Sinha, Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar.
Asked why so much dependence on celebrities in ads, Bhatia said, “Celebrities are used in ads as they are easily noticed. In the footwear category, the fresh quotient is increasing. Celebrities are good way to position one’s brand as youthful and fresh. It is important to know that the kind of celebrity you use should reflect the values of the brand. For eg., we use Akshay Kumar for Sparx as he is energetic and appeals to the youth. The brand very well relates to Akshay and the target audience’s aspirations.”
Relaxo ad with Sonakshi Sinha:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDkbmt3Y6Eg[/youtube]
Relaxo ad with Salman Khan:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOMf4OFEbG8[/youtube]
Another Relaxo ad with Salman Khan:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0XwE0VovDk[/youtube]
Relaxo ad with Katrina Kaif:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tzoBTVQvU4[/youtube]
Relaxo ad with Akshay Kumar:
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yufhabBXK4[/youtube]
Talking about the challenges the industry faces, Bhatia said, “The industry is very unorganised and has a presence of a lot of small time players. The industry needs to come together and work on that front.”
The target audience of the brand is everybody in the household. Relaxo has its own shopping portal shopatrelaxo.com. The brand is present on Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon. The brand mostly allocates its ad spend on BTL activities and on ATL. It advertises less on digital. On the ATL front, it does FM and television ads. Relaxo does a fair amount of activation too.
Established in 1976 by Mukund Lal Dua and Ramesh Kumar Dua, the company is headquartered in New Delhi and has regional offices in Bangalore, Mumbai and Patna. Relaxo has a strong retail presence in the country with 261 stores spread across 143 cities in nine states. The brand has its reach in South and West besides a strong presence in Delhi, Haryana, Punjab, UP, Bihar, Jharkhand and the North-East markets.
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Tag Archives: SZA
All the Best, Worst & Most WTF Moments from This Year’s Met Gala
Posted on May 8, 2018 by Alexandra Weiss
photo by John Shearer/Getty Images
So, last night was the Met Gala. What used to be just an event to celebrate the opening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s newest exhibition, has become one the biggest night’s in fashion. That means lots of amazing gowns, horrible looks and tons of WTF moments. This year, we put together a list of all three.
First, for the night’s best moments:
SZA in Versace and Chris Habana head piece and jewelry
photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images
For her first Met Gala, SZA paired pastel Versace with BlackBook favorite Chris Habana head wear and jewelry. Literally heavenly.
Nicki Minaj in Oscar de la Renta and Tiffany & Co. jewelry
photo by Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images
Coming off of her double feature “Chun-Li” and “Barbie Tingz” video premiere last week, we had high hopes for Nicki. Needless to say, she didn’t disappoint. In a red and black Oscar de la Renta gown, the rapper told photographers she interpreted the theme by dressing as “the devil.” If Lucifer looks like this good, consider us Satanist.
Rihanna in custom Maison Martin Margiela by John Galliano and Maria Tash and Cartier jewelry
Seriously, bow down. Rihanna’s custom Margiela by John Galliano ‘fit wasn’t just a look — it was a moment. And after last night, Queen Rih has just become The Pope.
Kate Bosworth in Oscar de la Renta and Tacori jewelry
I usually find Kate Bosworth pretty boring — and I’m not just talking about her acting. But this Oscar de la Renta look was practically perfect. The gold, white, train and veil combo makes me not want to fight with my boyfriend long enough to actually get married.
Cardi B in Moschino
photo by Frazer Harrison/FilmMagic
Sorry Bey, there’s a new queen in town and her name is Cardi B. The “Bartier Cardi” singer looked like The Virgin Mary in her Moshino gown and headpiece, baby bump and all.
Diane Kruger in Prabal Gurung, Tasaki jewelry and a Philip Treacy x Tasaki headpiece
photo by Karwai Tang/Getty Images
Diane Kruger gets our vote for best dressed for the night. Her Prabal Gurun gown may not have been totally on-theme, but the entire look was a religious experience.
Solange in Iris Van Herpen and Lorraine Schwartz jewelry
Solange’s Iris Van Herpen dress was our other favorite look of the night. The total opposite of Diane Kruger’s sweet blue dress and train, this look was like a sexy bondage Medusa moment that made me a full believer. Okay, that was the last religious pun, I promise.
Lily Collins in Givenchy Haute Couture
To be honest, I don’t really know who Lily Collins is. I think she’s a model-turned-actress. But really, aren’t they all? Either way, I don’t really care who she is, because her Givenchy Haute Couture dress and avant-garde makeup were absolutely stunning.
Lana Del Rey in Gucci
photo by Dia Dipasupil/WireImage
Jared Leto looked absolutely ridiculous in his overdone Gucci look, but Lana Del Rey pulled her’s off perfectly. Though, that’s partly because she always kind of looks like she’s in costume.
Priyanka Chopra in Ralph Lauren
I didn’t see Priyanka Chopra on enough “Best Dressed” lists today. Her velvet Ralph Lauren look gave me serious Joan of Arc vibes — in a good way.
And now for the worst. It’s actually kind of sad when celebrities get it this wrong. For one thing, they’re paying stylists a ton of money to fuck them onto the “Worst Dressed List.” But also, you can tell when they’re posing on the red carpet that they think they totally nailed it. Sorry, guys. Better luck next time.
Mary J. Blige in Versace
photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images
Let me start this by saying I really do love Mary J. Blige. But the girl’s a serious fashion victim. I honestly can’t remember one time I thought she didn’t look ridiculous. I mean, Mary J. loves herself a fedora. And remember the “Family Affair” video? Just tragic. Last night, she tried to amp things up with a Versace gown, but just looked like a kind of sloppy Greek goddess.
The Olsen Twins in vintage Paco Rabanne
It honestly baffles me how I spent so many years worshiping the Olsen Twins. I used to seriously — and I mean this in a literal way — take notes during their shows and straight-to-VHS movies, trying to outline how to dress as cool as them. Of course, Mary-Kate spawned the whole bohobo thing, which I readily adopted for a few seconds. But that was like, 2006, and now, the whole oversized thing with way too much jewelry is just kind of depressing.
Cara Delevingne in Dior Haute Couture and Bulgari jewelry
photo by REX/Shutterstock
We have to forgive Cara Delevingne for this look, because she clearly couldn’t see herself in the mirror with that headdress. The Dior Haute Couture gown looked like a giant fishnet stocking.
Madonna in Jean Paul Gaultier
Oh, and about those fishnet stockings — apparently, Madonna also got the memo. The sad part is, this look actually could’ve been good if it weren’t for its entire top half. Though, she gets some points for her crown — it was epic.
Sarah Jessica Parker in Dolce & Gabbana and Jennifer Fischer jewelry
photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
At least no can ever say that Sarah Jessica Parker doesn’t go for it. Out of every celebrity, she always leans fully in to the Met Gala’s theme. Unfortunately, this year, it didn’t do her any favors.
But of course, for all the good and bad looks this year, there were also a few WTF moments. I mean, what’s a celebrity event without a nip slip or some self-aggrandizing? I’m looking at you, Jaden.
Frances McDormand in Valentino
I actually wanted to like Frances McDormand’s Valentino look, if only for the fact that when a reporter asked her about the religious theme, she replied, “I’m a pagan.” But alas, it wasn’t enough to make up for this trainwreck. I will say, though, if I had to imagine what a pagan high fashion look would be, it wouldn’t be too far from this.
Katy Perry in Versace
I’m not sure if this is a real WTF moment, it’s just bad — and really big.
Kim Kardashian in custom Versace and Lorraine Schwartz jewelry
This one’s a WTF for a different reason. See, I actually liked Kim Kardashian’s Versace dress, but I feel like it was kind of understated — at least, for the Kardashian-West clan. With the religious theme and everything, I figured Kimye would show up decked out in t-shirts with their faces screenprinted on them. “No, you’re brilliant Kanye,” “No you are Kim.” Ah, what a love story.
Grimes in who cares because she’s dating Elon Musk?
I know. What? Grimes showed up in a sloppy dress and those platform Marc Jacobs shoes we’ve already seen everywhere for like, two seasons. But for someone who prides herself on being weird, the weirdest thing she’s ever done was show up to the Met Gala with Elon Musk, only to reveal that they two are actually dating.
Last but not least: Jaden Smith in Louis Vuitton and carrying his own gold record
I really didn’t think Jaden Smith would go this far. Oh wait, yes I did. The singer showed up wearing Louis Vuitton and holding his own gold record. We get it, bro. You’re super smart and way too philosophical for the rest of us pesky humans. But even Kanye isn’t this blatant.
Oh well, at least we have awhile until we have to see what Jaden Smith will wear next year.
Posted in Fashion, FASHION & STYLE, Style | Tagged #MetGala, cardi b, Diane Kruger, FASHION, Frances McDormand, Gucci, jaden smith, Kate Bosworth, katy perry, Kim Kardashian, Kimye, Lana Del Rey, Lily Collins, Louis Vuitton, Madonna, Met Ball, Met Gala, Moschino, Nicki Minaj, Oscar De La Renta, Priyanka Chopra, Rihanna, Solange, Style, SZA, Valentino, Versace
Kendrick Lamar & SZA Release Galactic ‘All The Stars’ Video Off ‘Black Panther’ Soundtrack
Posted on February 6, 2018 by Hilton Dresden
The music video for Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s latest collaboration, “All The Stars,” has dropped today. It sees, among other visuals, Kendrick in a boat held above a sea of swaying arms and SZA dancing in a field of stars.
“All The Stars” will appear on the Black Panther soundtrack, which comes out this Friday and is curated by Lamar. In addition to this song, he’ll have four other tracks appearing in the film, and the likes of James Blake and Vince Staples are also confirmed to be making contributions.
The new video is directed by Dave Meyers & the little homies – take a look below.
Black Panther is out next Thursday, February 15, and stars Lupita Nyong’o, Chadwick Boseman, and Michael B. Jordan. Check out the trailer below.
Posted in Art, ARTS & CULTURE, News, NEWS & OPINION | Tagged kendrick, SZA
SZA’s Record Label Had to Steal Her Hard Drive to Release Her Debut Album
Posted on July 31, 2017 by Chris Thomas
We’ve spent the better part of the summer grooving along to SZA’s remarkable debut album Ctrl, but it turns out that the project almost never saw the light of day. In a new interview with The Guardian, the “Drew Barrymore” singer revealed the the only reason we’ve got her album on repeat right now is because her record label TDE literally “cut [her] off.”
“They just took my hard drive from me. That was all,” she explained. “I just kept fucking everything up. I just kept moving shit around. I was choosing from 150, 200 songs, so I’m just like, who knows what’s good anymore?” It’s shocking to know that the album might’ve been tectonically different had she been given more time, but we’re also lowkey thankful that her record label stepped in. After all, SZA said she was quitting music last year and her debut album became notorious for how many times it was delayed.
Fear not because, with her debut out of the way, don’t expect to wait years for another album from the artist. “I have less anxiety about the things that hindered me putting this album out, so I’ll probably be done in the next six months,” she said of releasing a follow-up album. Then again, we’ve heard that before so, until it drops, you can catch us singing along to “Love Galore.”
Posted in ARTS & CULTURE, Culture | Tagged SZA
SZA’s Sensual Debut Album CTRL Is Here to Slay
Posted on June 9, 2017 by Chris Thomas
Once you’ve finished giving Katy Perry’s Witness a one-through, take back CTRL of your life with SZA’s long-awaited debut album, packed with perfect bops for strutting in 80 degree weather this summer.
Full of meditative beats and her signature blend of hazy, dreamy vocals, CTRL confirms that Solána Rowe is ready to sit atop the alt-R&B throne with the likes of Solange. The album’s release isn’t just a celebration of her abundance of black girl magic, though. It’s also a victory against years of tension with her record label TDE that nearly resulted in her leaking the album herself. It wasn’t until January—three years after her wildly successful Z EP—that she announced the album’s release on Jimmy Kimmel Live.
In the buildup to its release, she’s dropped singles like “Drew Barrymore” (unfortunately not an ode to the actress’s award-worthy performance in 50 First Dates), “Love Galore” with Travis Scott, and “Broken Clocks.” As if that trifecta of jams wasn’t enough, she dropped her fiery ode female sexuality, “Doves in the Sky,” featuring Kendrick Lamar last night and then dumped the whole album on us for good measure.
If you need us, we’ll be laying in the sun with the album on repeat all weekend debating on what song makes us feel the sexiest.
Posted in ARTS & CULTURE | Tagged SZA
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Film April 2013
By Julian Ryall
Glenn Ibbitson plays the black-clad intruder.
Bizarre Fukuoka intruder tale retold in Welsh farmhouse
Based on homeless woman’s true story
Inspired by freedom versus security
Film took Leeds man two year to make
Success spawns new “contrast” film
Inspired by an article he had read in The Daily Telegraph in May 2008, a British artist and filmmaker has released a short film that takes the curious case of Tatsuko Horikawa and gives it a dramatic new setting in the mountains of Wales.
Glenn Ibbitson, originally from Leeds but now living near Cardigan in Wales, spent two years making the 44-minute film, Tatsuko. It has been highly acclaimed since having been screened at the artist-run London space, Studio 75.
Late last December, before travelling to Tokyo, Ibbitson, 54, attended an exhibition at Kyoto’s Arton Art Gallery. It featured members of the Fishguard Arts Society, a group founded in Wales in 2011.
“I saw the story of Tatsuko Horikawa in The Telegraph and then Radio 4 picked up on it”, Ibbitson told BCCJ ACUMEN. “I was inspired by the way it illuminated the quandary that we all face over how much individual freedom we are willing to sacrifice for a small bit of security”.
The film—shot largely in black and white—is based on the true story of homeless Tatsuko Horikawa, who was found living undetected in a man’s home in Fukuoka.
The owner of the house became suspicious that he was the victim of repeat burglaries after he noticed that food was disappearing from his refrigerator.
The man, who has not been identified, installed security cameras linked to his mobile phone and caught images of a woman walking around the house when he was out. The man contacted police and, after an exhaustive search of the property, Horikawa was found hiding in the top of a built-in bedding cupboard.
Behind the cupboard’s sliding door, she had laid out a thin futon and had several drink bottles, police said. Horikawa told police she had moved into the cupboard in a room the man rarely used. She said she had done so about a year earlier, after he had gone out without locking his front door.
Horikawa did not steal any money from the homeowner, and so was charged only with trespassing.
Ibbitson, a former BBC backdrop painter—who has worked on programmes ranging from Newsnight and Clive James to adaptations of Jane Austen novels—took the tale of Horikawa to Wales. There he used his own home and the surrounding countryside as his set.
Carole King: artist whose space is invaded.
His partner, Carole King, was talked into playing the part of an artist living in a house, while Ibbitson plays a black-clad man who invades her space.
In Ibbitson’s rendition, a hooded man arrives at a remote farmhouse, where the owner goes about her daily routine oblivious to the figure that is watching her. Although the stranger avoids full contact, his interaction with her life slowly increases.
The question is whether the intruder is a threat to the woman, or more of a guardian angel.
A review of the film, following the London screening, describes it as “a hauntingly beautiful, dramatically gripping yet enigmatic film that draws the viewer into a world dominated by a strange landscape, where the familiar becomes alien and human relationships are intense yet completely distant”.
Ibbitson covered some of the costs of the film through crowdfunding—the collective effort of individuals who pool their money to support projects initiated by other people or organisations—all of which went on the soundtrack.
The music is by Wyn Lewis Jones, a member of the Welsh punk band Ail Symudiad, and includes the tones of slowed-down wind chimes that “bring [the music] back to Japanese territory”, Ibbitson said.
Yet another link with Japan is director Yasujiro Ozu (1903–1963), whom Ibbitson greatly admires. Moreover, it is the film legend’s refusal to use a roving lens and to have the actors make all the moves that Ibbitson has tried to emulate.
“I would say that the hardest part of the project was convincing my leading lady to take part in it, as she is very reserved”, he said. “I deliberately did not tell her the full story of what we were doing, as I wanted to catch her reactions in order to make it look as natural as possible”.
Ibbitson came close to scrapping the project when, during filming, he dropped his camera. It was broken beyond repair, and the replacement was not only expensive, but it lacked some of the functions of the broken camera.
Finally, however, the film was completed and Ibbitson is now focusing on a new project. The film will capture contrasts: temples, skyscrapers, traditional Japanese beauty and the growing homeless population on the streets of the nation’s cities.
More articles in Film
Film May 2018
Never too short
Making your name in the world of films
Film October 2017
Don’t Take Me Home
New movie looks back at the summer Welsh footy fans did not want to end
Film November 2013
The Hafu Project and its new film aim to redefine notions of the mixed-race experience.
Film June 2013
Bard to the Future
Welsh filmmaker John Williams has taken one of William Shakespeare’s most well-known plays, turned it upside down, inserted a Japanese rock-and-roll band, and set it 30 years in the future and on remote Sado Island in Niigata Prefecture.
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Home News JioPhone Will Finally Get YouTube App, But No Sign Of WhatsApp Yet
JioPhone Will Finally Get YouTube App, But No Sign Of WhatsApp Yet
Launched last year, the 4G VoLTE-enabled JioPhone quickly soared up the popularity charts, becoming the best-selling feature-phone model in the country last year, and has continued to dominate the sales charts this year as well. The company has since launched the JioPhone 2, which went on sale for the first time earlier this month.
The fact that Reliance promised the availability of some of the most-used apps, such as Facebook, WhatsApp and YouTube on the device, no doubt contributed to its runaway success.
However, while Facebook has since been made available on the Jio Store, users haven’t been so lucky with the other two. While WhatsApp and YouTube were both expected to hit the JioPhone this week itself, a report on The Quint now suggest that it might still be a while before the former is available on the platform.
According to reports, a dedicated YouTube app for JioPhone is already available on the JioStore, and can be downloaded on all JioPhone and JioPhone 2 units after a system update that will be rolled out in the coming days.
However, much to the chagrin of JioPhone users, WhatsApp continues to remain absent from the JioStore almost a year after the launch of the first-gen device. What many users are finding even more disconcerting is that the company is not even giving any ETA about its availability just yet.
JioPhone was easily the best-selling feature phone in the country last year. It is powered by KaiOS – a fork of the now-defunct FirefoxOS – and comes pre-loaded with quite a few Jio apps, including, but not limited to, JioTV, JioMusic, JioCinema, HelloJio, JioGames, JioTv, JioShare etc. It also got support for Google Maps recently.
JioPhone 2
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NASA’s warped measure of safety
December 15, 2018 at 11:39 am Robert Zimmerman Essays And Commentaries
In posting an invitation to social media users to attend the launch of the first unmanned test flight of SpaceX’s man-rated Dragon capsule on January 17, 2019, NASA’s public relations department added the following warning:
NASA has a series of reviews before the uncrewed test flight, and the outcome of these reviews, including the Flight Readiness Review, will ultimately determine the Demo-1 launch date.
For months I have reported numerous examples of NASA’s safety panel acting to create fake problems that will force a delay in this launch. First it was the fueling method. Then it was the insulation on the helium tanks. Then there was the need for SpaceX to fill out all the paperwork. Now it is the parachute system and worries about the safety culture at SpaceX.
I might take these concerns seriously, except that NASA’s safety panel seems to be so sanguine about far more serious safety issues with NASA’s SLS rocket and Orion capsule. This double standard is starkly illustrated once again in this NASASpaceflight.com article about NASA’s plans for the very first manned Orion/SLS mission.
On that manned mission, NASA will fly a host of new equipment for the first time. For example, the capsule’s “Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS), crew displays, and other crew systems will be making their debut in Orion.” Anything else that has flown previously will essentially have done so only once, during the first unmanned test flight of SLS/Orion.
It gets worse. While NASA has demanded SpaceX fly the final manned version of its Falcon 9 rocket seven times before it will allow its astronauts on board, the agency plans to launch humans on SLS on only its second launch. More astonishing, that second launch will include a mission taking those astronauts on a loop around the Moon.
During the Apollo missions in the 1960s, NASA had a policy that no mission would head to the Moon without carrying a lunar module (LM). The logic was that the LM would act as a lifeboat should something go wrong with the Apollo capsule, a logic that was actually proven during Apollo 13.
NASA did send Apollo 8 to the Moon without the LM, but it did so in the context of a Cold War space race and an end-of-the-decade commitment by an assassinated president. The agency then knew the risks were high, but it decided the situation justified those risks.
NASA is not faced with a Cold War space race today. Instead, it has a grossly over-budget and long delayed boondoggle called SLS/Orion, increasingly embarrassed by the quick and efficient achievements of private space companies. In a desperate effort to keep that boondoggle alive, the agency is apparently pushing it to fly it too soon and with inadequate development. In fact, it appears to me that the safety culture at NASA that caused both shuttle accidents (a desire to favor frequent launches while ignoring safety analysis) has returned at NASA, and it has done so with a vengeance.
Meanwhile, the contrast with how the agency’s safety panel treats SpaceX versus SLS/Orion demonstrates how corrupt and unreliable that safety panel has become. They no longer really work to reduce risk. Their goal appears to promote government-built rocket systems over those manufactured by the private sector.
Hat tip to Kirk Hilliard for pointing out the language in the NASA pr invite to the SpaceX launch.
10 comments capitalism, commercial, competition, engineering, Falcon 9, freedom, government, NASA, oppression, Orion, policy, politics, regulation, SLS, spaceflight, SpaceX
AUDERY CARR.
When the paperwork equals the weight of the Machine, then can you go flying.
Audery Carr N502DD
I was taught this in the 1980.s
fred k
It will be interesting to see if the arbitrary review language shows up in the announcement for the Boeing starliner.
Up to this point, I wouldn’t describe the issue from the ASAP panel as fake … they just seemed to be arbitrary and fairly vague. Example. Risk of getting hit by debris in space. We know that the risk is very low, but not zero, We also know that staying up longer result in larger cumulative risk (which is still a small number). ASAP is forcing changes to the crew capsules based upon the cumulative risk while being parked at the station.
That’s dumb, because the capsule isn’t risky when the astros are on station. Also, the risk can be thought to be zero’d out, because there are at least two easy, good backup scenarios (stay on station; launch another capsule).
Bottom line is that the ASAP panel has no downside to overplay every risk. It has no upside to flying early, flying on time, or flying at all. The only downside if might have is to analyze a risk, and yet have that risk eventually result in a bad day. Consequently they are only going to make it harder to fly. Note that this is not the same as making it safer.
fred k. See: NASA’ safety panel illustrates the impossibility of exploration by NASA
Phill O
Politicking often is more related to the “Dog in a Manger” not known by today’s youth.
Robert wrote: “In a desperate effort to keep that boondoggle alive, the agency is apparently pushing it to fly it too soon and with inadequate development.”
Let’s assume that it is not a boondoggle [sorry, I make myself laugh to tears — SLS not a boondoggle, hah!]. In this (unimaginable) non-boondoggle scenario, SLS costs so much and launches so rarely that treating it like Apollo is hardly an option. Rather than play it safe (isn’t there an ASAP safety panel that makes sure they play it safe?) by performing a checkout flight in low Earth orbit (LEO) and then flying to lunar orbit with a lifeboat in a safety conscious way, the more affordable and more productive move is to combine multiple test missions into a single riskier mission.
Can you imagine spending a couple of billion dollars just to checkout a spacecraft in LEO with nothing to show for all that money? Then taking another couple of years and another couple of billion dollars just to do a lunar flyby, again with virtually nothing to show for it? Apollo would have been a terrible failure under such a scenario. Even after all this, there is no goal for Orion-SLS to achieve, except to merely exist. Any missions being planned beyond EM-2 are only to service the other NASA boondoggle: (F)LOP-Gateway-To-Nowhere. To paraphrase Dante: Abandon all hope, ye who enter Gateway.
And this is why I have to laugh so hard: such a scenario is the very definition of a boondoggle.
Wodun
They dont really have a choice as there are a limited supply of engines and are directed by congress. The money is largely irrelevant because NASA isnt a business and cant operate like one.
Look at the requirements for commercial crew as what NASA would like to do themselves but are incapable of. For SpaceX and Boeing, their launchers fly regularly so the requirement isnt much of a burden.
Its a double standard but one that NASA can only meet through proxy. From a commercial point of view, the delay matters but not much because there is no where for customers to go. Also, a NASA seal of approval is a great marketing feature for the people wealthy enough afford a ticket.
Lets hope nobody gets killed because of this poor attitude at NASA; we’ve lost far too many already.
It isn’t an attitude but rather a set of circumstances forced on them by congress and the reality of government vs markets.
While it is possible for government to own the means of production and attempt to function in the market, we can look at Russia, Europe, and even the USA for how well that works over the long term. Two major problems are the market forces that send information to decision makers are distorted, leading to bad decisions, and the primary customer is the government so that is the only customer whose approval matters.
SpaceX was able to do constant iterations on their design because they didn’t just have a high launch rate but also because those launches funded development and testing. NASA can’t replicate that but they can take advantage of the benefits of the free market to get what they want without having to pay for it in total. There is a mixture of shenanigans and bureaucratic sloth at play here but the end product will be something better than what NASA can/could produce.
It does illustrate a huge drawback under all of the proposed plans from space nerds like Zubrin, Musk, Bezos, and NASA. Under all of these scenarios, the government is the anchor customer and will be meddling in the market for good or ill. It wont be until products exist where government is either not a customer or a minor player where commerce will truly flourish but all of the proposals for lunar/Mars bases/villages involve either the United States government or an international coalition of governments to run things.
Expanding into cislunar space is promising. More nodes means more chances for commerce and innovation. It looks like a lot hinges on private space stations and then replicating them in other environments. Our government and the international community wont be so willing to give up their dominance on the moon or Mars and sadly, many companies will go along with them.
wodun wrote: “It wont be until products exist where government is either not a customer or a minor player where commerce will truly flourish”
I think a good example of this is commercial communication satellites. As soon as companies, not governments, were putting up these satellites, the advantages and profit potential were immediately seen. Improvements and innovations happened rapidly and that industry flourished.
We are now seeing rapid improvements and innovations in Earth observation satellites, now that this has become a commercial industry. SpaceX improved cargo transportation to space stations by making a returnable unmanned spacecraft.
As for safety, my expectation is that commercial space will perform similarly to commercial airlines in working very hard to reduce the number of fatal accidents. About a third of a century ago, the U.S. airlines realized that if they kept having accidents at the rate they were then there would soon be a headline each week about a major accident. They took safety very seriously and worked hard to reduce accidents. It took them a couple of decades to improve safety to where the major airlines had a whole decade of no fatal accidents. Learning to operate safely in space will likely be as difficult as learning to operate safely in the air, but hopefully we have learned a lot more about the learning process so that it will not take a century and thousands of lives to become relatively accident free.
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•October 3, 2018
Brisbane City Council Bus Monitoring Solution
When Brisbane City Council approached Bigmate, they required a new, high tech way to control buses in depots.
At the time that Brisbane City Council enlisted Bigmate’s help the depot was working in the following way; Buses would arrive and park in an empty spot or go to one of the various stations for refueling, maintenance and cleaning. When it was time to get back to driving, the driver would find the bus they are assigned to in the yard and then drive out.
The system had these main problems:
Bus drivers had no accurate way of knowing exactly where the bus they were assigned was parked.
There was no realtime way of knowing when a bus arrived at or left the depot.
There was no quick and simple way to know how many buses were available in the depot.
It was difficult to know if a bus was not at its home depot.
There was little visibility to knowing bus and driver route assignment.
Until recently there was little that could be done about these issues due to technological constraints and cost.
Bigmate Solution.
Using our technology and expertise, a solution that allowed Brisbane City Council to overcome these challenges while keeping costs low, was devised.
We were able to overturn these problems and create systems that could track buses within 95% accuracy.
The new systems could:
Identify when a bus arrived at the depot within 5 minutes.
Identify when a bus left the depot within 5 minutes.
Identify which station a bus was at within an accuracy rating of 95%.
Accurately capture where a bus was parked within an accuracy rating of 95%.
A system providing dashboard reports for the driver and other advanced reports was also developed to demonstrate the effectiveness of these new systems directly.
All of this was completed while keeping costs low in order to provide the greatest benefit to BCC.
How did we do it?
Our Internet of Things platform was the primary base for this upgrade.
It provided connectivity with the buses through the Bigmate Eagle devices and Sigfox network to create a robust system allowing the buses to accurately and quickly update their position.
This new system created a connected, more efficient way to track buses within the depot.
It solved a lot of Brisbane City Council’s issues, like bus location in and outside of the depot, while keeping costs low.
Utilising our innovative technological solutions such as IoT devices and Platform we have been able to develop new ways to solve old problems for numerous situations.
Oversee Everything, Overlook Nothing with tailored Bigmate solutions. Contact us today to see which Bigmate solution will suit your needs best.
Click here to see how we can help you today.
January 31, 2019Sam Montague
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Contributor Nature Nano
Neutrophil-mimicking nanoparticles intercept inflammation signals and suppress joint damages in experimental arthritis
Neutrophil membrane-coated nanoparticles present a broad-spectrum anti-inflammatory strategy for rheumatoid arthritis management.
Qiangzhe Zhang
The paper in Nature Nanotechnology is here.
Five years ago, I was an undergraduate student at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). To me, designing novel biomaterials to solve medical problems is always an intriguing topic filled with wonders and excitement. One day, I read a paper published in Nature Nanotechnology about making nanoparticles by wrapping synthetic polymeric cores with membranes of natural cells to detain bacterial toxins1. I was intrigued by the elegant assembly of natural and synthetic materials for therapeutic functions that otherwise did not exist. I was also excited to see that the invention was from my own university. I wrote a letter to Professor Liangfang Zhang in the NanoEngineering Department at UCSD, the senior author of the paper, and expressed my eager of participating in his research. He accepted my application. Five years have passed since then and I am now pursuing my graduate degree under his supervision.
Since the start of my research with Dr. Zhang, I have been involved in several projects aimed at developing cell membrane-coated nanoparticles. Membrane coating presents a facile top-down method to directly replicate the highly complex functionalities of the natural cell membrane. The resulting nanoparticles therefore mimic some of the properties of the source cells, from which the membrane is derived. This design marries the advantages of natural cell membrane and synthetic nanomaterials for novel biofunctions. For example, I witnessed the development of platelet membrane-coated nanoparticles that effectively targeted damaged vasculatures and platelet-adhering pathogens2. These targeted nanoparticles efficiently delivered therapeutic payload in the polymeric core to the disease site, demonstrating unique platelet-like functions bestowed by membrane coating. I also participated in the development of macrophage membrane-coated nanoparticles for sepsis management3. Leveraging macrophage membrane receptors responsible for the sensing of bacteria-derived endotoxins, we engineered macrophage membrane-coated nanoparticles to sequester endotoxin and dampen the propagation of sepsis. In the past a few years, I have witnessed the emergence of cell membrane coating as a platform technology in the fields of nanomaterials and nanomedicine. Cell membrane from a variety of cell types have been used to coat over nanoparticles made from many different materials4 (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Design concept of cell membrane-coated nanoparticles. A variety of cell types have been used as sources of membranes to coat over nanoparticles. Each cell membrane type can utilize unique properties to provide functionalities to nanoparticulate cores, the material of which can be varied depending on the desired application. Figure adapted from reference 4.
Rheumatoid arthritis came to my attention during my discussion with Dr. Zhang. It was a devastating disease. The specific cause of rheumatoid arthritis is unknown and the disease is incurable. Progress has been made in rheumatoid arthritis treatment, especially the use of biologics that inhibit tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) and interleukin (IL)-15. However, existing approaches still carry considerable limitations. Today, rheumatoid arthritis affects more than 1.3 million Americans and about 1% of the worldwide population6. Unmet needs in treating rheumatoid arthritis has prompted the development of nanoparticles to seek leaky vasculatures at inflamed joints7 or inflammatory cells8 for better delivery of anti-inflammatory drugs. It also inspired the use of natural microvesicles from neutrophils, which presented pro-resolving protein Annexin A1 to protect joints in arthritis9. I was excited to read about these novel approaches and their remarkable engineering ingenuity.
Dr. Zhang encouraged me to read more about rheumatoid arthritis. I learned that in rheumatoid arthritis, neutrophils play crucial roles in disease progression. As the “first-responders” to inflammation, neutrophils arrive early at the inflamed joint in response to inflammatory cytokines and chemokines. They relay and amplify inflammatory signal to various immune cells downstream10. The active roles of neutrophils intrigued the idea of developing nanoparticles coated with neutrophil membranes (neutrophil-NPs), which may serve as targets of signaling molecules but without propagating signals. Could this be a broad-spectrum anti-inflammatory agent and a solution to rheumatoid arthritis treatment? I decided to find out.
The major challenge I encountered early in this project was developing a reliable and reproducible neutrophil production process. Unlike many cell types that could be expanded in culture, the most reliable source of neutrophils is freshly collected blood11. Furthermore, neutrophils are known to undergo apoptosis rapidly after isolation12. My only option was to repeatedly collect and isolate neutrophils for membrane derivation. It then became challenging to control the quality of different neutrophil batches. To tackle this problem, I carefully optimized and streamlined the entire neutrophil collection process, from technical parameters such as route and time of neutrophil activation, to operational parameters such as isolation procedures, the total time needed to complete them, and even the personnel performing the procedures. The quality of different neutrophil batches was further analyzed using a variety of parameters to ensure consistency of the resultant neutrophil membrane. Looking back, this well-designed neutrophil production process bestowed the neutrophil-NP platform with excellent reliability.
The hard work of making neutrophil-NPs paid off. I was excited to see neutrophil-NPs showed remarkable efficacy to inhibit arthritis damages when injected locally to the joints. The swelling of knee joint and cartilage damage were both significantly alleviated with neutrophil-NP treatment. In addition, early treatment using neutrophil-NPs showed profound systemic anti-inflammatory activity. We were also excited to observe that the therapeutic efficacy of neutrophil-NPs was comparable to that of anti-cytokine antibodies similar to what are used in rheumatoid arthritis therapies13 (Figure 2).
Figure 2. a, Schematic representation of neutrophil-NPs designed for suppressing synovial inflammation and ameliorating joint destruction in inflammatory arthritis. b, Change of hind knee diameter on day 60 compared to that of day 0 in a therapeutic study with CIA mouse model. c,d, Representative images of H&E staining (c) and safranin-O staining (d) on knee sections from mice treated with neutrophil-NP, PBS, anti-IL-1β antibody or anti-TNF-α antibody. Scale bars, 100 μm. F, synovial membrane fibrillation; H, synovium hyperplasia; I, immune cell infiltration. Figure adapted from our paper13. SpringerNature.
The use of neutrophil-NPs as a potential treatment for rheumatoid arthritis is still an early stage technology and only tested with experimental arthritis in mice. Tremendous challenges exist prior to employing this strategy for anti-inflammatory therapy. For example, large-scale manufacturing of neutrophil-NPs may be challenging with the use of natural cell membrane. In this respect, bioprocesses for ex vivo production of neutrophils have reached a clinical scale and may help to produce a large quantity of neutrophil membranes14. Meanwhile, significant progress has been made in producing human cells with universal immune compatibility15, which would also enable cell supply for clinical studies. These technological advances together offer a promising prospect for the translation of neutrophil-NPs. Seeing these progresses also motivates me to pursue more ideas and overcome more medical challenges with cell membrane coating technology.
Our paper: Zhang, Q. et al. Neutrophil membrane-coated nanoparticles inhibit synovial inflammation and alleviate joint damage in inflammatory arthritis. Nature Nanotechnology (2018).
A News & Views article from Nature Nanotechnology: Neutrophil wrap.
1. Hu, C.-M. J., Fang, R. H., Copp, J., Luk, B. T. & Zhang, L. A biomimetic nanosponge that absorbs pore-forming toxins. Nat. Nanotechnol. 8, 336–340 (2013).
2. Hu, C.-M. J. et al. Nanoparticle biointerfacing by platelet membrane cloaking. Nature 526, 118–121 (2015).
3. Thamphiwatana, S. et al. Macrophage-like nanoparticles concurrently absorbing endotoxins and proinflammatory cytokines for sepsis management. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 114, 11488–11493 (2017).
4. Fang, R. H., Kroll, A. V., Gao, W. & Zhang, L. Cell Membrane Coating Nanotechnology. Adv. Mater. 30, 1706759 (2018).
5. Chan, A. C. & Carter, P. J. Therapeutic antibodies for autoimmunity and inflammation. Nat. Rev. Immunol. 10, 301–316 (2010).
6. Taylor, P. C., Moore, A., Vasilescu, R., Alvir, J. & Tarallo, M. A structured literature review of the burden of illness and unmet needs in patients with rheumatoid arthritis: a current perspective. Rheumatol. Int. 36, 685–695 (2016).
7. Hofkens, W. et al. Safety of glucocorticoids can be improved by lower yet still effective dosages of liposomal steroid formulations in murine antigen-induced arthritis: Comparison of prednisolone with budesonide. Int. J. Pharm. 416, 493–498 (2011).
8. Thomas, T. P. et al. Folate-targeted nanoparticles show efficacy in the treatment of inflammatory arthritis. Arthritis Rheum. 63, 2671–2680 (2011).
9. Headland, S. E. et al. Neutrophil-derived microvesicles enter cartilage and protect the joint in inflammatory arthritis. Sci. Transl. Med. 7, 315ra190-315ra190 (2015).
10. Wright, H. L., Moots, R. J. & Edwards, S. W. The multifactorial role of neutrophils in rheumatoid arthritis. Nat. Rev. Rheumatol. 10, 593–601 (2014).
11. Ferrante, A. & Thong, Y. H. Optimal conditions for simultaneous purification of mononuclear and polymorphonuclear leucocytes from human blood by the hypaque-ficoll method. J. Immunol. Methods 36, 109–117 (1980).
12. Edwards, S. W., Derouet, M., Howse, M. & Moots, R. J. Regulation of neutrophil apoptosis by Mcl-1. Biochem. Soc. Trans. 32, 489–492 (2004).
13. Zhang, Q. Neutrophil membrane-coated nanoparticles inhibit synovial inflammation and alleviate joint damage in inflammatory arthritis. Nat. Nanotechnol. (2018).
14. Jie, Z. et al. Large-scale ex vivo generation of human neutrophils from cord blood CD34+ cells. PLOS ONE 12, e0180832 (2017).
15. Feng, Q. et al. Scalable Generation of Universal Platelets from Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells. Stem Cell Rep. 3, 817–831 (2014).
Ph.D. student, UC San Diego
Cell membrane-coated nanoparticle for biomedical applications
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Joint Venture & Partnerships
Leaf Resources and Novozymes Join Forces in the Conversion of Biomass to Functional Sugars
By lepitreb December 28, 2016 August 12, 2019
Leave a Comment on Leaf Resources and Novozymes Join Forces in the Conversion of Biomass to Functional Sugars
Leaf Resources (Australia) is focused on making sustainable products from plant biomass. It has developed a patented biomass pretreatment process called GLYCELL*, which uses glycerine to economically produce cellulosic sugars.
Leaf Resources recently announced their cooperation with Novozymes, the world’s largest producer of industrial enzymes, to further increase the yields and efficiency associated with Leaf Resources’ innovative biomass conversion technology.
The GLYCELL technology operates at low temperature and pressure, and uses crude glycerin as a low cost, recyclable reagent. The process efficiently deconstructs plant biomass and produces a high-yield of high-quality, concentrated cellulose and hemicellulose sugars, which in turn enables cost competitive production of renewable chemicals.
As part of the collaboration, Novozymes will use its expertise in biotechnology to customize its broad portfolio of robust, high-yielding enzymes to the Glycell process. The goal of the collaboration is to design a highly tailored enzyme package and to allow the Glycell process to achieve superior performance, quality, and reliability for the production of high-value renewable chemicals. Leaf and its development partner, Claeris, LLC, will then incorporate Novozymes’ tailored enzyme package into the biomass pretreatment section of integrated bio-refineries.
“Production trials performed by independent third parties have validated the performance of the Glycell process and confirms both the unique nature and economic viability of our process,” says Ken Richards, Managing Director of Leaf Resources. “Our continued work with Claeris and a number of potential production partners confirms the strong interest of all stakeholders in large-scale renewable chemicals production, and we look forward to working with Novozymes to make it a reality.”
“The combined scientific expertise of our companies makes it possible to enhance the conversion of biomass to sugars which, when combined with the development expertise of Claeris, will help accelerate the development of renewable chemicals,” says Michael Burns, Head of Biorefining Business Development for North America at Novozymes. “There is a clear move towards sustainable chemical production and we believe the combination of Claeris and the Glycell process will help further enable the industry.”
The end of 2016 is rich with announcements related to technologies and partnerships allowing to refine biomass at reportedly lower costs and higher process yields and obtain high value renewable chemicals such as functional lignin, xylitols and other cellulosic sugars. Please refer to §26 of the detailed report on the European Bioplastics Conference 2016 to know more about the also promising biomass refining technology and process of Annikki (Austria).
What are Bioplastics and Biopolymers?
What is the Difference Between Biodegradable, Compostable and OXO Degradable?
The History and Most Important Innovations of Bioplastics
What are Drop-In Bioplastics?
History of Cellophane
The History of Elephant Grass Bioplastics
Polylactic acid or polylactide (PLA)
What is Bio-BDO?
McDonalds and the Polystyrene Connections
The Future of Polystyrene
Bioplastic Feedstock 1st, 2nd and 3rd Generations
Tags: Leaf Resources Novozymes
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Pam England’s Story
By Pam England | April 8, 2018 | 0
Birthing From Within® was conceived and developed by Pam England, MA, CNM, homebirth midwife and mother, who, inspired by her own birth experiences, developed this innovative, holistic approach to childbirth and postpartum preparation.
When Pam became pregnant for the first time in 1982, she believed that her plan to birth at home was ensured because of her dedication to excellent prenatal nutrition, baking her own bread, wearing Birkenstock sandals, and putting her fingers in her ears when anyone spoke about cesarean birth. However, after a long labor at home in which she tried every possible alternative known to midwifery, she was transferred to the hospital for the cesarean birth she most feared.
While lying on the operating table being draped for surgery, Pam mused over the irony that although she knew more about birth than any of the women in her family, living or dead, she was the first to have a cesarean! Before her cesarean, Pam believed women could avoid surgery and other interventions by arming themselves with information, a positive attitude. But in this perfect, unexpected twist of fate, her harsh disdain of cesarean mothers softened into camaraderie.
Moments later on the operating table, the course of Pam’s life changed when her entire being was permeated with these questions:
What did I need to know to give birth as a mother that I didn’t already know as a midwife?
What do all modern women need to know to give birth-in-awareness in a medicalized birth culture?
These questions preoccupied Pam for years, leading her to meet influential teachers including Michel Odent in Pithivier, France in 1984. She earned her Masters in Psychology & Counseling from Antioch, with an emphasis on Perinatal Psychology and Hypnosis in 1989.
During her second pregnancy in 1990, Pam understood the importance of inviting all the “Birth Fairies,” (not just Homebirth Fairies), to her labor. She reasoned that she didn’t need to do special preparation if the birth was destined to be normal, the baby would just “fall out.” Instead, she faced her biggest birth Tiger, cesarean birth, by planning a mindful cesarean.
Pam gave birth to her second son, easily and quickly. Soon after, she began to envision childbirth classes that would both educate and initiate parents so they too could learn to face their birth Tigers and invite all the Birth Fairies without attachment to outcome. Over a period of eight years, she developed a totally new model and structure for childbirth classes, and tested and refined many new multi-sensory processes that now comprise the Birthing From Within approach to childbirth preparation. Her approach is described in her first book, Birthing From Within, which was edited by Rob Horowitz and self-published by Partera Press in 1998.
This year marks nineteen years since the first Birthing From Within workshop was presented in Austin, Texas. Since then countless birth professionals across the country and in other countries have been touched by the philosophy and unique multi-sensory process that comprise this approach. Many have enrolled in the certification programs for childbirth mentors and doulas. It is through their teachings, practice, and writings, as well as those of our new team of facilitators, and our members that this body of work continues to thrive and gently shift the paradigm of birth in our culture.
>> Learn more about our training programs for birth doulas and childbirth educators.
Posted in Meet the Mentor
BFW Dictionary: Mentor →
About Pam England
Pam lives, writes, and paints in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is the author of Birthing From Within, The Labyrinth of Birth, and Ancient Map for Modern Birth (link to purchase). She is currently working on her next book, Birth Story Medicine. She also hosts workshops and speaks at conferences on topics such as preventing and healing birth trauma, cesarean birth, storytelling, visualizations, hypnosis and many other aspects of mentoring parents during the many life transitions they experience in the childbearing year.
View all posts by Pam England →
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Companies and Performances
European Ballet Companies
By SFCleo, May 17, 2016 in Bolshoi Ballet
Post scriptum: I didn't say "I always sit close", I said "I always try to sit close". There is a big difference. Circumstances force me regularly to watch the performance from a certain distance, but after experiencing at Covent Garden what they call there "Amphitheatre", I will never-ever again sit there. You barely could see who was on the stage, with zero nuance visible, and it still cost me a lot of money. I would rather leave such pleasures to others.
17 hours ago, Quinten said:
Vaziev undoubtedly has a talent for spotting real talent and a strong desire to nourish it. He's acutely aware of the brevity of dancers' careers and cites that as a reason for bringing them along as quickly as possible. Historically dancers have both benefited and suffered under Vaziev's guidance. His extraordinary promotion of Stepanova to prima from soloist, however much deserved, made her a target of anger and resentment.
One needs to ask: "a target of anger and resentment" by whom? By fans of other dancers? This is completely irrelevant from the professional perspective, with their angry internet denunciations those fans may at most mislead not well informed ballet goers who spend too much time reading what others write. In the end, if a dancer in question is indeed exceptional, such denunciations will be later funny to read. Like the denunciations of Marie Taglioni by a certain jealous, toxic Parisian critic in the 1830-ies. More important is what other dancers in the troupe may think, and most of them are professional, unlike their fans they can easily determine who has huge talent and who owes his position due to somebody's strong backing. The promotion of Stepanova was "extraordinary" perhaps for some of the fans of Bolshoi, outside Russia this happens all the time and is considered to make a lot of sense when applied in exceptional cases, of course. Her promotion has also another side to it, there are situations that dancers accept employment at the rank significantly lower than what they represent, I have absolutely no doubt that her initial rank of "Soloist" was not reflecting what she actually represented, it was neither a result of her advancement within the company. It wasn't that she so "dramatically improved" within a half year that Vaziev was in charge, for anybody in the trade she was already exceptional before. The case of Somova was different. I am not sure, however, there would be much backlash today, because in the last 15 years the steady erosion of the classical danse in the West proceeded so far that to find a good classical ballerina nowadays anywhere in Europe or in America becomes increasingly difficult.
Edited January 21, 2018 by Laurent
corrected two words
Fleurdelis
On 1/20/2018 at 2:44 PM, Laurent said:
Also her approach to the roles, too rational, too calculated, she is unable to shed this "I have taken care of everything" image when she is on stage. Such is her Aurora, a business lady who planned her life before she was born, such is her Odette which is really more like Odile "en blanc", such was also her Carmen. I prefer the dancers who are capable of drawing me into their world because there is something magnetic and perhaps very pure in them.
I would think that "theater" is where one would typically want to see acting take place. And Smirnova, in my view, is one of the best actresses of her generation in ballet, if not the best. She does not draw people into her world, she draws the audience into the world of the play, into the world of her character. This is what at least I come to see in a theater. But others may prefer other things, what do I know?
As for the specific roles, I have seen her Aurora, Odette / Odile and Carmen, and saw absolutely nothing of what you saw there, quite the opposite actually.
Olga Smirnova is interesting. She is interesting because she has something to show. Most dancers, including some truly accomplished technically ballerinas, have not much to show besides being able to go through the prescribed text "without setting a foot wrong", with some tricks thrown in here and there, quite a number of them are, what we call, "empty". This sets Smirnova apart. She is most successful in the repertoire like Maillot or Cranko, where she is not forced to act through the medium of classical dance idiom. I mean "academically" classical, not "almost", "somehow", or "approximately", classical. You may not care about the canons of the classical dance, you may not know them, but they do exist. The dancers with natural flow of movement, who dance as they breathe, who don't need to constantly try to harness their hands and shoulders that refuse proper placement, have a significant advantage over those who do. The most ambitious of the latter category can, of course, with a lot of luck and enormous determination, have very successful careers. This is how I see her. I don't think she was successful, however, in drawing the audience "into the world of the play", as you say, in "Sleeping Beauty" or "Swan Lake", even as an actress, precisely because she was expressing herself. Every single ballerina who has anything to show always expresses herself in every piece she dances-acts. She is always willingly or not, drawing the audience into her world.
Mashinka
9 hours ago, Laurent said:
If you don't sit close to the performing artists, you have no chance observing all the nuances and details of their performance.
Strongly disagree, if an artist is unable to project they're not much of an artist. The beauty of the ballet is the choreography that can be seen from every part of the theatre.
"Strongly disagree" with what? With saying that "you have no chance observing all the nuances and details of their performance" if you decide to sit far from the stage?
11 hours ago, Laurent said:
And are you saying ballet goers unless sufficiently well-heeled to sit in the front stalls should simply pack up and go home?
canbelto
Emeralds Circle
IMO if you always sit in the first few rows of the orchestra near the stage (and not farther back in the orchestra), or in the first balcony/tier, then you miss so much from sitting so close to the stage, namely, the patterns of the corps. You need to be IMO at least eye length with the stage in order to have an idea of the corps formations. The first two or three rows puts you UNDER the stage so you are basically looking up at the dancers. There's a reason why in theaters the first row is often marked "partial view." Maybe first few rows would work for a gala of pas de deux.
Not every ballet has a Balanchine corps. It's always a trade-off. I wouldn't have seen Krysanova's expressions in yesterday's Bolshoi Romeo and Juliet transmission if I had been sitting in the back of the house admiring the corps patterns. (I also got to see that Krysanova's physically resembles Ferri in some ways.)
IMO, the only reason someone else's personal preferences should matter is if you're attending with them, and they want you to sit with them.
Otherwise, other people prefer to sit somewhere else? More tickets available in your section for you.
volcanohunter
Some theaters have really lousy sightlines from the orchestra level, so there it's either the first row or one of the upper levels. For example, the opera house of the National Arts Centre in Ottawa has horrible sightlines on the orchestra level, even though the incline is pronounced. In the front row the view is certainly not from underneath the stage and everything is visible. (I'm assuming that the orchestra pit is in use and not converted into an additional seating area.) Of course there's also the option of multiple balconies or their side boxes. Personally I like to see ballets from multiple vantage points. And I'll admit to sitting up close for favorite dancers and further away to look at floor patterns when the lead dancers are less to my liking. At Covent Garden I love row G centre, but I have no objection to the front area of the amphitheatre either. I don't find it's far from the stage at all and don't use magnification while seated there. Because yes, good dancers do project without overdoing it. My objection to seats further up in the amphitheatre relates to the muffled sound, but not the view. I have no use for side boxes where ballet is concerned, and I don't much care for them for opera either.
Birdsall
I tend to prefer sitting close up for classical ballet which is basically hierarchical in nature (the leads are more important than the corps and minor soloists although the corps is also very important when it is a company like the Mariinsky). Anyway, imo when watching the leads in classical ballet I usually do want to see the facial expressions and nuances close up. For Balanchine I like to sit higher up to see the patterns of the corps. To me in many of Balanchine's ballets the leads are not as important as in classical ballet and often they are not acting because it is an abstract ballet, so I don't have to see their expressions. In opera it is a very hard issue for me, because when the singers are huge stars I do like to sit close up to see their expressions and how they act. However, sound is often way better far away (you get to hear how big a voice is). I tend to vary it from time to time or choose a halfway point in opera hoping I get a feel for the size of the voice as well as facial expressions (and binoculars help too).
I sometimes think what we think is an artist projecting can sometimes be our own excitement of the experience. Big stars often seem to project because the house is buzzing with anticipation, and the live experience of hearing or seeing a "star" in a signature role makes us want to feel that we have seen a performance of a lifetime. I have often seen a performance and found it "electric" and then found a bootleg audio recording or video and then felt it wasn't quite what I felt in the house. I think we get wrapped up in the moment and enjoying a fun time with people around us. This is all my opinion, but I have never sat in the very back row of a balcony and experienced someone projecting who I could not see well.......I need to be somewhat close to feel I am seeing the real deal. And I have seen Leontyne Price, Placido Domingo (when he was in his prime and not an embarrassment), Montserrat Caballe......just to name a few. I am not saying some stars can not project. Maybe they can. I think they can certainly project their voices and create a visceral thrill with the voice alone. However, I am in doubt about projecting acting or face or anything.......if I can barely see the person on stage to me he or she is not projecting no matter how big the personality is.
7 hours ago, Helene said:
(I also got to see that Krysanova's physically resembles Ferri in some ways.)
Come to think of it - yes indeed ! I admired Krysanova as a dancer, but after seeing her as Juliet and Catherine recently I admire her even more as an actress.
San Francisco Opera has the perfect solution: Operavision. It's up in the Balcony (top section) of War Memorial. There are two screens towards the sides, and the performance is "broadcast" visually through cameras, including close-ups, with subtitles on the screens. But if you look through the middle, you see it live, and you're always hearing the sound live.
The first time I experienced it was for Kaneko's Magic Flute in San Francisco, where the transitions between the different projections were worth seeing live, but the close-ups were great when the background was static.
Actually, we have a policy against discussing the discussion and each other.
So don't do it.
On 1/21/2018 at 10:01 PM, Laurent said:
You may not care about the canons of the classical dance, you may not know them, but they do exist. The dancers with natural flow of movement, who dance as they breathe, who don't need to constantly try to harness their hands and shoulders that refuse proper placement, have a significant advantage over those who do. The most ambitious of the latter category can, of course, with a lot of luck and enormous determination, have very successful careers. This is how I see her.
Canon of classical dance is not a set of rigid narrowly prescribed rules, it may be far from a free-for-all, but still allows for quite a range of styles and expressions. Otherwise we would not have had such a plethora of amazing, legendary, yet very different dancers. One can simply compare and contrast how different such stars as Plisetskaya, Semenova, Ulanova, Kolpakova or Kurgapkina were in classical roles to see this plainly. Smirnova's hands and shoulders (her generous epaulement, the expressive, the defined and finished movements of her arms and hands, the way her arm movements start at the back) are what I find particularly spectacular about her, and this is what favorably distinguishes her, a thing of mesmerizing beauty.
I don't think she was successful, however, in drawing the audience "into the world of the play", as you say, in "Sleeping Beauty" or "Swan Lake", even as an actress, precisely because she was expressing herself. Every single ballerina who has anything to show always expresses herself in every piece she dances-acts. She is always willingly or not, drawing the audience into her world.
It may be very tempting to associate one's own judgment or impressions with those of an entire audience, but is best avoided, as it is almost always a fallacious illusion. And my point was that, as someone who is also a member of the audience, I am impressed precisely by her ability of making an entire play happen, acquire a greater significance and meaning, rather than showcasing just her own individual performance.
Having seen her in both Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake, I found the characterizations so different, that I would find it impossible to tell in which one, if any, she was actually be expressing herself, rather than giving her interpretation of Aurora, Odile or Odette. I call it having a wide range, which is what great actors are admired for. And while I feel that more often than not dancers do not fare well when they step outside their emploi, she is one of those very rare artists who do it incredibly well.
Edited January 24, 2018 by Fleurdelis
Horrible hands, lack of natural, harmonious movement. She has worked a lot trying to correct it, unfortunately such things are very difficult, often impossible to correct if they weren't corrected at school. I saw her recently twice, the worst is still there, the only thing she can do is to try to "mask it" through all of these elaborate mannerisms. I can't watch it.
The graceful hands, arms and epaulement that Smirnova demonstrates in classical works are one of the most exquisite, fluid, harmonious and expressive things in ballet today, they are what makes one revel at and revere the classical ballet tradition, and have been so since school. Depending on the work and the character in question, her movements would also change (after all, a long mournful adagio does call for different movement than a perky allegro piece), so the manner of doing them will vary, but this is not a mannerism, but rather another demonstration of considerable acting range and careful application of the language of classical ballet for the purposes of creating a believable character and a compelling artistic impression.
Sure, people are perfectly entitled to like or dislike things (I once had someone, an arts student, no less!!!, try to convince me that Michelangelo's David was actually an ugly disproportionate figure, so, go figure!), and there is no point in arguing over matters of taste.
I may be less qualified than most other members to evaluate execution, but the Smirnova I saw live so far at the Bolshoy as Nikiya, Aurora, Odette/Odile, and memorably in the Grand Pas Classique on two consecutive gala evenings in October 2016 was "beauty in motion" imho.
Admin warning: do not discuss each other, however veiled, or the discussion.
Aesthetics in dance seem to have shifted, just as technique has become vulgarized, for me both Smirnova and Stepanova are vastly inferior to past generations of Bolshoi principals. To get back to Vaziev, what is he going to do about it? Demoting Alexandrova and Kaptsova doesn't inspire faith in his judgement
5 hours ago, Mashinka said:
Don't know how technique can be vulgarized. It is delivery or character representation that can be vulgar or not.
And, of course, railing against vulgarity while at the same time hailing Alexandrova is as much of a contradiction as there can be. So, I am with Vaziev on this one. But not on Kaptsova.
All IMHO, of course.
5 hours ago, mnacenani said:
Oh dear dear ....... our Stepanova fans will respond to this with "fire and fury" ...... if they don't have a heart attack first !
Gets quite partisan, even sectarian. Fan wars are almost as old a tradition as ballet itself, at least in Russia.
3 minutes ago, Fleurdelis said:
railing against vulgarity while at the same time hailing Alexandrova is as much of a contradiction as there can be.
Now my heart is broken ..... don't you dare "vulgarise" my beloved Masha !! Joking aside, I really think Masha is an excellent dancer and a "character" - the moment she walks out on stage, or is in a crowd somewhere, or taking class on World Ballet Day there is no mistaking her for anyone else.
She is indeed a superb technician, one of the best there has ever been, and owns one of the biggest jumps in Bolshoi's history. In the right role it works to a great effect. I retract any inference of considering her vulgar, but in many roles I prefer to see a more finesse approach.
"You keep seeing open mouths, hunched shoulders, jutted chins, arms turned inside out at the socket and avidly reaching; you keep seeing elbows bent stiff or stretched stiff, hands crooked at the waist, impatient arms, agitated hands, bobbing heads."
That was Edwin Denby's reaction upon seeing the Bolshoi in 1959. The Bolshoi having a dash of vulgarity and inelegance is nothing new.
2 hours ago, Fleurdelis said:
Don't know how technique can be vulgarized. It is delivery or character representation that can be vulgar or not
When jumping technique is taught so that the standard is a 190 degree split with a dropped crotch, for example, that is an example of the way that technique can be considered vulgarized. When extensions are taught to be so high, and dancers weeded out because they can't/won't, that the music has to be slowed down to accommodate them, that is another way that technique can be considered vulgarized. When Balanchine demanded open and raised hips in arabesque as a technical element, that was considered vulgarized technique for quite a while.
In Catherine Pawlick's book, she describes how Vaganova herself was pressured to change technique to respond to the demand of choreographers, and at some point, Vaganova refused, having decided that it was too circus-like and crossed the line.
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Citybizlist Rewards Launches in Baltimore
Anne Calvert
In this day and age, it would be hard to find an internet user who doesn’t belong to a group deal site. Most people belong to several; it’s easy to be lured in by their promises of grandeur and their seemingly insider info. We join because the concept is great and the potential deals are so tempting. And yet, once you’ve joined, you realize that the deals are rarely applicable to you. Yes, 50% off laser hair removal sounds great, but the drive back from York, PA sounds like it would be unpleasant. Sure, that 50% off a bushel of crabs sounds nice, until you realize it’s only valid from November 30-January 30. And, frankly, if we were going to skydive, we wouldn’t want to do it on the cheap.
Thankfully, an alternative to the woes of “horizontal” deals is coming to Baltimore.
Citybizlist, a site dedicated to bringing relevant local business news to business owners, executives, and professionals, is launching Citybizlist Rewards, a program that will offer deals their targeted demographic actually wants to use.
Edwin Warfield, CEO of Citybizlist, wrote in the launch email that the launch is “a tremendous step forward for readers and advertisers….Our fast-growing audience has demonstrated a passion for the quality business and financial content curated by our editorial team, and we believe they’ll be similarly excited by the deals we’re finding for them.”
Warfield touches on a key point: the relationship between reader and advertiser is key in group sites. With horizontal group sites, companies know that so many readers will see their offer and at least some of them will likely be interested. The risk always looms that the deal won’t work. Citybizlist solves this problem by offering relevant companies a pipeline to their target audience, and in doing so, offers its readers deals they actually want to use. It’s a symbiotic relationship.
“We’re offering a limited number of advertisers the chance to put their business in front of a very high profile audience of business executives, entrepreneurs, and professionals. We will be offering real rewards for our readers that you don’t see anywhere else; our philsophy is ‘you’ve worked hard, you’ve earned it, now enjoy yourself,’” says Warfield.
Best of all, the program is launching in Baltimore, with additional cities to follow over the next year. This month’s deals will include an overnight stay at The Inn at Black Olive in Fells Point, Custom-tailored suits by Victor Pascal, Easton’s Promise B&B, and more.
The uncertain market for deal programs (local daily deals have had only modest success in Baltimore so far and Groupon is reevaluating the wisdom of preparing for its IPO), the new twist of Citybizlist Rewards could be just what we need. Are you ready to make a deal?
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August Book Review – Townie: A Memoir by Andre Dubus III
There is violence in our world. For some of us, we can turn a blind eye and pretend it isn’t there. But that does not mean it is gone. Violence has been around since Cain and Able, is still around, and will be around tomorrow when all in the world has changed, except human nature. In reading Townie: A Memoir, Andre Dubus III brought that violence into my home: not glorifying it, nor sugar-coating it; never seeking sympathy. His words seek only understanding. With simple, earnest, honesty he told his story.
Andre Dubus III was raised in some of the tougher neighborhoods in Boston by a working mother, while his father lived only miles away, devoid of understanding of his children’s daily condition. Dubus tells of growing up a scared and skinny kid with an overwhelming sense of responsibility to care for his people or those he viewed as needing protection. He takes us on a journey of weight lifting, running, boxing and street fights that lets you deep into his soul, his anguish, and anger. Even at the height of his physical domination, his inability to protect those he loved from harm confuses and torments him. There is a sense that when he punches the bag or faces an opponent he is seeking an answer and if he can just hit hard enough he will find it.
It is when he puts pen to paper, that the Dubus begins to find his answers, and in finding his answers, he gives so much to his readers. As a writer, he gave me encouragement: through the words of his mother, the ‘thank you’s’ written by his father at the end of a day of writing, and through the stories of the characters sitting on the edges of his scenes. As a reader he gave me page after page of stunning imagery: walking me through Boston neighborhoods, into local bars, across the campus where his father taught. He introduced me to his family with their flaws, their fear and their love.
Sometimes when I seek examples of why I enjoyed a book, I have to sift through several pages to find a quote, or a scene that inspires. Not so for Townie. Every page is packed with descriptions that impact all senses. Every page depicts unending love of family and friends, despite the violence. Every page lets you into the life of the young boy, who survives the streets to find his way as a young man. Dubus describes events that crippled others: emotionally, physically, mentally; events that caged acquaintances: behind bars, in bars, and six feet under. His rendering of how he took these events and ultimately found his life’s work was inspiring.
I’m not a believer of the end justifying the means. But for Dubus, his life was mean. In response he learned to protect himself, first by fighting, and ultimately by understanding. What a loss to the literary world had Andre Dubus III chosen to continue with his fists instead of learning to use his words.
Townie: A Memoir by Andre Dubus III has made it to my Gold Medal List.
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Wedding Crashers (Why—what did you do your first night in India?) #India #humor #travel
garba, humor, India, Indian wedding, travel, wedding, wedding crasher
Guess what, India? We’re baaaaaack!
I’m back in India to get into trouble with my two old friends and fellow travelers, Janine and Jaya. While we’re busy rushing for new disasters, I thought I’d share some memories of a few trips ago. [For even more elephant frenzy, parathas, temples, palaces, monkeys…and the kindness of Indian strangers—please click on the image above.]
Nobody who knew the three of us believed it a year ago when—as old friends since our university days—Janine, Jaya, and I actually managed to meet up in the middle of India. So obviously, we just had to push our luck. (Actually, that bit nobody had any trouble believing…)
This time, Janine and I were supposed to meet up at the Mumbai International Airport. But due to a tragic annual event we have up north (winter), both our flights were delayed.
I’d been traveling from Scotland for over eighteen hours, much of that time spent on the runway as the plane was repeatedly de-iced. More than a day earlier, Janine left her home outside Washington DC in the middle of a blizzard, making it out on the last plane to take off before the Eastern USA put out the CLOSED sign and climbed back into bed to binge-watch old seasons of Walking Dead.
One thing about international flights is that they feed you. This is not, however, necessarily a good thing. Shortly after our flight took off, the attendants began distributing the trays. I think they had approximately two vegetarian meals for a flight headed to a country where over half the population are vegetarians. By the time they reached my section—so far back in steerage I expected to be chained to an oar by a whip-wielding flight attendant—they were offering passengers a choice of beef stew. (The choice was to take it or to leave it.)
“Beef stew.” The flight attendants repeated this to each incredulous passenger as they made their way toward me. “We only have the beef stew.” The next person would politely request, “Vegetarian.”
“No. Beef stew.”
“But I ordered the veg meal.”
“We didn’t get our meal orders because of the weather. All we have is beef stew.”
I have to hand it to the attendants. As far as I could tell, they never once got upset about having the exact same conversation with each and every passenger.
The passenger in front of me cried. Her husband glared at the attendant, who offered a bottle of water and a roll (no butter).
My turn. “I’ll have the veg meal please.”
The flight attendant’s smile never wavered but something in her eyes made me think about all the hours we still had to spend together. And that whip.
“Just kidding. Do you have any beef stew?” The smile turned beatific. I thought she might kiss me as she handed over the foil-covered meal. I peeled off the cover and…it was absolutely, completely, astonishingly inedible. In whatever form the contents of that tray had started life, they had obviously undergone some transformation that wouldn’t have been out of place in a SciFi horror flick, spreading to smother all items with a gelatinous brown goo. I pressed the foil back around it before it could escape and start turning my fellow passengers into gooey mile-high pod people, and asked my new flight attendant buddy for a coffee. She smiled sympathetically and offered me extra milk.
As the attendants repeated the same meal offer two more times over the course of the flight, neither their smiles nor the menu varied. By the third pass, they didn’t even pretend to hand out the trays as they pushed their little carts the length of our steerage economy cabin.
But hardship and deprivation can bring out the best in people. A woman across the aisle from me handed around one of those big discount bags of gummy candy and got a standing ovation.
When the flight landed in Mumbai, exhausted passengers stumbled off, desperate for anything that was:
A) not beef stew and
B) …actually, A) pretty much nailed it.
But first we had to run the stamp-intensive gauntlet that was passport control. Luckily, I’d been to India before so I knew how to line up before the row of immigration officers behind their high desks. Or, more precisely, how not to line up. There is, of course, nothing remotely resembling an actual queue. You just plunge in and crowd surf until you’re pushed up to the front. I could hear American voices behind me protesting bitterly that people were not waiting their turn and it was just so not fair, while British passengers cleared their throats fiercely.
I held out my paperwork to the agent. As he looked it over, we agreed that yes, Madam’s passport was very full and yes, Madam did go lots of places, and no, Madam didn’t know they would need several pristine passport pages for their stampage, and yes, Madam would most certainly see that she had more blank pages next time, and no Madam didn’t mind at all that after twenty-plus hours of beef-stew aggression and international travel, she didn’t resemble the photo in her passport. Frankly, if Madam did look like her photo at this point, either Madam or that passport would have to be shredded. Maybe both.
Behind me, the other Americans were still looking for actual lines to wait in, and still complaining about it. Lots. I hid my now copiously-stamped passport and tried to look Canadian.
The Mumbai Airport is in two widely-separated locations—Domestic and International—which have to be navigated Indian style. The usual friendly soldier with the usual honking huge gun waved me toward signs for Domestic transfers, and at last I ended up at a roped-off circle of chairs randomly placed in the middle of the airport terminal. Eventually, a lady in a quasi sari/uniform came over and told our group to follow her to the buses headed for the Domestic terminal. In the UK, that would work perfectly. Baby ducklings following their mother couldn’t fall into queue more precisely. Even in the US, passengers would lope along in a rough follow-the-leader line.
But this was India, where travelers are an independent breed. The others in the chair circle leaped to their feet and surged for the doors at a dead run. Uniform Lady made a good show of trying to keep up with them, but somehow I lost her in the general melee. Men in suits, grandmothers in saris, mothers in embroidered salwar kameez (holding babies and clutching children’s hands), and one severely jetlagged old American lady—we all trotted as a pack through the terminal, along corridors, down stairs, out the doors and over to the bus at the curb.
The Mumbai Domestic Terminal, including a lit up guy holding a giant tire. Of course.
People tossed their suitcases into the luggage section under the bus and pushed aboard, sweeping me with them. When it became obvious that there were not enough seats for the entire crowd, Uniform Lady reappeared and began ordering people off the bus. This caused delays as they remonstrated with her.
[DIGRESSION: In India, I’ve seen entire families plus their weekly shopping traveling on one motor bike. I’ve witnessed trucks barreling down the freeway, so full of people those hanging onto the back were only kept from certain death by the grip of the inside passengers. I’ve seen auto-rickshaws disgorging more fullgrown adults than a circus clown car. So I could understand why people were shocked at being asked to give up their bus aisle perches, which after all, were not even a little bit hanging outside from the roof or out the rear door.]
But Uniform Lady was adamant, so we all waited through even further delays as each evicted passenger attempted to convince Uniform Lady they should remain in their perch on top of the luggage rack/steps at side entrance/entire aisle at back half of bus/perfectly legitimate seat. Finally, all the luggage was removed from the under-bus compartments so the refugees could retrieve their luggage and put it on the next bus, which had actually been waiting immediately behind us the whole time. Uniform Lady walked our bus aisle, evicting two other indignant passengers pretending to have seats on the luggage racks at the rear, and at last waved us away.
When we arrived at the Domestic Terminal, there was no sign of our flight to Vadodara (a small airport relatively near Jaya’s home in Gujarat). I looked around the waiting area for Janine to make sure she wasn’t hiding behind the oversized glowing statue of a giant holding up a truly enormous tire. Nor was she inside the outpost of one of my favorite stores, Fab India. Just to be sure, I looked especially carefully for her over by the pair of gorgeous earrings (which I bought), or modeling the silk scarf (which I also bought) or by the block printed shawls (yeah, yeah…). [Don’t judge—I was still suffering post-traumatic-stew-disorder. I needed the retail therapy.] All I knew was that she had left for the Washington DC airport more than thirty hours earlier, just ahead of the blizzard closing airports across America’s east coast.
It’s safe to say that Janine and I were not the two sharpest knives in the travel drawer that night. But we didn’t have to be, because we have a foolproof method for finding each other in foreign countries in the middle of the night. I went to the only open coffee bar and ordered for two. [NOTE: for you amateurs out there, do NOT try this on your own. It only works with someone you’ve known for the better part of four decades, so that you know exactly how they will think.] When Janine eventually arrived at the Domestic terminal, she beelined it for the coffee bar, where I’d already ordered her latte.But we still had a problem. The crowd was nervously watching the departure gates, and when they finally put up the sign for the Vadodara flight, all surged forward, waiting for the gate to open. And waiting. And waiting. A woman in front of us cautioned that all the people pushing in from the sides would attempt to cut us off, and suggested that we link arms and form our own blockade. We waited some more. Eventually, the Vadodara sign was taken down again, and the blockade strategist wandered off. Still we waited.
Finally, the sign went back up and the departure gate attendant requested that everyone present ticket and passport. It was the last word he got in before the crowd surged through the gates en masse. The attendant gave a what-can-you-do shrug and turned away. Our passenger group rushed the doors only to find… more buses. Although there were several airplanes next to the terminal, apparently getting to our plane would require transport. After people filled the bus, indignant passengers without seats were evicted, and the driver was satisfied that all had official seating, the bus finally moved away from the terminal. First it drove for some distance straight out, then circled a roundabout to drive for several blocks back, passing the airport terminal where we had boarded the bus, and continuing on in the opposite direction. At another roundabout, it turned around again and headed back to the airport terminal.
We still don’t know why we were on this bus.
As we slowed to a stop before a plane parked right outside the terminal, Janine whispered to me, “This is where we got on, isn’t it?”
As far as we could tell, we had just taken thirty minutes to board, ride, and depart from buses that took us across the street.
The flight itself was only half-an-hour, but the crew served a full meal. Racing down the aisle, attendants dealt each passenger a tray with a speed that a Las Vegas dealer would envy. My tray held a delicious breakfast (vegetarian) and a little booklet telling me that I’d won a wonderful prize of a discount on a water bottle. But before even the fastest eater could have finished, attendants were back to collect the trays, tell us to fasten seatbelts, and prepare for landing.
Neither Janine nor I could have told how long we’d been traveling at this point. But it didn’t matter because at the open end of the tiny airport, we saw Jaya waving.
We were back in India and that could only mean one thing. It was time to eat. After a huge and 100% beef-stew-free meal, we headed out for a walk in the nearby town park. We weren’t sure if we were hallucinating from the sleep deprivation and jetlag, but we saw what looked like Cinderella’s carriage (if Cindy had been REALLY into neon). Gorgeously dressed guests, beautiful horses, a full marching band, and women carrying gigantic light fixtures were all milling around.
“It’s a wedding,” Jaya observed in the disinterested tones of someone describing paint drying. “They have them most nights.” Sure enough, a young man dressed like a prince was soon seated in the carriage and it was drawn slowly through the streets, the band playing, and the women with the giant light fixtures now balanced on their heads leading the way. They didn’t get far before a tune that everyone seemed to know started up.
A group of gorgeously dressed women—wedding guests and bridal party—all began to dance in an expanding circle. “It’s called the garba,” Jaya explained. “Here in Gujarat, you can’t help dancing it.” Even as we watched, women approached me and asked me to join them. Ignoring my protests, they pulled me in.
Luckily, the movie Wedding Crashers had been among the oldie selections on the plane coming over. I’d watched it in between refusing beef stew, so I already knew the rules of wedding crashing (as listed here). But for those of you who might have missed the movie, here’s how I applied those rules:
Invites are for losers. (Translation: jetlagged American tourists wearing inappropriate clothes and confused expressions don’t need invites.)
Stop. Look. Listen. At weddings. In Life. (Translation: hold onto your passport in case you need to leave quickly.)
No excuses. Play like a champion. (Translation: you’ll never see these people again. Unless that kid’s cellphone video goes viral…)
Blend in by standing out. (Translation: try being the only foreigner wearing jeans and sandals in a sea of silk saris.)
Never leave a fellow crasher behind. (Translation: so what if every single dancer is a woman? You can still pull that guy in…)
Never walk away from a crasher in a funny jacket. (Translation: That would be the groom, actually. Always.)
I’m very sorry to report that both Janine and I attempted to dance the garba while Jaya did her best to record my dance failures for future blackmail purposes. US/Indian cultural understanding might have hit a new low.
46 thoughts on “Wedding Crashers (Why—what did you do your first night in India?) #India #humor #travel”
Hillarious, so glad it wasn’t me! I hope you got to your beds at some stage.
Sleeping is always a crap shoot on these trips. But we make up for it with plenty of chai and a disturbing number of Starbucks Instant packets.
Hahaha. I can’t stop laughing! Your smile never left your face. You’re a good sport!
What’s not to smile about? I’m constantly amazed by the people who are traveling somewhere different but bitching the whole time because it’s not just like home. (And embarrassed by how often those people are my fellow Americans.)
Anne Copeland said:
I have to remember to wear my Pampers when I read your writing. Too many days of sitting in wet pants and even the animals avoiding me. I think you should become a stand-up comedian too!!! I will come to the show, but wearing my double strong Pampers and no beef stew either. Hugs, Anne
Anne, I don’t know how to apologize to your animals. Please convey my deepest regrets for the state of your knickers. In future, I’ll try to be more boring.
Ha! Like that will ever happen!!! (chuckles and drips) Well, we are having monkey bread this morning, so I don’t have to worry about the damnable beef stew. Strangely though, there is a can of the beef stew sitting rather menacingly on the floor in a corner. Even the dogs, who will eat anything that remotely resembles meat, all run outside on the porch when they see me pick up a can of the stuff. I could leave it there for a week, and they would still be outside. I always thought they would eat just about anything, but apparently they must have been on that flight at one time or another. Excellent writing as always. You know, I have so missed some of the great comedian writers in the 50’s and 60’s, but you sure have done a great job of bringing written comedy back! I know, one of the ones I was thinking of was Erma Bombeck. Well, keep the writing coming. Everyone needs a good laugh these days, so bring it!!!
Blimey. If ever we’re in the same airport together i fear International travel may go the way of the VCR and the properly furled umbrella. Fantastic read Batb. You are singularly responsible for accelerating the children’s inheritance one heart seizure at a time.
I accept your children’s thanks, but think international travel is still safe. (Just to be sure, could you please avoid Heathrow for next few weeks?)
Ritu said:
You portray the chaos of India Perfectly and with the best humour ❤️😂
I LOVE!!! everything about India. (Almost everything. Still warming up to crossing the street in Mumbai, and me driving is something that must never happen.) But Ritu, the lunch we had today would make you weep. I expect I’ll be dreaming about it.
I’d NEVER drive there either Barb! In fact usually, my eyes are shut whilst in a car because I can’t watch the risks that are taken, however I’ve got pretty good with road crossing 😁
Someday I want to be just like you!
A most entertaining read, Barb. I love the video. Perfect! I would have been the wife crying on the plane because they were out of vegetarian meals. Don’t know if I could have survived on a granola bar.
A good 50% of our dinners are Starbucks & granola bars in our rooms because we’ve just had WAY too much fun all day and there’s no way on the planet we’re going to make it out for dinner. When we have access to a microwave, we experiment—often with disastrous results.
[Here’s where we take on the egg…and lose big time.]
Thank you dear friends for the reblog!
This is one place I will not be visiting, as I am not blessed with your sense of humour!
See, I’m like a religious convert who can’t stop telling people about the Good News that awaits them if they just follow me. India is just that fun for me, but I get that it might not be everyone’s cup of chai.
Horses for courses!
Chelsea Owens said:
Traveling vicariously seems the best way to visit India, now that I’ve read your account. 😀
Oh, no–if you get the chance to go to India, I hope you’ll leap at it. India is such a bizarre mixture of old and new. We went to one temple where all the brilliant young entrepreneurs come to determine the most auspicious launch dates for their next Next Thing startups.
I’d like to, but also feel a bit of terror at all the unknowns….
I totally get that. India is great big ball of unknowns. We’re beyond lucky to have old friend and India native Jaya to guide us through the mysteries.
I think knowing a local always helps, in any location.
Mary Smith said:
Love it – looking forward to more.
LOTS more coming!
Lynette d'Arty-Cross said:
What a wonderful read (and view). Thanks, you made my day.
AND you made mine!
As soon as my daughter wakes from her nap, I’m going to have her read this too. She wants me to go to India with her and I say no for all the reasons you list here. She’d be perfectly at home, I’m a lot German. Nuff said. You have me cracking up all the way through this and the comments as well. I might have to go now. Sigh.
Go with your daughter! You’ll have a wonderful, frustrating, amazing, and just uncomfortable enough time to know you’ve been someplace completely different. If you open yourself to the unexpected opportunities, you’ll find your stories of what went wrong are almost always a precursor to something fabulous you could never have planned.
I’d bet you are absolutely correct. I spent a year and a half in Taiwan 50 years ago. That was an eye opener too but I was a size 2 when I got home. 🙂 My German digestion had a hard time. Oh, the memories. 🙂
I haven’t ever come across anything that could make me a size 2, so I’m a bit jealous. My American digestion takes almost everything I throw at it and asks for more, with peanutbutter on top.
I promise, I didn’t stay there. When we got back to the states, I got back every ounce that went missing and then some.
Mick Canning said:
Standard arrival in India, really. You have just reminded me of trying to catch an internal flight at Mumbai an hour after my international one landed. Oh, how we laughed.
Well, you really HAVE to laugh. The alternatives are just too hard on you and everyone around you.
Indeed. Major Diplomatic incidents are so awkward.
Thank you. You just made my whole damn week! Loved the video and I must say you have the most beautiful smile I’ve seen in a long time.
Thanks for those kind words! (My daughter saw the video and reminded me not to give up on my day job. )
You look happy. Well done.
CarolCooks2 said:
Thank you for the great traveller’s guide to India, Barb…All done with great ad-libbing…Thank you for the early morning chuckles 🙂 x
Been a great trip so far. Fingers-crossed for the rest of it. (Or, as my traveling companions are getting REALLY tired of hearing me say, “I could SO blog this!”)
Haha…I can relate to that my family even ask now do you want a picture for your blog..Enjoy your trip 🙂 x
Hilarious, Barb! Glad I’m reading about your adventures and not living them.
The Lockwood Echo said:
This was great fun, loved the video. And so completely agree with your attitude; unlikely to ever see these people again, so let’s just throw caution to the wind! Along with that stew. It’s why we do stuff on holiday we wouldn’t do at home 😉 I hope the rest of your trip goes to plan (though I secretly hope it doesn’t cos, you know, blog 😉 ).
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By Emily Hosking Music 24/02/2014
REVIEW: Real//Talks | Self-titled EP
Humble 7 piece GC outfit, Real//Talks have released a classy yet energetic debut EP which will no doubt help nudge them a few step’s further up the music industry ladder.
Recorded at a number of studios across the Gold Coast and Brisbane, the EP was a collective DIY effort that has worked as a compliment to their unique take on the indie rock sound.
The opening track Liars is a clear stand out with its catchy melody grabbing you from the get-go. After learning that each song featured on the EP was written around the theme of classic literature tragedies, I couldn’t help but fall further in love with the evident depth in each individual track. This EP isn’t just a collection of songs it’s a carefully constructed piece of art.
While Real//Talks sound and songs don’t particularly demand a 7 piece set-up, it is obvious that this larger collective of musical minds has allowed their songs to explore more depth than the majority of music you find classified to this genre.
This is one of those EP’s that you’ll most likely end up saying ‘I bought that before they were even famous.’ You should probably grab a copy now.
real//talks
Emily Hosking
View all of Emily's posts.
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GC band set to beef up Mudgeerabarby for massive skatefest
They’re from Burleigh. They combine surf and skater rock and they’ve got old-school punk attitude. And if that’s not #verygc, I’m not sure what…
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01/25/2016 06/24/2019 adminLeave a Comment on Kris Kaminski Named EastCoast Entertainment Partner
Many of our clients and industry friends are unaware that EastCoast Entertainment’s ownership consists of a group of partners. Today the partnership announces it will be expanding the board by naming Kris Kaminski as partner. Kris rounds out a board of eight and is the first female named partner in the agency’s 40 year history.
Based in Richmond, Virginia, Kris began her career at ECE in 1988. Her parents owned Nightfire Productions, an entertainment agency which merged with EastCoast. Sheryl Benson, Kris’s mother, was the first female agent at EastCoast Entertainment. Kris started as a booking assistant for Lee Moore and quickly worked her way into becoming a full-time agent.
“Kris was my first of many protégés here at ECE. I knew she was going to be a superstar right away. Her concern for our company and our artists, her intelligent approach to solving problems, her relentless work ethic, her attention to detail, her moral commitment to always do the right thing and her incredible sense of humor all combine to give ECE an outstanding leader moving forward. I couldn’t be more proud of all Kris has accomplished in her three decades tenure at ECE,” says Lee Moore.
Kris’s early days at ECE. Can you also spot ECE partners, Lee Moore & John Wolfslayer? | Photo: Early 1990s.
Never one to shy away from the dance floor or karaoke, Kris is admired for her work hard/play hard mentality. | Photo left: Early 1990s | Photo right: Mid-2000s.
Throughout the 90’s, she was instrumental in developing EastCoast’s business strategies pertaining to the college and Greek Life markets. In the early 2000’s, she transitioned to performing arts – a new market for the agency offering much potential. Since then, she has excelled in the performing arts market yet still manages to book some weddings and corporate events for longtime clients.
Kris and her sister with Bonnie Raitt after a Music With Friends performance in Charlotte, NC. | Photo: 2011
Kris and Lee Moore at the Association of Performing Arts Presenters Conference in New York City. | Photo: 2013
“I could not be more excited about having Kris as our newest partner. For many years, I have counted on her for advice and expertise in our industry and business. To now be able to welcome my colleague and friend into our ownership group is a huge step for EastCoast as our company leaps into its next chapter,” states EastCoast Entertainment President and CEO, Doug Daniel.
We caught up with Kris to ask her about this new endeavor.
QUESTION: What does this partnership mean to you?
KRIS KAMINSKI: “It’s an incredible honor. I’ve seen the company grow from 2 offices to 13 and I have enormous respect for the original partners of ECE. They’ve devoted their lives into building and growing this company. They are to be commended for having the foresight in creating a model for the continued growth and success of the agency as they near retirement by bringing in additional partners. The newer partners are exceptionally talented in their own right, so to be asked to join this team is quite humbling. I sincerely appreciate their belief in me and I’m excited about the future of the company.”
QUESTION: What excites you most when you think about the future of ECE?
KRIS KAMINSKI: “Our potential is limitless. Truly. There is so much business out there… so much abundance. And we have the best job in the entire world! We get to help people have fun and break away from the ordinary day-to-day. If we keep our focus on that and serving our artists and clients well, we can only continue to grow.
QUESTION: Anything else you would like to add?
KRIS KAMINSKI: “I’ve been here close to 28 years now and I just feel so lucky, still, to be a part of this amazing agency and to work with so much talent: the artists, all the agents in every office and our entire support staff – they’re all such good, caring people. To have that ‘family’ feeling in such a large company, spread across 13 offices is an unusual cultural environment, but it’s there. It’s palpable and I love the connection and teamwork we share. We serve an outstanding group of artists. I am continually blown away by the talent, professionalism and integrity of the artists on our roster. Our presenters are also so much fun to work with and I adore how our agents are genuinely eager and excited to assist our buyers in finding the perfect artist for each and every event. It’s great to wake up every morning wondering what’s going to be amazing today. Somebody pinch me!”
Congratulations, Kris!
Categories ECE CultureTags EastCoast Entertainment, Kris Kaminski
Previous Real Wedding: Patsy + Scott | Bay 7 | Durham, NC
Next Real Wedding: Anna + Tripp | Inn at Crestwood | Blowing Rock, NC
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Monkey Business Images/shutterstock
Best Colleges for Seniors in Every State
Elizabeth Sheer July 23, 2018
Many people dream of furthering their education even later in life, and it can be very affordable or even free to do so. One the best perks of getting older is, every state has at least one institution where senior residents can attend classes for free or cheap. Whether for actual college credit or not, these school offer numerous ways to broaden one’s horizons.
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Seniors 60 and older can get a tuition waiver at any two-year public college in the state. Most are community or technical colleges.
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Free tuition at the University of Alaska is available to residents who are eligible for full Social Security benefits and fill out a waiver request. The waiver covers full tuition (but not fees) for courses with space available.
Courtesy of cochise.edu
While there is no state-mandated tuition waiver in Arizona, a few schools provide opportunities for seniors. All Maricopa Community Colleges offer a 50 percent discount for county residents 65 and older who want to take courses for credit. Senior students are accepted only if spots are available after the first class is held. Cochise College offers half off tuition to residents 60 and older.
Natalia Bratslavsky/shutterstock
At all University of Arkansas campuses, Razorbacks 60 or older pay no tuition to enroll in for-credit classes, although some fees may apply. Senior students can pursue graduate and law degrees in addition to undergraduate work. Some schools, such as Rich Mountain Community College, have special programs designed for students 60 and older.
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At the 23 campuses of California State University, state residents 60 and older can enroll in any course as a regular student for $2. San Francisco State University offers an ElderCollege program for students 55 and older that lets students sit in on regular university classes for $55 per semester.
Arina P Habich/shutterstock
Colorado State University lets seniors 55 and older attend classes for free as a visitor (with the instructor's permission), although not for credit. The University of Northern Colorado admits seniors 65 and older to audit courses with no fee, while the Metro Meritus program at Metropolitan State University of Denver allows seniors over 60 to audit select classes for free.
Courtesy of wikimedia.org
Tuition is waived for residents 62 and older at the state's public colleges and universities, including the University of Connecticut (all campuses). The waiver applies to degree-granting programs as well as audited classes.
The University of Delaware gives residents 60 and older free tuition for classes toward the completion of a degree, either undergraduate or graduate.
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Adults 65 and older can audit undergraduate courses at Georgetown University for $50 per course through the School of Continuing Studies.
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Florida state colleges give tuition waivers to state residents 60 and older. No academic credit is granted for attendance.
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The 29 schools in Georgia's university system offer free tuition to residents 62 and older for credit-earning courses. At Georgia Tech, this waiver can be applied to graduate school work but not medical, dental, or law school classes. Normal admission requirements must be met.
Courtesy of manoa.hawaii.edu
The University of Hawaii at Manoa and other schools offer free course auditing through the Senior Citizen Visitors Program.
Courtesy of lcsc.edu
The College of Southern Idaho offers free, non-credit classes to those 60 and older. Senior scholars in the University of Idaho system pay $5 per credit hour and a $20 enrollment fee for undergraduate courses; no credit is awarded. The same perks apply at Boise State and Lewis-Clark State College.
Courtesy of illinois.edu
Illinois allows any eligible senior citizen 65 and older registered in the University of Illinois system to take for-credit classes tuition-free. Residents 62 and older can audit classes for a small fee. Some schools, such as Chicago State University, offer a tuition waiver to senior residents with income no greater than 200 percent of the federal poverty level.
Courtesy of indiana.edu
Retired Indiana residents 60 and older may enroll in any class in the Indiana University system and get 50 percent tuition remission. Classes are for credit, and the limit is nine credits per semester.
Although it isn't required by state law, some schools in Iowa have senior programs. At Des Moines Community College, residents 62 and older may enroll in for-credit courses with waived tuition. Simpson College allows seniors 65 and older to audit classes tuition-free.
Seniors 60 and older can get tuition waived at public institutions. At the Lawrence and Edwards campuses of the University of Kansas, the waiver applies to non-degree-seeking students for up to six hours of classes per semester in either the undergraduate or graduate divisions. Other institutions where this waiver applies are Wichita State University, Washburn University, Emporia State, and Fort Hays State.
Courtesy of uky.edu
Senior citizens 65 and older can enroll in any public institution of higher learning tuition-free. The University of Kentucky's Donovan Fellowship for Academic Scholars applies this waiver to both audited and for-credit classes, as long as students meet admissions requirements and space is available.
Seniors 55 and older get free tuition at any public college or university and a 50 percent discount on books.
Courtesy of umaine.edu
Maine has a mandated tuition waiver for seniors. The University of Maine campus offers free classes to any resident over 65. Students can register with the goal of completing an undergraduate degree or for personal enrichment.
Courtesy of umd.edu
The University of Maryland system has a tuition waiver policy for students 60 and older. The Golden ID program waives tuition for retired residents 60 and older and reduces student fees.
Courtesy of umass.edu
Residents 60 and older can get tuition reduced or credited at most University of Massachusetts campuses. However, fees apply in all cases and can be expensive.
There is no mandated tuition waiver for Michigan seniors, but some schools offer one. Western Michigan University's Senior Citizens Opportunity Program in Education grants residents 62 and older tuition-free enrollment in one class per semester (not for credit). Northern Michigan University also offers asenior tuition break, and Michigan Tech waives tuition and related fees for up to two courses per semester for students 60 and older.
Ken Wolter/shutterstock
The Senior Citizen Education Program of Minnesota waives tuition for residents 62 and older at all state-supported schools. Audited classes are free, and classes for credit are $10 per credit.
Courtesy of msstate.edu
Mississippi State University offers a tuition waiver for retirees 60 and older for two on-campus courses per semester. Senior students are limited to six semester hours per semester with a maximum of 18 hours for the year at the Starkville or Meridian campuses or the Center for Distance Education. The University of Mississippi has a Lifelong Learning program for seniors 65 and older that covers one course per semester for free.
All state-supported institutions waive tuition for students 65 and older, but different schools have different rules. Missouri State University-West Plains allows state residents 62 and older to take up to 24 credits of coursework for free but not for credit. At the University of Missouri-St Louis, they may audit a course for a $25 registration fee.
Jon Bilous/shutterstock
The Montana University system offers free tuition to residents 65 and older.
At Chadron State College, residents 65 and older can audit one class per semester without paying tuition. Seniors 62 and older can register for credited classes at Mid-Plains Community College for 65 percent off the regular tuition. Metropolitan Community College in Omaha gives residents and non-residents 62 and older a discount of half off for-credit classes. A tuition waiver for seniors 55 and older applies at Nebraska Indian Community College.
The University of Nevada, Las Vegas is home to the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, where members can take as many classes as they like, in topics ranging from cellphone photography to Indian history, for a $175 annual fee. Additionally, seniors 62 and older can attend in the summer at 50 percent off normal tuition fees.
Source: New Hampshire Public Radio
Residents 65 and older can get tuition waived for up to two credit-bearing courses per year at the University of New Hampshire. Rivier University has a senior education program in which residents 55 and older can take up to 10 courses for $130 per semester.
Tuition waivers are mandated for residents 65 and older at any state institution. Rutgers has an auditing program that is free for seniors 62 and older in Camden, Newark, and New Brunswick during the fall and spring semesters. At the private Seton Hall University, seniors 65 and older may take selected classes during the summer for a reduced rate of $100 for audited classes and $500 for credit-bearing classes.
Residents 65 and older may audit classes at any state institution for $5 per credit hour. At most schools there is a cap on how many credit hours eligible students can take per semester. The limit varies by school but is usually six hours.
DW labs Incorporated/shutterstock
A state program has begun offering free tuition to families with income up to $125,000. There is also discounted course auditing at many SUNY schools. Fordham University's College at 60 program offers non-credit seminars and lecture series for adults over 60, with an option to matriculate into a degree program at 50 percent tuition. Cornell University has a visitors program that lets area adults attend class without earning credit for 10 percent of the usual fee.
Courtesy of unc.edu
The state repealed its community college tuition waiver for seniors in 2013, but senior citizens still have options. Some University of North Carolina campuses let seniors audit classes tuition-free.
Courtesy of bismarckstate.edu
North Dakota's State Board of Higher Education provides for a senior citizen tuition waiver at each institution's discretion. Bismarck State College offers students 65 and older a tuition waiver for one audited course per semester. Seniors 65 and older may audit classes tuition-free at Lake Region State College, as well, and Williston State College waives tuition for the same age group.
aceshot1/shutterstock
All schools within the Ohio University system offer residents over 60 the ability to audit classes with waived tuition. Some schools have a Lifelong Learning program where seniors can take four- to eight-week classes for a $36 membership fee.
Tuition is waived for residents 65 and older who want to audit classes at all Oklahoma state colleges and universities.
cpaulfell/shutterstock
Oregon residents 62 and older can take free or discounted classes at Portland Community College. Oregon State offers free course auditing for those 65 and older, and Portland State University waives tuition for seniors who audit classes.
trekandshoot/shutterstock
Tuition waivers vary by school. Penn State offers a limited number of classes for credit or audit for free to students 60 and older. Clarion University waives tuition for state residents 62 and older auditing classes, and the University of Scranton allows those 60 and over to audit classes for free and take for-credit classes 50 percent off.
The public institutions of Rhode Island waive tuition for residents 60 and over, who must submit tax forms to show eligibility. If senior students want to take classes for credit, they must submit a financial aid form, as well. At Rhode Island School of Design, senior citizens 65 and older get a tuition discount.
By state mandate, residents 60 and older can take classes for credit or audit at any public institution of higher learning without paying tuition if they are not employed full-time. Some schools, such as Clemson University, Coastal Carolina University, and University of South Carolina Aiken, have programs specifically geared to seniors.
A 75 percent discount applies at all public institutions for residents 65 and older. This discount can be applied to either undergraduate or graduate course work.
Melinda Fawver/shutterstock
Residents 65 and older may take classes for credit for $7 per credit hour at the University of Tennessee. Senior students can audit classes for free when they turn 60.
f11photo/shutterstock
Seniors 55 and older can get reduced tuition at all Texas public institutions. Students 65 and older can get free tuition for up to six credits per semester.
Chris Curtis/shutterstock
The University of Utah allows residents 62 and older to audit many classes for $25 per semester. There is a $10 registration charge at Salt Lake Community College, Southern Utah University, and other schools.
Courtesy of marlboro.edu
Vermont recently eliminated free tuition for senior citizens, but there are still discounts. Students 60 and older can take classes for credit at half price. At private Marlboro College, seniors 65 and older can arrange with the Dean of Faculty and the instructor to audit one class per semester at no charge.
Virginia residents 60 and older may audit classes at public institutions for free. Senior students may take classes for credit for free if their taxable income is less than $23,850 a year.
At public colleges and universities, residents 60 and older can take up to two courses per semester for $5 per class. This discount applies to classes taken for credit as well as auditing. Not all classes are subject to the waiver.
Residents 65 and older are entitled to reduced tuition at public institutions such as West Virginia University, which offers for-credit and non-credit classes for seniors.
Aeypix/shutterstock
Students 60 and older may audit classes at University of Wisconsin System institutions for free.
Residents 65 and older may enroll in classes at the University of Wyoming at no charge. At Northwest College, a two-year public school, students 60 and older can take six credits per semester with waived tuition. Classes must be taken for credit.
Best Air Conditioners
Fun Things to Do in Retirement
Elizabeth Sheer
Great Jobs for Retirees
Geof Wheelwright
Things Retirees Don't Need
Jason Notte
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USCHO.com Fan Forum | board.uscho.com > College Hockey > Men's Division I > B.U. Season Thread 4. From a weekend that will determine playoff seedings on....
View Full Version : B.U. Season Thread 4. From a weekend that will determine playoff seedings on....
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buoldtimer
Offensively: I really liked Cohen and Popko...
Which aspects of Luke's game offensively did you like?
BU Hammer
He did have a sweet one-time finish on a pass from Bonino at the tail-end of one of BU's better games this year. He put that in and I think we all did a double-take, looked at each other, at Popko, then at Saponari, and all just kind of thought the same thing...
BU Fan 84
after reading this, I am not feeling very confident about next season.
can anyone give me some reason for optimism?
How much optimism did you have for the 08-09 season in the beginning of April, 2008? #1 goaltender removed from the team, our season riding on the shoulders of two freshmen, one of them recruited in a hurry. Same awful defensemen, and a group of forwards who, besides Wilson, Bonino and Higgins, weren't really looking too good. We were looking at having three lines of: completely untested freshmen (including Connolly, who wasn't exactly a big time recruit); Popko, Periera and one of not good Glass, Gilroy, or waste of space Z. Cohen; and offensive juggernauts Lawrence and Yip, and McCarthy. Look how that turned out.
and the underperforming Yip and Lawrence who both couldn't score...
25 N Countin'
I told my buddy that preseason that if either goalie could play, we were looking at a Frozen Four/National Championship contender...I swear that's true.
I just looked at our defense, Wilson, Bonino and Higgins and thought we had enough possible offensive power and defense to be a monster team.
Man, it felt good to be right about that.
Until I saw them play North Dakota, I figured they'd lose in the first round of the NCAA tournament, typical mediocre BU. That's what I'm thinking about next season, too.
I remember people on here wondering after we thumped Michigan if we would make the tournament or not.
I remember thinking they were a definite NCAA tourney team and a possible Frozen Four team before the season even started. After the Michigan game, I told my friends (and probably even posted it on here) that I thought they were a legitimate national title contender.
mookie1995
i'll admit it certainly wasn't the first game that i pronounced them the team of destiny and awarded them the NC (it was sometime after that :D )
srsterrier
that has held true for a long time... i guess the 80s was probably the last time we missed the ncaa tourney twice in a row...
i'm usually overly optimistic about BU hockey - i thought before the season that this was a team that would at least win one game in the ncaa tournament and had a good shot at the FF
i just don't see any way the team won't be mediocre next year, unless this year's troubles were solely due to attitude and not the talent drain. i mean, after 09 we lost 5 of the top 6 scorers and the top two defensemen, and looks like we're losing a bunch of underclassmen again this offseason. ugh...
Recruiting is always a little speculative but BU has 3 of the top forward recruits in the country committed for next season, Coyle, Nieto, and Gill. I can't remember the last time BU had this many top forwards coming in at once. I think it will be tough to ride to the Frozen Four on the backs of Freshmen. But they are all considered highly skilled and, assuming they all come [a fourth, Cisse, has already deferred to 11'], it is fair to expect that they will contribute right away. That should give you a little optimism ...
Terrier520
Remember that in spring 08, BU had put up a good run, and the major problem wasn't our offense, but sub-par defense and horrible goaltending.
I think the consensus was that BU would make the tournament.
After last season, JP said his defense corps was the best he's ever coached.
This past season, with 4 of these defensemen returning, BU allowed the most goals in HE, including better than a GAG more than our friends up the street.
1. Why are we concerned about the departures of any of these guys?
2. Gilroy and Strait must've been much better d-men than anybody thought.
BU-Grad
good point... i hate to be a downer, but i don't think we have anyone like gilroy and wilson returning though. gilroy was a 2-time all american heading into 08-09 and wilson was obviously a great one too.
BU Hockey x2
Good point. I titled the that incorrectly. Should have been "on offensive". Popko in my mind was a great fourth line center, with some special skills that were valuable. I liked him as a player, not necessarily "offensively" though.
Agreed. I would place a little more uncertainty on Coyle and Gill simply because of the level of talent they played against this year. Doesn't Gill play in the same league Trivino lit up the year before coming to BU? It's taken him a little while to adjust to the speed and size of the college game. Nieto on the other hand is probably about as can't miss as you're going to get. Look at the top scorers on the USNDPT over the past 4 or five years (Kessel, Kane, Van Rem, Wilson) and your going to find extraordinary talent. I might be being overly optimistic comparing him to these players, but I don't think it would be too big a stretch to expect him to be playing on the first of second line and end up in the top 5 in scoring in his freshman year.
Terrierbyassociation
Agreed. I would place a little more uncertainty on Coyle and Gill simply because of the level of talent they placed against this year. Doesn't Gill play in the same league Trivino lit up the year before coming to BU? It's taken him a little while to adjust to the speed and size of the college game. Nieto on the other hand is probably about as can't miss as you're going to get. Look at the top scorers on the USNDPT over the past 4 or five years (Kessel, Kane, Van Rem, Wilson) and your going to find extraordinary talent. I might be being overly optimistic comparing him to these players, but I don't think it would be too big a stretch to expect him to be playing on the first of second line and end up in the top 5 in scoring in his freshman year.
Trivino never played in the BCHL, he played in the OPJHL. The BCHL is still an open higher scoring league.
Question remains to how much freedom the freshman will be given, regardless BU's going to have to score a whole mess of goals to even be competitive with what's left of the defensive corps.
We need to bring in several defensemen stat.
Obviously I don't feel like working today. To further sell my confidence in Nieto. Top two scores for USNDTP from 08-09 were Morin and D'Amigo, who both put up similar stats as Nieto did this past year. Morin lit up Major Junior this year with 70+ points and D'Amigo finished third in scoring for RPI averaging a point a game. My argument being that it is completely reasonable in my mind to expect him to big a contributor on the score sheet his freshman year.
Because Millan looked nothing like he looked like in 08-09. That was a huge reason.
candycanes99
1. I'll take Gryba, Shattenkirk, and Colby (yes, even Colby) over unproven guys like Rosen, Ruikka, and a freshman being forced into the everyday lineup. In my opinion, that necessity exposed Escobedo this year, who we shouldn't forget was accelerated. I hope that a full season will have helped him and Nicastro. Cohen and Shattenkirk should have shown improvement after another year and filling bigger roles, but they regressed in my opinion.
2. That pair was a perfectly oiled machine. Gilroy did whatever he wanted, and Strait was lockdown, positioned perfectly. And defensively Gilroy really was no slouch either. I don't think anyone underestimated their importance, but we were just overly optimistic in the effort we'd get from the existing guys and how quickly the freshmen would adjust.
I'm really looking forward to the offseason thread. Let's put this year behind us (but fresh in the memory of the players. Rebound!)
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Emerson and Thoreau: Make America Transcendentalist Again
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) and Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) are the most famous members of the mid-nineteenth century intellectual movement known as American Transcendentalism. Few read Emerson or Thoreau these days, unless it is a class requirement, and even then it is doubtful that much attention is paid. (Maybe the hip-hop Hamilton treatment would help.)
We have a crying need to know these American thinkers. In their time, the promise of America was being compromised. Some Americans were tired of being preached at by overzealous, narrow-minded and hypocritical religionists. Some were not being sufficiently nourished by the current culture. Some seemed to be following each other or the latest trend like sheep. Times like these are times like those. So a look back and revival of Emerson and Thoreau might not be a bad idea.
Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind….
What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office—to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame. Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and our American colleges will recede in their public importance, whilst they grow richer every year.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar
I observe that in our political elections, where this element, if it appears at all, can only occur in its coarsest form, we sufficiently understand its incomparable rate. The people know that they need in their representative much more than talent, namely the power to make his talent trusted. They cannot come at their ends by sending to Congress a learned, acute and fluent speaker, if he be not one who, before he was appointed by the people to represent them, was appointed by Almighty God to stand for a fact—invincibly persuaded of that fact in himself—so that the most confident and the most violent persons learn that here is resistance on which both impudence and terror are wasted, namely faith in a fact. The men who carry their points do not need to inquire of their constituents what they should say, but are themselves the country which they represent; nowhere are its emotions or opinions so instant and true as in them; nowhere so pure from a selfish infusion….
A healthy soul stands united with the Just and the True, as the magnet arranges itself with the pole; so that he stands to all beholders like a transparent object betwixt them and the sun, and whoso journeys towards the sun, journeys towards that person. He is thus the medium of the highest influence to all who are not on the same level. Thus men of character are the conscience of the society to which they belong.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Character
Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify….
The nation itself, with all its so-called internal improvements, which, by the way, are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it, as for them, is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads? And if railroads are not built, how shall we get to Heaven in season? But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us….
Hardly a man takes a half-hour’s nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, “What’s the news?” as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels. Some give directions to be waked every half-hour, doubtless for no other purpose; and then, to pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed. After a night’s sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast. “Pray tell me anything new that has happened to a man anywhere on this globe,”—and he reads it over his coffee and rolls, that a man has had his eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito River; never dreaming the while that he lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye himself….
Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. This is always exhilarating and sublime. By closing the eyes and slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory foundations.
Henry David Thoreau, Where I Lived and What I Lived For
Movies and Fairy Tales: Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood
“Many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the Sixties ended abruptly on August 9, 1969, at the exact moment when word of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brushfire through the community, and in a sense this is true. The tension broke that day. The paranoia was fulfilled.”
Joan Didion, The White Album
Joan Didion is one of the great essayists, and The White Album may be her finest essay. It gave title to a superb collection published in 1979. The White Album is about the entwinement of her life and life in Los Angeles in the late 1960s and early 1970s, both of which she reflects on as being strange and even surreal.
Los Angeles in the late 1960s is also the subject of Quentin Tarantino’s new movie Once Up a Time…In Hollywood. The center of the film is the event mentioned in Didion’s quote above: the murders of Sharon Tate Polanski, Abigail Folger, Jay Sebring, Voytek Frykowski, Steven Parent, and Rosemary and Leno LaBianca in the Hollywood Hills by members of the Manson Family. But is about much more than that.
The title of Once Upon a Time gives away just what kind of story this is. It is a fairy tale. Fairy tales are not either absolutely light or dark. As modern scholars now regularly say, fairy tales are meant to reflect something about ourselves—who we are, what we need—and in that sense could not be just light or dark. They are merely true.
The opening paragraph of The White Album is one of the best explanations of story ever written:
We tell ourselves stories in order to live. The princess is caged in the consulate. The man with the candy will lead the children into the sea. The naked woman on the ledge outside the window on the sixteenth floor is a victim of accidie, or the naked woman is an exhibitionist, and it would be “interesting” to know which. We tell ourselves that it makes some difference whether the naked woman is about to commit a mortal sin or is about to register a political protest or is about to be, the Aristophanic view, snatched back to the human condition by the fireman in priest’s clothing just visible in the window behind her, the one smiling at the telephoto lens. We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the “ideas” with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.
If you are a fan of some or all of Tarantino’s movies, you are already planning to see Once Upon a Time. If you are not a fan, or affirmatively dislike Tarantino, you should consider seeing it anyway. As with other movies that play with Hollywood as story (Robert Altman’s The Player is an excellent example), the inescapable point is that Hollywood makes things up, even as the movies may attempt to reflect actuality, because that is what they do. They tell and sell fairy tales. Light and dark. As long as we appreciate the subtle differences and similarities between actuality and story, we can be entertained and the better for it. We do, as Didion writes, tell ourselves stories in order to live.
Heart of Darkness: A Flabby Devil of Pitiless Folly
“I’ve seen the devil of violence, and the devil of greed, and the devil of hot desire; but, by all the stars! these were strong, lusty, red-eyed devils, that swayed and drove men—men, I tell you. But as I stood on this hillside, I foresaw that in the blinding sunshine of that land I would become acquainted with a flabby, pretending, weak-eyed devil of a rapacious and pitiless folly.”
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
“Humpty dumpty” was eighteenth-century slang for a short and clumsy person. (Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English)
Through the Looking Glass (Alice in Wonderland), Chapter 6
However, the egg only got larger and larger, and more and more human: when she had come within a few yards of it, she saw that it had eyes and a nose and mouth; and when she had come close to it, she saw clearly that it was Humpty Dumpty himself….
‘And how exactly like an egg he is!’ she said aloud, standing with her hands ready to catch him, for she was every moment expecting him to fall.
‘It’s very provoking,’ Humpty Dumpty said after a long silence, looking away from Alice as he spoke, ‘to be called an egg — very!’
‘I said you looked like an egg, Sir,’ Alice gently explained. ‘And some eggs are very pretty, you know’ she added, hoping to turn her remark into a sort of a compliment.
‘Some people,’ said Humpty Dumpty, looking away from her as usual, ‘have no more sense than a baby!’…
‘What a beautiful belt you’ve got on!’ Alice suddenly remarked.
(They had had quite enough of the subject of age, she thought: and if they really were to take turns in choosing subjects, it was her turn now.) ‘At least,’ she corrected herself on second thoughts, ‘a beautiful cravat, I should have said — no, a belt, I mean — I beg your pardon!’ she added in dismay, for Humpty Dumpty looked thoroughly offended, and she began to wish she hadn’t chosen that subject. ‘If I only knew,’ the thought to herself, ‘which was neck and which was waist!’
Evidently Humpty Dumpty was very angry, though he said nothing for a minute or two. When he did speak again, it was in a deep growl.
‘It is a — most — provoking — thing,’ he said at last, ‘when a person doesn’t know a cravat from a belt!’
‘I know it’s very ignorant of me,’ Alice said, in so humble a tone that Humpty Dumpty relented.
‘It’s a cravat, child, and a beautiful one, as you say….
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
The Maddening Sound of Guilt: Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart
I foamed—I raved—I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder—louder—louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God!—no, no! They heard!—they suspected!—they knew!—they were making a mockery of my horror!
Edgar Allan Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart
Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart (1843) is the story of someone who murders an old man, dismembers and hides the body beneath the floor boards, and is then driven to confess by the sound of the still beating heart.
A lesson for those who hide the truth and think they have nothing to fear. Even for the conscience-free, this is how it ends, with the police at the door.
From The Tell-Tale Heart:
As the bell sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the street door. I went down to open it with a light heart,—for what had I now to fear? There entered three men, who introduced themselves, with perfect suavity, as officers of the police. A shriek had been heard by a neighbor during the night; suspicion of foul play had been aroused; information had been lodged at the police office, and they (the officers) had been deputed to search the premises.
I smiled,—for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome. The shriek, I said, was my own in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was absent in the country. I took my visitors all over the house. I bade them search—search well. I led them, at length, to his chamber. I showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim.
The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. I was singularly at ease. They sat, and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of familiar things. But, ere long, I felt myself getting pale and wished them gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears: but still they sat and still chatted. The ringing became more distinct:—it continued and became more distinct: I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling: but it continued and gained definiteness—until, at length, I found that the noise was not within my ears.
No doubt I now grew very pale;—but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice. Yet the sound increased—and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound—much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath—and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more quickly—more vehemently; but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men—but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! what could I do? I foamed—I raved—I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder—louder—louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God!—no, no! They heard!—they suspected!—they knew!—they were making a mockery of my horror!—this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! and now—again!—hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!—
“Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed!—tear up the planks!—here, here!—it is the beating of his hideous heart!”
William Goldman Dies at 87
“As a writer I believe that all the basic human truths are known. And what we try to do as best we can is come at those truths from our own unique angle, to reilluminate those truths in a hopefully different way.”
William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade
William Goldman, who won Academy Awards for his screenplays for “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “All the President’s Men” and who, despite being one of Hollywood’s most successful screenwriters, was an outspoken critic of the movie industry, died on Friday in Manhattan. He was 87.
In his long career, which began in the 1960s and lasted into the 21st century, Mr. Goldman also wrote the screenplays for popular films like “Misery,” “A Bridge Too Far,” “The Stepford Wives” and “Chaplin.” He was a prolific novelist as well, and several of his screenplays were adapted from his own novels, notably “The Princess Bride” and “Marathon Man.”
There are plenty of reasons to admire William Goldman—as a writer and as a writer who cast a realistic light on writing—but nothing is higher than The Princess Bride.
The movie, written by Goldman and directed by Rob Reiner, is a gem, worth watching at least once a year. But in its own way, his novel from which he adapted the screenplay, is even better.
If you know the movie, it is a comic romance and adventure set in a fantasy kingdom, framed by a grandfather reading this story to his grandson. But the novel is much more meta. Goldman places himself in the novel, as a writer with a fictionalized family, condensing and adapting a book by S. Morgenstern that his father had read to him, which adaptation is…The Princess Bride. The trick that Goldman pulls off is that you come away believing that everything he has told you—about his career, his family, the non-existent book by the non-existent S. Morgenstern—are all true.
The bigger trick—the bigger truth—is that everything he wrote in The Princess Bride is absolutely true. Even though he made it all up. If you are a writer or a reader, and don’t fully understand that, read William Goldman, starting with The Princess Bride.
Tilted Room
Dreams are the tilted room
In the funhouse of sleep.
Outside (you hope)
The world is still level
But when you exit this way
You feel yourself
Falling over.
Note: Writing this poem, I realized that some readers have never experienced a funhouse, or even know what it is. It was an essential part of carnivals and amusement parks, before amusement parks became theme parks (and, presumably, amusement became themes). It is an awesome way for children to learn that things are not what they seem, but that that could be simultaneously fun and scary.
And in the spirit of tail wagging dog, or note wagging poem, note that funhouse also served as a titular inspiration for an important but now pretty neglected work of fiction. John Barth’s collection of short pieces Lost in the Funhouse (1968) is considered “a major landmark of experimental fiction.” Barth is better known for novels (often long novels) such as Giles Goat Boy (“a fantasy of theology, sociology, and sex”), but Lost in the Funhouse is an easy introduction to the early days of what is now called postmodern fiction. (A seriously misleading and meaningless conceit, since Joyce and others had been writing weird and wonderful formally transgressive things for decades, writing that delights and defies total comprehension.)
Anyway, Barth writes that the first piece in Funhouse, Frame-Tale “happens to be, I believe, the shortest short story in the English language (ten words); on the other hand, it’s endless.” Endless because it is a Moebius strip:
The rest of the collection, and his novels, are not so brief, filled with many more words of charged and challenging writing:
“One way or another, no matter which theory of our journey is correct, it’s myself I address; to whom I rehearse as to a stranger our history and condition, and will disclose my secret hope though I sink for it.
“Is the journey my invention? Do the night, the sea, exist at all, I ask myself, apart from my experience of them? Do I myself exist, or is this a dream? Sometimes I wonder. And if I am, who am I? The Heritage I supposedly transport? But how can I be both vessel and contents? Such are the questions that beset my intervals of rest.
“My trouble is, I lack conviction. Many accounts of our situation seem plausible to me—where and what we are, why we swim and whither. But implausible ones as well, perhaps especially those, I must admit as possibly correct. Even likely. If at times, in certain humors—stroking in unison, say, with my neighbors and chanting with them ‘Onward! Upward!’—I have supposed that we have after all a common Maker, Whose nature and motives we may not know, but Who engendered us in some mysterious wise and launched us forth toward some end known but to Him—if (for a moodslength only) I have been able to entertain such notions, very popular in certain quarters, it is because our night-sea journey partakes of their absurdity. One might even say: I can believe them because they are absurd.
From Night-Sea Journey
Frankenstein: The Republican Creature
“The Creature showed unparalleled malignity and selfishness in evil; he destroyed my friends; he devoted to destruction beings who possessed exquisite sensations, happiness, and wisdom; nor do I know where this thirst for vengeance may end. Miserable himself that he may render no other wretched, he ought to die. The task of his destruction was mine, but I have failed.”
I was at first touched by the expressions of his misery; yet, when I called to mind what Frankenstein had said of his powers of eloquence and persuasion, and when I again cast my eyes on the lifeless form of my friend, indignation was rekindled within me. “Wretch!” I said. “It is well that you come here to whine over the desolation that you have made. You throw a torch into a pile of buildings, and when they are consumed, you sit among the ruins and lament the fall.”
This year marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s monumental work of modern literature. The characters and story have been fashioned into hundreds of forms, some truer to the original than others. One basic element is inescapable: the story of a skilled technician trying to create something new, only to discover that the Creature is ultimately destructive of much that is cherished and good.
That is where the Republican Party finds itself with Trump. Admittedly, Trump has more fans than Victor Frankenstein’s Creature ever did, but is similarly an uncontrollable force of twisted nature.
In the final chapter of Frankenstein, Captain Walton concludes the narrative letters that chronicle his passenger Victor Frankenstein’s relating the tale of the Creature he created:
You have read this strange and terrific story, Margaret; and do you not feel your blood congeal with horror, like that which even now curdles mine?…
Sometimes I endeavoured to gain from Frankenstein the particulars of his creature’s formation, but on this point he was impenetrable. “Are you mad, my friend?” said he. “Or whither does your senseless curiosity lead you? Would you also create for yourself and the world a demoniacal enemy? Peace, peace! Learn my miseries and do not seek to increase your own.”…
“Oh! My friend, if you had known me as I once was, you would not recognize me in this state of degradation. Despondency rarely visited my heart; a high destiny seemed to bear me on, until I fell, never, never again to rise.”…
“If I were engaged in any high undertaking or design, fraught with extensive utility to my fellow creatures, then could I live to fulfil it. But such is not my destiny; I must pursue and destroy the being to whom I gave existence; then my lot on earth will be fulfilled and I may die.”…
“He [the Creature] showed unparalleled malignity and selfishness in evil; he destroyed my friends; he devoted to destruction beings who possessed exquisite sensations, happiness, and wisdom; nor do I know where this thirst for vengeance may end. Miserable himself that he may render no other wretched, he ought to die. The task of his destruction was mine, but I have failed.”…
I entered the cabin where lay the remains of my ill-fated and admirable friend. Over him hung a form which I cannot find words to describe — gigantic in stature, yet uncouth and distorted in its proportions. As he hung over the coffin, his face was concealed by long locks of ragged hair; but one vast hand was extended, in colour and apparent texture like that of a mummy. When he heard the sound of my approach, he ceased to utter exclamations of grief and horror and sprung towards the window. Never did I behold a vision so horrible as his face, of such loathsome yet appalling hideousness….
Will Eisner Week
Will Eisner (1917-2005) was a pioneer in the comic art form, the godfather of the graphic novel with publication of A Contract with God (1978), a teacher and theoretician of the medium with publication of Comics and Sequential Art (1985). The major award in the medium is named after him.
This is officially his week.
I see myself age 7, standing on a corner in the Bronx, reading a Superboy comic book I had just bought at the candy store. I couldn’t wait to get it back to our apartment.
I didn’t know then that comic books would shape me as much as any other cultural influence. I didn’t know that comic books would evolve into “real” literature in the form of graphic novels. I didn’t know that by 2018 comic books and graphic novels would end up being the multi-billion dollar backbone of the movie and TV industry.
I didn’t know about Will Eisner either, but I would learn that he, more than any other person, was responsible for the breakthrough that turned cheap disposable entertainment for kids into a major art form of the twentieth—and now the twenty-first—century.
The poster for Will Eisner Week says “Read a Graphic Novel!” If you haven’t ever, you should.
As with all literature, “best” is a matter of taste and interest. For me, and for many others, it is Watchmen (1986) by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Time magazine listed it as one of the 100 Best Novels since 1923—that is best novels, not just graphic novels. Like all supreme literary works, it weaves so much into its pages that the reader is mesmerized way after the book is closed for the first, fifth or nth time. And like many works—including now many comic books and graphic novels—the attempt to transform it into film was good but only partly successful, and still not the experience of reading the book. So whether it is Watchmen or one of the many other worthies—Read a Graphic Novel!
Winnie the Pooh Censored in China
China President Xi Jinping wants to change the constitution to remain in power beyond the limit of two terms. China Digital Times explains:
Chinese state media announced on Sunday a list of proposed amendments to China’s constitution, which are expected to be adopted next month at the National People’s Congress session in Beijing. Among the 21 proposed amendments, the one with perhaps the deepest potential impact on the future of Chinese politics and society deals with paragraph 3 of article 79, which would eradicate the current limit of PRC presidents and vice-presidents to two five-year terms. This would effectively set President Xi Jinping up to maintain his seat as president indefinitely….
Following state media’s announcement, censorship authorities began work to limit online discussion.
As part of that censorship, a growing list of terms have been blocked from being posted on the search engine Weibo. Along with seeming innocent phrases that are protest memes and obvious authors such as George Orwell, for a while the list also included the letter “N”:
N — While the letter “N” was temporarily blocked from being posted, as of 14:27 PST on February 26, it was no longer banned. At Language Log, Victor Mair speculates that this term was blocked “probably out of fear on the part of the government that “N” = “n terms in office”, where possibly n > 2.”
Most ridiculous of all is the blocking of Winnie the Pooh:
Winnie the Pooh (小熊维尼) — Images of Winnie the Pooh have been used to mock Xi Jinping since as early as 2013. The animated bear continues to be sensitive in China. Weibo users shared a post from Disney’s official account that showed Pooh hugging a large pot of honey along with the caption “find the thing you love and stick with it.”
I’ve written before about my high regard for Winnie the Pooh—the books by A.A. Milne, not the Disney version. It is great literature, not least in the character of the sweet, loyal, interesting, but seemingly not very smart bear (as he calls himself, “a bear of very little brain.”) Seemingly, because he may also be a bit of an enigmatic Zen master:
On Monday, when the sun is hot
I wonder to myself a lot:
“Now is it true, or is it not,”
“That what is which and which is what?”
I have never thought of Pooh as a political subversive. And yet, if you are a supreme ruler aiming to become eternally supreme, enemies are everywhere. Even a letter of the alphabet or a simple and adorable bear.
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ספרים ספרים 21 - 30 מתוך 51 עבור Yet he seems to have known that bees sometimes escaped to the woods: — "Nor bees....
Yet he seems to have known that bees sometimes escaped to the woods: — "Nor bees are lodged in hives alone, but found In chambers of their own beneath the ground: Their vaulted roofs are hung in pumices, And in the rotten trunks of hollow trees.
Good Company - עמוד 361
תצוגה מלאה - מידע על ספר זה
The Works of Virgil
Virgil - 1877 - 492 דפים
...pitch, produce A more tenacious mass of clammy juice. Nor bees are lodged in hives alone, but found 60 In chambers of their own beneath the ground : Their...pumices, And in the rotten trunks of hollow trees. But plaster thou the chinky hives with clay, And leafy branches o'er their lodgings lay : 65 Nor place...
...hive. Not birdlime, or Idaean pitch, produce A more tenacious mass of clammy juice. Nor bees are lodg'd in hives alone, but found In chambers of their own...pumices, And in the rotten trunks of hollow trees. But plaster thou the chinky hives with clay, And leafy branches o'er their lodgings lay : Nor place...
Pepacton
John Burroughs - 1881 - 260 דפים
...rain." It is quite certain he had never been bee-hunting. If he had we should have had a fifth Georgia. Yet he seems to have known that bees sometimes escaped...roofs are hung in pumices, And in the rotten trunks of liollow trees." Wild honey is as near like tame as wild bees are like their brothers in the hive. The...
...rain." It is quite certain he had never been bco-liunting. If he had we should have had a fifth Georgic. Yet he seems to have known that bees sometimes escaped...little more delectable than the domestic article. NATUKE AND THE POETS. NATURE AND THE POETS. I HATE said on a former occasion that " the true poet knows...
...rain." It is quite certain he had never been beehunting. If he had we should have had a fifth Georgic. Yet he seems to have known that bees sometimes escaped...the hive. The only difference is that wild honey is flavoured with your adventure, which makes it a little more delectable than the domestic article. NATURE...
Birds and Bees,
John Burroughs - 1887 - 88 דפים
...rain." It is quite certain he had never been bee-hunting. If he had, we should have had a fifth Georgic. Yet he seems to have known that bees sometimes escaped...little more delectable than the domestic article. THE PASTORAL BEES. 1 THE honey-bee goes forth from the hive in spring like the dove from Noah's ark,...
...fifth Georgic. Yet lie seems to have known that bees sometimes escaped to the woods : — • " Xor bees are lodged in hives alone, but found In chambers...little more delectable than the domestic article. k. NATURE AND THE POETS. NATURE AND THE POETS. I HAVE said on a former occasion that "the true poet...
The Writings of John Burroughs: Pepacton
John Burroughs - 1895
...rain." It is quite certain he had never been bee-hunting. If he had we should have had a fifth Georgia. Yet he seems to have known that bees sometimes escaped...little more delectable than the domestic article. IV NATURE AND THE POETS T- HAVE said on a former occasion that " the true -*- poet knows more about...
...rain." It is quite certain lie had never been bee-hunting. If he had we should have had a fifth Georgic. Yet he seems to have known that bees sometimes escaped...little more delectable than the domestic article. IV NATURE AND THE POETS I" HAVE said on a former occasion that " the true poet knows more about Nature...
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Heat kills! Pat'n Chip argue for survival of the wealthiest at WUWT
Paul C. “Chip” Knappenberger and Patrick J. Michaels (Pat'n Chip) keep plugging away at their weird notion that no matter how hot it gets, humans will adapt and fewer will die from heat-related causes. Here is part of what they write at WUWT (archived here):
The cause of the observed decline in the sensitivity to extreme heat in the face of rising heat is likely found in a collection of adaptations including increased access to air-conditioning, better medical care, improved building design, community response programs, heat watch/warning systems, and biophysical changes. There is no reason to think that such response measures won’t continue to exist and be improved upon into the future.In our recent study summarizing the findings on declining heat-related mortality trends in both the U.S and Europe, we made this observation (Knappenberger et al., 2014):
Credit: Plognark
So everyone who lives somewhere that's affected by heatwaves, make sure you upgrade your air conditioner and try to find one that will work at 47°C plus. (I picked that number because I once had to drive my car in 47°C heat for half an hour or so to try to get the air conditioner fixed. I don't know how I made it without passing out. Also, I'm sure I'm not the only one whose home air conditioner is only rated to 43°C, the best we could find at the time.)
Not that your air-conditioner will do you much good when the power goes out because either it's broken down or can't cope with the stress on the system, caused by the heat wave. Heat can kill hundreds of people in a single heat wave. Maybe Pat'n Chip live in a very mild climate.
Make sure your local hospital is equipped to cope with the influx of people who get caught in future heat waves (those that don't collapse and die on the spot). And don't forget to boost your paramedic services. Hospitals won't help if you can't get there. Stuff more insulation in your ceiling space and walls and don't go outside, whatever you do. Even if that means you get the sack from your job or your sports team (see also here).
I really don't know why Pat'n Chip keep beating this dead horse. Where I live there is a big spike in the number of deaths in a heat wave. Horrid heat is not something you want to inflict on anyone, unless you're like Pat'n Chip who don't care about those suffering the heat in India or South America or Australia or elsewhere.
Although it hasn't happened yet, as the world warms it's conceivable that large areas could become uninhabitable. That's not because of heat alone. It's because when temperatures soar enough alongside humidity then it exceeds the physiological tolerance of humans. This was described by two researchers a few years ago. Stephen Sherwood from the University of New South Wales and Matthew Huber from Purdue University did the maths and this is documented clearly and succinctly in their abstract:
Despite the uncertainty in future climate-change impacts, it is often assumed that humans would be able to adapt to any possible warming. Here we argue that heat stress imposes a robust upper limit to such adaptation. Peak heat stress, quantified by the wetbulb temperature TW, is surprisingly similar across diverse climates today. TW never exceeds 31 °C. Any exceedence of 35 °C for extended periods should induce hyperthermia in humans and other mammals, as dissipation of metabolic heat becomes impossible. While this never happens now, it would begin to occur with global-mean warming of about 7 °C, calling the habitability of some regions into question. With 11–12 °C warming, such regions would spread to encompass the majority of the human population as currently distributed. Eventual warmings of 12 °C are possible from fossil fuel burning. One implication is that recent estimates of the costs of unmitigated climate change are too low unless the range of possible warming can somehow be narrowed. Heat stress also may help explain trends in the mammalian fossil record.
So although it would be quite a few decades before global temperatures rise 7 °C, there will still likely be parts of the world where those conditions could arise for short periods of time later this century. Particularly if we don't reduce carbon emissions enough.
Heat waves don't just kill people directly. They also affect the ability to supply electricity, they spark fires and cause them to turn into catastrophic killers, they dry up bodies of water and exacerbate drought. Heat is very pleasant in moderation. Too much of a good thing will kill.
I consider people like Pat'n Chip a menace to society.
From the WUWT comments
Eve doesn't give a rats for people who die in the heat and says:
I have been freezing in Canada since I returned from the Bahamas. I have not had the quilt off since I arrived, plus having to wear long pants, long sleeves, no heat wave, just cold. Where is Obama that he is so hot? Tell him to turn down the heat.
Tom Harley is deluded about southern Australia. It can get much hotter down south than it does in the tropics. He says:
Majormike1 is right, here in the tropical north of Australia, thousands of climate refugees are towing their camper vans, trailers and wotnot all over the region, clogging up the roads, hotels, resorts and camping grounds, just to get away from ‘the cold’ in the ‘Southern Australian States’.
Those of us who have lived here long enough, hate to leave here, even in the summer.
If you want your cold, you can keep your cold. Stay away Mr President. Bring global warming back, now.
Eric Worrall suggests everyone move to beautiful Hervey Bay and says:
I’ve got good news – when it gets too hot, here in Sunny Hervey Bay, 25 degrees south of the Equator, we wear shorts and t-shirts.
Hervey Bay has a lot of retired people, because of the year round pleasant climate, a lot like Florida. So far, heat related mortality does not seem to be an issue.
Sherwood, Steven C., and Matthew Huber. "An adaptability limit to climate change due to heat stress." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, no. 21 (2010): 9552-9555. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0913352107
Labels: heat wave, Patrick J Michaels, Patrick J. Michaels, Paul C. “Chip” Knappenberger
Millicent June 21, 2014 at 8:55 PM
I wonder if this form of denial is for people who are geographically challenged, or whether a large part of the globe's population - those who do not live in an air conditioned world - just don't matter.
numerobis June 21, 2014 at 10:59 PM
The "argument" is that the non-AC world will only get AC if we let them burn cheap fossil fuels, and that refusing them access to those will in turn refuse them access to the wealth needed for buying AC units comma you monster.
The argument is horseshit in every way (except it's not good fertilizer) obviously, but that's what Chip and various like-minded lukewarmer "economists" like to spout.
Sou June 21, 2014 at 11:08 PM
I wonder if people like Pat'n Chip want regions that are bypassing coal for renewables to trade in their solar panels and wind turbines for dirty diesel generators and filthy coal-fired power stations.
It's more likely Pat'n Chip don't care how many people fry, as long as it's not them.
Millicent June 22, 2014 at 12:28 AM
Unless your typical mud hut comes complete with a mains supply I guess its the 'fry' option then.
numerobis June 22, 2014 at 1:02 AM
Millicent: Under the belief system of Pat'n Chip (and Lomborg), the typical mud hut denizen will get richer if we let them burn coal and cheap oil, so that they aren't going to be in a mud hut when it comes time to fry, and thus all will be well. Consider that 150-200 years ago, much of the West was agrarian and living in mud huts or the equivalent. Burning cheap coal and cheap oil got us rich, urbanized, and solid, insulated homes on the grid, with A/C. So that's what today's agrarian mud hut societies should do, right? And if they don't make all the mistakes our forebears did, they won't develop and they will suffer. For some reason, they don't argue they should be driving model T's, but they definitely shouldn't use pollution control, because it's not free.
Sou: yes, I'm pretty sure they believe that. If poor people buy solar panels, according to them, they are wasting money and should have bought coal-fired power plants instead. That part of their argument almost wasn't stupid five years ago, when solar cost 4x as much as it does now, except that even then it had the huge advantage of being much easier to deploy solar in a place where the central government is ineffectual.
This gang spend a lot of time talking about how the third world should develop just like we did. I think they're deluded, but I don't think they're heartless. I could be wrong.
PL June 22, 2014 at 3:39 AM
numerobis: excellent summary. This is a more useful view of Michaels, at least, to frame discussions with him or about him. He's the one, after all, who told the Heartland conference that they should stop pretending AGW doesn't exist.
Of course, he also lied (or demonstrated extreme ignorance) in a congressional hearing, but he's not the worst of the bunch.
Millicent June 22, 2014 at 4:19 AM
"So that's what today's agrarian mud hut societies should do, right?"
Meanwhile back in the real world the agrarian mud hut societies are on the verge of collapse and their men folk are off to join Boko Haram for want of a better option.
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/06/nigeria-environment-climate-change-boko-haram
numerobis June 23, 2014 at 12:44 AM
And the Syrian war was caused by the government's disastrous response to drought -- the drought being now linked to global warming.
guthrie June 24, 2014 at 7:30 PM
I note a certain lack of developmental economists amongst their number, Tol being a political economist, which is not the same.
cRR Kampen June 24, 2014 at 11:26 PM
To be sure, numerobis, the war erupted because that government decided to shoot protests of, among other, bankrupt farmers to bits. A disastrous response to climate change effects indeed.
Lionel A June 21, 2014 at 9:52 PM
The trouble with heat exchangers is in the name these units have to shunt the heat somewhere. After all, what happens if you don't allow ventilation behind a refrigerator.
Anybody who has worked in confined spaces in ships the tropics knows the truth of this. The engine rooms of steam turbine driven vessels were notorious and anybody who has served on warships knows about this.
I once had to get used to working in an aircraft hangar on a carrier in the tropics and even with a lift down to aid ventilation frequent breaks swallowing mugs of 'limers' with added salt were essential to replace fluid as pools of sweat ran down the Phantom F4K stabilator (tailplane) to gather in a large puddle on the steel deck.
In the nearest 'heads', toilets, there happened to be an air-conditioning system heat exchanger adding its heat load to the surrounds causing sweat to dissolve the special water soluble toilet paper on touch placed therein for the use of. This to satisfy local pollution laws in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Joe June 22, 2014 at 12:19 AM
Wait a second, I thought only "warmists" thought the earth was getting warmer. If we're actually cooling or going through a "stadium wave" or we're "paused" forevver, then why does there need to be an article discussing adaptation to warming? These deniers confuse me to no end.
This crew get assailed at WUWT for admitting the world is warming. They generally don't attack the scientific findings; they just downplay them, and argue that we'll adapt to everything just fine. But only if we don't adapt just yet.
bryce parker June 25, 2014 at 3:14 AM
Some deniers will admit that the Earth may be warming with the caveat that it certainly can't be us and that there is "not a single shred of evidence that warming is caused be CO2," don't you know.
Trying to provide graphic evidence for CO2 effect on climate is a exercise in pointlessness - because they just deny it.
Deny, deny, deny and then deny again. It is like a bizarro world where the basic laws of physics do not exist and the greenhouse effect has not been known for 150 years.
EliRabett June 22, 2014 at 3:23 AM
The place where the rubber will melt on the road is the Indus and Ganges Valley's in South Asia. Given that both India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons that will not end well
Eli is tempted to try and post that over at Willard Tony's
BBD June 22, 2014 at 4:14 AM
What idiots. P&C have forgotten that peak summer temperatures impact crop yields. *That* is going to hit lots of people where it hurts - in the stomach.
Lionel A June 22, 2014 at 10:15 PM
Matt Ridley adds his distortions for the delayer/deniers to lap up:
Junk Science Week: IPCC commissioned models to see if global warming would reach dangerous levels this century. Consensus is ‘no’.
Note that Matt invokes Ross McKitrick who has recently been responsible for another misleading article:
McKitrick tries and fails to move the goalposts on climate action.
Ross, Matt,Pat & Chip are despicable and beneath contempt all they have left is zombies, but sadly zombies that much of the developed world want to believe in.
Aside, has anybody else noticed the volume of Zombie, Vampire and other fantasy programming come out of US TV channels of late, many with sickening portrayals of violence? A nation is being conditioned for the hell to come, hell that is being disavowed by the likes of the suspects mentioned here.
citizenschallenge June 24, 2014 at 2:06 AM
Sou, you ask: "I really don't know why Pat'n Chip keep beating this dead horse."
Well, that's simply what fantasists do… and they enjoy it.
KR June 24, 2014 at 5:08 AM
"I really don't know why Pat'n Chip keep beating this dead horse."
Well, perhaps because that is their job. They are professional lobbyists, and they are paid to present their sponsors in the best light possible.
Regardless of reality, or those ever so pesky facts.
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November 11, 2018 by Kimia
“The Book of Were-Wolves” by Sabine Baring-Gould
It’s easy to “poo-poo” were-wolves as superstitious just-so stories, invented by our ignorant ancestors.
Baring-Gould, while not convinced human beings physically transform into wolf bodies, nevertheless has taken a scholarly, detailed, and anecdote-filled look at this phenomenon. Along with his scientific, 18th-century respect for facts, he brings the Christian insight into human nature to his subject (he’s more famous for writing Onward Christian Soldiers).
The resulting book is fascinating, profound, and sometimes disturbing…both by what it says about were-wolves, and by what it says about ourselves.
Mr. Baring-Gould begins his work by explaining why were-wolves came to be of such interest to him. He describes a personal experience in an isolated village in France, where the local villagers were deathly afraid of crossing the heath at night, for fear of the loup-garou.
Baring-Gould poo-pooed the idea of supernatural beings (although he provided himself with a cudgel for use against actual wolves). He says that the persistence of the belief in were-wolves – even into his own time – inspired him to study the phenomenon in depth.
This personal touch persists throughout. The book is stuffed with examples and anecdotes of vicious men, men (and women) who turn into beasts (not limited to wolves), accounts of diabolic interference, and other strange circumstances.
It is now over a hundred years since Baring-Gould composed his work, and yet the intimacy and authority of his source material brings the subject uncomfortably close to home.
Legend – Near and Far
Baring-Gould also strives to include a diverse selection of material. He tells of the savage berserkr in the Norse lands…of a shunned class in North Africa who can take the shape of hyenas…a North American Indian tribe who began when a litter of puppies took off their dog-skins to play as children, and the skins were burned…and, of course, he brings in the idea of reincarnation from India and other Buddhist lands, where a “human” soul may inhabit several different animal bodies on its metaphysical journey.
Baring-Gould is also very clear about the theological significance of each culture’s story. The Eastern peoples believe that the soul is the true person, and the body is simply its “housing”…thus to exchange one living quarters for another is no big deal.
In contrast, the Catholic peoples of Europe were more likely to ascribe were-wolves to the Devil. Several men convicted of being were-wolves admitted – and indeed, claimed – to be in service to “Satan”, and several accounts describe how a salve transformed them into wolves during their Black Sabbath celebrations.
A scholarly treatise anyone can read.
It’s true Baring-Gould often quotes from his sources in their original languages – Greek, Norse, French, etc.
However, he brings enough humor and a conversational tone to the subject that it’s never too dry (although it’s sometimes too unnerving).
If you wanted some quaint yet spooky fire-side tales from silly, superstitious people long ago, you’ll probably get more than you bargained for.
Does the Devil have the power to turn men into wolves, the better to rend their fellow humans? Is it solely the result of mental illness, where men either believe themselves responsible for the work of normal wolves – or believe themselves transformed into wolves, and so act according to their new nature? Is it a self-fulfilling prophecy, where people who believe in were-wolves imagine any violent, vicious man to be actually transformed into a wolf?
I imagine the truth is some balance between these possibilities, but there’s no denying the final factor: ordinary human evil.
Mr. Baring-Gould makes this point emphatically. The examples he gives are horrific, while not being explicit or gory.
Without sensationalizing, he lets the facts speak for themselves as he describes historical, document-able cases of cannibalism, torture, or sadism…with no excuse of physical transformation or diabolic possession.
Respectable is not Holy.
The most obvious example is Gilles de Laval, Maréchal de Retz, Marshall of France. Although a war hero to his country, rich beyond imagination, and an advisor to his king, he was not satisfied.
When he read of the cruelties of some of the Roman emperors, he was so thrilled that he determined to imitate – and even surpass – their wickedness.
In 1440, he was arrested, tried, and condemned for kidnapping, torturing, murdering, and beheading over a hundred children (most of them seem to have been about ten years old).
What madness possessed this noble of France? What excuse could possibly be given for this horrific practice? None. He did it because it was fun — and admitted as much at his own trial.
Now, he also protested repentance, begged to be sent to a monastery to purge his soul, and sermonized at his own execution about the forgiveness of God.
Was he sincere? Only God can know. But as Mr. Baring-Gould sagely points out, “‘If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments,’ said our Lord. How many hope to go to heaven because they have pious emotions!”
The Were-Wolf In Our Hearts
While first published in 1865, this book rang true and relevant to me today. How easy it is to relegate savagery and cannibalism and child sacrifice to the heathens of long ago! But these evil impulses still lurk among us today…they lurk in my heart, and in yours.
What would it take to bring them to the surface?
Do a web search for “man eats girlfriend”. You’ll find a slew of news stories from this very year. Just reading the preview text is probably enough to make your stomach turn.
But it’s important to face these issues and think about them. Because, if we ignore and deny the wickedness in our own hearts, we’ll never think we need the Cure.
Onward, Christian soldiers!
Image from Wikipedia.
The Book of Were-Wolves is in the public domain and available on Project Gutenberg. Please check the copyright laws in your own country.
It’s also available as a free ebook on Amazon (here) or as a paperback (here). Find also on Barnes&Noble (paperback), Kobo, and the Book Depository (free worldwide shipping).
Sabine Baring-Gould was an Anglican priest, hagiographer, antiquarian, and writer of several hymns in the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. Find out more on Wikipedia.
Cover image above is from Amazon.
Subscribe to Kimia Wood’s mailing list to get a free e-copy of the post-apocalyptic adventure Soldier, plus occasional updates on my latest reading and writing exploits!
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Ching deserving of his spot in MLS All-Star Game
By Jose de Jesus Ortiz on July 18, 2010 at 11:11 AM
He has led the organization to a pair of MLS Cups and nobody has scored more goals for the franchise. The modest Brian Ching might argue this point, but he is the face of the Houston Dynamo.
Actually, he is the face of Houston soccer. And MLS commissioner Don Garber made the right choice in picking the Dynamo forward as one of his two commissioner’s picks for the MLS All-Star Game against Manchester United …
Ngwenya after Pachuca diss: Talk is cheap
By Jose de Jesus Ortiz on July 15, 2010 at 9:27 PM
Dominic Kinnear put a great game plan together for Pachuca on Thursday night.
Pachuca dominated possession and pressed the attack, but Tally Hall and the defense were too much on a night Joseph Ngwenya scored a pair of goals to beat Pachuca 2-1.
Pachuca coach Guillermo Rivarola wasn’t pleased with the Dynamo’s style Thursday …
Canopy Tour In My Final Days in South Africa
By mike_levitt on July 14, 2010 at 9:55 AM
The World Cup is over. My journey is ending. I leave on Saturday. This will most likely be my final post.
Thanks to everyone who followed my first World Cup experience, hopefully this will be only the beginning. I plan on attending as many future World Cups as possible, not only because I love […] …
The Beautiful Blog: Epitaph
By Al Saracevic on July 13, 2010 at 3:50 PM
Just wanted to thank all the readers of “World Cup 2010: The Beautiful Blog” for their support and commentary throughout the Finals.
This was an ambitious project here at The Chronicle, mixing internal voices with outside writers to provide interesting, provacative coverage of the World Cup, from a decidedly Bay Area perspective.
Let’s face it, our interactive map of bars where you could watch the Cup was worth the price of admission in its own right.
Thanks again to all the contributors and readers and let’s do this thing again in four years. Brasil!!!
Al Saracevic
SF Chronicle
Landon Donovan highlights First XI
Landon Donovan gets it.
He understands that soccer in America needs an ambassador. Actually, he realizes the sport needs many ambassadors, and he’s embracing his role.
I spoke with Donovan twice today on two separate calls, and one thing stands out above all else: the L.A. Galaxy star embraces the burden of being considered the greatest American soccer player of his generation …
From Our Man in South Africa – Chris Zeimer – An evaluation
By Max Garrone on July 12, 2010 at 9:03 AM
By Chris Ziemer – Santa Rosa, July 12th
Typical final brings World Cup to close…
The pull of watching the final at a US Fan Fest (I still had visions of thousands gracing the Durban beaches) had my family biking to downtown Santa Rosa. As we rode through Santa Rosa, vuvuzela’s in hand, we passed through Doyle Park, where a baseball game was being played …
Top Ten World Cup Stories
Well, it’s over. After a month of action and intrigue, the World Cup has come and gone. These are the ten stories that stick from the tournament.
1) A number of big teams came and fizzled at this World Cup.
While some of the world’s top soccer nations excelled, many were huge letdowns. France and Italy both […] …
Football, bloody hell
By andrew_keen on July 11, 2010 at 9:48 PM
For 116 minutes today, I was feeling pretty good. Holland were holding on, not prettily of course, but effectively. We were four minutes away from penalties (which the Dutch would have won, with Puyol blasting over in sudden death), when the unthinkable happened. My day, my week, my month was ruined … …
Four More Years
By alan_black on July 11, 2010 at 4:01 PM
Dep: SFO, Thu June 5, 2014
Arr; Rio de Janeiro, June 5, 2014
Dep: Rio de Janeiro, July 11, 2014
Arr: SFO, July 11, 2014
Who wants to go?
Furia Roja were a worthy champ
In part because the Netherlands appeared more intent on making dirty tackles instead of playing the free-flowing attacking style it had displayed earlier in the World Cup, the World Cup final wasn’t very pretty.
Nonetheless, La Furia Roja of Spain was the worthy winner.
España 1, Oranje 0.
Spain showed its class in winning its first World Cup trophy …
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Just as I am getting rather comfortable in my armchair in the Airth Castle Hotel lounge, I see someone who looks a little like my prey – Phil Earle – walking towards the bar. He seems like my likeliest option, so I heave myself up and go to stare ‘discreetly’ at him from afar. He nods at me, so I nod back, and decide I might as well go for this chap, whether or not he is Phil. (If not, he’s doing a remarkable job of pretending.)
His hair isn’t right. By that I mean, he doesn’t look like he did in photos online; not even the same hair I’d seen on his Facebook author page in photos taken earlier in the week. Other than that, his hair is just fine. Quiffier, somehow.
Anyway, this quiffy author gets up to rearrange the furniture in the bar, as my path from where I’m standing, to where he is, resembles an obstacle course of armchairs. Comfortable, but in the way. Phil shifts them in all sorts of directions, before we can finally shake hands.
He asks how my week has been, and it takes a while to extricate myself from the question, to ping it back at him. ‘I’ve had an amazing three days in Ayrshire,’ he says. And now he’s in Falkirk. ‘It’s a different atmosphere up here. In London, a lot of the schools are quite blasé about seeing authors. Here it’s a bit more far flung, a bit more appreciated. It’s been brilliant. We’ve sold a lot of books too.’ He points out that the selling is merely a nice side effect; ‘the amount of chat you get from the students afterwards has been fantastic.’
I ask which age group he’s been seeing, and it’s anything from S1 up. ‘We did a session with a special education school, which I haven’t done a lot of before. I loved it.’ He didn’t change anything for them, because ‘the kids often feel like they’re being talked down to. It was awesome.’
‘Yes, you’re a cool type, aren’t you?’
He laughs, ‘not me. I didn’t grow up wanting to be a writer. Sometimes that buys you a bit of currency with the kids. Especially the lads.’
‘You write for them, don’t you?’
‘I write for me, the stuff I’d read. I like Kevin Brooks, Keith Gray, Anthony McGowan.’
‘All boys’ books.’ We laugh. I mention Heroic, which I’ve just read a few sample chapters from, and which made for hard reading.
‘You end up getting typecast quite quickly.’
‘Your third book, The Bubble Wrap Boy felt serious while still being very light. There were mishaps, but it made me laugh. I remember I had my arm twisted to read Being Billy. The subject is not really me at all, but you treated it so differently.’
‘Good.’
‘But these chapters from Heroic…’
‘Yeah, scary right? I’m bloody proud of that book. I’ve always been terrified by the army, and I was trying to understand what it must be like. At the end of Heroic, they’re on top of a tower block, one bleeding, one carrying a gun. With The Bubble Wrap Boy I wanted to show people I could do lighter stuff, with something serious at its heart, you know. Nice to pull the rug under sometimes. I just identify with underdogs. In The Bubble Wrap Boy.., I have no idea where the friend came from. He kind of came out of nowhere.’
Phil talks so easily about his writing that I must ask, ‘are you doing well?’
‘Reviews wise, yeah. There’s a massive gulf between the John Greens and Veronica Roths, and Cassandra Clares, in terms of commercial success. They hit a nice spot, what readers want.’
‘They do.’
‘Look at the Meg Rosoffs, the David Almonds, Melvin Burgesses, Tony McGowan! Beautiful writers, critically they get the acclaim, but commercially they don’t sell what they should. They deserve to sell a hundred times more, but it’s really hard. It’s a real challenge for YA. Keith Gray is one of the reasons I write. If I’d been 15 and Keith had been writing then… I thought there were no books there for me. I was reading graphic books, comic books, but that was it. No aspirations to write, no aspirations to read. It didn’t float my boat at all.
I was lucky, I worked for Ottakar’s. It was utterly revolutionary for me, like a lightbulb moment. I read Holes, I read Skellig, I read Warehouse by Keith Gray and the Snicket books. Completely changed me.’
‘So you still have to work – do “proper” work – for a living?’
‘Three days a week. I’ve been really lucky, four books in, four years in. I was at Simon & Schuster, and I was using holidays to do school events. I love school events! I got a job at Bloomsbury, four days a week, and last summer I got an offer from David Fickling. I feel like the luckiest.., David is completely irresistible.’
‘I know.’
’It allows me to work three days a week, it allows me to focus on every single [David Fickling] book. My perk is giving authors the kind of treatment I’d like as an author; I know my books inside out, I know my authors really well, get to travel round the country as their sales and marketing director.’
‘You go round telling everyone what a wonderful book this is?’
‘That’s like the best gig in the world. It gives me a nice balance, and I commute from bed to the [bedroom] window. The challenge of that is that the four YA books were written on the bus to and from work, 500 words a day, 3,500 words a week. Now I’m doing some middle grade stuff, 35,000 words, it’s only ten weeks and I’m there. One of the funny things working with David is when you’re in the office, and Philip Pullman is sat in David’s office, you’re like a school kid…’
Here we continue the hero worshipping and sit and talk about John Green, Alan Gibbons, Bali Rai, and how much time they spend on travelling the world, to meet their fans. This Scottish tour is actually Phil’s first. He’s done individual events in the past, but not toured.’
‘Do you find that people want to be like Billy or Daisy?’
‘No. Kids in care are often referred to as children without a voice, which is the most ironic thing I’ve ever heard, because they are some of the noisiest. Really loud. Jacqueline Wilson did a magnificent job with Tracy Beaker, and I want to write about stuff honestly, give kids an insight into a life that could have been theirs, had things been different. Ronnie, the Colonel in Billy; I hadn’t planned his trajectory, at all. I did work with a load of male carers, ex-military, and it makes sense when you think of it. For them a children’s home is perfect.
The children used to call us Uncle or Auntie, but it teaches them the wrong thing about what a family really is.’ Phil goes on to describe how a child might be calling someone Auntie, only for that carer to leave their job a few weeks later, and that must give the child the idea that family can get up and go at any time. So any positive effect people might expect from having someone you could call Auntie, will be counterbalanced by the fact that it is only a job.
‘The thing with Ronnie is a bit like a romance.’
‘Yeah yeah. It’s interesting you say that, because I think that true for Heroic as well. It’s a love story about two brothers.’ Phil says he’s not brave enough to write anything [traditionally] romantic.
I speculate about the PenguinRandom effect, and mention my recent Jacqueline Wilson event. ‘She’s brilliant, is Jacqueline. Amazing woman. I used to be her rep when I worked at Transworld. At signings she used to slow down after a few hours, not because she was tired, but because those kids were the ones who had waited the longest… She used to give them more time. That’s absolute class.
Working in publishing made it [writing a book] easy and difficult at the same time. I’m four books in now, and have another six to come, under contract.’
‘Ohh, that’s not bad!’
‘Yeah, I’m writing six for Orion, a couple of young readers, and four 8-12 books, as well, which start coming out next May. The ideas I’ve got are younger at the moment, so I’m going to give that a whirl.’
‘Good thing if there can be more young books for boys.’
‘I think 8-12 books are often woefully ignored. I love the Carnegie, but the books more recently are predominantly YA, aren’t they? I’m hoping Marcus Sedgwick wins this year. I thought She’s Not Invisible was fabulous.’
‘Yes, one of the best.’
We spend a few minutes talking awards and winners, and putting literary prizes and their judges to rights, and Phil returns to one of his favourites, Tony McGowan. ‘He’s a very versatile writer. He’s hilarious, he’s brilliant,’ Phil says, and we find we are both enthusiastic about his Brock. ‘He’s writing a sequel.’
’Is he?’
‘I’d love to be on it just once [the Carnegie shortlist].’
And I’m sure he will, one day.
Three elderly ladies, wearing identical dressing gowns amble past our table in the bar. I make a point of not meeting Phil’s eye, as I’m not sure I could not giggle, just a little.
From there we move on to how old Bookwitch is (the cheek of it!), how many proofs I get, and how great it is for me to get out to met authors. Like Phil. And Anthony McGowan. And for once I can actually remember what the last book I read and loved was, because it was Michelle Magorian’s latest, Impossible!.
‘We just finished reading Goodnight Mister Tom with our eldest, and honestly I’d never read it before. I thought it was terrific.’
‘How old is he?’
‘He’s nine.’
I mention my surprise that Phil has four books out already. Time flies.
‘Working in publishing makes you cynical about sequels [he’s talking about Daisy], it was quite nice because it was set six to nine months before Billy. You could read it on its own.’
‘Was it harder to write about a girl?’
’In a way. I’d worked with girls who self-harm. With my middle class suburban upbringing, I had no concept that this even went on, you know. So when I was confronted by it from a carer point of view, I found it really difficult to get my head round. A lot of the stuff that happened to Daisy is what happened to me. The reason I stopped working with children is I had a nervous breakdown, when I was 26. I just couldn’t cope long term with what those children… It’s the book I get the most emails about, especially from young women. Some people have said it has helped, and then it doesn’t matter whether it sells or not.’
‘You need to find yourself in a book.’
‘That’s why I didn’t read as a kid, because the teacher was asking me to read Great Expectations, and The Grapes of Wrath, and poems, and they didn’t say anything to me. I used to read graphic novels. They were what taught me to read. Books like Maus, something that had real power.’
Our conversation is coming to an end, and when I ask what is he doing this evening, it seems he’s going to the cinema. And I’ve heard there’s some fancy dinner.
‘Another 300-400 students tomorrow, two schools. And then back home to the kids, to give my wife a rest. In theory, anyway. I’ve been Skyping them every night. It’s been quite fun. It’s really nice to be writing something they can read. They’re very good at turning the books face out in bookshops. I don’t do that myself, and I didn’t even train him! He did it instinctively; “they can’t see your book there, dad’.”’
He asks where my nearest bookshop is, and whether it’s any good. And poor Bookwitch that I am, I don’t actually know, but we assume that they are. Finally Phil wants to know what I’m reading right now, and I show him all three books I have in my bag; The Bubble Wrap Boy, which he signs, and two others, which he doesn’t. Maybe it’s his past as a rep or his present job as director of sales and marketing which means he knows a lot about current books and trends. He asks just the right questions about the books I brought. And about their authors.
And with that Phil gathers up his PR ladies and off they go to the movies. I move to make myself comfortable with my books and my water, but ‘unfortunately’ at that moment my driver turns up, and off we go too. Oh well.
One response to “Being Phil Earle – ‘I didn’t grow up wanting to be a writer’”
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← F.
My Mumme Poll ballot, Week 6 →
Where things stand.
I remember when I first realized that Mark Richt was taking the program some place it hadn’t been in a long time. Ironically, that time came during a loss – the ’02 Florida game. But it was at some time during the first half when I saw the defense routinely (key word, there) stuffing an offense that had given it nothing but fits for more than a decade that I knew those guys could play with anybody. There was an attitude, a confidence about the way they went about their business that made me feel like that. And it started with the guy at the top.
So if you’re expecting me to start raving about how it’s time for Richt to go, or how Damon needs to start issuing ultimatums today, by Gawd, then this post is going to be a disappointment. Mark Richt is a good man and a great head coach. He hasn’t stopped being either of those.
But… but. I’ve read Macon Dawg’s reasoned, thoughtful comments about how this isn’t the first time Georgia’s suffered a humiliating loss, and while I agree to a point with his reasoning, I think there’s more going on than that. Mark Richt wakes up this morning as the captain of a very dysfunctional ship. I doubt there’s anyone in the Dawgnation, including the head coach, who feels same way about the program today as I did in Jacksonville seven years ago.
If I had to put my finger on what’s wrong, I’d call it a crisis of faith. I don’t mean that in a religious sense. (By the way, of all the arguments I’ve seen about what’s wrong, blaming Coach Richt’s religious convictions for the slide has to rank as the dumbest.) Rather, it’s a systemic doubt: the coaches lack faith in the players to execute and the players lack faith in the coaches’ ability to deploy them efficiently and effectively.
Speaking of irony, how else can you describe that in Richt’s self-proclaimed year without stars, this team seems more reliant than ever on hoping that it can ride sheer talent to get through a game? That’s why the offense goes through complete games where the winning strategy is little more than throw it to A.J. And that’s why you see dumb decisions on the field every week, like Prince Miller electing to return a punt from his goal line.
I’m certain Miller knows in the aftermath it was a silly thing to do. We’ll probably hear an acknowledgement from him of that some time this week, just like we heard from Brandon Boykin last week about his decision to run back an interception from deep in his end zone. But in the heat of the moment, look for these kids to keep doing things just like that – because that’s what Georgia football boils down to these days, hoping that somebody can pull off a game saving play all by their lonesome. It’s certainly entertaining, but it’s no way to sustain a program over the course of a season. Or seasons, as it’s starting to appear.
And that’s why I have to beg to differ with Macon Dawg, at least a little. What depresses me the most about what I saw yesterday is that none of the bad happened in a vacuum. There were plenty of little instances and bigger things that echo developments we’ve been observing for some time now.
Here are three of those things for you to ponder as much as I have:
Blair Walsh. Here’s a stat that should blow you away – Walsh leads the SEC in touchbacks. Let me say that again. Blair Walsh has had more kickoffs result in touchbacks than any other kicker in the SEC. He’s made all his PATs and he’s 9 of 10 in field goal attempts. 50+ yard field goals are getting to be the norm for him. In short, he’s having an all-SEC season. Yet to hear it from his coaches, you’d think he’s a significant part of Georgia’s special teams problems. The insistence on directional kicking in the face of Walsh’s leg strength has gone from puzzling to frustrating to absurd. Insane is just around the corner, I’m afraid.
Jonathan Crompton had a career day. Willie Martinez’ epitaph? If not his, sad to say, it may wind up as Richt’s. You simply can’t survive as a head coach at Georgia if your teams can’t play defense competently. And at this point, I’d settle quite happily for competence. There’s no other way to say it than that Georgia’s defense is flat out bad right now. The team’s Pavlovian reactions to misdirection and play action are predictable, to the point of being reliable – just ask Kiffin – and are exacerbated by poor fundamentals. The number of quarterbacks (and tight ends) who have enjoyed Georgia’s defensive bounty grows at a consistent and alarming rate. That’s the worst part of Crompton’s performance: nobody was surprised.
Spiking the ball with one second on the clock. I don’t know who made that Reggie-Ball-on-fourth-down-esque decision. But it’s embarrassing that anyone associated with this program did. In fact, I’m hard-pressed to think of another SEC coach that would try something like that.
If it sounds like I’m putting the onus of the situation on the coaches’ shoulders, you’re right. The first responsibility of a good coach isn’t recruiting or scheme or play calling, although they’re all important. It’s motivation. It’s getting your kids to buy into what you’re doing and believing that the program has an identity. It’s why Tennessee smoked Georgia yesterday. It’s why Georgia is going to struggle to win seven games this year.
And there simply isn’t a valid excuse as to why this program, with all of the talent and resources it has at hand, should have to struggle to do that. The rock music critic Greil Marcus had a great line about Rod Stewart – rarely has a singer betrayed his talent so completely – that isn’t on point for Mark Richt, at least not yet. But it concerns me that it still came to mind unbidden after watching yesterday’s loss. Right now, if there’s a bigger underachiever in college football than this Georgia squad, I can’t think of it.
It’s not realistic to expect changes between now and season’s end. And I don’t want Richt rushing off half cocked on big changes, anyway. (Besides, who could he bring in midseason, even if he wanted to make a change in coaching?)
But there’s one change he could and should make now. They need to quit throwing kids under the bus in public. That’s not to say that there aren’t some decisions on the personnel front that are due. But the comments in the press need to stop. In some cases, like Walsh’s, they’re not only disheartening, they’re increasingly stupid in light of the performance on the field. And whatever else Richt has to say to Martinez this week, something needs to be said about behaving like a petulant adolescent during a game when a player makes a mistake. Throwing a clipboard after a penalty may feel good, but it looks bad. There’s a reason Spurrier is mocked for acting like that. There’s also a reason he gets away with it. And Willie doesn’t have that luxury.
It’s apparent from their post game comments that these kids are hurting. Yet they’ve managed to acknowledge how things are falling short without pointing fingers in the press at themselves or their coaches. There’s a dignity in kids like Rennie Curran that deserves our support. And that of the coaches.
One last thing. I hope this is just a sentiment of the moment, and I know it’s hard to resist circling the wagons when things are going badly, but Mark Richt needs to reconsider and reject this kind of thinking:
“If you’re a leader or a player and you are brave enough to be in the arena, there’s going to be people outside the arena that want to throw things at you and say things about you,” Richt said. “But there’s honor in being in the arena, and a lot of people don’t understand it because they’ve never been in there.”
Coach, you’re better than that. We’re not the issue here. The real problems you face are fixable, although the fix won’t be pleasant. It’s time to roll up your sleeves and get to work. After all, it’s not like you haven’t done it before. I’ve no doubt you’re capable of doing it again.
129 responses to “Where things stand.”
Senator – well said.
Excellent Post.. in some ways it hurts to read, too.. but… the truth hurts.
We have gotten by on individual performances and you can’t do that.
It’s time for the coaches to say, “We (the coaches) need to do a better job, because we aren’t getting it done” and lay off the kids. We know the kids are making mistakes; we can see it. We don’t need the coaches to accentuate it.
BlunderingAmerican
Good post, though I’m not sure Richt has the fire in his belly to do what it takes. It’s not always easy to recapture it once it’s lost.
By the way, are you the same Senator on the DawgVent?
Senator Blutarsky was my handle on the pre-Rivals Vent. When Rivals took it over, it required re-registration and that gentleman beat me to the punch, unfortunately.
So the short answer is no.
Someone else has a “Get the Picture” handle but that person doesn’t strike me as being the same person, but I wonder how much confusion there is.
cjwestbrook
Oh, I just assumed it was the same. I guess I’ll stop making a priority to read that guy’s stuff now. Though he does strike a resemblance.
SilverDawgFrank
I plead on the altar of forgiveness, Senator, for my passions running amuck yesterday and yanking tangential arguments of the air (and elsewhere). Usually a more reasonable man prevails in my old frame. My better spirit was decidedly undercoached.
Great column. Well said. Richt can right the ship.
That I do believe.
Nice commentary.
I have a different opinion of what a coach’s first responsibility is. I think teaching technique is co-equal with motivation. Technique is molecular level football: where do linemen put their hands, how many steps in a pattern, who do I look at to do my reads.
The position coaches are supposed to teach technique, and the coordinators and head coach are the motivators and planners. The head coach and coordinators tell the position coaches what techniques to teach.
The combination of technique and motivation produces confident well trained 20 year olds. The closest analogy is military basic training.
I don’t know enough X’s and O’s to judge where the fault lies here, but I think our coordinators have lost faith in themselves, and players can tell when that happens.
Dead on man, a scene from the movie Patton has been popping through my head since yesterday, the scene where General Patton says: ”You want to know why this army got the hell kicked out of it at Kasserine, a blind man could see it in a minute, they don’t look like soldiers, they don’t act like soldiers, why the hell should they be expected to fight like soldiers”. It is obvious our defense is poorly trained and disciplined, we are not lacking raw talent. One of the reasons I have always thought Richt had a chance to be a great one was that he did not appear to have too much pride to see his own faults, learn and adapt. He appears to have a blind spot when it comes to his friend Willie Martinez though, I have the feeling he would not tolerate that kind of failure out of himself. I know he is a loyal guy and I respect that but as head football coach at UGA his duty to his players and his fans must override his duty to his friend. Willie has got to go and Richt has got to find someone who can light a fire under the defense again (not Muschamp).
The Original Chuck
I think that’s fundamental, and unfortunately, it appears to be the thing Richt least understands. All this talk about execution in very vague terms rather than as a biproduct of process is not good.
Great post Senator.
During the game, I was bothered by what I perceived to be Richt’s lack of emotion, almost looking aloof even. After a night to sleep on it, I’m wondering if what I saw was more like a man who is appalled at what he’s seeing and knows he’s going to have to fire some people that are very close to him. He’s a good man to be sure, so if he’s feeling that way (and I hope he is), then that’s the only rationale I can see for his demeanor yesterday. Any thoughts?
Richt usually doesn’t get too emotional on the sidelines- he has, but usually he doesn’t. It is part of who he is and also was developed while he was an OC, so that instead of venting, he could call the next play. This point was commented on by several writers and announcers back in the good days, stating that while at times some fire would be good, the calm would also help when things got bad, the team wouldn’t panic and would just go to work at rallying.
NebraskaDawg
Will Richt wind up like Fulmer and fall on the sword instead of firing some of his assisstants? I hope not. But if Richt continues with the status quo then he may go that route. How long have we been talking about the same problems under Richt? The team looks poorly coached. We look so predictable on both sides of the ball it is pathetic. They make no adjustments and continue to fall for the same shit on defense (especially play action pass of which you’d think our defense would be good against since it the same exact damn thing we run on our offense). If Richt decides not to make any changes then accountablility lies squarely on his shoulders.
rbubp
Accountability always lies squarely on the head coach’s shoulders. It’s one of the beautiful things about college football–you can’t blame the meddling owner, the salary cap, or the idiot GM.
Actually there is a “meddling owner” and “idiot GM.” He’s called an AD and his name is Damon Evans. I will not go into everything he has done to facilitate where we are now in this post but, suffice to say, he definitely deserves at least some of the blame.
You sound like prototypical message board guy.
“I’m not gonna say anything, but I know something that you don’t, thereby increasing my anonymous credibility when anything happens, allowing me to point back to me saying I knew something. Granted what I knew wasn’t what happened, but it was something, so I was still right.”
You must be new to this blog. I have made NUMEROUS detailed posts here over the entire course of the season about Damon Evans’ deficiencies as AD. First, the entire season got off to an awful start when he subjected his team to the indignity of opening on the road as cannonfodder for the grand reopening of a top 10 ranked team’s stadium where they got mercilessly home-cooked by the refs. I figure in an honestly reffed game the Dawgs win that one 17-10 or at worst it goes into OT.( I bet you didn’t know that Jerry Jones offered $8.5 Million to move that game to the new Dallas Cowboy Stadium-a neutral site-and Okie State turned it down. I wonder why?) Second, by now it is beyond argument that something rotten has been going on with the Dawgs and SEC referees. What has Damon Evans done about that? Nothing! The theft by the refs of what should have been a win over LSU had as much to do with the TN loss as anything ( I wrote a detailed post on how fragile the confidence of 19 year old kids is) and our AD does nothing. Third, the scheduling miscues that have come to fruition this season are monumental. UGA had at least 4 “trap games” on the schedule this year. We finish the season against KY and GT back to back and both of them have a bye week before playing UGA but UGA does not. This is systematically setting your team up for failure. So, if you don’t know about what is going on, just read and maybe you’ll learn something.
The usual BS.
Conspiracy-laden crap with no actual information, just pure outlandish speculation–“the refs are agin’ us”–come on.
and by the way, the referees didn’t make us give up a huge kickoff return after the TD–for the umpteenth time this year!!!, or make us miss a field goal that would have changed the last LSU series, or allow a running play to go 30+ yards with the game on the line.
Refs didn’t do any of that. Shut your face about the damn referees already.
Excuse me? How do refs have anything to do with scheduling games where the other teams have an extra week to get ready and your team doesn’t? We have THREE of those ( Arkansas was one, too) on the schedule this year.
Ooh, three? In one season in the last 6 or 7, Alabama had 7 such games.
I didn’t know that. What year, and what was ” Bama’s record that year?
You’re the one who brought up not addressing the so-called ref conspiracy.
And as for scheduling, well, f’ing grow a pair. Wasn’t it Richt who whined about Jacksonville, too?
You want to play with the big boys, start freaking being one.
Go check Tennessee’s schedule from last season, Mayor.
the tri guy
Dude, KY doesn’t have a bye before playing us, and even if they did, they are KY. We really shouldn’t need them to be worn out to beat them.
Tri guy, I checked it out and you are right–my bad.
Dawggonepanic
We are a football program in trouble! We can’t block anyone and we can’t tackle anyone. This is the worst secondary I can remember in UGA history. Yet week after week we see the same people make the same mistakes and they still remain starters. It make me wonder what is going on in Athens w/ our coaches. This year has been unbelievable. Are the players really this bad or are the coaches this bad. According to the recruiting rankings it is the coaches. I thought they could turn things around after last year but I was wrong and this is unacceptable. Some changes must be made!
Oh by the way, solid anaylsis Senator.
i’ve wondered before about richt’s staffing choices (duh). he’s had remarkable stability in terms of low turnover. i thought last season that stability played a role in keeping martinez – take a chance on him improving so that you don’t have turmoil in the ranks with coaches vying for the dc slot and the silver-medalist leaving (i.e. – rodney garner going somewhere else in the conference). but dear lord he’s going to have to do something now. no revelations here, but i wonder how this shakes up beyond the dc level.
bobo is more of a puzzle. does richt resume play calling and keep bobo on? i dunno. but he certainly appears to be the one who is most lost without stafford and moreno.
i completely agree that richt is a great coach and person having one hell of a bad year. but when he has screwed things up before he has taken responsibility (recall the jasper-dive with seconds evaporating against auburn, and richt ‘fessing up to his own fault and addressing it explicitly in the off season).
lastly – i think we now more fully understand just how good of a coach van gorder is…
God I hope not…Bobo does what he can although lately his game calling has been off and I can give no reason why that should be. I think it’s as the great senator said, its a crisis of faith.
I saw Richt try to do things that didnt work until they did way more than bobo ever has. Bobo is good for a few failed plays before he moves onto something else, rather than trying it the whole game. Richt doesn’t always seem to have that going for him.
Athens Avenger
Excellent treatment. Richt has a tough road ahead to get back to where he was, but I believe he will get there.
I am going to write off the “honor in the arena” remark as regrettable words spoken in a moment of personal crisis. In a world where the average fan lives in fear of the next mortgage payment, I know (hope?) that Richt would never intentionally imply that only he and his well-paid staff understand the “honor” inherent in fighting to survive.
I’ve also been perplexed at the lack of confidence in Blair Walsh. The kid has been for the most part fantastic. He is one of only a handful of kickers in the country that is almost automatic from 50+. They bring in yet another scholarship kicker in the off season when Walsh could kick it in the endzone all along. Fabris is a joke.
S.E. Dawg
On-point and well said Senator. If changes are to be made and I doubt that will happen, I hope it’s after signing day. If changes are made mid-stream I’m afraid some of the kids will jump ship. I don’t think re-evaluating is going to cut it this time. That was supposed to have already been done last year. I know Coach Richt knows 100 time more about football than I and I’m sure he knows what the coaches are capable of, but when you have a former player that was a receiver coaching running backs and a former running back coaching receivers there is doubt that they are up to the task. I wish we all knew what the answers are and I guess the coaches do too. It’s sad that we can’t compete against a new coaching staff as in Tenn. and ours have been there for 9 years. I think coach Richt is trying his best to be a head coach without being an actual coach but he may need to be more hands on again and that’s tough row to hoe.
Excellent post, Senator.
I too am very disheartened by Mark Richt’s increasing penchant for blaming the players or the critics. It doesn’t look good, it doesn’t set a good tone, and most of all it won’t work.
from a buddy...
This came from a buddy of mine…
“Check out these stats:
Season Highs (For most Career Highs)
Arkansas Ryan Mallet 408 yards vs UGA (next best game was 309 yards vs Missouri State)
South Carolina Stephen Garcia 313 yards vs UGA (next best game was 222 yards vs Florida Atlantic)
Tennessee Jonathan Crompton 310 yards vs UGA (next best game was 259 yards vs Auburn)
Next Best Game
LSU Jordan Jefferson 212 yards vs UGA (best game was 233 vs Mississippi State)”
Telling.
We just can’t execute, I guess.
Nice post, Senator. I enjoy your work.
When hiring partners or C-level execs, venture capitalists often talk of “pattern recognition.” They’re looking for people who’ve seen enough startup trajectories to see parallels, to ask the right questions and to understand the implications of acting and not acting.
I look at Richt from 2006 on, and I’m unshakably led to Fulmer, 2005-2008; Donnan, 1998-2000, Dooley, 1984-1988; Tuberville, 2006-2008; Majors and Dye, 1990-1992. Each coach saw the competitive landscape around him change, and each was eventually overwhelmed.
Some stood pat, wrongly thinking that football strategy is a carved-in-stone thing: what works, works — always and forever.
Others flailed about, juggling staff. But the new hires were hired by the same guy who hired the last batch. Sometimes they caught lightning in a bottle (Borges, 2004; Garner, 2000). But, in the big picture, it amounted to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
I want to see Richt succeed. I like him as a person. But I don’t see many second acts in this game, and Richt is at the end of his first.
I haven’t felt this grim about Georgia football since my student years (1993-1996). Going forward, we can be occasionally good under Richt, but the longer we accept good, the longer we postpone great.
Problem is too many people here are fine with good. Talk to people at the game, and to a man they’ll tell you how come you’ve got crazy expectations if you’re unhappy with the fact that we win roughly 10 games a year. They tend to ignore the ways we’ve managed to loose the other 3ish games each season, however. The amount of excuses after last years amazingly disappointing 10-3 was completely stunning on so many levels I almost gave up then.
Do you really think the coach is the reason a team shot through with injuries and an OL with no one older than their sophomore year is the reason UGA didn’t beat Florida and win the MNC? How many SECCs or MNCs have had such problems?
Yeah, you do have very irrational expectations if you think firing a head coach who had Georgia (historically, an upper Tier 2 program, by the way), in the top 10 6 of his first 8 seasons including 2 SECC seasons and 2 seasons that have been good enough to make the MNC game for other SEC MNC winners this decade (who simply got a better luck of the draw, which the MNC game requires), is a good idea.
The problem isn’t people settling. The problem is all yours… and it is a very common error made by CFB fans with tunnel vision on their own team.
Um, we finished #2 in the country in 2007, fwiw. Where does that fit in the patterns of the others you mentioned?
Pretty consistently, I’d say. Fulmer rebounded after 2005’s 5-7 season to kick our asses twice in a row and went to Atlanta in 2007. We thought Ray Goff was on to something in ’92. Auburn was ranked #5 coming into Athens in ’07. All were mirages.
I’m glad you brought up 2007, because that’s lynchpin for every status-quo-er in our fanbase. That was a great team that had no business watching the SECC from home. That said, way too much has been made of the strong finish. That ’07 Florida team was a broken one, as was Auburn. Gailey was on the way out at Tech, and Hawai’i, well, come on. We beat those teams like we should have, and we lost to SC and Tennessee like we shouldn’t have.
I don’t know that I’m ready to see Richt fired. But when I ask myself if I believe Richt is going to get us back in Atlanta in early December, I look at what’s brewing in Gainesville and Knoxville and no rational part of me can come up with an argument for why I should say yes.
“Status quo-er.”
That’s cute. (Especially coming from someone who admits he too supports the status quo (keeping Richt).)
Nice downplaying of 2007, fwiw, but it is what it is: a year in which, comparing the full resumes of every CFB program that year, Georgia had the 2nd best performance of all of them.
And the Fulmer comparison is cute… but his 2006 and 2007 teams each lost 4 games. He then had a 2008 that completely melted down. Richt’s 2007-2009 is not even remotely close to that.
I’m not going to get in a pissing match online, especially with someone who appears to be in violent agreement with me.
I’ve acknowledged the possibility that Richt could surprise me by radically overhauling his staff (Mack Brown is a case study of how episodes like this can be overcome), while expressing my skepticism that he’ll do so.
But who knows? Richt has surprised me before. When a 9-year veteran of the league and a full roster of top-10 recruiting classes gets run out of the stadium by a rookie coach with an incomplete roster, it would be hard to see that as anything other than a cataclysmic event. Richt just hasn’t acknowledged it as such, hence my skepticism.
Senator – very well put.
I agree completely that throwing kids under the bus is ludicrous. But I’m amazed at the expectations of many bloggers/posters that the coaches are going to say something really introspective or uplifting in a post-loss press conference. Some act like they want to hear Richt/Willie/Bobo/Fabris throw each other under the bus or bang on the table and act like lunatics to prove they’re angry about losing. That’s a ridiculous expectation that wouldn’t do a damn thing to change anyone’s feelings about the loss. They probably understand that the more they say, the more ammunition they give to their critics. Specific tactics are easier to assail than general remarks.
Frustration is high after such a brutal loss and accountability should be expected in any profession. But it’s not going to be debated publicly by the coaching staff or administrators and no changes are going to be made mid-season. I realize that many feel like changes were due at the end of last season so they’re extrapolating to the end of this year and assuming that the same will hold true (because of Richt’s “loyalty”). I say let it play out before making judgments. Even though the beginnings of the “systemic doubt” may have come last year or earlier, I didn’t really expect that UGA would make changes after finishing #2 in 2007 and starting #1, finishing #10 and winning 10 games in 2008 (that hardly sounds like rock-bottom where change would be a given).
This year, the confusion and lack of productivity on both sides of the ball is, I believe, apparent to everyone – including the coaches. Candidly, I don’t expect or want Richt to start publicly stating that things need to change in the next six games or someone’s getting fired. But I do hold hope that appropriate personnel decisions are made if/when (depending on your perspective) the same problems continue through the remainder of the season.
As self-serving as they may have been, Bobby Bowden’s comments aired during last night’s game were applicable – “a head coach ain’t nothin’ but a dadgum problem solver” (or something very close to that). UGA needs to solve some problems and it’s looking like personnel changes may be warranted at the end of the year. If Richt has truly transformed from position coach to head coach, then he’ll manage change for the good of the program rather than the good of his staff and friends. I’m not going to assume he won’t act in that manner. It appears that this might be the kind of season where it’s a lot easier to make those kind of decisions when the season is done.
The only thing that I’m virtually certain of is that Mark Richt will be UGA’s coach next year. Any speculation about next year should focus on who would be part of Richt’s staff – not who will replace Richt and who will he bring with him. I do wonder about the staff dynamics at UGA versus at other schools. I’m quite sure that the everyday environment at UGA (under Richt) is quite different than at places like Tennessee. The kind of coach that will be attracted to some places won’t be attracted to UGA. And, if they would be offered and accept, the fit might be dysfunctional (see Tony Franklin at Auburn). Could you ever see a guy like Orgeron working with someone like Richt?
It’s likely that coordinator selections would have to come from lower divisions, second-tier BCS conferences or second-rate teams in first-tier BCS conferences. Sometimes, selections work out OK (Fresno State OC to Bama; Malzahn to Auburn – so far) and other times not so well (Richmond coach to UT; Franklin). Unfortunately, many Dawg fans seem to think we should be able to attract Tony Dungy as our D.C. and Bill Walsh (if he wasn’t dead) as our O.C. I very much doubt that UGA’s selections will come from the NFL. And, if they do, they’ll probably be someone we’ve never heard of (no, it won’t be Van Gorder).
Last, Richt will have to concern himself with how his hiring decisions affect current coaches he wants to keep. Will Garner leave if he doesn’t get the D.C. job? Given his recruiting prowess, he may be the one person that is deemed irreplaceable on the staff. What would the reaction be if we hire unknown coordinators and Garner bolts?
Most of the short lists that are thrown out by bloggers and posters focus on head coaches. And most of them are crazy (Gruden, Cowher, D. Dooley). Some are coordinator suggestions but typically “homers” (Muschamp, Smart). I think it would be interesting for more educated fans than me to speculate on who the most interesting coordinators are (i.e., who is this year’s Malzahn? where’s the up and coming Charlie Strong?)
Putting things in perpective (as you have here), I was listening to a national sports call-in show after Southern Cal lost a few weeks ago. Wouldn’t you know it, people were screaming for Carrol’s head, that he’s lost his touch, the game has moved past him, that he can’t recruit anymore, ad nausem.
That crazy talk sure did sound familiar, and all I could do was chuckle at those comments.
Thanks for the perspective. I absolutely agree about all of the coaching stuff; it will be people we’ve not heard of–college coaches, come on no NFL guy wants to step down from college and have to recruit unless they are just run completely out of there or came from it first, like Kiffin–unless we’re lucky enough to score perhaps Tommy Tuberville (which would seem to depend of personalities and how/if TT would want to get back in the game). But it would be nice to have a substantial discussion on this, and even whether CWM would be able to resume as secondary coach.
But I do have to dissent about the coaching comments. No, Richt is not going to blame his coaches or discuss strategy in a detailed way, and he is right to do that.
But what gets people so hopping, including me, is that he seems to want to lay blame everywhere else in subtle ways, i.e. Blair Walsh, Joe Cox’s “regression” non-denial yesterday, the constant execution excuse, the scheduling, being number one pre-season, having “stars,” being the favorite, the travel between games…
It seems that this crap didn’t happen a few years ago.
In that vein, I’d say shoot for Dana Holgoren (Houston OC, former Texas Tech OC but they had a 1,200 yard rusher last year and put up solid #s against every auto-BCS team they faced) for OC and TCU’s Dick Bumpas for DC.
And longshot (maybe) DC? Tuberville. He was DC for wrecking crew Texas A&M and Miami under Jimmy Johnson, and other than against us, his last few Auburn squads weren’t giving up 40 spots (plus he held that record-breaking 2007 Florida team to 17 points.)
His biggest weakness before the Tony Franklin Project fizzled was losing to teams he shouldn’t, but was excellent at beating rivals and Florida.
Also, it doesn’t get said enough, but Jancek should join Willie on the way out–other than Rennie we don’t hear much about our linebackers, and it’s the entire back seven biting on seemingly every play-action fake.
Those are the kind of interesting names (Holgoren, Bumpas) that I ‘m talking about. I agree that Tuberville is a longshot and, probably, a poor fit. But I think fans and players could get excited about coordinators that would put us in a position to win with a combination of scheme and athleticism rather than athleticism alone. (Even then, Richt and Evans will never please everyone – I’m sure you can imagine the reaction of some long-time Dawgs about hiring a Texas Tech coordinator)
Next year, whoever the coordinators are, I’d like to see opposing defenses looking confused and desperate (like our D often looks). And I’d like to see opposing offenses looking confused and timid (like our O often looks).
Another thing I’ve wondered about is what goes on in the offseason amongst a long-tenured staff like Georgia has. I believe one of the reasons that staffs wear out their welcome is because of their tenure and tendency to keep doing the same things year in and year out. Over time, there’s plenty of film to use to see what works and what doesn’t. Rather than solely thinking about how we’re going to scheme for other teams and their tendencies, are our coaches asking “how do other teams scheme for us” and “how can we make changes to make sure our schemes are evolving/unpredictable”? I really haven’t seen much evidence that’s the case.
We’re not going to get that kind of insight from our current SEC competitors but I would think ex-coaches like Tuberville and Croom would be able to provide great insight that would help our coaches to improve scheme. It’s apparent that coaches have learned how to prepare for UGA and there are quite a few game tapes that now act as a handbook for game prep.
I just don’t see Tubberville taking a step back to DC. I think he will wait for another HC job. Maybe at A&M or something like that.
One other thing I wonder about on offense is whether Richt is married to the idea of having QBs read the defense and make adjustments at the line. That’s an area that I think was ripe for evolution this year with a first year – albeit “experienced” – quarterback. Next year will be even more pronounced with a RS sophomore or freshman starting at QB with no game experience.
I recognize that UGA’s pro-style approach with the QB making the reads and running the offense is what attracts guys like Stafford to sign up. And reading comments like Schwartz’s about Stafford’s preparation for the NFL are flattering to UGA’s approach. But isn’t it too much to ask a typical 20 year old kid at ground level to make the necessary adjustments to beat top-notch defenses?
I will one-up your crazy….
We get Monte Kiffin as DC.
DallasDawg
“Georgia Embarrassed” That’s the headline in today’s Dallas Morning News which gives quite a bit of coverage to UGA; the lasting impact of Stafford I guess.
Seriously, as I’ve watched our opponents (even the losers) this season I generally think they’ve come into the game with a plan that plays to their strengths and exploits our (many it seems) weaknesses yet I don’t see that UGA approaches the games with any real plan at all. We seem to trot out the same the same group and tell them (via the play calling and defensive schemes) to do the same things regardless of who we are playing. Maybe a break a the directional kicking thing isn’t an example of this but otherwise I think I’m right. Are we not looking at who’s on the schedule and trying to come up with a plan to beat that specific team?
While we’ve still got time maybe we should start practicing with only one thing in mind: beating Tech. I don’t see us doing much else at this point that would salvage the season any meaningful way.
It is pretty obvious that this is happening. Along with the play-action, Kiffin determined that a. his QB sucks under pressure but can roll out ok; b. our LBs cannot cover any receivers; c. we blitz up the middle this year, for personnel, scheme, or whatever other reasons.
So a and b we can’t much help in-game. But C, we can do something about that. Did we try to bring pressure from the edges? I gave up on the game in the 3rd after it was 31-19 and wasn’t looking for this. Anyone?
There is one simple problem with our team (hint it’s NOT Richt): it’s Van Gorder vs. Willie….that’s almost the only difference here (we run the same offense – I think Bobo is better than Richt was).
Simple fact is, we haven’t had a defense play WEEK IN AND WEEK OUT since 2004. In 2005, we had the Auburn collapse and West Virginia. 2006, Tennessee 2nd half. 2007, Tennessee again. 2008, umm….Bama, Florida, Kentucky, Tech…lol. 2009, we have South Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee. These are all absolute utter collapses. I was in Knoxville yesterday, and I was laughing it was so bad. We will never again win consistently with Willie has our defensive coordinator. Yes our offense is horrible this year…..but in the past, that didn’t mean an automatic loss.
There is one thing to do and everyone either knows or SHOULD know what it is by now. Facts don’t lie, and our defense is terrible. They even cracked during the Florida-LSU game about LSU driving late in the game that, “this isn’t any Georgia defense” and laughed and said, “True.” We’re the punch line to jokes about defense in the SEC.
If that isn’t enough to make something happen, I don’t know what will do it. When we’re the national laughingstock for defense, Georgia has fallen hard and fast.
“They even cracked during the Florida-LSU game about LSU driving late in the game that, “this isn’t any Georgia defense” and laughed and said, “True.” We’re the punch line to jokes about defense in the SEC.” -WOW …I did not hear that. Sad.
Farsider
“…. I had to put my finger on what’s wrong, I’d call it a crisis of faith…….”
Brother you read my mind. All night I was thinking about things and I kept coming back to a phrase of “lack of belief” or “crisis of confidence” in describing this team. But motivation is not all on the coaches. Players have to buy in and motivate themselves, too. And as you pointed out so well, that just is not happening because the players don’t have faith/confidence/belief.
It would really, really, really behoove the coaching staff to stop the passive-aggressive bullsh*t with the fans.
The fans say directional kicking isn’t working. The fans are 106% right. Admit it and move on.
jdawg
The disheartening part is that the team had “faith” in the pre-season and up to the LSU game. That game seems to have broken the players. The offense hasn’t moved the ball effectively in the past 3 games. The Defense must be getting tired of playing all game. Seems as though they are sensing that something isn’t working.
We were unquestionably outcoached AND out played against Tenn. The offense and defense were completely out schemed. They had a plan to exploit what we have been doing: the same plays over and over, the same offensive and defensive formations. I believe that Richt can turn it around, but wish the bye was this week.
The sad part is that being from the NFL they didn’t have to work too hard to scheme us. On both sides of the ball the Pro’s handled the amateurs with great ease.
I see very few people blaming his religion. Instead, I see people pointing out that our fans use his religion as an excuse so as to never put any pressure on the man. I’m thrilled he’s a great human being and a wonderful Christian, but the amount of people who that placates after every loss is ultimately the most frustrating thing about our team. “Well, he’s a good Christian man.” Wonderful, but we’re paying him to be a good coach first. I just wish the fanbase would stop using his faith as a reason behind keeping him as coach.
Tenn_Dawg
My thoughts exactly. Our fans are using his Christiany as a crutch. I am a man of faith and I am glad he is a man of faith as well…..but he is paid for running a clean program and winning football games.
I have realistic expectations. I know we are not going to win every game, win SEC championships every year and NCs every five years. I do however expect the team to compete at a certain level given the resources of our program and the recruiting prowless. Getting blown out by comparable teams and barely beating teams that are not on our level is getting old.
Is it just me or does it rub others the wrong way that Richt has very little interaction with the players during the game. I never see him coaching guys up, calming them down, getting in their face, etc. He seems almost disinterested. I hate to bring the guys names up but Saban and Meyer both do this. They seem like they are involved with every aspect of the game during the game. They are interacting with the position coaches, players and co-ordinators. I know it is probably not Richt’s style but the current approach is not working.
I’ve seen this critisism several times and think it’s just way off base. Mark is very involved with the players coming on and off the field. He just doesn’t nuzzle and kiss like Meyer does to the Chosen One…thank God.
“I hate to bring the guys names up but Saban and Meyer both do this. They seem like they are involved with every aspect of the game during the game.”
So is Richt.
And FWIW, not sure what you’re seeing with Saban. 90% of the time that guy looks like he’s just strolling around.
I heard Loren Smith defend the continued employment of CWM on the grounds that his daughters go to UGA and that they bleed red and black.
BTW, I tuned into radio broadcast. The current broadcast team is great with Butler, Green, Zeier, Dantzer, Howard, Loren Smith, Williamson nd Dowdle.
But it was comical when they went to Loren on the sidelines for a comment in the 2nd half, with the score 24-19, and Loren’s sideline comment is about the good fishing in Donaldsonville, GA, where Bacarri Rambo is from.
Loren is a total douche that is a sycophant and needs to do the world a favor and retire. Did I make my feelings clearly known?
The hardest part about all of this for me is the faith that I’m losing in Richt. Since he came to UGA, I’ve been as big a supporter of Richt as anyone. I just love so many things about the guy. He’s a great man; a wonderful husband; and an outstanding father.
But as of right now, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t quickly losing faith in his ability to coach, part of which involves making whatever tough decisions are necessary for the good of the program. Surely he realizes what is involved in being a CEO-figure. I mean, … surely.
If you’d told me back in 2007 (the year of the emergence of Evil Richt) that I’d be thinking the sorts of thoughts that I am now, … I’d have said you were crazy. But if some sort of decisive changes are not made between now and Jacksonville, I’m afraid my days of Mark Richt apologia will be numbered.
Do you really think there is any way we beat Florida now? I mean, at this point I’m just hoping to upset Auburn and Georgia Tech. Asking for a victory over Florida with this group, when Richt’s GREATEST teams couldn’t pull that off, seems like asking too much.
Oh, absolutely not. I’m just thinking that, if Richt makes some sort of drastic change between now and Florida, I’d at least take that as a sign that he still recognizes that his job is first-and-foremost about winning games. But if, between now and what is arguably the biggest game of our season each year, Richt makes no observable effort whatsoever to right the ship … then I’ll take that as a sign that he’s simply conceding the rest of the season, which no coach should ever do. (The Vandy game, as far as I’m concerned, is totally irrelevant.)
There is no way that Richt or any other college coach (so no “But Saban…,” witness 2007) would make drastic changes on the order of what you’re wanting at mid-season.
Well, I never specified what sorts of changes I want made, so I find it impossible to understand how you could be so confident that Richt would never make the sorts of changes I want made mid-season.
In agreement here, but food for thought (and perhaps faith) is that CMR has made changes before (2006 and 2007, for example).
This year does seem different, though.
I fully expect to take a huge beat down by Florida, probably the worse loss ever at the hands of the gators and possibly in program history. Tebow will want to do once more just to pay us back for beating him once. I’ll beat Meyey holds all of this time outs to the last minute and calls them then just to relish in the moment.
I’d gladly take the inevitable massive loss one more time if we played Murray or whomever we think the QB of the future is just to give him some PT and put a bad taste in his mouth that I hope would turn into motivation for revenge. If he’s all people have said he is he won’t stay four years anyway so why bother with the redshirt?
To be clear, I absolutely expect us to lose to Florida. But the loss will be much easier for me to swallow if I think that, between now and then, steps have been taken to turn this back into a respected, winning football program.
I have zero hope that any action will be taken during the season. As far as UF bend over and grab your ankles because it’s not going to be pretty.
http://www.firemarkricht.net . It’s the opposite of the eric berry campaign.
If I am an OC and I look at our D I’m a happy man if I have a semi-competent passer and a good TE. We do as we have done for 9 years and I think Lane pointed it out nicely. If an NFL coach (even a bad one)can’t beat a cover 2 then he would have never been in the NFL no matter who his father was.
In defense of the O, Monty was doing back flips and said as much to see a pro type O coming to town. The man did not have to scheme for us he invented the D to stop us and he cut our heart out. Anyone that thinks Mike Bobo could make a Monty Kiffin D break a sweat is just plain nuts. We are lucky we made any 1st downs at all.
All day I watched some really great SEC D’s and what I saw made me sad. We used to have great D’s that rose up and stopped the opponent, now we have Rennie trying to cover the entire field to make saving tackles on D and kickoffs. He is being wasted. Our DC reminds me of Donald Duck as he waves his arms and whistles to get the attention of the players who are looking at him like they don’t know what the heck is going on.
Great D’s like great soldiers perform on instinct honed by training. When things start to go bad you act decisively you don’t stop to think. Lack of training causes hesitation and that causes the kind of play we are getting from our D.
Having followed UGA football for 50+ years and seen plenty of good, bad and ugly teams this is the first time I have just felt sad. I guess it comes with getting old and knowing that there are so few next years to wait and see if the Dawgs can do it.
Couldn’t agree more re: the “Arena” quote, which obviously borrows liberally from Teddy Roosevelt. Very disappointing coming from Richt. I really expect more accountability from him.
Mark really needs to consider the “Pride goeth before a fall” quote. All the great coaches of the past would never ever point fingers at anyone except themselves. Bear, Dooley, Dodd etc. they were not going to lay it off on anyone. CMR lost a lot of points with me when he made the statement about Blair’s KO’s. Just say it’s my fault and leave it at that.
The staff did the “let’s blame the best player” crap with Lumpkin in 2006. Dude whiffed on one (1) block, and he was in the doghouse the rest of the year, despite being the only offensive weapon grounded in sanity (unlike that year’s version of Stafford).
CataulaDawg
The only thing that disappoints me more than the trajectory of the season is the ruthless, irrational reaction of some of the “fans”. I appreciate seeing an articulate assessment like the Senator’s and I agree that radical coaching changes during the middle of a season won’t usually turn the season around (see: Felton, Dennis).
It’s been my observation that in leadership, if your team isn’t producing, it’s your responsibility to do something about it. If you don’t, someone up the food chain will make those decisions for you and you may not agree with the outcome.
Paging Mark Richt: please don’t let this happen.
We’ll have to see this season through, but hopefully at its conclusion we will have a coaching staff that can leverage the abundant talent and resources to maximum potential.
“I agree that radical coaching changes during the middle of a season won’t usually turn the season around (see: Felton, Dennis).”
It’s worth noting that Georgia managed to essentially knock both Florida and Kentucky out of the NCAA tournament field after Felton was fired. No, the team didn’t really get worlds better, but they at least won a few conference games.
PNWDawg
I’ll gladly forgive Richt for any quotes considered in bad taste. He’s a very good man and is human like the rest of us. I’m sure it’s a very difficult day for him.
I know from personal experiences that sometimes you have to hit an all-time low for change to occur. That’s even if you knew change was necessary to begin with. I believe great things will come from this.
We all have talked about the problems over and over now. It’s no secret anymore what’s going wrong. There’s really not a whole lot we can do to change how the staff manages the team. IMO, the ONLY thing we can do is to show an unwavering support of our team and help them back onto their feet. No, that’s not looking at the season with rose-colored glasses. It’s called being a fan. Let’s not take our frustrations out on the players by continuing to bitch about the same things. Yeah, it sucks our coaches continue to do things that drive us crazy and I have done my fair share of bitching this year. I just think a strong showing up support will do a lot more for the team at this point. Go Dawgs!!!
MacAttack
As someone said on another forum, the players were NOT running to Richt before the game (on the field) and have not been ALL SEASON LONG
The players did not respect the coaches and it shows
We are poorly coached, under-performing almost all over, and are losing by BLOWOUTS
Major changes do in fact need to be made and if we keep coming up with new excuses….we will go another 4+ years without a single SECCG appearence
Wes G
I was never a “Fire Willie Martinez” guy (out loud anyway), though I wouldn’t have been upset to see him go.
But I guess now I have to be. It’s awful to see great players killing themselves on the field, betrayed by scheme and a lack of practice against certain plays (play action bootleg, anyone?).
So I say he has to go. I think Richt will fire him. Richt is a competitive guy, and he doesn’t want to get fired (which he will be in a few years if he doesn’t let Willie go). So I look forward to that problem getting fixed.
But Richt isn’t the problem. Richt is a great coach. And our players are great players. And out program is a great program. It’s still great to be a Georgia Bulldog, and this ship will right, one way or another.
As of 2:00 pm there were 1,385 comments on one of the AJC stories. That tells me the natives are restless. People certainly do not like what’s going on with this program.
It also goes to show how positively giddy Georgia Tech fans are at this point in the season.
1st win over Georgia in 8 years + turmoil in the Georgia fanbase = the only thing better than a great night of drinkin’ Zimas and playin’ World of Warcraft.
Has Richt ever demoted or fired an assistant? serious question, and I don’t know the answer.
He did fire our first running backs coach, apparently for some indiscretions, but the details were never made public.
Richt needs to realize our player talent deserves the same level of coaching talent.
I don’t think so. I don’t think any have ever reached a point where assistants are normally fired at major programs though. It just doesn’t happen as often as many people think.
Is Richt too loyal? Maybe. But we have no way of knowing at this point given there haven’t been any situations where a coach under Richt has reached a situation that usually results in firing/demotion elsewhere in CFB.
Great post, Senator.
Even great programs occasionally have bad teams. And we have one this year.
And seasons with bad teams are never pretty. They are filled with errors, bad coaching decisions, etc. But you don’t just fire proven coaches with great track records because of one (or even two) bad years. You let them work through it. Not just because they have earned that right, but because it is more often than not going to be the best choice for future results.
Richt was a good enough judge of coaching talent to shock us all by giving the DC job to an obscure defensive coach at Western Illinois. We need another wise pick like back then.
—Enlightening Article from 2001 season.—
VanGorder has defense on upswing at end of season
Charles Odum
DawgPost.com Nov 27, 2001
ATHENS, Ga. — It doesn’t require a great deal of technical football knowledge to see the difference in the Georgia defense in the last few weeks.
Most obviously and simply, Georgia is making the tackles that it missed only a few weeks ago.
In last Saturday night’s 31-17 win at Georgia Tech, the Bulldogs held Tech’s highly ranked offense to only 63 yards rushing and 242 total yards.
The week before against a Mississippi offense that ranked second in the Southeastern Conference in scoring, Georgia’s defense was similarly impressive in a 35-15 win. The Rebels were held to a net of 28 yards rushing and 261 total yards.
Is Georgia tackling better?
“I don’t think there’s any doubt about it,’’ said defensive coordinator Brian VanGorder before Monday’s practice for Saturday’s final regular-season game against Houston.
VanGorder said he and the other defensive assistants discussed the decline in missed tackles in meetings Monday.
“The missed tackles between Florida compared to the last two weeks are dramatically different,’’ said VanGorder, who wouldn’t release any numbers on missed tackles. “Poor tackling is a cancer on defense and we’ve been able to do better in that area.’’
Through most of the season, VanGorder was most proud of his unit’s effort in a 14-9 loss to South Carolina in the second week of the season. The last two weeks were the best efforts in consecutive games and have provided encouragement that the players have become more comfortable with VanGorder’s defense and what he demands of players.
“I think we’re playing better football and I think we’re preparing better, with a better focus,’’ he said. “That obviously has given us the momentum.’’
The key to improved play has been improved practice.
“What you see out there is how we prepare in practice,’’ said senior rover Jermaine Phillips. “I think it’s the way we are practicing that’s made the biggest difference.’’
Now when VanGorder sends in a play, each player on defense has a better grasp of his responsibility.
“I think everybody knows now what to do and what their assignment is,’’ Phillips said.
Said VanGorder: “As coaches, it has definitely been a big part of our mission statement to create a tempo in practice that carries over into the game.’’
Georgia has not allowed as many as 30 points in a game this season, but after allowing big yards in midseason games against Kentucky, Florida and Auburn, there were concerns about the defense under VanGorder.
Now No. 16 Georgia ranks fourth in the Southeastern Conference and 24th in the nation in scoring defense, allowing 20.1 points per game. The Bulldogs rank third in the SEC and 19th in the nation with their average of 115.1 yards rushing allowed per game.
Coach Mark Richt is especially happy with the way VanGorder has devised schemes to combat the opponent’s strength.
“That’s about what I was expecting from Coach VanGorder when I hired him,’’ Richt said. “He’s not a guy who’s gonna put a cookie-cutter defense out there. He does a great job, he along with our staff, of really dissecting what teams will do and taking away what they do best.’’
The defense has stiffened late in the season even after losing starting defensive end Bruce Adrine to a season-ending knee injury and, in a more devastating loss, starting defensive tackle David Jacobs to a stroke.
The defensive line is left with very little depth, but still the plan is to have another week of physical practices.
“That is a tough thing in making that decision,’’ VanGorder said. “That tempo issue is so important, you don’t want to lose that edge.’’
Good lord, I’m not particularly into bashing Willie (or at least I wasn’t), but that article is damning. Considering how we use to speak about our D coordinator, Willie’s tenure has definitely been a disappointment.
Great post, Senator. I woke up on Sunday not sure what I thought about that disaster. I finished your post pretty darn certain about it.
The Richt reaction caught me off guard, primarily because he’s ended the last two seasons with a defining narrative about leadership and team chemistry. In 2007, he says he righted the ship when he realized that the seniors weren’t leading, the team was adrift, and he had to do something to create fun and focus. Hence, the Celebration, the Blackout, and a #2 ranking.
In 2008, we spent the offseason committed to the meme that last year’s team was too complacent, that they waited for one of the future draft picks to bail them out. Richt led us all to believe that this line of thinking wasn’t too far wrong, and that this offseason was mostly about getting back to working hard, playing as a team, and not waiting for someone else to make a play.
Now here we are again – a team in disarray, a locker room in the dumps, and a coaching staff looking for a magic bullet. Richt may very well find a way to pull it together and get us to a bowl game. But even that won’t change the fact that we’ll have had three straight years (and possibly four, if you count the multi-QB, lost half-season of 2006) where our teams are total headcases needing psychological (and strategic) interventions to maintain the level of success Georgia fans have come to expect from the Richt Era.
Like you, Senator, I remember the days when I didn’t worry about whether we were ready to play. Even when things didn’t go well, it was because of good play by the other team, or a known chink in our armor. But beginning with the trend in 2007 of sleepwalking through entire halves, and continuing through yesterday, we’ve completely lost that most important characteristic of a big-time program: reliability. No temporary patch imposed by Richt for this season will restore it — only time, stability, and success can do that. Without it, we’re a program in decline.
I think there’s a bit of revisionism going on with UGA fans thinking UGA was unbeatable the first half of Richt’s tenure. I’ve read some variation of this “I remember when I didn’t worry about…” thing in several places now.
UGA has only had one 7-1 SEC season under Richt. And it came with several very close calls (including a game-ending goalline fumble, a last minute field goal, and a virtual Hail Mary on 4th and a lot). It also came in one of the weakest SECs in the past couple decades, thanks largely to Florida being in the tank.
The other early Richt years were no better than 6-2. And in two UGA got very good breaks (in addition to Florida still being in the tank) to get into the SECC game… breaks it didn’t get in its 6-2 seasons in 2007 and 2008.
Texas_Dawg, I don’t disagree about the revisionism. My concern isn’t that we lose – it’s HOW we’re losing. During the first 5 years of Richt’s tenure, I don’t recall his teams having the problem that has been in evidence of late – that they disappear for entire halves, or in the case of yesterday, entire games. We may not have played our best in every contest, but we didn’t just s**t the bed as we have lately.
For the first three years of Richt’s tenure, we only lost one game by more than one score — Florida in 2001, 24-10. We didn’t lose again by more than one score until we lost to the undefeated 2004 Auburn team 24-6. We didn’t lose by more than one score after that until … 2006, when we lost to Tennessee 51-33. Since then, we’ve lost five games by more than one score: Tennessee 2007, Alabama 2008, Florida 2008, OK State 2009, Tennessee 2009.
That doesn’t even take into account our team’s recent penchant for getting into high-scoring contests. From 2001 to 2006, the Dawgs averaged one game a year where the opponent scored more than 28 points. From 2007 to the present, they are averaging four per season (3 in 2007, 5 in 2008, 3 so far in 2009).
I agree that we weren’t perfect in the early years, but we knew who we were — a team that didn’t beat itself, ran the ball well, and played very-good-to-great defense. When we lost, it was usually in a squeaker. That’s not the case anymore, and things seemed to change in a fundamental way somewhere around 2006-07.
I don’t really get into margin-of-victory.
I look at Ws and Ls over full seasons, and the 2007/2008 teams were 6-2 SEC teams in a stronger SEC than the 2003/2004/2005 6-2 SEC teams played in.
Part of the problem here is that UGA fans got huge expectations after a very fast start by Richt. So the more recent 6-2s feel less impressive and rewarding… even though they were arguably tougher accomplishments (that didn’t get the benefits of Florida going in the tank or the luck of the draw in the division tie (as 2003 did)).
Even if it’s true that the SEC of 2007-09 was stronger than the SEC of 2003-05, I think most people would say that our talent level kept up with that. Aside from the O-line, which was decimated in 2007 due to recruiting issues beyond comprehension, I can’t think of a single position where, on paper, Georgia was supposed to have taken a step back.
So taking your perspective, are you saying that Georgia’s success in the early part of the decade is less-impressive than Florida and LSU’s at the end of it? And should Georgia fans just get used to being 5-3 in the East, going to the Outback Bowl, because everyone else has caught up?
Like you, I’m not in the “fire Richt” camp. But if it’s true that the rest of the league just “caught up,” that catching up seems mostly to have involved other programs hiring new coaches, who then beat our coaches (or at least our teams). If this was basketball, it would mean it was time to get a new coach. This isn’t basketball, and I think the answer is more nuanced. But I don’t think it just comes down to saying that Georgia fans were irrationally exuberant about their program in the early part of this decade.
I think we took advantage of some good breaks and a down time for Florida and others in the SEC.
That said, the 2002 team was good enough to win even in today’s SEC and got a terrible break in having 2 other undefeated BCS conference teams.
Florida has had a run, based mainly off a 2006 class that is done after this year, that is one of the best in CFB history. We just got a bad break that it happened at the same time we had some of our best players come through the program (and additionally had a ridiculous run of injuries gut the best opportunity with that group). But fortunately, such a run isn’t permanently sustainable. Yes, Florida will still be very good as long as Meyer is there… but it will be a little more beatable once Tebow and Spikes are gone (the offense has already taken a big step back with the loss of Harvin… it’s the 11 starters returning defense that is carrying them this year).
I’m not worried about Mark Richt. He is among a select few (out of thousands who have tried) at the top of the list of men who have tried their hand at coaching CFB players over the last 2 decades. And he still badly wants to win, and the recruiting pipeline continues to be as strong as ever.
We came 5 more yards by Kentucky in 2007 (at the end of their game with UT) from playing a very inexperienced Ryan Perrilloux in the Georgia Dome in what would have been the de facto MNC game. Those 5 yards and this year’s rebuilding year is treated for what it is with hopes of more good things to come in the future, with all of this Richt doubting permanently erased.
5 yards may often be the difference in a lot of frustration or not in CFB… but it isn’t the difference in Mark Richt knowing how to coach CFB or not.
Don’t forget about the missed Vandy field goal at the end of the 2007 UT-Vandy game. If that goes through UGA is in the SECC game, too. Plain old bad luck.
TexasDawg are you Mark Richt in disguise?
No. Why?
God forbid anyone point out that a coach who has put UGA in the top 10 6 of his 9 seasons doesn’t completely suck as a coach…
Urban helped ’05 Georgia by epic choking in Columbia…but know what? DJ Shockley got hurt. I say it evens out.
That team still had to win the SECCG. Which they did. By a lot.
I know, but we still got into that game as a 6-2 team. Without the rest of the division being 6-2 or worse, we don’t get the chance.
If the division (i.e. Tennessee) had done the same in 2007 as it did in 2005 (and 2003), we’d have won the MNC and all these conversations about Richt would be permanently ended. (Ask Mack Brown.) Unfortunately it didn’t. But that’s just the luck of the draw in CFB… not some indictment of Richt’s coaching abilities.
Concerning Mack Brown- That 2005 team was the only time he’s ever won the Big 12. Ever.
The problem is the questions about Richt aren’t “when should we fire him?” but “when will he man up and do what needs to be done?”
In other words, unlike Mac Brown who does a good job of getting the top talent at Coordinator positions (specifically D), Richt is willing to sink or float with what he’s got currently. Now, if firing Willie means giving Rodney Garner a shot, fine. I’m alright with that happening, since Garner is so obviously important to our recruiting, but I do not want it to dictate how we’re going to play forever. If Garner can’t get it done in a couple years coordinating, then he’s not worth his salt (look at Coach O at Ole Miss). BUT DO SOMETHING. Don’t play your oboe as the Titanic sinks around you if you can make it into the lifeboats!
Here’s where things stand to me:
To fill air time during the massacre, one of the two announcers made a comment I think after Tennessee got 45 that Tennessee had not scored that many points on Georgia since 2006 when they scored 51 against Georgia.
It’s 2009. Three years ago they scored 51 on us. That year Tennessee lost to Florida, LSU, Arkansas and Penn State.
This is Tennessee. It’s not like it’s Florida who everybody rightfully expects will beat Georgia. Florida is the better program. This is Tennessee, the dysfunctional program that ran off its coach last year.
Then I read a comment from Lane to the effect that he told his players he never wanted Tennessee to lose to Georgia because, among other things, he needed to recruit the state of Georgia. This is Lane. It’s not Knute Rockne. Lane Kiffin.
So not only do we make opposing QB’s look like Heisman candidates, we make Lane look like Mack Brown.
And as someone mentioned above or elsewhere, how can Richt look so calm on the sidelines during the beating. Had I been him, I would have been trying to kill something. But I guess that’s why they don’t let people with explosive temper disorders coach.
That’s you.
Tom Landry, Bill Walsh, Bear Bryant, and a long line of other great football coaches have had similar demeanors on the sideline. Not sure why people are so into this. The coach freaking out and acting like a child doesn’t really do much for me. Certainly doesn’t change the scoreboard.
Totally agree. It’s a comfort that our coach is reliably classy. Not only does it help in recruiting, but it rubs off on players and speaks highly of our program and our school.
Yeah, I don’t give a crap about Richt’s demeanor.
Everyone said Tony Dungy was too nice. They won a super bowl and built a dynasty.
I care about wins and losses, and our team showing up for games being fully competitive and delivering up to their talent.
I also care about coaches being held ACCOUNTABLE for their failures.
And for god sakes, stop throwing players under the bus.
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Ugh. How embarassing:
FRONT PAGE of rivals.com:
“Georgia coach Mark Richt should be safe, but that doesn’t mean changes aren’t coming in Athens. The Bulldogs’ struggles continued in a blowout loss to Tennessee, and it could spell trouble for some on Richt’s staff. Get the scoop on that and much more as we find out what our Rivals.com experts learned in Week 6.”
I saw that as well, Muckbeast, but for those who want Martinez (and/or others) gone, that is a good sign.
CFB coaches aren’t usually fired when it’s only the fanbase saying the firings should happen. They are fired when outside, impartial and rational CFB observers are widely suggesting the firings as well.
As bad as the defense was last year, or has been in other games even before that, there have not been outside CFB observers from reputable organizations or publications saying Willie Martinez should be fired. They are starting to say that now though…
That makes Richt’s job somewhat easier should he decide to make a move. And it also raises the possibility that Martinez just makes the move himself.
Martinez, sensing the heat coming down on his good friend and boss, offers to take a demotion back to DBs coach.
UGA brings in Tuberville as DC.
No. Freaking. Chance.
Tubs wants a head coaching job, as he’s said on numerous occasions. No way he coaches D for Richt. Maybe for the Bear if he returned from the Crypt, but not for Richt. Good friend and all, he didn’t go down in flames so bad that he needs a coordinating job to get his name back out in the market. Now, Larry Coker a couple of years ago should have angled for an offensive coordinating job, and he would’ve done better than that D-III team he’s coaching now.
Not likely of course, but does he really want to move to the obscurity of coaching in, say, Arizona? Really? I mean, yeah, sure… we all want to be the boss… but at what cost? Half empty stadiums and 11PM ET kickoffs on Fox Sports Pacific… for years? Fonk that.
Take the DC job, flip the tables on UF and Bama in recruiting and the field, win the SECC/MNC, have a lot of fun for a few years doing it, and then jump to the first major program HC opening available.
This is a sale that could be made.
a former redcoat
that would be absolutely beautiful, wouldn’t it?
honestly if we threw about a million and a half in with that sales pitch (and why not “associate head coach” to go with the DC job), maybe we get tubbs. fire bobo and let coach richt take over QBs and OC again. ya gotta question bobo’s abilities as a QB coach since he’s had cox all to himself for a while (i know richt worked with stafford… but since he wasn’t officially the QB coach any more, maybe he didn’t pay any real attention to cox) and cox makes some pretty bad decisions, can’t look off defenders, etc. honestly, best deal is fire bobo, do ANYTHING for the offense and find a great DC. we definitely have the money, the fans, and the players to attract one. plus we could always point out how many YEARS of poor coaching you can get by with before you have a chance to actually lose your job
Dude, Richt was HORRIBLE as OC. Total revisionist history going on here. Go check out our production against the other “Big 6” in the SEC when Richt was OC. It was as bad as, or worse, than Bobo.
might want to re-read my post there. never said he was a great OC here. he was a great OC at FSU though and it’s hard to say he’d be worse than bobo is right now. but, no revisionist history. maybe you just didn’t read what i wrote in the first place…
but, remember that we managed to score 10 points against florida last year and get shut out in the first half against bama with stafford, moreno, massaquoi, and AJ green all on the roster. that’s gotta fall on bobo.
my point was more that richt would be better than bobo and it would be worth doing that if it made it possible to get an incredible DC.
It’s really tough to be head coach and OC at the same time. very few have been able to pull that off long term and be successful. Richt needs an OC rather than to do it himself.
Gen. Stoopnagle
Tubs is going to be at the top of a lot of team’s lists for HC *this* year. He won’t need a DC job to find it. He’s not Tommy Bowden or anything…
Amazing did no one watch this game ?UGA rushed for nothing that counted(could not gain 1 yd on 3rd and short). Remember when CJD hired the bozo from ut ? Can’t anyone else see CSS is that same guy ? It looks like he talks to players , same as the media. Wake up , you must run the fb in sec or at least appear you can).CMB is not ready for this league as oc.
CMR doesnt need to go…yet..but theres something systemic that needs fixing and if CMR has a flaw it’s loyalty to the point of stupidity (Tereshinski ?)
I’ll also say this. And its not directed at any one individual here or anywhere else but is more directed at the vibe I’m getting from a lot of people I know in many areas of the world, work and friends, people online and off:
If nothing else we’re thinning out the fan heard. Take your fair weather and shove it up your ass. You want a team thats easy to root for? Go buy some jorts…but go on and sell all your early 90s FSU memorabilia on ebay as one wouldnt want to be too much of a hippocrate.
Your reward for loyalty is upgraded season tix.
And remember ye this, the year isnt shot although plenty of people act like it is. As someone who’s been a die hard falcon’s fan his whole life (Suwanee native, so the falcon inn kinda helped things along); I’d like to remind people that it could be much much worse.
Enjoy the rest of the season….
Brady Ackerman of “Talkin’ Football” on CSS made the following comment on this week’s show about what happened to UGA this season: “Georgia really needed to open up with a couple of cupcakes to get into their offense and defense. They couldn’t because the schedule was too tough.” This is why top programs open up at home with a walkover team before they start playing their regular schedule. It gives the new players a chance to get game experience and gives the coaches a chance to evaluate players in a real game to see what they have and make necessary adjustments. It also builds confidence for the young players. Suppose instead of going to Stillwater and being cannonfodder for the grand re-opening of T. Boone Pickens’ $300 Million playground (with his name on it) the Dawgs had opened up between the hedges with a Western Carolina-type team. Maybe they get some of the bugs out. They certainly don’t lose the first game. Maybe they are covering kicks better and tackling better at the end of the LSU game and LSU doesn’t score and they win that game and are 5-0 going to UT. Even if Willie and Bobo do get outschemed and the Dawgs lose they are only 5-1 (or at worst 4-2). Think about it. There is a reason why Florida opened up with 2 walkover teams back to back. That’s why Florida is Florida. Not because they have better athletes. They don’t make bonehead decisions.
Pingback: Stacy Searels Deserves A Lot of Blame Also « The Grit Tree
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← Judge not Kirby Smart, lest ye be judged.
Your weekly non-Dawg… er, no Dawg game day post, 10/22 edition →
Who is this “defensive coordinator” you speak of?
Pretty amazing — an almost 1500-word piece on how Alabama changed its defense for the better after 2012 without a single mention of Kirby Smart.
It’s reassuring to know that the brain trust at Georgia saw through the public perception of “it’s Saban’s defense” to get the man they wanted.
To be fair, I doubt the truth on Smart’s role in fashioning the ‘Bama defense is anywhere near that absolute. I also doubt that anyone at Butts-Mehre who had a hand in hiring Smart had the first clue about how to gauge that.
Blind faith is what makes religion run. It’s not the best guiding principle for managing a football program, though.
Filed under Georgia Football, Nick Saban Rules, Strategery And Mechanics
89 responses to “Who is this “defensive coordinator” you speak of?”
My observation though on Kirby is his defense in Georgia is much better than his offense, so I can assume he at least learned something under Saban, LOL.
8th in the country last year in scoring D’, they are now 64th. Not sure if they have improved anywhere…
Not mentioning Kirby is not unusual. The names of pharaohs in Egypt is routinely erased from monuments when a new God takes over, haha.
They certainly had Deshaun Watson’s number. He only has 478 yards of offense and 4 passing tds against them. Coaching genius right there. Who else could take merely the no. 1 recruiting class every year and hold Deshaun Watson to his third highest passing yardage total in his career in the biggest game of he year?
Mos def. I mean, Watson, he like, sucks right?
He’s a hell of a football player. Alabama struggles against good qbs. They destroy mediocre qbs. Just tell the truth and quit acting like saban is some destroyer of top qbs.
The story starts with Manziel and then they fix it, right? Guess what? 12 months later it was again 14-0 A&M in the first quarter. If the argument is that well it took time, I give you January 2016.
Most teams would have said let’s make someone else on Clemson’s team beat us. That’s not how Alabama rolls. Obviously, they’ve been wildly successful, but it isn’t because of some game day coaching genius.
The main way that Alabama has countered the new approach to offense, is its own new approach to offense. Of course to do that is to not focus all attention on the great satan.
I get it. You don’t like Kirby. That’s fine. But citing Watson and JFF as examples of Alabama struggling against good QBs is absurd. Guess what? EVERYONE struggled against those guys came they were once in a generation players for their programs (how’d you miss Cam on your list, btw?)
Saban’s D made Tebow cry, pwned Dak, shut out Connor Cook, and knocked Colt McCoy out of a national title game.
He’s beaten very good to great QBs before. The ones that have beaten him are either all-timers, or just played the games of their life against him (Stephen Garcia, Nick Marshall).
This isn’t about Kirby. Not even close.
I hate saban. Period. End of story.
I just wish that the sports media was capable of correctly analyzing why saban has been successful instead of feeding bullshit to the masses.
He recruits at a high level.
He isn’t afraid to screw over a kid to get a better kid.
He’d get Ted Bundy a room at the sorority if he ran a 4.3.
Because of those factors, he doesn’t have to make major adjustments week to week. He can count on winning enough one in ones matchups to win the game.
Where does Kirby come in? Who knows? If he can recruit top 3 classes what he learned will transfer quite well. If not? Who knows? Although from the same coaching tree, Pruitt was able to adjust to talent deficiencies. Hopefully, CKS won’t have to.
U P Reluctantly
I’m a hater that’s for sure. He’s a no good SOB. It will bug me to my dying day that CMR didn’t punch it in 4 years ago.
To have done it treating people right would have been a great message. Instead the lesson taken is that the key is to be a horrific human being. That’s unfortunate in my view.
Aaron: why didn’t you throw it to TK?!?!?
Punching is more CPJ’s forte
What did that have to do with Kirby? Get yourself together.
Ah. Another fan of College Sports Radio! I started listening recently when I realized if I had to listen to Lebatard, etc.for another second, I’d pull the radio out of my dashboard. Remember when ESPN used to talk about sports? Yeah, me too.
Yes, listen about 6-7 months of the year to that station, all but when the talk is on baseball or basketball. My wife isn’t so crazy about it but anytime I am in the car it is on…sometimes in the house when there is lots going on. Gets a little goofy sometime but keeps you in touch with other programs and their fans/coaches.
I enjoy that station quite a lot too.
This is pretty darn accurate to describe how to beat Saban and always has been true. Saban’s defenses tee off on teams that can’t push the ball downfield. Period.
His defenses, historically, have loved man coverage, putting corners on islands. You don’t beat him by running the ball. his defense is built to shut that down. To beat his teams, you have to be able to press the ball downfield against his corners, throwing them open.
It’s not rocket science, but it isn’t easy either. Also, this isn’t controversial, in my mind. he has better players than you do, generally, so you have to have advantages against his team weaknesses in order to beat him.
this means, ability to push it downfield, and simply outscore them. Examples: UGA-LSU 2004, UGA-Bama 06, Clemson-Bama 16, A&M games.
Not all are wins by the opposition, but that’s the blueprint to beat him. it’s why Murray was able to come inches away from beating him in ’12, because he could get the ball to his WRs on those back shoulder fades, which ate them up. we just didn’t have the horses on defense to stick with them all game.
It isn’t rocket science but it works because there are so few teams that have the qb with the requisite mix of talent/balls/lacks of good sense to get it done. I just get really frustrated when OSU and Clemson exploit the shit out of them and nobody ever says: Saban, dude. How about a little cover 2?
I think part of coaching is optimizing your advantages, covering up your liabilities, limiting the other guy’s strengths and taking advantage of their weaknesses. When you’ve got the best players, the hardest parts are baked in the cake.
I think Saban made a change last year to address this problem by basically have two platoons of defensive fronts. He has the luxury of having enough talent/depth but the underlying problem affects every other team that faces multiple styles of offense. SEC may be the conference with the biggest problem dealing with this as they have good teams that employ both traditional and spread offenses littered through out the schedule. Big 12 and PAC12 teams rarely see a power running team or fullbacks, Big Whatever rarely sees a true spread offense in their conference. SEC has good spread offenses (A&M, Auburn, Miss State, Mizzou) and serious power running games (LSU, Bama, UGA past). Almost have to recruit two different types of DL and linebackers, we have struggled with this the past several years and may be caught in between…again.
due to my aforementioned wee ones, I haven’t seen as much football as I would prefer this year and haven’t seen much of Bama’s games. Also, with the arrival of Pruitt, I expect them to use some of the concepts we saw over the last 3 years, which does more to protect the secondary from exploitation that can lead to big plays.
Bama has more, better players than every team they’ve faced this year, which covers up many coaching style deficiencies, so we haven’t seen how they can be attacked successfully this year, really. that being said, Ole Miss whalloped them early on with exactly what I described up top. Pushing the ball downfield, until ole miss’ defense simply couldn’t keep up.
They are the gold standard in football right now, which is why every team in the SEC has a new coach over the last few years. Everyone wants a different coach that might be the one that can get them past Bama.
Bama is unquestionably the gold standard now, but this too shall pass. Hasn’t been that long ago they were in a mess and having coaching difficulties like TN has been going through. Some signs of instability this year with players leaving the program for the first time, had to happen with all the highly rated recruits sitting on the bench.
Hey, we were told here in Athens that Kirby having two jobs at that time was no big deal.
This story says no part of the process is bigger than recruiting the right jimmys and joes.
What is college football, if not religion?
Is Greg McGarity like a high priest, then?
markclegg
worse, a sadducee
Greg is more like the acolyte who hands the high priest the wine cup.
money-changer
Judas Iscariot?
ADGM? http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/18900000/Temple-of-Doom-Screencap-indiana-jones-18902567-1024-440.jpg
More like the usher that takes up the collection. Treasurer of the Temple. Something like that.
You’re such an existentialist, Blutarsky. Look outside yourself for meaning, brother.
If McG is the snake who ruins Eden!
Temple money changer, imo
The tiresome deacon you avoid like the plague.
Here’s a UGA fan practicing his religion Saturday afternoon. https://youtu.be/V-ffYA2KHFY
mykiesee
I bet you’re just a riot in social situations.
In the strictest, most traditional sense, college football is one of the few university sanctioned opportunities for the student body and faculty to enjoy some down time away from academia. Long ago when the student body was limited to having all aspects of life centered on campus, similar to living on a military base, there were things the universities did to satisfy free time for all the residents. CFB just happened to grow into what we have now. For a time, leaving campus proper was an unusual thing.
Kirby knows plenty and had his hand in plenty. He was making every defensive call, and recruiting nearly every kid. I thought, and still think, Kirby was and is the right man for the job. Saban will be 65 in a little over a week. He has 24 years experience on Kirby, but pretty soon that number will start to catch up with him on the recruiting trail. It caught Bobby. It caught SOS. It catches everyone. There is no stopping Father Time.
I love the game and Dawgs. I’m miffed by the rise of angst by what I believe is the constancy of an online presence surrounding teams (as I write on my favorite blog!!!) The immediacy of our culture has made us lose patience at an alarming rate.
I have witnessed, in person, every single loss in person for the last 22 seasons. I adamantly fought against the notion that Richt wasn’t the guy until I sat in the waning moments in Everbank last October. I knew then it was over, and needed to be. Now, Richt is struggling in Miami, too. I think he’ll turn it around there, but a 1st year regime is just hard.
I honestly don’t care that we didn’t vet Herman and Fuente because I don’t think they are right for us. I believe SEC recruiting would have eaten them up on the trail. I think they drastic change in offensive philosophies would have put us behind for a few years, and I’m not convinced they’re elite coaches. More convinced on Herman.
There wasn’t a slam dunk hire that promised sure fire instant success. If you know anything about football, you knew exactly what was going to happen in Ann Arbor and Columbus when those two guys took over. What we are seeing is that we’re going to have to live through a coach learning on the job as the head guy a little. What I do believe is that, frankly, he’s smarter than someone like Will Muschamp. I believe Kirby likes to win more, like Spurrier, who was willing to do anything to win. Will just wanted to be stubborn. I don’t think Kirby is that stubborn, and our offense is light years ahead of where Florida’s ever was under Will.
FWIW, Muschamp’s recruiting classes at Florida ranked 10th, 5th, 3rd, 10th. McElwain is ranked 22nd, 14th, and currently sits at 19th for 2017. That’s going to catch up with the Gators. McElwain inherited juniors and seniors that were the 3rd and 5th ranked classes and won a weak SEC East with them. He’s certainly a better on-field coach than Muschamp, but I’m not sure his early success is a sign of long-term success.
My rambling point? We just don’t have enough data to know much of anything. We can’t judge after 7 games. It stinks losing to Vandy…ever. Richt did it 2 times. Donnan never did. Goff did a couple times. Vince was prone to a few upsets. I don’t know. Maybe it will be a head scratcher for the season. Maybe it’s a harbinger. But Kirby knows enough to turn it around.
Daniel Simpson Day
Nice post, brother.
Agree with DSD. Nice post.
I’ve read these exact same sentiments for every Tennessee, Auburn and Miami hire in the last 10 years, almost verbatim. ‘He just needs enough time’ gradually morphs into ‘He’s had enough time’, and then it’s on to the next guy.
We can delude ourselves into thinking it’s about finding the ‘right guy’ by looking at whether he ticks certain boxes (the most suicidal one being ‘is he an alum’), but hiring a coach is a gamble, and we went the high risk/low reward route with Kirby.
Miami has lost 3 in a row with your idol at the helm. Lost by 21 last night. I guess they screwed up in their hire too.
Perhaps. Richt might have become the worst coach in the land the second after he was terminated. No evidence for it the second before, though.
It’s nice that you can hang your hat on his losses while our program is in the shitter for who knows how long.
And you’re hanging your hat on Kirby’s losses just so you can release personal frustration that has been pent up since your idol got fired.
We just lost to Vandy for the 3rd time in the last 11 seasons and you’ve been crying all week that the sky is falling. Get a grip.
So we probably aren’t going to go 9-3 or 8-4 again. Who cares? It’s where we are in the next 2-4 years that matters.
That’s where you are confused. I do not want Kirby to fail, and take no joy in his failure. I also don’t know that he won’t turn it around.
But his failure was always highly probable, as you can see from looking at similar hires over the last 20 years. It’s not your job to know that, so I don’t begrudge you hoping for the best. It was ADGM’s job, and he failed as badly as he possibly he could. He’s not just incompetent, he’s anti-competent, in that his decisions are worse than random.
Keep on hoping, man, that’s what college football is all about. I’ve spent too much time looking at other programs and the results of hires like this, so I can’t. The personal attacks are pointless.
I care. I don’t like losing to Vanderbilt. And I don’t think saying it’s inevitable or part of the process eliminates the possibility of me being upset about poor coaching decisions or a team not prepared to play. If you’re simply waiting for the next 2-4 years, then you’re willing to waste Nick Chubb’s career, for example, for the prospect of a 2018 SECEast Championship. Something about that doesn’t sit well with me.
I like Kirby, and I believe the positive direction he has for the program will come to fruition. I also respect the things Coach Richt did while he was here. Am I not allowed to be a Dawg fan if I think both of these things?
I also knew when I turned the tv off last Saturday that I was done with football this season. But here we are, about a week away, and I’m already starting sing the “gators, gators” song, and wistfully remembering how good it feels to be a Dawg fan victorious in Jax. That’s why college football is so great. Every game matters. I won’t look to 2018 because next Saturday has the ability to be the one of the greatest days in Georgia football history. This, every weekend, should be true.
See Blowtarsky’s reply to the exact same point above.
The above comment is to is to ATLDawg’s post above.
“we went the high risk/low reward route with Kirby.”
Yeah, you’ll never get success out of a long time assistant at Georgia. When we hired Dooley and Richt, we went after the top name in the country, looking for someone with 20+ years of head coaching experience.
Yep, Richt is the best assistant coach hire in the conference over the last 25 years by a country mile. And we thought we could hit the lottery twice in a row? And at least we knew Richt was responsible for the success on his side of the ball at FSU, so when he left they fell off a cliff. When Smart left Alabama, they might have actually gotten slightly better.
I think I might go with Bob Stoops for that. Richt is a top 3-5.
I said in conference, but expanding to national Stoops is the clear winner. What he’s done with second-tier talent is incredible.
Sorry I missed that
“Low reward” would have been staying where we were. Maybe you need to see more, but 15 years was a large enough sample size for most people to know what we had. A good coach that wasn’t going to take the program higher than it was and probably was never going to win another conference title, much less a national title (maybe there is a coach that went 10 years between SEC titles, but I don’t know who–once that window closes, it closes).
Again, it was simply time for a change. To me, as far as that change goes, Kirby is decidedly low risk: GA recruiting connections, pro style O, same D, etc.
Worst case scenario, Kirby flames out in 4 years and leaves us with the talent Zook/Boom left at Florida.
“once that window closes, it closes”
Nonsense that only makes sense to sports fans. Some of the greatest coaches in the history of the sport went two decades before their first title. Titles flow to coaches that win games. If your coach stops winning games at a high rate, can his ass, otherwise shut up and enjoy the show.
Sure, then who was the last coach to go 10 years between SEC titles?
No idea, it would never occur to me to pose a question whose answer could be totally reversed by the outcome of a single play (e.g. 5 yards in 2012). This is why titles are such an unreliable metric, they are super noisy. I believe Bill Connelly has called it the biggest fallacy in evaluating coaches, or something along those lines.
If a coach averages an SEC title every 5 years or so, a 10 year drought isn’t remotely surprising, that’s how probability works.
That probability only holds if everything else is static. The coaching got better over time.
My original point is that once your window to win titles closes, it doesn’t reopen. You can’t seem to refute that.
Refute it? I don’t even understand it. It appears to be an assertion that no matter how many games a coach wins, when he gets to the title game he will be compelled to lose it because of a window that closed years before, is that it? When did the window close on, oh, I don’t know, this guy’s title ambitions?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Osborne
You’re acting like what I’m saying is more complicated than it is because you don’t have a good response.
Here, I’ll break it down: once a coach at a school wins a title, the other schools respond. Some coaches are good enough and have a strong enough organization that they continue winning even though everyone around them is adapting specifically to stop them (Bryant, Saban, Spurrier at UF).
Other times, the other schools raise their level to the point that the coaches can’t keep up winning titles (Fulmer, Richt).
In no instance I can think of did a coach have success, then have a 10+ year drought, then win titles again.
Your position seems to be that UGA should have stayed where they were and prayed for something that had never happened because the alternative might be that the program takes a step back.
To you, the disappointment of a step back seems to outweigh the more likely possibility that fresh blood wins a title.
It’s either that, or the actual response would have to include about a week’s worth of education on probability and statistics. I tried, but it’s difficult. That’s mostly a compliment, by the way. Your position sounds perfectly reasonable as a sports fan, and would easily pass editorial review at ESPN, so it’s no wonder I cannot convince you of precisely what is wrong with it in a paragraph.
I’ll give it one last go: Richt’s record was perfectly consistent with a coach that wins titles, both conference and national, at a rate of once every 5 years and once every 12 years, respectively. His record showed no evidence of regression (even though yes, I agree it feels like it did), and this was true the day he was fired, from an objective, statistical perspective. Everything else is just gibberish, building arbitrary narratives from the random number generator that is sports. I understand why we do this, I do it too. The narratives feel real, but they aren’t.
gatri:
thanks, this is a great summation of where I was with CMR, though I had never distilled it so well.
I, like Derek last year, thought GL and CBS were major problems but CMR & UGA was not a dumpster fire and no need to press the panic button…simultaneously, I thought chilidawg was right that we were never going to get any better with CMR and were trending from his best work (2002-2005) towards his most mediocre (2008-2010).
I’m ok with the calculated risk and I’m now “all in” for Kirby b/c hie’s my coach and I pull for my team regardless.
But who was the last long-timer to finally break through and win a national title after not getting one? The most recent long-tenured coach I can think of was Fulmer in 98, and he hadn’t even spent a decade at UT before that one happened.
The other tricky part about the comparison is it’s not at all fair to compare 70s/80s football with 90s football, and even the most recent doesn’t compare to now — there is a bit more parity, more scholarship limits (hard to break through vs Bryant when he could sign your state’s best players and keep ’em on the bench just so you didn’t get them) and less offensive/defensive diversity (and to boot, fewer juniors leaving early for the NFL.)
I’m not saying it’s impossible for a coach to have a great career, miss out on even playing for a national title, and then put it together, but when people say it’s unlikely, they’ve got pretty firm factual ground to stand on.
They don’t, because it’s only a recent phenomenon, and a self-fulfilling one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
It is now impossible for any coach to last longer than Richt at a premier program without a title, so we’ll never see a coach do it again. It has nothing to do with whether or not those coaches could win titles. Such coaches were super common in days past, and in fact constitute a large portion of any ‘greatest coaches of all time’ list you would care to assemble.
Just off the top of my head I can name a guy who went eight years between SEC championships. His name is Vincent Joseph Dooley. We were champs in 1968 and co-champs in 1976.
If I recall correctly Frank Thomas went a long time between conference championships at Alabama.
Ok. I’m not sure what that has to do with the price of tea in China. My point was that 2016 would have been going into year 11 between conference titles.
If a coach won 10 division championships in a row and lost to the eventual national champion every year in the SEC championship game, would you still want to fire him because he hadn’t won the SEC in 10 years?
Be objective about it. You likely didn’t want him out entering the 2013 season. You probably didn’t want him out after 2013 given the rash of injuries to our best players including a record-setting quarterback. You wanted him out after the last 2 debacles in Jacksonville. By the way, that’s a reasonable take in my opinion. We should have beaten them senseless in ’14 and shouldn’t have tried the Bauta experiment in ’15.
It has nothing to do with tea prices. It does show that a coach can win an SEC title after several years. Obviously “the point of no return” is more than 8 years. You picked 10 years as “the point of no return” because it fits your narrative. How do we know the “point of no return” is not 13 years?
No, I picked 10 years because that’s how long it had been.
If you wanted to stay the course with Richt and believed he was going to win another SEC title, then that’s fine. I know a lot of people did. Just be realistic and realize that it would have been unprecedented.
It’s more likely that a new coach comes in and puts his own stamp on the program and wins a title than it is that a coach wins, then goes through a 10+ year drought, the wins another title.
Granted Kirby might not be the guy, but that’s a separate discussion.
I have not taken the time to look through the college football archives as to whether any coach won a championship at a school then did not win another at the same school for over a period of 10 years, but Hooper did remind us that Wally Butts did it.
I wonder if we apply the same rules from 1992 to now in evaluating prior years if there will be some coaches that went over 10 years between championships. That is confusing. Here is what I mean. From 1932 through 1991 the SEC allowed for co-championships and each co-champion could correctly call itself “SEC Champion. ” Dooley was actually a co-champion with Alabama in 1966, a co-champion with Kentucky in 1976 and a co-champion with Alabama in 1981. Since 1992 there have not been any co-champions. Using the current landscape on which there can only be 1 SEC championship, Dooley went from 1968 to 1980 without being an undisputed sole champion.
I have no clue about any other SEC teams and I am not going to look. I have no idea about any other conferences, either.
Wally Butts???
Absolutely. Butts went from 1948 to 1959. Great recall on your part.
Well it was 5 yards in 2012…. although the 350 rushing yards (almost 7 yards per carry) that Bama crammed down the throats of a less-than-full roster mighta had a little something to do with it.
I thought you heard Roterhals, it was all McGarity’s fault.
Dawgtwo
That’s an interesting take. And a reasonable one. Refreshing, after nearly a fortnight of reading missives from the War of the Dawg Fans.
Thanks. I try to stay unemotional and reasonably, but freely admit that I often fail.
Nice comment
You did everything except mention the Reserve Fund
In Re Football and Faith
Senator, you’re closer to the mark than you realize.
The arenas from the Greco-Roman empires (all over the Mediterranean) were primarily a place for public celebration of religious rites and festivals and a place for games and gladiators to a lesser extent. The smaller villages in the Mediterranean would have an arena that could seat several thousand while the temples would be quite small, often the size of a house. At the annual Zeus or snake cult festival, the crowds pile into the arena and the relics are paraded about.
To bring 93K into an arena for cheering and merriment, as well as earnest pleas for mercy to the football God’s is in our DNA, it would seem.
uga1960
kirby smart was a bad move,he is going to be a bust!!! bank on it!!!
buddyblog
We’ve got a Bible. God doesn’t ask us to have “blind” faith. Our faith is based on knowledge.
Yes indeed Buddy!
It seems like this year is just the flip side of last year: filled with close and somewhat ugly games decided by small margins and a few plays. We won most of those games last year and won 10 games. This year we are on the other side those games. Given the coaching transition and freshman QB that should not have come as a complete shock.
That doesn’t mean I like it (or that we shouldn’t expect improvement) but I think, objectively, it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.
Close, ugly games … that’s not an excuse to lose to Vandy and almost suffer the most embarrassing loss in program history to Nicholls … and I’m looking at it objectively.
“Blind faith is what makes religion run.”
Wow, Blutarsky is an expert on religion too!
I hate talking about religion sometimes. Probably because of the different flavors in our household. Jewish, Catholic, Baptist, Presbyterian. Yikes.
Honestly, Bluto’s comment there..made me pause and reflect. Out of his whole post that is what I continued to think about. I’m not saying he expected it or intended it. But there you go….go figure huh? Bluto wrote something that you felt annoyed with…supposition on my part. Yet I took something totally different away from that.
Football blogs…who knew?
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← The salesman
Today, in talk is cheap →
“What do you think when someone says, ‘Second-and-26’?”
To my mind, one of the questions that won’t be answered until they set foot on the field tomorrow is what Georgia’s mindset will be.
On the one side, you’ve got the story the media has been obsessed about — the way the national title game ended — and how this year’s team has internalized whatever lessons there are to be learned from both the loss and how it continues to be pushed in their faces. This is a perfect summation of that:
“Last year has nothing to do with this next game coming up,” Bulldogs tailback Elijah Holyfield said.
The end of the previous meeting between the teams was so sudden and dramatic — the Bulldogs had a 23-20 lead when Ledbetter and linebacker Davin Bellamy sacked Tagovailoa on the play prior to second-and-26 — it took a while for the losers’ pain to truly sink in.
“That’s something you’ll never get over,” cornerback Deandre Baker said.
I hope that’s not the case, Deandre.
Isaac Nauta had more to say about that.
“It’s always tough to look back on, watching the film from last year brought up some bad memories,” said Nauta, referencing the Bulldogs’ 26-23 overtime loss to the Crimson Tide in the College Football Playoff Championship Game last January in Atlanta.
“We used that game as a learning tool to see what we could have done better, and I think that’s a lot of stuff we focused on in practice this week to fix and make sure we capitalize on those drives and make sure that we execute and get that extra first down and extend more drives.
“We’ve been working on it, we don’t forget.”
It’s an interesting motivational thread Kirby has to pass through the needle’s eye this week. Alabama is the defending national champ and this year’s team is better overall than the team Georgia fell to last January. You’ve got to prepare your team and that means looking at tape of that game, along with Alabama’s 2018 steamroll act.
On the other side, your team is the defending conference champ, something that shouldn’t be sneered at. That Georgia is playing in back to back conference title games, something that’s never happened before happened after being away for several years, is another indication that this program has arrived. It’s been playing as well as pretty much any team in the country of late. And Kirby Smart is someone I trust to do his best to get his team mentally prepared to face ‘Bama, relying in part on a damned solid resume to this point.
So, where are everyone’s heads at rolling into Saturday? Beats me. I mean, I like to hear ain’t skeered talk like this…
Just ask junior running back Elijah Holyfield. He appeared genuinely dumbfounded this week when a reporter asked him if Georgia was anyway intimidated by the No. 1-ranked Crimson Tide, which has beaten opponents by an average margin of 35 points a game this season. So thrown off by the question was Holyfield that he repeated it back to his inquisitor.
“You’re asking are we intimidated by them?” Holyfield asked, his raised eyebrows indicating incredulity.
Holyfield’s eyebrows furrowed, and he shook his head hard as he offered his one-word reply. “Nah.”
… but, to be honest, I don’t remember the Dawgs feeling any differently when they went to Baton Rouge. Of course, that LSU team was stomped by the Tide, so any way you look at it, this is a major step up in class for Georgia.
So, there’s pride, disappointment, respect, awareness, concern and no doubt a host of other emotions all swirling about in a sort of mental stew. There’s also the reality that this will show out on a stage that this team now has familiarity with. What the final product looks like, though, I have no idea. I doubt anyone on Georgia’s sideline really knows for sure, either. We’ll all find out together in another day and a half.
82 responses to ““What do you think when someone says, ‘Second-and-26’?””
FisheriesDawg
2002 and 2003 were b2b title game appearances.
You are right. Bad editing on my part. Thanks for catching.
Also 2011 and 2012
I should have read one more comment. Pardon.
Weren’t we in the SECC game in both 11 and 12?
Yeah. Like I said, bad editing on my part.
For a second, I was afraid you’d contracted a bad case of Gatoritis. The primary symptom is an inability to remember football stuff that happened before a certain date, as if history itself only began on said date. In its most virulent form, a patient may forget entire decades of less than satisfactory football results. 😉🏈😂😂😂😂
Nah, it’s just been a long week… too much going on for my brain to process sometimes.
I don’t know. We had the upper hand most of the game despite not being expected to have a chance. Doesn’t that leave you with a different outlook than, say, being expected to compete and getting blasted?
I don’t think this team goes in thinking it’ll be manhandled.
Yeah. I think it’s more likely their confident they can win because they did the manhandling much of the game last year.
Agreed. I tell the team:
“f*** it. That was one play–they were lucky to have a great QB that nobody had a body of non-garbage time film on. But we no everything about him now. But there Ain’t no discounts….ain’t no eeeeaaasssy way to do it. You gotta cut yo’ ass loose !”
RangerRuss
I’m so weary of “Wait until next year.” GO DAWGS!
Right on brotha. The future is now! GO DAWGS!
I wonder how much we’ll hear about UGA “playing with a chip on their shoulder” in the pre-game commentary. Alabama deserves all the accolades for the historic season they’re having, but we’re not exactly Northwestern going up against Ohio State here.
Northwestern has a pretty good D. I don’t think they are a total walkover for the Bucks, either. We’re talking about a tOSU team that got beat by Purdue.
Got the shit beat out of them by Purdue, who lost to the Akron Zips. In everything but the scoreboard they lost to Maryland also.
I think all of that motivational, “mind set”, “game face” stuff is a lot of bullshit.
What happens after you get hit in the mouth is what’s going to matter. What team is going to impose its will on the other in the 4th quarter? Who is going to own the LOS when it comes to crunch time?
That’s going to decide the game. We’re either running the damn ball in the 4th OR we’re watching cut ups next week of our guys getting rag dolled by Williams and Davis.
No play from last year or pregame speech or anything else is going to matter.
Just GATA and don’t let up until the horn sounds and then look up to see what the score is.
This. You just got beat; what do you do on the next play? Learn, re-set, go.
Uglydawg.
I agree, on a team level. But for certain individuals (Tyler Simmons and DeAndre Baker) it could be the extra fire that sharpens their focus and determination.
What would you give for Tyler Simmons to block another punt? Wouldn’t that be the greatest thing?!
Consider last years re-match with Auburn. That turn around wasn’t solely due to mind set but a lot of it was based on being pissed off that you let someone beat you that you could have bested. Auburn’s rb being hampered didn’t hurt either.
But I agree..once you get punched in the mouth, your focus narrows.
Also consider that Bama is sort of in the same situation Auburn was in before the SEC game last year. They knew Georgia that the Dawgs weren’t intimidated, were talented, well coached and inspired. That describes both of these teams.
Yeah. The “mental stew” is familiar to anyone who’s ever been in physical competition. Then the ball is snapped, the punch is thrown, the takedown happens and it all goes away. Then it’s on and you do what you do without tension or fear and it doesn’t matter who’s across from you.You will beat him or he will beat you.
Let’s tee it up. Time to find out what we are.
I think moving on is an area where Kirby learned The Process ™ very well. I can’t remember which Bama title run it was (ugh, too many), but maybe 5-7 years ago, there was a year where there was a lot of media attention around the idea that Saban had brought in sports psychologists to work with the team. Basically the idea was to help the team learn the mental habits to not dwell on the past or the far future, but to focus on the next play, the next practice, the next game. Stating the obvious here, but I think that is a huge part of Bama and Saban’s sustained success. There are schematic and teaching reasons to review past performances, but in Saban-world, these are not big, dramatic, who-wants-it-more Life Lessons; these are mistakes that can be improved the next time. All indications are that Kirby internalized this way of working and has done a nice job of instilling that in his players. I sure hope so.
One trend that’s getting very little focus is that Kirby is yet to lose a revenge game. And in fact every revenge game has been a beat down.
Every loss has been avenged at the very next opportunity and soundly.
Absolutely!–but this Bama team is a beast, better than any other team we’ve gotten our revenge against.
We got to play reckless, over the top, like we’ve got nothing to lose. This is a game in which we might find ourselves behind by more than one score, like OK last season. How will we respond? How will Bama react, when they find themselves in a tight game in the fourth quarter? Hasn’t happened all year.
We’re not favored, but I’ve seen us win as a bigger underdawg (Fla ’97).
We saw last year how they’ll respond if they get down. Slamming Fromm’s head into the turf, players fighting coaches on the sideline, trying to pull De’andre’s head off by the facemask… They don’t know how to handle adversity; all they know how to do is win.
J-DawG
My thoughts exactly. Kirby doesn’t state it but he wants revenge as much as the players. If ever there was a time for Bama to take some rat poison and be overconfident, it’s now. Bama needs to be de-throned, not just for us, but for the overall health of college football.
It’s a goofy shaped ball and you don’t know which way it will bounce until it’s kicked off. Go Dawgs!
psd . Ticket prices have risen in the last 12 hours.
My head is about to explode from all the stats and analysis…
I just don’t want to lose bad. If we do and have lost two years in a row to them, the concern is the pressure builds and everything next year will point to another match up with Bama.
I’m not worried about Georgia being ill-prepared or intimidated or anything of the sort. My worry is that they have not improved enough to beat Alabama. Honestly, unless they get some breaks, I don’t think they’ll win this game if both teams play well. Alabama may even cover the spread, ultimately.
Senator, do you know how this year’s Georgia team compares to last year’s in the world of advanced stats? My quick impression of the game tomorrow goes like this: Georgia and Bammer played an extremely close game last year, but Bammer is better now while Georgia isn’t quite as good.
I’m just wondering how accurate my thumbnail assessment of Georgia is.
Advanced stats say UGA’s offense is better, but defense is not as good.
Well, that’s what my old eyeballs told me as well. Thanks.
I wonder though if we’re better at what we need to be tomorrow. What we’ve given up in qb pressure and run stuffing we’ve replaced with being stingier on the back end.
If we limit Tua to”human” status and they’ve got to take 12-15 play drives to score, I like our chances. I think our best hope is a game of attrition. I don’t think we can win a “shoot out” and I don’t think we can just send the house at Tua and pray.
We need to do what Belichick did to the Bills and the Rams in the SB. Both teams came in with high flying offenses and they took away what they wanted to do and gave them what they didn’t. Both close, low scoring games…. and wins.
Shorten the game. Get TD’s when we’ve got the chance. No big plays. Make them earn FG attempts. Hope we can lean on them in the 4th with our big uglies on the OL.
LSU demonstrated that you can limit their points with that strategy, but Georgia’s offense will have to make them pay for not scoring TDs.
Lutz Dawg
yes, IMO the Bama offense is better but their defense isn’t as good. We have to keep them from hitting home run TD’s and make them drive the field to score. We also need to consume clock time on offense and get points. the blue print was made last night by the Dallas Cowboys beating the Saints. They kept Brees off the field and didn’t let him get comfortable or hit long plays.
Think just the opposite, our defense is full of holes but our offense is equal, or better. The difference is the defensive talent they each will face. Our STs are slightly better, especially the kicker.
Georgia’s also been trending up in a big way the back half of the season, with their overall S&P+ rating going from 19.7 heading into the Florida game to 27.1 at the moment. Improving by more than a TD is a pretty gigantic move over five games when you’re already good. That’s my one reason for hope. It’s possible they’ve improved enough to be almost on par with Alabama. My eyes tell me that they aren’t there, though. I hope I’m wrong.
This is essentially what I’m hanging my hat on, too.
Hate to say it, but UGA loses by 2 TD’s. I’ll be back hopefully to eat crow.
My heart, it disagrees. But my brain, it agrees. Hope my head is wrong and my heart is right. Either way, I am going to enjoy one more game of UGA football this year.
Shewdawg
A quote often attributed to Mike Tyson, but maybe it was Joe Louis: “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
Both teams (I hope) will feel that at some point in this fight. How they respond respectively will determine how this it plays out.
I am 100% certain that Kirby is preparing the team with that in mind.
If the Dawg’s will to win remains strong in the face of those moments, we may have a finish that would generate the most epic of Munson calls. And oh what joy it would be if he could be here to top the “hobnail boot” call. God rest his Red & Black soul.
I’m focused on one bellwether game: Our defense is good, though not as good as Missy State. Our Offense is light years better than Missy State. Therein lies all my hope.
Win or lose Saturday, and I fully expect to lose and lose big, we should not get down on this group. What this team and coaching staff has done this season is impressive. The Dawgs have dominated the East two years in a row. This is exactly what we were begging for during the latter part of Richt’s tenure in Athens. We are squarely in the playoff conversation for the sending straight year. These are good times for Dawg fans. Enjoy the ride, root like hell on Saturday, and be proud to be a Dawg!
All you can ask of any coach or team is to be in the playoff hunt going into the conference championship game. Anything can happen in a given game. Alabama impresses the hell out of me but fuck that lose big shit. This is college football man. Get fired up. What the fuck is a crimson tide anyway? Some kind of algae bloom? Fuck Alabama! Go Dawgs!
california_dawg
This all damn day.
Texas Dawg
I think (hope) that Kirby and Chaney learned their lesson from last year. When we get ahead (I’m an optimist), DO NOT take your foot off the gas.
I’d be intimidated to ask Holyfield if he was intimidated. Props to the reporter that asked that question.
I like our chances. Dawgs aren’t expected to even compete, but as we know, they’ve played much better since the LSU fiasco. I think the coaches learned as much in that game as the players and they are all now fully in synch. I think we move the ball and keep it close, maybe get them out of their rhythm a bit. If it’s close late, we win.
I thought the reporter who asked that must have ‘never lettered in shit’ (props to @3YearLetterman) because it was a completely dumb-ass question and an insult.
I was giving props for the courage to ask the question. Because it’s so stupid. Plus, if I just dropped in from Uzbekistan I think I’d still be able to tell the Holyfield doesn’t look like someone who would be intimidated by anyone or anything.
My first thought now, and then: Time Friggin Out!!!
Since that didn’t happen our guys have to remember having outplayed Bama when everyone said it couldn’t be done last year. Playing our best gives us a pretty good chance again this year. If both have their A game and limit mistakes, we will probably come up short from what I have seen. But there is no reason to think we cannot make it hard to find their A game when faced with the best team they have seen since January. Rise up and smite their asses!
I think we have a heckuva better chance than the world is assuming. Last year we were beaten pretty soundly by aubie and came back 2 weeks later to take the secc. The only reason bama wins in January was by getting lucky a truly desperate move to change QBs went their way, along with lousy officiating.
Seems to me Kirby’s done well against mobile/running QBs. So what happens if Tua has to dink & dunk all game, and big hitters are hard to come by? What if our talented OL gives Fromm time to pick bama apart? I count at least 25 UGA players who saw substantial playing time in the post season last year, along with almost all of our coaching staff. I’m thinking we give bama a much tougher fight than people are anticipating.
Our talented offense line is decimated with injuries.
If you think it’s decimated you haven’t watched the last five games.
More than likely Cleveland nor Mays will play
Not really. We’re down 1 starter. Now, our depth has taken a massive hit, but on the actual starting OL, we’ve swapped Ben for Hill. I love Ben’s nasty streak, but Hill is massive and mails folks too.
We just can’t take another hit there.
There are two things I am hanging my hat on in hopes of a win. One, Tua has not faced a defense this year with the same caliber of back-end speed that we have. He will have to throw his receivers open. Two, our O-line should be good enough at this point to give Jake time in the pocket. If neither are true we are in deep shit.
The LSU and Miss St. defenses are probably better than our D. However, their offenses aren’t even close to UGA’s. therefore, we should be able to move the ball and keep Tua on the sidelines; whereas those teams had to trot the defense out their more often because their offense couldn’t move the chains. Our best defense is our offense! the longer Tua stands on the sidelines the better. Control the line of scrimmage, control the ball, control the clock, and score points…that is the recipe!!
The Dawgs are good enough to win. My only real concern is game officiating. After what happened last season that is a reality based concern.
We can only hope that our secret overlords have decided that Bama doesn’t need help. But to be honest, until Saban gets one more than the Bear, the conspiracy theorist in me says they are going to continue to cheat for Bama. That 1st half in the Miss St. game was about as bad as I have ever witnessed blatant cheating for one team over another.
Think how dangerous we could be running the triple option in this game. 😜
From hearing all of the talking heads this week, we shouldn’t even show up at MBS tomorrow. Bama has been anointed, and the argument is about OU vs OSU for the 4th spot. I hope the rat poison is working overtime in T-town with their team. The Bammers are already their obnoxious, arrogant selves.
It sort of feels like last year when everyone was talking about Auburn as the first 2 loss team to make the playoff. Let’s go shock the world tomorrow, Dawgs.
I have the opposite thought: I think a lot of the chatter has been about how we’re the best team Bama’s played this year, etc etc. If anything, what I’ve heard/read is feeding Bama by talking us up.
That certainly hasn’t been the talk on satellite radio this week when I’ve been listening. McElroy in particular hasn’t given any lip service to the possibility of a Bama loss tomorrow.
McElroy is a Bama cheerleader, not a professional in he broadcasting business. For him to say there is no chance for UGA is absolutely stupid, even his own network has us at about 34%, that is 2-1 underdog. How does that equate to “no chance”. He is also dumb enough to be buying the Central fla BS, how do you respect his knowledge after hearing that. Awkward clutz/nerd.
I am always amazed by the way the media brings up 2nd and 26. It is good for the fans but if you think about it, both teams have 20-25 players who weren’t there last year. (i.e. freshman and/or didn’t make travel squad). Furthermore, you have two new coordinators on both sides of the ball for Alabama. Looking back at the NCG for extra motivation is one thing for those players who were there last year. Looking back on that game to find how Alabama operates is crazy. I totally understand why the team doesn’t really focus on that.
On paper, Alabama is better, like double digits better, that’s also not a knock on Georgia, Alabama is just that good.
We’re slightly better if not as good as last year’s team and are legitimately the 3rd best team in nation unfortunately Alabama got a whole lot better and is the clear cut best team in the nation.
I don’t know that our secondary can cover four elite receivers, especially long enough for our not fantastic d line to get home against tua. Also Alabama still has its usual ground game.
Do we know that our o line can win in the trenches against an elite Alabama d line and give Fromm time to throw and space for holyfield and swift?
We’re also kind of dinged up, especially on the o and d lines.
Not to mention Alabama is going to get all the calls, sorry that’s just the way it is.
That being said you play the game for a reason and we’re not exactly chopped liver. Let’s hope we come out inspired and ready for a fight. We’ve got a tremendous opportunity and nothing to lose, let’s play the game of our lives and take down the best team of Alabama dynasty.
biggityben
Damn you just bummed the F out….
*bummed me
“Not to mention Alabama is going to get all the calls, sorry that’s just the way it is” . Come on everyone….follow the money . How does the SEC make the most money? By getting two teams in the playoffs. How does that happen? Georgia wins and gets in the playoffs as the SEC champs and Bama gets in with only one lose. Because the way the SEC maximizes revenues is to have the officiates slant the field in UGA’s favor and get two teams in the playoffs, It follows that the officials are on the DAWGS side for just this one game. It still may not be enough but I don’t think the dawgs will be fighting the officials this time. SHOW THE SEC THE MONEY.
Anybody seen the movie No Country For Old Men ? I think the Dawgs mindset has to be like the scene when he calls the ruthless bounty hunting killer from the hospital and says “I decided to make you a special project of mine. You ain’t gonna have to come looking for me at all.”
Not so much a We Want Bama. But they’re gonna have to play their best game too or we just might kick their ass.
And then I tell them about 2004 LSU.
Yeah, that worked out well for Llewelyn Moss.
Personally, I’d rather go out to the middle of the field and say: “call it.”
Is Notre Dame the girlfriend in this scenario?
I’ve always preferred the term “reigning national champ” or “reigning SEC champ” to “defending.” Alabama doesn’t have to defend anything. If Georgia wins on Saturday, they get to keep their rings from last year. We don’t really get to redeem January 8th. That’s something we’ll carry forever. 1995 didn’t erase the pain of 1991 for the Atlanta Braves. That’ll bother me forever. And January 8th is going to hurt worse than that, and forever.
No, it’s more than just a talking point, the 2018 Dawgs and Tide are truly different teams from the 2017 versions. The contrast is more stark and obvious on Alabama’s side of the coin with the Tide playing an almost completely different brand of offensive football than they did last year, including the second half and overtime of 2017. This game is about winning the SEC Championship, and everyone that lives here knows that’s a big enough crown to covet. This is a new year and a new day and last year doesn’t affect this game. Let’s go get this win.
You don’t want to know what I think when somebody mentions that.
In life, very few people earn a second chance on this type of stage.
Cut your ass loose and make it count!
When I hear that comment, I know I’m talking to an ass hole Bama fan.
Randall Adams
Prick Bama Fan or Prick Tech, Auburn, Florida, UT fan who tries to use that, since the Dawgs have ‘owned’ them.
I think the Bama nation is coming in thinking they are going to rule this game supreme. I don’t know – maybe so… But my gut tells me that for the first time this year, they are up against running backs that stack up quite well against them, especially when getting into the secondary.
And for the first time all this year, banged up or not, they are coming up against an O-Line that is just as big or bigger that has ‘no problem’ hitting them right in the mouth.
My wife and I are going and sitting on the Bama side… We’ll have ‘fun’ regardless..
It will be a well played game by both teams. Georgia’s special teams is going to have to offset Alabama’s advantage on the line of scrimmage – a tiny one when Georgia is on offense and a large one when Alabama is on offense. Beating this Alabama team without NFL players on the DL is a really, really y’all order. Everywhere else, Georgia has the pieces to make it happen.
“How about ‘Fourth-and-11’?”
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← The Auburn decision: Morehead’s call
“Is the playbook going to be different? No.” →
The Auburn decision: Smart’s call
Kirby Smart is paid nearly seven million dollars a year to do one thing and do that well: win a lot of games without drawing NCAA sanctions. The reason Kirby does that one thing well is because he is incredibly focused on the task at hand. Everything he does that’s football-related, then, he does with one thought in mind, does this help me win games?
I mentioned yesterday that Smart previously indicated a desire to have Auburn return the favor of playing two home games in Athens.
It wasn’t that way until 2013, when because of expansion and scheduling concerns, the SEC asked Georgia to make a second straight trip to Auburn. Georgia agreed, but now Kirby Smart, who wasn’t around when the change was made, would like to see Georgia get two straight home games against the Tigers.
“Yeah, absolutely. If we can get a chance to fix that and return the favor that we paid to them. I hear about that a lot,” Smart said. “It would make it more consistent and balance that out. It would probably be helpful in the long run. But I’ve got a feeling there’s more to it than just us and them. It always affects so many other moving parts. But it would be nice to do that.”
From Kirby’s selfish standpoint, resetting the Auburn game would have meant that Georgia wouldn’t face the pressure of November road games against both the Tigers and Georgia Tech every other season.
(Purely as an aside, I don’t understand this particular bee in Smart’s bonnet. Georgia hasn’t lost to Tech on its home field in twenty years. That’s positively Spurrier-esque. In fact, given that Spurrier never overcame a 20-point deficit or upset a much higher ranked team as the Dawgs did in 2009, you could argue it’s beyond Spurrier. Why some portion of our fan base prefers to agitate for an end to the series instead of rubbing that streak in the faces of Tech fans as Gator fans did to us is something I don’t understand. But I digress.)
Anyway, I presume once it became clear early on that making Auburn play in Athens two straight years wasn’t a viable solution, Smart signed on to moving the game earlier to avoid playing two November road games against rival programs. The only problem with that theory is that Tennessee, with which the Auburn game is being swapped, is on the same home-and-away schedule that the Tigers are, so nothing is being gained in that regard.
Given Smart’s stance, I have a hard time believing that’s where things have been left standing. So either the 2020 move, which, by the way, is one when Georgia has both schools at home, is a one-time deal, or if something longer term is involved, then another permanent substitution besides Tennessee is in the works. Maybe Greg McGarity’s wheels within wheels method of working with the SEC’s scheduling brass will pay off with something more in line with Smart’s wishes.
Or maybe not. Maybe Kirby’s sufficiently cool with getting all the bells and whistles he asks for.
81 responses to “The Auburn decision: Smart’s call”
Exactly – switching a game at Tennessee for a game at Auburn is a push every day of the week and twice on Saturday. It makes virtually no difference to us whether we are playing on the Plains or in Knoxville in the middle of November, EXCEPT for the loss of the tradition…
Chances are good that auburn will remain the stronger opponent. We’re certainly in more head to head recruiting battles there.
And as I suggested yesterday, if this means even 1 more auburn win over Alabama a decade, it would be worth it.
Based on what? Chances are just as good that Auburn shitcans Gus and goes into a funk for a few years, and Pruitt is able to build some momentum and get things going in Knoxville, thus making Tennessee the stronger opponent. There is pretty much no daylight between Tennessee and Auburn for us, historically, and assuming there will be in the future requires a lot of rank speculation, IMO….
In the past 30 years, we have beaten good Tennessee and Auburn teams, lost to bad Tennessee and Auburn teams, done miracles to beat Tennessee and Auburn, and had miracles done unto us by each of them as well, all on multiple occasions…
Tater Tot, Tubs, Chiz and Gus all have undefeated seasons or national title games appearances. What makes you think shit canning Gus will send them to a funk?
UT has been a dumpster fire practically since Y2K with a few exceptions.
And other than those high points, each followed up those seasons with some absolute stinkers (they all (other than Gus, who has hung on a couple of times by the skin of his teeth) got fired for a reason, you know)… Both have winless conference seasons in the past 6 years… But perhaps the most important and relevant data point is, who won the game on the Plains last year? Flash in the pan for Pruitt, or sign of things to come for the Barn???
I just have a hard time believing Auburn is going to be materially and consistently better than Tennessee for the next decade or so, but YMMV.
I hate to say this because of the impact on the team. What would Kirby’s reaction be if no one showed up in red and black for the 2020 Auburn game in protest of the move? Come to Athens, tailgate, and give Athens businesses (other than the bookstore and the Tailgate Club) our patronage. At game time, pack up and head home or stay at their tailgates. Students with tickets scan their IDs and walk back out to avoid a strike.
Kirby, the failure to advocate against this was almost as dumb as your two fake kicks calls made this past season.
I like the idea of giving the small businesses the benefit of tailgating and such, but if the fanbase just boycotted altogether then those small businesses would exert every ounce of pressure they can muster against Butts-Mehre, and that would probably speed up the response.
Do we know that Kirby didn’t advocate against this or are we just assuming that it wouldn’t have happened without his sign-off?
My take is that it wouldn’t have happened this way without Kirby. He’s publicly on board with this for a reason.
Is the decision the equivalent of a fake kick or a five star recruiting battle? Who knows?
If Kirby was on board with this, he’s as tone deaf to tradition and the desire of the fan base as the M&M boys. I assume the only reason he agreed to it is the liquor barons told him they didn’t care.
Does this tradition help Kirby win games?
If you want your team playing their best at the end of the season, I would want my toughest conference opponents toward the end of the schedule. So, I would say yes in this case.
NCDawg
No but it helps Auburn win theirs and possibly have a stronger record at the end of the season post facto hurting UGA’s chances
Which games does it help Auburn win?
It helps them have the advantage of not having UGA and ALA so close. So now we have potentially Auburn and FL close if they put the game in Oct. Looks like Auburn got relief in their schedule and that’s an advantage. If they put Auburn within 2 weeks of FL, I’ll really be mad.
If Auburn wins at Alabama’s expense, that helps Georgia.
Seems like Kirby might rather have the potential of a west division sec loss earlier in the season than risking dropping in the polls in November (LSU 2018). If we lose to utk in October or November it really does make no difference with our playoff chances… we are out… and deservedly so.
I cannot imagine Morehead and GMcG would have agreed to this without Kirby’s blessing or “I don’t care” reaction.
He thinks either it’s a good idea or tradition doesn’t matter to recruits … therefore, do whatever.
It probably doesn’t matter to recruits. To the extent that a 17yr old is like any other 17r old (as opposed to one signed up for football), I didn’t know **** about UGA traditions before enrolling and attending my first games.
Football player or not, if your parents didn’t go to UGA or you didn’t have some other close tie, you’ll initially learn of the traditions in the most sterilized way (think campus tour or official visit), and they’ll eventually grow on you as you become part of the experience, but as a senior in high school you will not (yet) be emotionally invested in the preservation of that interest. You are merely on the sidelines watching the debate.
Hell, I have a UGA degree and follow it with a passion bordering on obsession but largely abstain from the debate over the Tech series because I consider that a subject better settled among Georgians (taxpayers and permanent residents).
Why not just tell the players to FO? See how that works for you.
You must not be able to read very well because I didn’t say it should be done. All I said is what if we reacted to this as it seems everyone associated with the football program has reacted to the surprise about fan reaction … pretty much to piss down our backs and tell us it’s raining.
Then again, if I remember correctly, you aren’t a season ticket holder.
I am not…and I’ve said the ticket holders should have somewhat of a say…but sadly, they do not. I gave up two tickets when we fired Ray…he was so close. 🙂
There better be. Otherwise, I don’t see any narrative other than we got rolled.
If Kirby played his cards well, he would now have the ability to bring recruits to the Florida game.
I don’t think that’s going to happen. You either have to take tickets away from students or contributors to have recruits in Jacksonville. I want the coaching staff focused on winning the game rather than entertaining 15-18 year olds. Also, you can’t have the recruiting infrastructure in Jacksonville he has in Athens.
Do Texas and Oklahoma host recruits at the Red River Shootout?
Kirby has stated many times he wants to have recruits at this game. He has the staff to handle it.
There were more than enough empty seats at last year’s game.
The Georgia allotment sells out … who are you going to take ticket purchasing privileges away from if you are Greg McGarity to accommodate recruits and their families? Students who have to pay the athletic fee and then have to pay for the ticket? The optics of that would be really bad in Athens. Contributors who have had Florida tickets for decades and contribute at the levels they do to attend the WLOCP? Sure, the Magill Society members don’t have to worry, but another thing that the optics would be really bad for the AA.
Kirby may want it to happen, but Kirby isn’t going to be the one to take the calls from contributors who are wondering why their Florida ticket order was being refunded.
The points threshold changes every year for Florida. Using last year’s parking grab as the latest example, I don’t see the AD having any problems taking things away from low-level contributors.
We know first hand it is the Georgia students who take the calls from disappointed contributors while the decision makers take their vacations.
It’s The Georgia Way.
All of that doesn’t make it right so Kirby can have recruits (especially those who just want to go the game and aren’t planning to sign with Georgia) show up.
All of this from someone who hasn’t been to the Florida game since 2000.
Easy answer: faculty/staff and students. Duh. People who don’t donate to anything they don’t have to.
Students contribute … it’s that little thing that isn’t optional called the athletic fee they or their parents pay for the privilege to enter the lottery for tickets they still have to pay for at face value.
Faculty or staff who don’t contribute to the Hartman Fund … that’s probably something I could support.
“…isn’t optional…”
That’s not a contribution, that’s a price.
AND… it’s discounted.
Also, don’t touch my French benefits. /s
I bet there are so many shitbirds on the faculty that have, not just a disinterest, but a disdain for all things Georgia football yet still get tickets just to turn around and scalp them for a few extra bucks. Beneficial or subsidized tickets should all be together in the same section and NOT have a hard movable ticket. Scanned ID with a receipt giving you your seat assignment as you walk in.
You’d lose that bet.
Bogart Double Dawg
Man, people. Faculty/staff are not shit birds and a bunch love football at UGA too. Many even have degrees from UGA. They also are the ones delivering the real service of why students attend UGA and are an integral part of the University community.
You know, a lot of f/s also attend other sports around campus too pretty regularly. We want to support our students and cheer for our organization.
Don’t lump f/s in some theoretical bucket based on perceptions that aren’t validated. While there are sometimes disputes between faculty and athletics, they are usually not that intense. At the end of the day the purpose of the University (IIRC from my multiple degrees and time working here) is to “teach and inquire into the nature of things”. Doesn’t mean the folks working to provide those things don’t love collegiate sports.
This. 1 million percent. For those of us who love Georgia, most of us love the University, including its sports teams. Not the other way around.
Fair enough. I’m happy to stand corrected.
ilini84
The F/S season ticket is a card with a bar code and the name of the holder on it.
GruvenDawg
Hopefully this is a one time deal. The slime balls at Auburn purposely scheduled UMASS that week to make us have to either move our bye or move the Auburn game for 2020. From a coaching perspective who is going to have more depth and be able to hold up at the end of the year? AU or UTjr? Based on talent I would say UT would be more susceptible in 2020 to be wore out by the end of the year.
My understanding is that most of the I-AA/non P-5 home game contracts have clauses that allow the home team to move the game a week in either direction or push it out to another year once the conference schedules are finally set by the leauge. If the league said Georgia and Auburn were playing on X date, Auburn almost assuredly has the contractual right with UMass to move the game… The P-5 games and neutral site games are the only ones chiseled in stone and, because they are generally set well in-advance and are good draws, the conferences are willing to work around those when developing schedules.
Godawg
I hope they lose to UMass…:-)
Agitating to end the series IS rubbing it in Tech’s face, IMO. I don’t know how serious most Georgia fans actually are when they advocate for ending the series, but I do know that it is the biggest insult you can offer to a Tech fan and it’s the dig that REALLY gets under their skin: “You aren’t worthy to be on the same field as us.” It’s the one thing they can’t even pretend they aren’t bothered by.
No it’s not. It’s cutting your nose off to spite your face.
Let’s win 9 in a row, then think it over, OK?
Explain why faculty tickets to any away game should be given? We send them bowl games, why exactly? Never have understood this. Faculty members are paid enough to pay their own way. I would rather have donors committed to the program be given an opportunity to buy those, or at least provided to students who pay an activity fee. At least someone who cares in a non-handout way.
It’s faculty and staff, for one. Staff are, by any measure, underpaid and, in large part, are committed to the success of the University on levels that donors aren’t. They commit their work lives to making UGA a great place for students, for faculty, and for alumni. The same goes for a lot of faculty. If you think all faculty are overpaid, then you either don’t value their work or don’t understand what they’re being paid. The effort and work put in by some of my faculty colleagues here is other-worldly – and they do it in large part not because it gets them a lot of money, but because love their work and the place they do it.
F/S season and away tickets aren’t “given.” We buy them like anyone else and I’ve not been eligible for any of the important away games in a good long while (and I have a pretty high priority as it goes). Is it a benefit to have access to tickets? You betcha! If you want it, apply for one of the jobs on campus. Spoiler: you won’t because you wouldn’t want the pay cut. On top of that F/S pay more per ticket than students, so it’s far from a handout.
“Donors” committed to the program aren’t always as committed as you’d expect. I often sit with a dear friend in an area of McGill Society types (if they are there or if they stick around for the whole game or if they even pay attention), so spare me the generalizations. I used his Sugar Bowl tickets and those folks were no where to be found in the 3rd quarter. (I did see my fellow staff buddy still in the stands a few sections over).
You’re usually find you a fairly thoughtful commenter even when I don’t agree with you, but you have no idea what you’re writing about in this comment. It’s based in assumptions and generalizations about those of us that work in higher education that are politicized and, in large part, off the mark.
This, and my thoughts above.
I often enjoy Macallans comments too, but people the f/s are a part of the community. They provide the means of why people come to a university in the first place.
If a student in my class is on the field (has happened more than a few times) I want to support them in this very demanding and intense endeavor. I don’t even get f/s tickets, but donate my own way through the Hartman fund. I hope all interested f/s try to come and support their students!
jtp03
away game and postseason tickets cost the same to faculty/staff season ticket holders as donors. availability of these tickets is based on length of service.
the benefit (which is taxed, btw) is on home games that are purchased at less than face value. I for one am happy to see the admin assistants and custodial staff who might make $8/hr enjoying the games as much as i do.
My misunderstanding, I apologize to those above. I was under the impression that included in the bowl costs were paid tickets and travel expenses for a large number of “connected” staffers and faculty. I did not realize they were paying for tickets and travel. I then lumped that into other away games. My error.
And I do not begrudge benefits awarded to the lower portion of any organization, I do not care for the upper echelons being taking care of on what I would call, non-business boondoggles. They can afford their own way.
It’s always nice to see an apology on the internet, especially from someone whose perspective I have always enjoyed.
One thing those outside f/s should keep in mind, is that this stuff can be very personal to us. I personally have had many football players in my classes (among other sports). I personally know these athletes as my students, and I want them to succeed in all of their endeavors. Their success matters to me. I know many f/s feel the same way.
I think the personal nature of this relationship is why you saw the responses you did.
Fair points. As I said, I took a position based on a limited amount of information. Sadly, it isn’t the only time I wish I had kept my powder dry once the smoke had cleared and more facts were visible. At least I didn’t kill anybody this time. 🙂
What in the hell are you babbling about?
It’s a UNIVERSITY and a UNIVERSITY is made of STUDENTS, FACULTY AND STAFF. I’ve never understood why all these pikers who never sniffed a classroom get to buy a ticket until every student, faculty and staff get one.
Even though I realize it won’t happen soon, I don’t understand this logic. There are many schools who represent a comparable, or better, win opportunity. UGA gets so little credit for maintaining this game, which is now a virtual lock for a noon time slot against many better games on that final weekend.
UGA/GT doesn’t even win the noon time slot, we could finish last against more interesting opponents and still win. And some games might even draw interest outside the Atlanta/Athens area. Tech fans don’t even show up for it when it is at home any longer. There are plenty of other “win” opportunities in the ACC alone. I get that you are dug in on this, but the patient is ill and the prognosis has gotten worse. Leaving the SEC put a dagger in that program.
GT is a P5 program. UGA gets credit for beating a P5 program by the selection committee, so I’m not sure what you mean.
Also have to think beating the shit out of the state’s other P5 school pays dividends on the recruiting trail.
Not to mention it’s a traditional rival.
My problem with Georgia Tech is that they are AT BEST in a 3 way tie with Kentucky and Mizzou for 6th place on the “I’m super excited for this game” scale–just above 9th ranked Vanderbilt among our 9 home games.
I say “at best” because being a non-SEC team probably puts them at 6(c). But really there’s nobody else we are going to play on Thanksgiving. Literally, everybody we would want to play has an in-state game that weekend. So, I’m fine with beating their ass nearly every year–but it doesn’t fire me up. Which I think is sad for Thanksgiving weekend.
Err, 9 contracted to play games
I’ll admit, it kind of sucks that, as far as the national media are concerned, COFH regularly plays second fiddle on Rivalry Week thanks to Tech’s ineptitude/lack of a national brand. But for me personally, I’m never anything less than excited for a chance to rub those smug dipshits’ faces in it for yet another year. Tech is kind of like that slump-buster booty call you hit up when you’re bored—you don’t think of them much at all, you’re certainly not going to brag to your friends about it, but if they weren’t there, you’d miss ’em.
Yes, they are a P5 school. But that doesn’t mean they get us any more credit than Vandy, Indiana, Rutgers, Oregon State, do. I wasn’t suggesting we replace them with a directional cupcake. GT, for all the attention they get in the greater Atlanta market, has no more impact on CFB these days than do the schools I mentioned above. I get that it is a fairly easy win in the days since they were in the SEC, but you guys are hanging onto the past.
I am all about traditions, but some have run their race, this is one. Bring back TX and A&M, or OU and Nebraska even, but we might as well retire the dated rivalry of UGA/GT. It just isn’t playing well, and is now a placeholder on the schedule. I said earlier, I don’t think I will ever see this happen, but putting some space between it might be a good way to start. Let’s dictate to them the way AU rolls over UGA, let’s play them every four years at our place. No reason to go to Atlanta to play a UGA home game.
I too have lost passion for the GT game..not sure why..but you state many of my same feelings on it.
Even when pundits review our OOC schedule, we get ZERO credit for having GT on board.
Problem is, what do you replace them with? I would prefer to play them game 1.
Yea, you literally can’t replace them. I believe it is a conference rule that you cannot have a bye the weekend before the SEC title game (tech weekend), so we have to have a Thanksgiving weekend game. Nobody else is available.
To clarify, I don’t believe that people who talk about ending the series actually want to do it. I think they want to piss off the nerds by saying it.
What bothers me most about all this is Smart’s refusal to let us know what he’s thinking.
Hey, y’all know what the best part of the 2020 schedule is? We go to Bama.
Anyone want to lay odds on if this new Auburn game is the week before or after we go to Tuscaloosa?
We typically play Tennessee the 5th or 6th week of the season and 4 times in the last 5 years, we’ve played our rotating west opponent the week before or after. I’ve a feeling the screw-job ain’t over yet.
All those off weeks for our opponents in ’19 and now an opportunity to really toughen up the road for Georgia in ’20 makes me think someone in B’ham is doing someone in Alabama’s bidding, but it ain’t in Auburn.
I bet it ends up the week before, and Bama conveniently has a bye week.
#BamaPrivilege is real and it’s spectacular.
Tennessee has won twice in Athens since Auburn’s last win.
Auburn lost to Tennessee last season and has a greater chance of being in turmoil next season. Tennessee is a division game. If the deal is for 2020-only, I am starting to see Kirby’s way of thinking.
And there it is.
Birmingham: “Team, the Jimbo threat is real and it’s growing. We have to do something…..instead of that late September slot usually reserved for rotating opponents, how about we kill 2 birds with one stone and send them to Athens while our Tahhhhd play Western Carolina ? This meeting is adjourned.”
The only benefit I see here is that this breaks up the Tennessee road trip that usually has Vandy-UT in back to back weeks. Obviously, 2019 is an anomaly with us opening up at Vandy.
Maybe I’m too tied to the tradition of Auburn in November, but it just doesn’t feel right. Hopefully, it’s a one time deal because I just don’t see much of an advantage to us unless it helps Auburn in the Iron Bowl.
I can understand McGarity and Morehead making this dumb decision but I really don’t see why Kirby wants this. I don’t see a strategic advantage to be gained by moving the game with UT.
etdf
I am not excited to see the Dawgs play on the “grass” in Knee-land in November. Its bad enough in October.
To me, this lessens Auburn in the SEC. LSU has complained bitterly about having to play Florida every year, but they haven’t asked for the schedule to be changed. Gus can’t take playing UGA and Bama at the end of their season. Maybe Auburn should join the ACC,’cause SEC teams aren’t supposed to whine about how hard it is to play in the SEC!
It’s maddening to me that we rolled on this without getting our home game back. Auburn wanted something, we wanted something. Instead, Auburn gets their way and we get bupkis.
HiAltDawg
I’m just amazed we didn’t wait ninety days and find this out in a FOIA request.
FlyingPeakDawg
No one’s mentioned that moving UT to the back of the schedule means we may not have the SECe locked-up until that game. Not sure why Kirby would want to put pressure like that on the back-end of the schedule. As we proved in 2017, you can take the loss to Auburn, go to the SECCG and even the playoffs with one late loss. Won’t likely be true if we trip on UT in similar circumstances. I don’t get this, and I can’t even follow the money. Was CBS also involved behind the scenes, and if so, what was their angle. UGA/AU early is good, but UGA/UT late vs. UGA/AU late is worse for ratings I’m sure.
No one loss is the end…two losses, yes…
One loss in the East is probably the end since we likely would not make the SECCG.
UGA '97
Gus is paid more to do the same. 2. We get the SEC Champ game at home. 3. We beat their asses 13 of last 18 (should be 14 wins if not for the Prayer at Jordan Hare). 4. The home and home with Florida is on the horizon.
SouthernYank
Strictly considering weather in November, I’d rather watch a game in Auburn than in Knoxville.
Maybe it’s all just part of Kirby’s plan to ‘change the culture’ in Athens. Today’s society is all about the right now. Let’s establish our own tradition – Auburn never beats us in September-October !
I cannot believe we did this and got nothing.
Someone made a good point that playing TENN late means more years where our ability to lock down the SEC East comes later. I don’t see that as a good thing.
This seems like a crap deal all around for us.
RE: GA TECH: I absolutely love crushing them and think we should not even consider losing this game. It is a P5 opponent that somewhat recently won the ACC. Heisman was their coach. It has a tremendous amount of tradition. They won a national title in the 90s. This is a good P5 win that we get nearly for free, and the impact on recruiting is huge for us too.
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Land Rover Burghley Horse Trials
2 - 6 September 2020
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Two Awards In A Week For Land Rover Burghley Winner
Pippa Funnell named BT Sport Action Woman Of The Year
In the last few days Pippa Funnell's Land Rover Burghley 2019 victory has been named Moment of the Year at the Horse & Hound Awards, and Pippa Funnell herself has been crowned BT Sport Action Woman Of The Year following her Land Rover Burghley success.
Speaking to The Telegraph, Pippa said "I've had the most amazing career and a long career, but any person's career over the space of 35 years isn't just going to be about the good days."
"Back in 2003 I won quite a lot of awards. Of course, I appreciated them all because I was on the crest of a wave back then, but I think because I've gone so long and not had this sort of recognition I think it's like I've been given a second change to enjoy it all over again."
The BT Sport Action Woman award shortlist also included, amongst others, athletics stars Dina Asher-Smith and Katarina Johnson-Thompson, England footballer, Lucy Bronze and Grade 1 winning jockey Bryony Frost.
"It was such an honour to be nominated among so many sporting greats, so as you can imagine it was the most wonderful surprise to win the award," commented Pippa to Horse & Hound.
Well done Pippa from all at Land Rover Burghley! We look forward to seeing you back here in 2020.
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Who is Sino-Forest's founder, Allen Chan?
The troubles facing China's Sino-Forest mark a new chapter in the chequered career of Allen Chan, its Hong Kong-born founder who resigned as CEO over the weekend amid massive fraud allegations and a plunge in its share price
Xavier Ng/Reuters
By James Pomfret
HONG KONG – The troubles facing China’s Sino-Forest mark a new chapter in the chequered career of Allen Chan, its Hong Kong-born founder who resigned as CEO over the weekend amid massive fraud allegations and a plunge in its share price.
Mr. Chan, a columnist and author in Hong Kong with a love of martial arts and classical Chinese literature, may lack the gravitas and vast wealth of Hong Kong’s billionaire tycoons, but he developed a reputation over the years as an innovative entrepreneur with an academic turn of mind.
As a columnist for the respected Hong Kong Economic Journal newspaper, he fused his knowledge of the Chinese classics, history and culture with theories on management, finance and business to nurture a steady readership. As head of Sino-Forest, he trumpeted sustainability and giving back to nature.
In a YouTube video clip, the bespectacled and balding Mr. Chan can be seen speaking in rapid-fire Cantonese expounding on his ideas of “monetizing of the forestry industry,” peppering his speech with thoughts on how to achieve predictable growth rates and harvests by melding forestry cycles with bond expiration dates.
“If you add derivatives and CO2 to the mix, it can be quite sexy,” he told a business conference in the 2009 video.
His firm’s fortunes have been decidedly far from sexy of late. Toronto-listed Sino-Forest has seen its stock price plummet since June 2, when short-seller Carson Block and his firm, Muddy Waters, accused it of fraudulently exaggerating the size of its forestry assets. Its market capitalization has fallen by roughly US$4.1-billion since.
Sino-Forest has denied any wrongdoing and has appointed a committee of independent directors to investigate the matter. Chan could not be immediately reached for comment on Monday.
However, last Friday, the Ontario Securities Commission ordered a 15-day halt in trading of Sino-Forest shares and said it appeared that Mr. Chan and other executives had misrepresented revenues and kept bogus accounts, leading to Mr. Chan’s voluntary resignation this past weekend.
The Sino-Forest saga is the most prominent of a series of recent accounting scandals to have buffeted investor confidence in Chinese companies listed in North America, triggering a flurry of regulatory probes both in Canada and the United States.
Mr. Chan’s resignation marked another sharp reversal of fortune for a man whose commercial investments have ebbed and flowed over the years.
Mr. Chan got his start in business in 1984 by acting as a project consultant for a hotel in Shenzhen, a special economic zone then at the vanguard of China’s watershed reforms and economic liberalization, China’s official People’s Daily newspaper said in a business profile in 2003.
It described Mr. Chan as a lover of Chinese classics who had practiced martial arts since the age of 10.
In the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, however, when foreign investment stampeded out of China, Chan’s businesses soured. He suffered an illness that left him physically paralyzed.
“Doctors declared he would spend a lifetime in a wheelchair,” the People’s Daily article recounted.
The bookish Mr. Chan, however, clawed his way back through intensive physiotherapy and learned to walk again, taking up writing while trying to salvage his businesses.
His nom de plume, Guan Zhong Lian, is derived from famous Chinese historical figures including political adviser Lu Zhonglian, who was known for his diplomatic and conflict resolution skills, he told the paper.
His second act came after the United Nations’ 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, which ignited his interest in forestry as a potential boom industry in China. Soon afterwards, Mr. Chan founded Sino Forest and succeeded in attracting investors of the caliber of Simon Murray, the chairman of Glencore, and billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson.
A Hong Kong University graduate, Mr. Chan worked for the Hong Kong government in new town development and management programs earlier in his career.
Chan’s deep-rooted China connections have been vital to his forestry businesses on the mainland. A member of a top advisory committee to China’s parliament for heavily forested Jiangxi province, he’s also a vice president of the China National Forestry Industry Federation.
In the industry, Mr. Chan and Sino Forest kept a low profile, said a senior executive at a rival Chinese forestry firm who asked not to be named.
“They were just like a fund manager. They raised money and bought land and other people managed it for them,” he said.
The latest turn doesn’t signal the end of Mr. Chan’s links to Sino Forest. His resignation is pending the completion of the investigation into Muddy Waters’ allegations. Sino Forest said in the same press release announcing his resignation that he “will be fully available” to assist with operational matters.
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Leasing Cutlass Tower for 3 and 5 years to facilitate Admin Complex repairs is necessary
in All News / By: on November 7, 2019 at 8:15 AM /
Premier Andrew Fahie (BVI News photo)
Premier Andrew Fahie said the Cabinet’s decision to lease two floors at the Cutlass Tower for a period of three and five years is a necessary move.
Leasing the office spaces are to facilitate repairs of the Central Administration Complex, now referred to as the Ralph T O’Neal Administration Complex.
When BVI News questioned the Premier on the length of time for the lease, and whether it was necessary to rent for years, he said: “The terms [of the lease] are because it is projected that some areas will be rented for longer periods because other areas of government will move in when the present office comes out seeing that space continues to be an issue in government.”
“Of course it is necessary to move because the building cannot be repaired with us in it. Everyone is moving. This is just one of many moves that will be made. This is done all the time by government so research would show that this is nothing new,” added the Premier who made it clear that his government was not responsible for sourcing the location or negotiating the cost of the rental accommodation.
Work to commence shortly
Meanwhile, Works Minister Kye Rymer who now has oversight of the undertaking said in a recent sitting of the House of Assembly that work on the complex will begin shortly.
He said: “This administration pledged to expedite the recovery and rebuilding agenda and to prioritize the rehabilitation of the Central Administration Complex. Today, your Government is keeping another promise to our people. Our word is our bond. We are delivering on the mandate entrusted to us, and we are just getting warmed up.”
He continued: “The contractors for the repairs to the roof specifically to address sealing the concrete base of the roof and reinstalling the sky lighting has been selected. These contracts have been awarded to STO, with local affiliation Mr Dion Stoutt and Wallans Skylight.”
Rymer stated, that once no setbacks are encountered, work is expected to commence “around the end of this year.”
He informed that the contractors have started mobilisation and have started to work on the site.
“Materials are being sourced and some has actually started arriving on island. Removal of the membrane of the roof for the repairs is scheduled to start any day now, and assessments are being conducted on the condition of the roof,” he remarked.
As it relates to other work such as replacing the windows, frames, and doors, the successful bidder will be informed by year’s end, he noted.
The Works Minister said he would provide “a more detailed update on the progress of the Central Administration Complex as the project advances.”
In the meantime, Rymer said the Office of the Deputy Governor’s has been working to securing appropriate accommodation for the Public Officers and staff who have been based at the Central Administration Complex since the hurricanes.
“Relocation is necessary because as we progress with the repairs, the facility will not be conducive to the safety of persons nor to concentration on work,” he stated.
According to a report on Cabinet’s October 2 meeting, the government decided to enter into a five-year lease agreement with Lake Development Co. Ltd who is the owner of the Cutlass Tower on Waterfront Drive in Road Town.
By BVI News’ calculations, the lease agreement is valued a little more than $1.2 million for rental accommodation for the Office of the Premier.
Premier’s Office relocating | Paying $1.2M over 5 years to rent spaces at Cutlass Tower
Disclaimer: BVI News and its affiliated companies are not responsible for the content of comments posted or for anything arising out of use of the comments below or other interaction among the users.
Fitting out says:
The first thing that needs to be done is to replace the cheap flimsy plastic windows.
Overspend says:
Who negotiated the rent on behalf of the Govt? It reminds me of the overspend at the pier park! It is higher than the Ritter Building which is the best office building in town.
Lily Ann says:
They renting her building, not remodeling it…
Rich getting richer says:
Yes sir, as if your aunty dont have enough money…let her continue to full her craw…greed and gluttony go hand in hand
vip heckler says:
It look like Patsea and bewiss running this government
First it was olando family now it’s fahie lol..good luck BVI
@vip heckler says:
Who cares. When the rich white friends were running it you were quiet and see where that got us. The price to rent the place is within the ongoing market rate. The building has been rented by the previous government for the same price so how come it is an issue now. Some of you are just poison to society.
SMDH says:
All of this is about nothing. The government building has been destroyed by Irma since 2017. Nothing to date has been seriously done to repair it. We the public servants have to work in deplorable conditions daily since 2017. The last government didn’t fix it. So now that the Premier & his team is moving to fix it then what is the fuss about? The Premier said it best in that everyone has to come out inorder to fix it. Let us just get on with it and stop these foolish games.
Maths says:
If I calculate correct that’s 20000 a months and that’s a good price giving the price of rent per square foot on cay.
Interesting says:
I swear only the BVI I see like to waste money on rent so. I hope this is actually a necessary move and not because people in government related to patsy.
Naive says:
I am sure that the agreement to pay rent at a rate higher than the Ritter Building has nothing to do with Patsy’s relationship with people in Government – that would be naughty.
It will also have nothing to do with the next decision to rent the building on the highway with no parking.
nepotism says:
The glancina george building is empty, 2 of roland hodge buildings empty, 1 of jr oneal building half empty, cb romney building empty but they had to rent both of lake buildings
Felipino says:
You think that they ain’t slick?? They all know what they are up to. All of them, keep you all eyes open. You people will pay for this … greed.
Humble One says:
VG man says:
Premier do not stress with the few haters. Keep pushing ahead for the people of the Virgin Islands. Thanks for working on the bank opening for we the people in Virgin Gorda. They are more with us than those against.
What a pity says:
What will some of you who are blogging say when the list of all the other persons government will be renting from comes out.The fact is all government departments have to move out of the building and go somewhere. Without doing that then the government building cannot be fixed. It is as simple as that.
So, spending $20,000.00 Per Month for 5 years is ok with the folks? Or could you get by with some type of Temp Mobile office space till the constructions is don? Thus saving $$$$$ …It has been 2 years since the storm folks this should of been done a long time ago….doesn’t pass my smell test! Who is part of the Lake Development Co. Ltd. doing the lease? Any ties to any govt. person?
Amnesia says:
When NDP leased the man’s building on the highway for Passport Office to give him a life line nobody had a problem.
Okay Then says:
So Lake needs a life line now?? … You VIP bloggers don’t come on here with your holy naive crap, they were part of the decision don’t let them fool you! And the rent price is exorbitant as Lake is known for having the highest rents in town.
Yes, the offices have to move out of the complex, and that is the story they will stick too. Because it’s a convenient story.
The pathetic part about the entire thing is this VIP Government sold themselves as being better than the previous govt, from my view, and by their actions, they are worse! And they just getting started.
@ Ok then says:
I’m saying!!! why not repair one wing at a time to save some of the leasing money… All I see under this VIP government is the rich getting richer… How ironic her son inlaw is responsible for the ministry that is in the midst of both her buildings been rented…The one on the highway would be rented by port….
Fowl says:
I understand the Ports is paying a handsome rent for that building on the Highway. You got to give it to her, she knows how to milk the cow… What else we expect from them?
Yep says:
You are right ! They could easily house some departments on one side of the building whilst the other wing is being repaired.
@Amnesia says:
Registry that was upstairs varieties got damaged and had to relocate so it was a wise idea to put both offices together which was a great move….
Money Changers says:
Adding interest charges to BVI tax payers if dem a day late on rent?
Blah says:
How can renting the Cutlass building now be a bad thing when it was first rented by the NDP a few years ago. It didn’t matter who the owner was back then but now somehow it does because the government change??? The Shipping Registry was in the 3rd floor until Irma damaged the building. The locks were allegedly changed sometime in October 2018 as it seems like the landlady was expecting the monthly rent even after Irma and claimed that thousands were due in rent for over a one year period. If the rent increased for the same space then that would be cause for concern.
blogs says:
I’m just here for the entertaining comments.
my 2 cents says:
my only issue was the length of the lease, now I understand the reason. I am satisfied with that reason. make sense.
On Looker says:
First there is no money, now that there is money this guy is on a stupid spending spree, and where is the 2020 budget he promised before the year was finished.
Cant believe anything this guy says.
these guys says:
so they can’t work from home or nttn like that and have meetings at the courthouse or something
Voter says:
Guys….VIP, be mindful of conflict of interest. It gets you every time.
Guy Hill says:
Do what you got to do and have to do, to get what you want do.
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Archive: Jan 2016
Why Getting the FM Chip Activated in Smartphones is Critical to Radio’s Future
January 29, 2016 2:20 pm Leave a Comment
It was not that many years ago that most people carried a transistor radio with them. They took it to the beach or to a party and radio was the primary source of musical entertainment. Today there are still lots of radios in cars, in homes and in the work place. But the one place that radio is not, is the one device that most people look at and use multiple times a day. That of course is the smartphone.
To be fair, there are some Blackberry and HTC devices that have a radio tuner built in and activated, but the most popular phones cannot listen to a local radio via a tuner built into the smartphone, because either the manufacturer or the carrier has not activated the FM chip which allows this to happen.
Did you know that many of today’s smartphones already have an FM receiver built in, but not activated? This means that everyone could have easy access to radio for the entertainment they love and information they need, but those FM receivers are not activated by all wireless carriers and phone manufacturers.
The NAB analyzed the top 70% of smartphones based on sales volume at the NAB labs and found the following:
Listening to FM radio provides as much as a six-fold battery life extension over online streaming services. Also they noted that battery life is better when listening to radio on a built in tuner on your smartphone as opposed to streaming audio.
According to the NAB, FM radio listening on a smartphone has almost no impact on a user’s data plan. However, according to the NAB, labs streaming 2 hours of an online radio services per day can consume over 3.5 gigabytes of data per month.
When the FM chips is enabled, every smartphone can be a radio, allowing critical emergency information to be distributed by radio stations quickly and efficiently. There is absolutely no cost to the carrier, but there are revenue share opportunities which could be a welcomed source of revenue for both radio and the cell phone companies.
The NAB had virtually every cell phone on the market as at the end of 2014 taken to an independent research laboratory and stripped down. Here’s is what they found:
2% of smart phones have the FM chip activated
20% of all smartphones tested have the FM chip installed and could easily be activated
10% of all smartphones tested have the FM chip installed but it is not activated
68% of all smartphones the FM chip is unavailable or could not be identified. Of these phones, Apple iPhone made up 67%.
Getting the FM chip activated in Canada is starting to gain some traction. But this may not be easy because some of the cell phone companies don’t see the value in allowing this to happen. There are training and support challenges and costs associated with this. But the main reason that some cell phone companies don’t want to see this happen is because they are eager for consumers to use lots of data because that is where they make the big money.
Also, some of the companies who manufacture these phones have their own strategy and hope to benefit in some way from not allowing the FM chip to be activated. For example, Apple launched iRadio a year ago. It has been total disaster for Apple and in early 2016 they quietly shut that division down, and today the only Apple Radio stream I can find is Beats1.
But getting the FM chip activated is only half the battle. Next we need a single app that can tune all radio stations that can be heard in an area and make it really easy for listeners to find the station they wish to listen to on their smartphone. Fortunately, all the heavy lifting has already been done thanks to a number of American broadcasters who developed the NextRadio app. This is a simple app that can come pre-installed on your smartphone.
In the USA, Sprint entered into an agreement with Next Radio and has shipped over 8 million phones with the FM chip activated and the NextRadio app already installed out of the box. In addition, the Next Radio app has been downloaded over 5.7 million times onto other phones as at the end of 2015. There are over 12,700 radio stations available on the app which covers almost every radio station in the USA.
This all happened because radio in the USA took a very proactive approach and ran promos and PSA’s educating the public about the benefits of activating the FM chip. They used the power of radio to drive listeners to websites such as www.freeradioonmyphone.org and encouraged consumers to contact their cell phone provider, the FCC congress and even Apple and demand that they activate the FM chip. They also encouraged listeners to use the power of social media to spread the word using the hashtag #UnlockFM. As at the time of writing this article there is now only one of the major US wireless carriers who have yet to activate the FM chip in smartphones and that is Verizon. However it is important to note that Apple, who have a massive share of the market Apple have not as yet activated the FM chip in the USA, even though it is built into every one of their phones.
Built into the NextRadio app is the Tag station tools which allow listeners to not only hear the radio station, but also display album artwork and provides listener interaction. Tag stations also synchronizes visuals and provides value metadata to improve the listener experience. Listens can purchase songs instantly, or click on an ad graphic for a voucher, or directions to the location.
NextRadio ran a national test case with Insurance giant Allstate on 245 radio stations in 78 markets from April until mid September 2015. When the ad played on radio it was synchronized with the image, and digital call to action in the NextRadio App.
2.28% of listeners responded directly to the Allstate campaign which is 114 times better than the advert click through ratio on a display ad on a website.
I am told that the NextRadio people had a high level meeting with at least one Canadian cell phone carrier at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas recently and there appears to be a level of interest. However, they will likely want to know that most Canadian radio stations are prepared to embrace NextRadio before they ink a deal.
By the way, NextRadio was one of the hot items shown off at CES in Las Vegas in early January. It was shown on the latest smartphones such as BLU who released their new Vivo 5 and Vivo XL, both in shiny gold and featuring NextRadio as the native FM tuner application. NextRadio has partnered with BLU to be the native tuner for all forthcoming devices.
Also, the NextRadio app was being demonstrated in the Ford booth as a featured SmartDeviceLink app. SmartDeviceLink is Ford’s open-source platform for connecting smartphone apps with the Sync car dashboard, and the technology was also recently adopted by Toyota. The in-vehicle demo showed how the FM tuner worked as powered by NextRadio. The app connects via Bluetooth and uses the station guide and metadata from NextRadio to create a visual and interactive radio experience in the car dashboard.
This is perhaps the most compelling reason for our industry to band together and not only get the FM chip enabled but also to ensure the app is on as many car dashboards as possible. I have been shopping for a new car for some time and have sat in lots of 2016 models and already I am seeing vehicles in Canadian show rooms with Apple’s Carplay and Googles Android Auto product. We need the radio to be in the car dashboard, and extend that to include the Nextradio app so listeners can enjoy the full extent of the tools and benefits this app offers.
Aside from the convenience benefit, there is also a major safety benefit in having a FM radio tuner that can pick up all the local radio stations on your smart phone. When disaster strikes, often the cell phone grid is the first to go down, either because of equipment failure or overloading. Here is what FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) Administrator Craig Fugate had to say about value of FM Radio on Smartphones
“I don’t think people realize how vulnerable they are. For example, recently there was an earthquake in Virginia and while there was no real damage to the cell system, there was such high data demand, and demand for getting through, the system crashed and people could not make, and in many cases receive, calls. So, all of a sudden, their smartphone became a brick. We also saw the same thing happen when Hurricane Sandy hit the Eastern seaboard. The cell systems went down or data was overloaded, and people could not get information. But when you start combining functions, like putting FM chips into cell phones, you start getting local radio. So even if the cell systems are overloaded, you still get that information and it moves us beyond streaming.
With radio chips in smartphones this is way to ensure that when all else fails, you can still get from the broadcasters critical information, because the government’s going to turn to the broadcasters and we’re going to pump information either through the emergency alert system or through broadcasters.
We always say all disasters are local and the most important information is going to come from those local broadcasters that are plugged into local officials, telling you what’s going on, on the ground. In a crisis, your best source of information is going to be the locals, and a lot of times, that’s going to be on radio.
At FEMA we still recommend every person have a portable radio with some sort of emergency power, whether it’s batteries, solar or hand cranked.
We don’t want you to think that this technology isn’t great, but we also want you to think about, in a disaster, can you get information? And what’s out there? So, again, we’re still recommending you get a radio. And, if your radio’s now in your cell phone, that’s just one less device that you have to have to have an extra of. But, it’s important to make sure you can get those broadcasts in an emergency.”
In Canada there are lots of reasons to push to get the FM chip enabled, and also adopt the NextRadio model. Frankly, it seems like a no brainer from a public safety point of view, but it will require action on the part of our industry to make this happen.
February Is…
12:26 am Leave a Comment
Jan 29-Feb 15 “Winterlude”: Ottawa, ON. Annual celebration of Canadian winter. Call 613-239-5000 or 800-465-1867. Web www.capcan.ca/winterlude.
Feb 1-29 “Therapeutic Recreation Month”: see www.canadian-tr.org.
Feb 1-29 “International Boost Self-Esteem Month”: Focus on the importance of nurturing and cultivating self-esteem to beat the winter blahs. Call Valla Dana Fotiades 863-875-0759. email valla@valladana.com.
Feb 1-29 “Junior Achievement Month”: Junior Achievement students in Canada participate in experiential learning programs to discover free enterprise, understand business and economics and develop their entrepreneurial and leadership skills. See www.jacan.org.
Feb 1-29 “National Heart & Stroke Month”: see www.heartandstroke.ca
Feb 1-29 “National Black History Month”: see Citizenship & Immigration Canada www.cic.gc.ca/english/multiculturalism/black/index.asp
Feb 1-29 “National Psychology Month”: see www.cpa.ca
Feb 1-29 “Plant the Seeds of Greatness Month”: If you are unhappy with your career, use these next 28 days to put to use your own unique prosperity and plant the seeds for your new career. Call Lorrie Walters Marsiglio 630-584-9368.
Feb 1-29 “Return Shopping Carts to the Supermarket Month”: An opportunity to return stolen shopping carts, milk crates, bread trays and ice cream baskets to supermarkets and avoid the increased food prices that these thefts cause. Call Anthony A. Dinolfo 815-463-9136.
Feb 1-29 “Spunky Old Broads Month”: A celebration for all women over 50 who are interested in living a regret-free life. Call Gayle Carson 305-534-8846, email Gayle@spunkyoldbroad.com. See www.spunkyoldbroad.com.
Feb 1 “Dump your Significant Jerk Day”: With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, there’s no time to waste. If you’re in a loser relationship, it’s time to cut the cord. So call Marcus P. Meleton for ideas at 949-413-3052, email mm@sharkbaitpress.com. Web www.sharkbaitpress.com.
Feb 1-5 “International Networking Week”: To celebrate the key role that networking plays in the development and success of businesses around the world. Call Ivan Misner, PhD 1-800-825-8286 or email internationalnetworkingweek@bni.com.
Feb 1-7 “Eating Disorder Awareness Week”: see www.nedic.ca
Feb 2 “Groundhog Day” If the groundhog comes out of his hole and sees his shadow, we’re in for another 6 weeks of winter. Call Woodstock, the town where Bill Murray filmed Groundhog Day 815-338-2436 or e-mail chamber@stans.com. Also check out Wiarton Willie – Canada’s leading weather prognosticator Phone:(519) 534-1400 or e-mail admin@wiarton-willie.org.
Feb 2 “Groundhog Job Shadow Day”: Students spend part of the day in the workplace “shadowing” an employee as he or she goes through a normal day on the job. Call 1-800-373-3174 for a kit. Email info@jobshadow.org. See www.jobshadow.org.
Feb 4 “Happy Birthday Facebook”: Mark Zuckerburg launched the social networking site on this day in 2004.
Feb 4 “International World Cancer Day”: see www.uicc.org.
Feb 5 “Working Naked Day”: A day for all those who are working from home “naked” – stripped of the resources that millions take for granted in the traditional corporate workplace.
Feb 5-14 “Ontario Winter Carnival Bon Soo”: Sault Ste. Marie, ON. One of Canada’s largest winter carnivals. Call Donna Gregg 866-899-1607, email mrbonsoo@bonsoo.on.ca or see www.bonsoo.on.ca.
Feb 6 “Safer Internet Day”: To promote safer and more responsible use of online technology and mobile phones, especially among children. See www.saferinternet.org.
Feb 7 “Super Bowl 50I”: Levi’s Stadium, Santa Clara, CA. Call 212-450-2000. Web: www.nfl.com.
Feb 7-13 “White Cane Week”: For info see Canadian Council for the Blind www.ccbnational.net
Feb 8 “Laugh and Get Rich Day”: When people laugh they are more effective, stay in the same job longer and tend to remember things better, according to Rick Segel. Phone: 781-272-9995 or e-mail rick@ricksegel.com
Feb 9 “New Mexico: Extraterrestrial Culture Day”: A day to celebrate and honour all past, present and future extraterrestrial visitors in ways to enhance relationships among all citizens of the cosmos, known and unknown. Annually the second Thursday of February in New Mexico.
Feb 12 “Darwin Day”: International celebration of science and humanity. Call the Institute for Humanist Studies 518-432-7820. email info@darwinday.org. see www.humaniststudies.org.
Feb 12 “Sexual and Reproductive Health Awareness Day www.cfsh.ca
Feb 14 “Valentine’s Day”: An occasion for the exchange of gifts and greeting cards with affectionate or humorous messages.
Feb 14-20 “International Flirting Week”: Recognizing the role it plays in the lives of singles seeking a mate, couples looking to sustain their love and those simply exchanging a playful glance with a stranger, acquaintance or colleague. Call Robin Newman 516-773-0911, email robin@lovecoach.com. Web www.lovecoach.com.
Feb 15 “Family Day (AB, BC, MB, ON, SK)”: Annually, the 3rd Monday in February.
Feb 15 “International Childhood Cancer Day”: see www.icccpo.org.
Feb 15 “National Flag Day of Canada”: see www.pch.gc.ca/special/flag-drapeau/index_e.cfm
Feb 15-22 “National Scout-Guide Week”: see www.scouts.ca or www.girlguides.ca.
Feb 20 “Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day”: The engineering community is asked to reach more than one million girls and encourage them to pursue the fields that lead to engineering careers. Call Natl Engineers Week Headquarters 703-684-2852. email eweek@nspe.org. web www.eweek.org/site/news/eweek/girlsday.shtml.
Feb 21-27 Freedom To Read Week: An annual event that encourages Canadians to think about and reaffirm their commitment to intellectual freedom. www.freedomtoread.ca.
Feb 24 “Pink Shirt Day”: A day of anti-bullying. See www.pinkshirtday.ca.
Feb 27 “World Thinking Day/Founders Day”: Birth date of both Lord and Lady Baden-Powell, founders of Boy Scouts and Girl Guides. Don’t be surprised to see members of these organizations in uniform today at school and work. See www.scouts.ca or www.girlguides.ca.
Feb 27 “Open That Bottle Night”: A night to finally drink that bottle of wine that you’ve been saving for a special occasion that never seems to come. Email Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher of the Wall Street Journal at wine@wsj.com.
The Shiny New Things at CES 2016
January 9, 2016 3:36 pm Leave a Comment
There are lots of interesting new gadgets on display for all to see at the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas. Automotive technology takes center stage at the massive tech show with more space than ever dedicated to automotive and the various companies offering add on’s to improve safety and the driver experience.
One company that showed up last year was Aupeo who promised to simplify the global complexity of in vehicle connected audio content delivery, and offer unique and high quality listening experiences for drivers all while giving auto makers a new way to communicate with their customers in and out of the vehicle. This company was acquired by Panasonic in 2015 and re-branded as OneConnect. David Taylor, CEO and managing director of Aupeo OneConnect, says the platform could be used by advertisers to communicate directly with consumers in the car. “The vehicle remains the No. 1 listening location for most consumers, and now brands can send targeted information directly to an engaged audience,” he said in a release. “This is one more step in adding a personalized level of service and usefulness to the in- vehicle customer experience.” The Platform is a versatile state-of-the art cloud based brand marketing and content delivery platform. It allows to create individual services and user experiences around connected audio use cases. It can be used beyond the vehicle to entertain and inform your customers while providing you with invaluable new Customer Relation Management opportunities.
Meanwhile, Ford announced two deals at CES this week. One with Amazon and a second with the ride sharing service called Lyft. Ford has invested $500 million in this service service which boasts cutting-edge app technology, and promises that wherever you’re headed, count on Lyft for rides in minutes. The Lyft app matches you with local drivers at the tap of a button. Just request and go.
Automobile manufacturers and technology companies are investing heavily in self-driving vehicles, and consumer interest is clearly increasing. Car owners want more integrated technology and in-car capabilities, including Wifi and products like Google’s Android Auto and Apple’s CarPlay which allow drivers to access smartphone apps, including music, via the digital dashboard touch screen, buttons on the steering wheel and even voice commands.
GM is positioning itself for a future when fewer people will actually own cars, and instead, opting for ride-sharing and on-demand services. As part of its deal, GM and Lyft are creating a fleet of rental vehicles for Lyft drivers, and also developing an on-demand network of self-driving cars. “GM wants to be in the pole position of manufacturing those cars, particularly if that rise in demand for ride services comes at the expense of individuals owning their own cars,” Jason Harrison, global CEO of Gain Theory, told Adweek. Any advances in digital dashboards and smartphone integration create fresh opportunities for radio broadcasters to deliver on-demand content to drivers, and radio owners need to be improving their digital offerings if they want to retain control of in car listening.
Autonomous cars are one of the hot areas at this week’s 2016 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, with carmakers and technology companies showing off new features that allow drivers to be passengers in their own vehicles and transform commuting into time for entertainment and work. “Cars are essentially becoming the next must-have mobile device,” Jason Harrison, global CEO of Gain Theory, told Adweek. That creates huge opportunities for content providers and advertisers. At CES, car companies including Volvo, Hyundai and Audi, among others, are previewing their latest self-driving and advanced car technologies. With self-driving cars expected to hit the market in 2020, according to analysts’ predictions in Adweek, the pressure is on radio broadcasters to deliver content that keeps its audience engaged and entertained. Once a driver is freed up and the car pilots itself, a consumer can still listen to radio, but can also watch videos, use social media, browse the web and video chat.
One of the services competing for in car ears, especially in the USA, is Pandora who rolled out details on an educational effort to help auto sales personnel spotlight Pandora as a central entertainment option in enabled vehicles. The opportunity for radio is to offer additional content, exclusive features like podcasts, original video and concert series that could be transformed into in-car entertainment, if a driver is free to use their ears and eyes.
CES 2016 is underway
January 6, 2016 10:51 am Leave a Comment
The world’s biggest Consumer Electronics Show, or CES for short is underway in Las Vegas for 2016. This year there at least 115 automotive companies who will be showing off the latest gadgets designed to make the driving experience better in the future in the Vehicle Intelligence Marketplace in the North Plaza.
Something that caught my eye was the new Apline 9 inch unit which incorporates Apple’s CarPlay.
Also, Ford CEO Mark Fields announced that they’re going to “change pretty dramatically” and become an “auto and mobility” company. PCMag talked to Mark about this new direction for the company. While we don’t actually see any of the things that Ford are showing off at CES in this video, Field mentions a number of interesting things that Ford are planning, and references the connected car and how they are improving the entertainment center. He also talks about Drones that can take off and land in the back of your F150! We will bring you more information about the connect car as it becomes available.
At long last we also get to see the updated version of the VW bug as Volkswagen take the wraps off the Budd-e, a little electric van that evokes Microbuses of yesteryear. You could see this on the road by 2019. Volkswagen’s new MEB platform will enable a series production car to have pure electric range that is on par with today’s gasoline-powered cars by the end of the decade. The time required to charge the batteries to 80 percent of capacity is anticipated to be reduced to about 15 minutes by then, marking an operational breakthrough for EVs.
The Chevy Bolt is also a game-changer, and may give Tesla some competition. It will be capable of traveling more than 200 miles on a single charge and it will cost around $(US) 30,000 after a $(US) 7,500 tax deduction. No word on Canadian pricing at this point.
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Tag Archives: pink blossoms
J. A. M. Whistler – Symphony in White no 2 (The Little White Girl)
It’s impossible not to love this painting; it has a meditative, dreamy aura, wistful lady wearing a beautifully painted white dress, and delicate pink flowers, hinting at Whistler’s appreciation of Japanese art and culture.
James Abbot McNeill Whistler, Symphony in White no 2 (The Little White Girl), 1864
Model for this ‘little white girl’ was an Irish beauty Joanna Hiffernan, a muse, model and a lover not only to Whistler but to Gustave Courbet as well, most famously in his painting ‘Sleep.’ Whistler’s biographers wrote of her: “She was not only beautiful. She was intelligent, she was sympathetic. She gave Whistler the constant companionship he could not do without.” Here, in Symphony in White no 2, Whistler painted her leaning against the mantelpiece in their love nest; a house they shared in Lindsey Row in Chelsea. She’s holding a Japanese fan in her hand. It’s interesting to note the ring on her left hand, but they were not married. There’s something ethereal about her; dressed in white gown that touches the ground, with long hair and a sad look in her eyes; she seems melancholic and detached from everything at the same time, as if she’s not really here, but is just passing through life without touching it, not allowing the harshness of reality to taint that beautiful whiteness of her muslin dress. If you close your eyes, you can imagine her slowly and elegantly walking across the room, then standing by the fireplace, her small hand barely touching the mantelpiece, while the other gently holds a fan. She is a silent Victorian woman living on the border of dreams and reality, like Millais’ Mariana, wrapped in the loneliness of her birdcage, longing for the imagined excitement of the real life out there. Or not. Perhaps she’s so engulfed in the sweetness of her daydreams and contemplation and doesn’t even walk to live the ‘real life’. At the same time, she knows that ‘dreams always end, they don’t rise up just descend’*, and this thought is the source of the wistfulness of her gaze that Whistler has so beautifully captured.
Here we see the typical elements of Japanese culture that can be found in many 19th century paintings; pink flowers, a fan, porcelain vase. Influence of Japanese Ukiyo-e prints, which were immensely popular at the time, is visible in the composition as well; you see how the picture looks like it’s cut on the ends, her wide sleeve on the left, pink azaleas at the bottom and her hand and the vase in the upper part of the painting. That’s something you don’t see in paintings of Academic Realism. Whistler is even said to have introduced Rossetti to Japanese art as a matter of fact.
Beautiful delicate pink azaleas are almost protruding into the composition, leaning their pink blossoms and delicate little leaves, as if they’re ready to listen to her sorrows and comfort her. ‘Don’t be sad, spring will soon come, and your woes will be gone‘, they seem to whisper. Joanna ignores them, her face turned away from the viewer. It’s the mirror which reveals the sadness and wistfulness of her gaze, and also the seascape that’s opposite the fireplace. She seems to be thinking:
“I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers,
And everything but sleep.” (Swinburne)
Perhaps the most beautiful part of the painting, besides the flowers, is her dress which is painted in soft, almost transparent brushstrokes. Its gentle, dreamy appeal is contrasted with the strict, geometrical line of the fireplace. White is the hardest colours to paint, but Whistler shows a complete mastery over it, and the painting deserves its title ‘symphony’, for it is indeed a symphony in whites. In one painting below, Symphony in Flesh Colour and Pink: Portrait of Mrs Frances Leyland, whose beauty arrives from the subtlety of colours, you’ll see that mastery of white again, and the dress seems to flow effortlessly, like a river, decorated with the flowers that also serve as an interior decoration; it’s hard to say where reality ends and dream start because the more I look at these gorgeous studies in white, the more I am drawn into this ethereal, delicate world that Whistler has created, using just his brush and colours, not magic.
James Abbot McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) was an American artist, but after coming to England in 1859, he never returned to his homeland again, but instead divided his time between London and Paris, and nurtured friendships with other artists and writers on the each side of the Channel; Gaultier, Swinburne, Manet and Courbet to name a few. Whistler is famous for promoting ‘art for art’s sake philosophy’, and enraging Ruskin who emphasised the social, moralistic role of art. He was also known for giving his paintings musical names, such as ‘Symphony’ or ‘Nocturne’, which sometimes enraged the critics, but still fascinates the lovers of his art, myself included.
This painting, with Joanna’s ghost-like reflection in the mirror, inspired Swinburne to write these verses:
‘Glad, but not flushed with gladness,
Since joys go by;
Sad, but not bent with sadness,
Since sorrows die;
Deep in the gleaming glass
She sees all past things pass,
And all sweet life that was lie down and lie.‘
The critics have drawn a parallel between this painting and Ingres’ Portrait of Louise de Broglie, Countess d’Haussonville from 1845, which also has a lady standing by the mirror. Similar meditative mood, delicate whiteness, and touch of the East, can be found in many of Whistler’s paintings, here are a few:
James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl, 1862 (Note: model is Joanna again)
James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Symphony in Flesh Colour and Pink: Portrait of Mrs Frances Leyland, 1872-1873
James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Le Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine, 1863-65
My interest in these paintings arose because of my longing for Spring, so here’s a beautiful haiku poem for the season that’s upon us. Spring, I am anxiously awaiting you, please come quickly!
“In these spring days,
when tranquil light encompasses
the four directions,
why do the blossoms scatter
with such uneasy hearts?” (Ki no Tomonori, c. 850-c. 904)
Tags: American painter, art, art for art's sake, haiku poems, James Abbot McNeill Whistler, Japan, Japonism, Joanna Hiffernan, longing for spring, lover, meditative, model, Muse, Painting, pink blossoms, pink flowers, Poem, Swinburne, Symphony, Whistler, White, white dress
Categories Art, Impressionism, Literature
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Tag Archives: young girl
Birth Anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe – The Oval Portrait
Edgar Allan Poe was born on this day in 1809. It must have been a cold and dreary winter’s day in Boston when his parents, traveling actors, welcomed him into this sad world. If he had been a girl, he would have been named Cordelia because his mother was a fan of William Shakespeare and often played roles from his plays. But he was a boy and they named him Edgar instead, again a theatre-inspired name from the play “King Lear”, more about it here. Now is as good opportunity as ever to indulge in his poetry or prose, and I decided to remind you all of his perhaps the shortest short story called “The Oval Portrait” (1842) which lingers in the memory long after one reads it; the shortness and the vague ending leave one wanting more, and the complex ideas about the conflict of life vs art, reality versus the world of imagination, and the idea of art feeding on life and ultimately destroying it. These ideas carried within them a seed which, long after Poe’s death in 1849, traveled over the ocean and blossomed into sumptuous flowers; the “l’art pour l’art” philosophy and later Aesthetic movement and Oscar Wilde’s “Dorian Gray”.
This story seems to have been particularly appealing to the French Nouvelle Vague director Jean-Luc Godard because in his film Vivre sa Vie or My Life to Live (1962), there is a scene where a young man is reading a fragment of the story to the main character Nana, played by Anna Karina who was Godard’s wife at the time. Their marriage was already falling apart because he was apparently too absorbed to even notice her or anything besides his films. Everything he wanted to say, he expressed through the art of film. Just like the painter in the story, Godard saw Anna, his beautiful blue-eyed wife only through the camera lens. You can watch the clip here if you’re interested.
“The Oval Portrait” starts as a Gothic tale with an unnamed narrator coming into a strange castle and becoming enamored with a portrait of a beautiful young woman on the wall, but the plot soon jumps from the narrator to the story about the portrait itself and its history, again there’s “the most poetic topic in the world” according to Poe himself; the death of a beautiful woman, a pale wistful bride and her half-mad artist husband. Here is the entire story accompanied by some portraits of pretty women painted around the same time the story was originally published:
Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Bildnis eines Mädchens (Portrait of a Young Girl), 1840
THE CHATEAU into which my valet had ventured to make forcible entrance, rather than permit me, in my desperately wounded condition, to pass a night in the open air, was one of those piles of commingled gloom and grandeur which have so long frowned among the Appennines, not less in fact than in the fancy of Mrs. Radcliffe. To all appearance it had been temporarily and very lately abandoned. We established ourselves in one of the smallest and least sumptuously furnished apartments. It lay in a remote turret of the building. Its decorations were rich, yet tattered and antique. Its walls were hung with tapestry and bedecked with manifold and multiform armorial trophies, together with an unusually great number of very spirited modern paintings in frames of rich golden arabesque. In these paintings, which depended from the walls not only in their main surfaces, but in very many nooks which the bizarre architecture of the chateau rendered necessary- in these paintings my incipient delirium, perhaps, had caused me to take deep interest; so that I bade Pedro to close the heavy shutters of the room- since it was already night- to light the tongues of a tall candelabrum which stood by the head of my bed- and to throw open far and wide the fringed curtains of black velvet which enveloped the bed itself. I wished all this done that I might resign myself, if not to sleep, at least alternately to the contemplation of these pictures, and the perusal of a small volume which had been found upon the pillow, and which purported to criticise and describe them.
Long- long I read- and devoutly, devotedly I gazed. Rapidly and gloriously the hours flew by and the deep midnight came. The position of the candelabrum displeased me, and outreaching my hand with difficulty, rather than disturb my slumbering valet, I placed it so as to throw its rays more fully upon the book.
But the action produced an effect altogether unanticipated. The rays of the numerous candles (for there were many) now fell within a niche of the room which had hitherto been thrown into deep shade by one of the bed-posts. I thus saw in vivid light a picture all unnoticed before. It was the portrait of a young girl just ripening into womanhood. I glanced at the painting hurriedly, and then closed my eyes. Why I did this was not at first apparent even to my own perception. But while my lids remained thus shut, I ran over in my mind my reason for so shutting them. It was an impulsive movement to gain time for thought- to make sure that my vision had not deceived me- to calm and subdue my fancy for a more sober and more certain gaze. In a very few moments I again looked fixedly at the painting.
That I now saw aright I could not and would not doubt; for the first flashing of the candles upon that canvas had seemed to dissipate the dreamy stupor which was stealing over my senses, and to startle me at once into waking life.
The portrait, I have already said, was that of a young girl. It was a mere head and shoulders, done in what is technically termed a vignette manner; much in the style of the favorite heads of Sully. The arms, the bosom, and even the ends of the radiant hair melted imperceptibly into the vague yet deep shadow which formed the back-ground of the whole. The frame was oval, richly gilded and filigreed in Moresque. As a thing of art nothing could be more admirable than the painting itself. But it could have been neither the execution of the work, nor the immortal beauty of the countenance, which had so suddenly and so vehemently moved me. Least of all, could it have been that my fancy, shaken from its half slumber, had mistaken the head for that of a living person. I saw at once that the peculiarities of the design, of the vignetting, and of the frame, must have instantly dispelled such idea- must have prevented even its momentary entertainment. Thinking earnestly upon these points, I remained, for an hour perhaps, half sitting, half reclining, with my vision riveted upon the portrait. At length, satisfied with the true secret of its effect, I fell back within the bed. I had found the spell of the picture in an absolute life-likeliness of expression, which, at first startling, finally confounded, subdued, and appalled me. With deep and reverent awe I replaced the candelabrum in its former position. The cause of my deep agitation being thus shut from view, I sought eagerly the volume which discussed the paintings and their histories. Turning to the number which designated the oval portrait, I there read the vague and quaint words which follow:
Henry Mundy, Martha Kermode, c. 1840
“She was a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee. And evil was the hour when she saw, and loved, and wedded the painter. He, passionate, studious, austere, and having already a bride in his Art; she a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee; all light and smiles, and frolicsome as the young fawn; loving and cherishing all things; hating only the Art which was her rival; dreading only the pallet and brushes and other untoward instruments which deprived her of the countenance of her lover. It was thus a terrible thing for this lady to hear the painter speak of his desire to pourtray even his young bride. But she was humble and obedient, and sat meekly for many weeks in the dark, high turret-chamber where the light dripped upon the pale canvas only from overhead. But he, the painter, took glory in his work, which went on from hour to hour, and from day to day. And be was a passionate, and wild, and moody man, who became lost in reveries; so that he would not see that the light which fell so ghastly in that lone turret withered the health and the spirits of his bride, who pined visibly to all but him. Yet she smiled on and still on, uncomplainingly, because she saw that the painter (who had high renown) took a fervid and burning pleasure in his task, and wrought day and night to depict her who so loved him, yet who grew daily more dispirited and weak. And in sooth some who beheld the portrait spoke of its resemblance in low words, as of a mighty marvel, and a proof not less of the power of the painter than of his deep love for her whom he depicted so surpassingly well. But at length, as the labor drew nearer to its conclusion, there were admitted none into the turret; for the painter had grown wild with the ardor of his work, and turned his eyes from canvas merely, even to regard the countenance of his wife. And he would not see that the tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of her who sate beside him. And when many weeks bad passed, and but little remained to do, save one brush upon the mouth and one tint upon the eye, the spirit of the lady again flickered up as the flame within the socket of the lamp. And then the brush was given, and then the tint was placed; and, for one moment, the painter stood entranced before the work which he had wrought; but in the next, while he yet gazed, he grew tremulous and very pallid, and aghast, and crying with a loud voice, ‘This is indeed Life itself!’ turned suddenly to regard his beloved:- She was dead!
Tags: 1809, 1842, 1962, aesthetic movement, American writer, Anna Karina, art, artist, beautiful woman, birth anniversary, Birthday, Boston, bride, castle, Death, Edgar Allan Poe, Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Godard, January 19th, Jean Luc Godard, l'art pour l'art, life vs art, mad artist, pale woman, Poe, portrait, short story, story, The Oval Portrait, The Picture of Dorian Gray, tower, Vivre sa Vie, young girl
Categories Art, Literature, Romanticism, Victorian era
William John Montaigne – The Imprisonment of Princess Elizabeth
“She sits in her red tower – and dreams.”
(Virginia Woolf, from a letter to Ethel Smyth written c. January 1935)
William John Montaigne (1820-1902), The Imprisonment of Princess Elizabeth, 1866
A young angelic faced maiden is standing by the window in a small chamber in the Tower of London. Our eyes are instantly captivated by her gorgeous dress; so sumptuous and so vibrantly red with golden detailing on the bodice, puffed ‘Juliet’ sleeves, delicate white ruffles around her slender neck, and a shining silk petticoat which falls beautifully and creases majestically, bringing to mind the splendour of the dresses painted by Van Dyck in his portraits of the seventeenth century court ladies. Apart from the beautiful vibrant gown, our eyes are captivated by her face which reveals an inner turmoil. So pale and delicate, almost doll-like with sad pink-lidded eyes and full pouting mouth. Wistfulness of her gaze reveals her thoughts and worries. So tall, thin, elegant, and regal she seems to is in that stuffy old chamber. She seemed to have been writing something on the wooden wall, words unbeknownst to us, but something made her stop and her hand gesture, resting on her forehead, signifies this overwhelming worry. This fiery red-haired girl is the twenty year old Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen Elizabeth.
Elizabeth, a younger Protestant sister was a thorn in the eye to the Catholic Mary, daughter of Henry VIII’s first wife Catherine of Aragon, and when Wyatt’s rebellion broke out early in 1554, Mary wasted not a second in trying to accuse Elizabeth of conspiracy. Elizabeth was questioned at court about her involvement with the rebellion and despite having protested her innocence, she was imprisoned in the Tower of London for two months. All sorts of thoughts must have been haunting her mind when she was imprisoned on the 18th March 1554. Her future was uncertain, what awaited her was a possible death, and, moreover, the Tower of London was the same place where her mother, Anne Boleyn, had spent her last days before being accused of witchcraft and adultery and then executed. Was her mother’s spirit there to comfort her, in blue velvety night when the full moon shone through the tall windows?
In this painting, young and pretty historical figure is facing the same inner drama, fear and uncertainty that some other heroines have faced; Joan of Arc and Lady Jane Grey to name a few. Romanticism loved romanticising martyrs and beautiful brave heroines facing tragedies, and Victorian painting brought this genre on an entirely new level. William John Montaigne was a Victorian era painter and such a scene is perfectly suited to Victorian tastes, but the wonderful execution and striking colours give it a lasting value, it’s not to be forgotten easily. Still, Montaigne’s painting style here has a lot in common with Pre-Raphaelites too, more than the sentimental mainstream Victorian art. The composition with the girl standing by the window, looking worries and dressed in a vibrant dress, brings to mind John Everett Millais’ “Marianna”. More similarities are found in the manner in which Montaigne’s painting was painted, using intense colours and portraying intense genuine feeling, and being attentive to detailing.
For anyone interested in the political situation behind Elizabeth’s imprisonment and even her letter, you can read an interesting article here.
Tags: 1860s, 1866, 19th century, 19th century art, art, England, girl, imprisonment, John William Montaigne, London, Painting, Queen Elizabeth I, red dress, Romanticism, tower, tower of london, Tudor era, victorian art, Victorian era, young girl
Categories Art, Victorian era
Egon Schiele – Death and the Maiden
Egon Schiele died on the 31st October 1918. Three days prior to that he witnessed the death of his pregnant wife Edith. If it wasn’t for the Spanish influenza, she could have had their child and his prodigious mind could have produced many more drawings and paintings.
Egon Schiele, Death and the Maiden, 1915
Painting “Death and the Maiden” is a very personal work and it connects and unites two themes that were a lifelong fascination to Egon Schiele; death and eroticism. It shows two figures in an embrace, apparently seen from above, not unusual at all for Schiele to use such a strange perspective. They cling to each other in despair; painfully aware of the finality and hopelessness of their love. They are lying on rumpled white sheets, their last abode before the hours of love vanish forever, which simultaneously add a touch of macabre sensuality and remind us of the burial shroud. The background is an unidentifiable space, a desolate landscape painted in colours of mud and rust.
Death is a man not so dissimilar to Schiele’s other male figures or self-portraits, without the help of the title we couldn’t even guess that is represents death. The red-haired woman hugs him tightly with her long arms and lays her head on his chest. She is not the least bit afraid of his black shroud of infinity. She holds onto him as if he were love itself, and still, her hands are not resting on his back gently, they are separate and her crooked fingers are touching themselves. We can sense their inevitable separation through their gestures and face expressions, and, at the same time, their embrace feels frozen in time, the figures feel stiff and motionless, as if the rigor mortis had already taken place and bound them in an everlasting embrace. The maiden will not die, she will be clinging to death for all eternity.
It is impossible not to draw parallels between the figures in the painting and Schiele’s personal life at the time. The figure of Death resembles Schiele, and we do all know he showed no hesitation when it came to painting and even taking a photo of himself, and the red-haired woman is then clearly Wally. To get a better perspective at the symbolism behind this painting, we need to understand the things that happened in Schiele’s life that year. In June 1915 he married Edith Harms; a shy and innocent girl next door. But first he needed to brake things off with Wally Neuzil, a lover and a muse who not only supported him during the infamous Neulengbach Affair but was also, ironically, an accomplice in introducing him to Edith.
Upon meeting Wally for what was to be the last time, Egon handed her a letter in which he proposed they spend a holiday together every summer, without Edith. It’s something that Wally couldn’t agree with. Perhaps she wasn’t a suitable woman to be his wife, but she wasn’t without standards or heart either. There, in the dreamy smoke of Egon’s cigarette, sitting at a little table in the Café Eichberger where he often came to play billiards, the two doomed lovers bid their farewells. Egon gazed at her with his dark eyes and said not a word. He was disappointed but did not appear particularly heart-broken, at least no at first sight, but surely the separation must have pained him in the moments of solitude and contemplation, the moments which gave birth to paintings such as this one.
Egon Schiele, Embrace, 1915
If we assume then that the painting indeed shows Egon and Wally, the question arises: why did he chose to portray himself as a personification of Death? He chose to end things with Wally, so why mourn for the ending? And shouldn’t Death be a possessive and remorseless figure who smothers the poor delicate Maiden in his cold deadly embrace? Schiele’s embrace in the painting seems caring and his gaze full of sadness.
On a visual level, the motif of two lovers set against a decorative background brings to mind both Gustav Klimt’s “The Kiss” (1907) and Oskar Kokoschka’s “The Bride of the Wind (or The Tempest)” from 1914. Although similar in composition, the mood of Schiele’s painting differs vastly to those of his fellow Viennese eccentrics. Klimt’s painting shows a couple in a kiss and oozes sensuality and beauty, the background being very vibrant and ornamental. It’s a painting made before the war, its horrors and changes. Kokoschka’s painting is, in a way, more similar to Schiele’s but they two are very different in the overall effect. Both show doomed lovers in a sad embrace, and a strange, slightly distorted background, but Kokoschka’s painting is a whirlwind of energy, brushstrokes are nervous and energetic, the space is vibrant, not breathing but screaming. Schiele’s painting exhibits stillness, stiffness, a change caught in the moment, a breeze stopped, and the space around them seems heavy, muddy and static. “Kokoschka’s is a ‘baroque’ painting, while Schiele’s relates more to the Gothic tradition. “The Tempest” is life-affirming, the Schiele is resigned to the inevitable, immobile and drained of life.” (Whitford; Egon Schiele)
Egon Schiele, Lovemaking, 1915
In this painting Schiele used the old theme of Death and the Maiden and enriched it by adding an introspective, private psychological dimension. Schiele’s rendition of the theme isn’t a meditation on transience and vanity as it was in the works of Renaissance masters such as Hans Baldung Grien; a gifted and imaginative German painter and a pupil of Albrecht Dürer. Grien revisited the theme of Death and the Maiden a few times during a single decade, at the beginning of the sixteenth century. These paintings always feature a beautiful and something vain young woman (she is looking at herself in the mirror) with smooth pale skin and long golden hair, and a grotesque figure of Death looming behind her like a shadow, reminding her with a sand clock that soon enough she too will come into his arms.
Hans Baldung Grien, from left to right: Death and the Maiden, 1510; Death and the Maiden, 1517; Death and the Maiden, 1518-20
I’ve included two more examples of this theme in this post; another version by Grien where Death is shown chowing the Maiden’s dress and the knight is literally saving his damsel not from the dragon or from danger, but from Death and mortality itself. Quite cool! And an interesting detail from Van Groningen’s “The Triumph of Death” where Death is shown as a skeleton in a cloud armed with a spear, chasing a frightened and screaming young Maiden dressed in flimsy robes who is running around hopelessly trying to escape. In these paintings, the Maiden is merely a symbol of the fragility of youth and beauty, but later artists, the Romantics and the fin-de-siecle generation, and Schiele too, had different vision of Death; they glamorised it and romanticised it. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “Edward Fane’s Rosebud” the beautiful young Maiden Rose is faced with mortality for the first time and how poetically Hawthorne had described it:
“She shuddered at the fantasy, that, in grasping the child’s cold fingers, her virgin hand had exchanged a first greeting with mortality, and could never lose the earthly taint. How many a greeting since! But as yet, she was a fair young girl, with the dewdrops of fresh feeling in her bosom; and instead of Rose, which seemed too mature a name for her half-opened beauty, her lover called her Rosebud.”
Death was a life-long fascination for Schiele; at a very young age he witnessed his father’s madness and suffering death, possibly from syphilis, he was obsessed with the idea of doppelgänger who was seen as a foreboding of death, in his poem “Pineforest” he even wrote “How good! – Everything is living dead”. All his art is tinged with death, and with Schiele it wasn’t a fad of the times but a deep, personal morbid obsession. In the height of summer, he already senses autumn leaves, in the living flesh he already sees decay. Also, he was born in 1890, and along with other artists of his generation he witnessed the final decay of a vast empire that had lasted for centuries; “Decay, death and disaster seemed to haunt their every waking hour and to provide the substance of their nightmares.” (Whitford, Egon Schiele)
Hans Baldung Grien, The Maiden, the Knight and Death, date unknown
Jan Swart van Groningen, Der Triumph des Todes (detail), 1525-50
Life and Death contrafted or, An Essay on Woman, 1770
Richard Bergh, The Girl and Death, 1888
Henry Levi (1840-1904), La jeune fille et la mort, 1900
Marianne Stokes, The Young Girl and Death, 1900
Happy Halloween, with Schiele and Death!
Tags: 1915, Beauty, dead, Death, Death and the Maiden, death anniversary, Egon Schiele, erotic, Hans Baldung Grien, love, Maiden, Oskar Kokoschka, Sadness, Schiele, Separation, The Tempest, transience, Vienna, Wally Neuzil, young girl
Categories Art
Faustine and the Beautiful Summer (1972) – A Review
A few days ago I watched a brilliant film called “Faustine and the beautiful summer” (original title: Faustine et le bel été) directed by Nina Companeez whose mood of dreams, romance, indolence and love for nature really struck a chord with me and I found a lot of things highly relatable, particularly the character of Faustine: her reveries, her carefree nature. Also, I wish I could just take her gorgeous outfits from the screen and have them in my wardrobe.
The plot is simple: a pretty sixteen year old girl called Faustine (played by Muriel Catala) is about to spent her summer holidays with her grandparents in the countryside. While there, she spends time wandering the woods and the meadows, discovering the secrets of nature as well as spying on her neighbours who are also there on holiday. She is ocassionally flirting with a fellow teenage boy from that family called Joachim, but mostly takes delight in rejecting him because she develops an interest in his uncle. She eventually befriends the entire family and visits them often, and spends time with Joachim’s female cousins who find her fascinating.
Everything is seen trough her eyes and it is almost like reading her diary, her memories of that summer. And through her eyes everything is magical and whimsical. There isn’t much that goes on in the film and it isn’t long either, only around an hour and a half, but the slow and sensuous mood that reminds me of David Hamilton’s photography from roughly the same years makes it a delight for me. Still, there is more depth to the film than it appears on the surface. For sure it is not a sugary and naive teenage romantic drama. Many conflicts linger throughout the film and surface one by one; conflicts between sensuality and innocence, real life vs dreams, observing life vs participating in it. Those are some things that anyone could relate to, but a girl of Faustine’s age and inexperience would particularly understand it, and that is another reason I loved the film. Not only do I love the aesthetic but the themes as well. And, Chopin’s music is played throughout the film as well.
There is a sweet sensuality lingering throughout the scenes; Faustine walking through the fields of poppies and pressing the golden wheat to her soft cheek, kissing the bark of a tree, the trace of milk left on Faustine’s lips as she puts down her mug, Faustine indolently lying on the bed wrapped in nothing but white lace and eating cherries and strawberries, Faustine talking to a delicate newborn poppy flower… and an ultimate feeling of being immersed in nature when she goes skinny dipping in a nearby lake while the rain is falling romantically and announcing the arrival of autumn. I adored one scene where she is running through fields of wheat and poppies, dressed in a white gown and wearing her straw hat with a long pink ribbon, running playfully as if she were a little girl and shouting “Summer isn’t over”, then throwing herself into the grass and gazing at the play of sunlight coming through the treetops and whispering: “Sunshine fills the air. Flowers of all colours. I drink you in, you make me dizzy.”
I love the coming of age theme and I can relate to Faustine feeling that everything is possible, seeing beauty all around her, and feeling rain of sadness falling on her sun-kissed skin from time to time, which are not the dark rains of autumn but the warm and transient summer showers that stir the soul but leave no scars. Throughout the film Faustine is constantly walking the tightrope between her daydreams and the real life around her. The last scene ends the film beautifully; she is dressed in a long gown, so elegant and grown-up, in an embrace with Joachim’s uncle and says: “And finally Faustine will enter the world through the blue door. Today my first kiss and in seventy years, at best, I’ll be dead.” It sounds as if she is narrating her own life, and it is unclear whether she is talking to him, herself or the trees all around them. From the world of daydreams, through a kiss, Faustine at last enters the real world and tastes its sweetness.
And now a few verses from Derek Walcott’s poem “Bleecker Street, Summer” which I discovered by serendipity last summer:
Summer for prose and lemons, for nakedness and languor,
for the eternal idleness of the imagined return,
for rare flutes and bare feet, and the August bedroom
of tangled sheets and the Sunday salt, ah violin!
When I press summer dusks together, it is
a month of street accordions and sprinklers
laying the dust, small shadows running from me.
These beautiful verses from John Keats’s “Endymion” which I loved last summer came to mind while I was watching the film:
…Now a soft kiss –
Aye, by that kiss, I vow an endless bliss,
An immortality of passion’s thine:
Ere long I will exalt thee to the shine
Of heaven ambrosial; and we will shade
Ourselves whole summers by a river glade;
And I will tell thee stories of the sky,
And breathe thee whispers of its minstrelsy,
My happy love will overwing all bounds!
O let me melt into thee! let the sounds
Of our close voices marry at their birth;
Let us entwine hoveringly!
I hope you enjoyed this review and that you decide to watch the film. I am glad I watched it now, in May, because I can look forward to another summer and hope that it is as sweet as the last one’s was, instead of pining for it once it passes.
Tags: 1970s, 1972., Bleecker Street Summer, coming of age, countryside, Derek Walcott, Dreamy, Endymion, fantasy vs reality, Faustine and the beautiful summer, Film, French cinematography, French film, idyll, indolence, Innocence, John Keats, kiss, love, Muriel Catalá, Nature, Nina Companeez, Poem, Review, romance, Romanticism, Summer, young girl
Categories Costumes through film, Film
Edvard Munch – Spring
Edvard Munch, Spring, 1889
At last spring has won the battle against winter and now the soft breeze and mellow sunlight are coming through the open window, flowers started blooming and a little sparrow is ready to sit on the windowsill and sing a little ditty to brighten up the lonely days of this weak and ill young girl. In this simple, almost genre-scene, Edvard Munch managed to convey so much depth and emotion. The most poignant detail in the painting is the girl’s mute ghost-like pale face with eyelids almost closed. While the sun bathes the room in warm yellowish glow, she is turning her head away from it, symbolically turning away from the life and lightness, gazing in the distance with watery eyes that saw the other side of the grave. Her small head, with that sad and gentle face, resting on the white pillow awakens empathy and compassion in the viewer because you get the sense that death has started living inside her, just the same as spring has started being alive outdoors. Her face radiates calmness and spiritual beauty, but the stillness that envelops the room is illusive, for the moment of death is yet to come and the scene we are looking at is merely the calm before the storm. The end of the long struggle and pain is near, and her soul will soon be dancing with the pure white daisies in the meadow. Stylistically, it is not Munch is his full Expressionist frenzy, but thematically, his obsession with death and the awareness of it is prevalent.
Death was Munch’s silent bride and his most faithful companion since his childhood; his mother died from tuberculosis when Munch was only five years old, his dearest sister Johanne Sophie died from same malaise in 1877 at the age of fourteen, and he himself was of frail health. The death of his sister affected him deeply and he returned to this sense of loss and tragedy numerous times in his artistic career, making many versions of the painting “The Sick Child”. Here, in “Spring”, he portrayed the same event.
Edvard Munch, The Sick Child, 1885-86, the original version
It was with this painting, “The Sick Child”, that Munch departed from Impressionism and for the first time painted in a style which would later be called Expressionism. The theme was such that is needed depth and emotions, and a new style. It’s interesting that in “Spring”, which was painted a few years later, he returned, for a moment, to a more Realistic style of painting which looks more similar to some Victorian genre-scenes than the art Munch is known for. Where did this artistic “regression” arise from?
Tags: 1889, 19th century art, art, Death, Edvard Munch, Expressionism, ill girl, illness, Johanne Sophie Munch, loss, Munch, Norway, Norwegian artist, pain, Painting, Spring, struggle, symbol, Tuberculosis, young girl
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Fostering Creativity
Kimming Yap
Consultant, Designer and Educator
Kimming Yap is the managing director of Creativeans, an interdisciplinary creative consultancy based in Singapore, Milan and Jakarta.
Kimming is a leading expert on brand and design strategies, and has collaborated with partners across a broad range of industries, including consumer goods, healthcare, beauty, food & beverage, technology, furniture, industrial, retail and government.
A recipient of multiple design awards, Kimming’s works have been widely published and exhibited at international platforms such as Salone del Mobile, London Design Festival and Triennale Design Museum. He is also the author of branding book ‘Are You Brand Dead?’ and serves on the judging panel of Singapore Prestige Brand Award.
Kimming currently serves as the Chairman of Singapore Manufacturing Federation’s Lifestyle Industry Group and is on the executive committee of Design Business Chamber Singapore.
He holds a Master of Design from Domus Academy, Milan.
Creativeans
Singapore Manufacturing Federation
Chairman, Lifestyle Industry Group
Design Business Chamber Singapore
Executive Committee Member
Master in Design
Domus Academy
39 Woodlands Close, #08-56, Mega@Woodlands, Singapore 737856
hello@c-academy.org
About C-Academy
Project / Research Collaboration
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QTWO - Q2 Holdings, Inc.
Avg. Volume 414,531
EPS (TTM) N/A
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No Banking Charter? No Problem. Fintechs Team Up With Small-Town Banks
(Bloomberg) -- Customers of Square Inc., the Silicon Valley payments behemoth, might assume that the cash they send to friends on the platform is housed in a glassy building in Silicon Valley, tended to by hoodie-clad tech workers. Actually, that money is more likely to be sitting in a 117-year-old community bank in Iowa.Partnerships between high-flying tech companies and traditional banks, many of them tiny by comparison, are a key force behind the financial technology boom. Because virtually no tech companies have the license required to perform banking services, many of them partner with existing banks to offer a suite of services including checking accounts, credit cards and the back-end and regulatory work the tech companies aren’t equipped—or allowed—to handle.Now, driven by the tech industry’s thirst to jump into finance, a new crop of businesses are looking to broker the connections between tech and banks. One such business is Cambr, a little-known division of an investment company called StoneCastle, which counts Square and other fintechs as customers. StoneCastle works with more than 800 small banks, spread across the country, ready to take and hold deposits from Silicon Valley startups like Square.“Airbnb, one would argue they are one of the largest hotel chains that doesn't own a room,” said Josh Siegel, chief executive of StoneCastle Partners LLC. “Our network works in a similar way. We have an account at the bank, it's the room we rent, and we can rent it out to whoever we want.”Cambr’s service launched last year as a partnership between StoneCastle, which provides the bank connections, and digital banking platform Q2 Holdings Inc., which works on the software and programming. Square’s Cash App was one of Cambr’s first customers, Siegel said, and it has since added startups like Acorns Grow Inc., MoneyLion Inc., Qapital Inc. and robo-adviser Betterment LLC, in a recently announced deal.What Cambr aims to offer tech companies is a ready-made strategy to accept deposits that they wouldn’t otherwise have the license to handle. Here’s how it works: A tech company or startup might give Cambr as much as $100 billion of customers’ cash, and could then ask the service to spread the money around to potentially hundreds of different financial institutions. A result of spreading out the deposits is that more of the fintech’s cash is insured under the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s $250,000-per-account guarantee, offering more coverage than if the money were deposited at a single institution.A Salve for Digital DisruptionThe partnership model, which has rapidly become the go-to for financial technology companies, does pose some risks for banks, particularly if fast-moving startups draw the ire of regulators, as has happened before. “The banks are the supervised entities so the buck stops with them,” said Brian Korn, partner and head of fintech practice at Manatt, Phelps & Phillips. “The regulators are waiting for situations where there’s a breakdown.”But many community banks have embraced such partnerships, seeing them as a salve in times of digital disruption. More deposits can allow small banks to grow and make more local loans. In Cedar Falls, Iowa, the 117-year-old Lincoln Savings Bank, which works with Cambr, has boosted its revenue by partnering with fintechs, said Mike McCrary, who runs e-commerce and emerging technology for the bank. McCrary said that when Lincoln Savings Bank considered how it could best position itself for the next 10 years, fintech partnerships were an obvious answer. “In order for us to be relevant years from now, there had to be something digital,” he said. “Now we’re putting a lot of resources into this area of our business,” including, he said, building out a new team dedicated to working with tech companies. While the partnerships have injected cash into many small banks, some industry watchers have wondered if those banks could be left in a lurch if fintechs eventually got their own banking charters. If they did, community banks could find themselves as direct competitors to tech companies, without the same digital capabilities. But so far tech companies have made scant progress toward winning banking charters, particularly as government concern over digital financial services has grown. Some members of the U.S. Federal Reserve have voiced concern over fintech’s risk management capabilities. And Facebook Inc.’s foray into cryptocurrency has drawn ire from lawmakers.One option for tech companies has been to apply for an Industrial Loan Charter, which would effectively grant them license to provide financial services. Square first applied for the charter in the fall of 2017, but its request shows no signs of being approved. Social Finance Inc. also applied for an ILC, but withdrew its application altogether.“It’s not easy to become a bank here, and we haven’t seen much traction in general with the ILC,” Matt Burton, partner at venture capital firm QED Investors, said. “What we have seen is continued demand for non-banks to offer banking solutions.”Picking PartnersPartnering with multiple small banks is just one option for fintechs. Some, like Apple Inc. which developed a credit card with Goldman Sachs Group Inc., have teamed up with one big bank instead. But there are advantages to Cambr’s many-bank strategy. Some tech companies favor “the network approach over the big bank because they can negotiate better rates because both parties are getting something they want,'' said Lindsay Davis, a senior analyst at CB Insights. Smaller banks are also more likely to play ball because they aren’t developing competing services.“For the big banks, they are optimizing for customer acquisition and cross-selling services,” Davis said. “So a tech firm getting into financial services might be cannibalizing an existing business.” Joe Yeres, Cambr’s vice president of business development, is partly responsible for brokering the connections with community institutions, and travels a few times a month to places like Waterloo, Iowa, and Kansas City, Mo., where some of the banks it works with are located. The trips were eye-opening, Yeres said.“I was born and raised in New York metro, so the whole thing is a little funny to me,” Yeres said. “I was done with one of the leads of the banking team, and we went out for drinks after work one day, and walking around Waterloo it was like this guy was the mayor, everyone knew him. It was like, ‘Wow, this is how this part of the world works.’”Eventually, Cambr has its sights set on a bigger prize: It wants to handle deposits from the tech giants, not just the startups. Many industry watchers believe large tech companies will eventually move to offer more financial services, as Apple already has with the Apple Card and Amazon.com Inc. has with small business lending. But Siegel realizes that Cambr, the little-known product of the relatively little-known StoneCastle and Q2, faces some hurdles. “Do they want to take a risk on a younger platform?” he asks, and in doing so, “upset big finance, which they’ll still have to work with on some things?”Still, Siegel is pitching the titans of tech, as they continue to march deeper into the world of finance. He adds: “We've probably been out and visited with almost all of them.”(Updates with context on tech companies in the penultimate paragraph. An earlier version of this story corrected the location of Lincoln Savings Bank headquarters. )To contact the author of this story: Julie Verhage in New York at jverhage2@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Anne VanderMey at avandermey@bloomberg.net, Mark MilianFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
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HomeFeaturedJWT wins Egypt’s first ever titanium Lion at Cannes
posted on Jun. 28, 2015 at 6:24 pm
JWT wins Egypt’s first ever titanium Lion at Cannes
Egypt won its first ever titanium Lion on the final night of the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
JWT Entertainment in Cairo picked up the award for ‘Abla Fahita’, a female puppet turned pop star and chat show host. Described as an “entertainment brand that has created an entirely new business model in advertising”, the puppet began life advertising for brands but has since become an entertainment brand in her own right. She has released a hit single with Hassan el Shafei and has since launched her own prime time TV chat show – Live from El Duplex on CBC.
Discussing the win, Ramsey Naja, JWT’s chief creative officer for the Middle East and Africa, said: “Words fail me. With Abla Fahita, the guys didn’t just turn a problem into an opportunity, they made all those buzzwords such as ‘new paradigm’, ‘game changer’ and ‘new business model’ actually make sense. I think this is what an inspired and motivated team can do when they think positive. That’s all it takes to make the jargon ring true.”
JWT’s chief strategy officer for the MENA region, Amal el Masri, added: “As an agency, we are best placed in terms of talent and skill sets to produce insightful entertainment. Abla Fahita is magical – an unlikely star who faced all her challenges with the same poise and charisma, which is probably why she resonates so strongly with her audiences.”
Also picking up an award last night was FP7/DXB, which won a bronze in branded content & entertainment for its ‘Xperia Underwater Store’ for Sony Mobile. Leo Burnett Dubai also won a bronze in film craft for ‘du Tuesday’, while Memac Ogilvy Dubai was handed a bronze in film for Greenpeace International’s ‘Story of a spoon’.
The four wins brought the total number of awards won for the MENA region to 26. There were also two golds and three silvers won in Lions Health, one of the new festivals within a festival that kicked off this year. The two golds went to Geometry Global Dubai for the ‘The lucky Iron Fish Project’, and 3SG-BBDO’s ‘Backup Memory’ for Samsung.
“I am very happy to see that the ‘Backup Memory’ application that helped the patients of Alzheimer’s and their families has won three awards at the Cannes Lions festival,” said Ghariani Hosni, chairman of 3SG-BBDO. “Also we are happy to participate in the success of the BBDO network. Today is a day of pride for our agency and for Tunisia – to climb on the highest steps of the best festival in the world. Three awards at Cannes in our first participation is a good start for our agency. I would like to thank you all the 3SG-BBDO team for these awards.”
Tags:Abla FahitaCannes LionsFP7GeometryJWT CairoJWT EntertainmentLeo Burnett DubaiMemac Ogilvy
Geometry Global Dubai relinquishes Cannes grand prix
Mobily rolls out star-studded TVC for 10th anniversary
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Day 6 was wrought with huge disappointments for me and others. Cancellations dominated the day as the likes of Jane Fonda, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Jennifer Lawrence were all absent desite being on the original guest lists.
My day started off confirming Lawrences absence and speculating heaving that JDM was also a no-show. However, I was still hopeful he was maybe in Toronto for the premiere and just somehow wasnt at the press conference.
I showed up to the premiere for Peace, Love and Misunderstandings hoping for the man who played John Winchester to be in attendance, and worst case scenario...at least I would get Jane Fonda. As it turns out, NEITHER of those situations happened, as both of them were no-shows. Instead, we were mistreated to the incredibly unfriendly Chase Crawford and shockingly unfriendly Kyle MacLachlan, who between of them signed maybe 10 autographs and spent less than a minute interacting with the fans. I dont know what company is dishing the $ out for P,L&M but I can assure you, the cancellation of the movies 2 biggest names and absolute neglect from itsw 2 second tier names likely unsold many tickets that night. The public relations team for this film must have had heart attacks when they checked the next day for fan on the street reactions and saw plenty of negatively worded responses. One of the reactions I saw in person was a gil, maybe 15ish who word for word said "fuck Chase. He NEEDS our ticket sales, we dont NEED his acting, theres lots of other guys to follow". Thisw blunt, factual and quite attentive response to being slighted by the tv actor is the type of thing that will over time hurt his star power. Hes replaceable, theres dozens of prettyboy faces out there, and some casting director is going to 1 day pick a nicer, more personable, more fan friendly 1 over him. The casting director of PL&M probably wishes they had that prior insight.
I attempted the Jennfer Garner red carpet. Had Alicia Silverstone signing near me, but was unable to get close enough to the fading star to get 1 of the limited autographs she tossed out. Jennifer Garner was just as bad, even statign 9according to a source who actually has admited to having bad hearing...but her body language did convey the same message) "I dont like you" as she skipped over my item, which seemed odd for someone that had prior to that moment only seen me for a total of 20 seonds in her entire life, back in 2007. and no words or actions were exchanged in that meeting.
After the shitty start to this day, I decided I better go for what SHOULD be a slam dunk. A premiere at the small Isabelle Bader Theatre. It was the only premiere the theatre had this festival that I worked, and it was...ok. I managed a couple autographs from Sarah Bolger and Scott Speedman as well as 1 from Lily Cole. Sarah Gadon was also there and signed willingly, I just had nothing for the budding star. It broke my shutout slump..even though I had hoped for at least 2 more autographs from that carpet, it was a start.
I contemplated quitting the night there & cutting my losses, but instead took the short walk over to the Windsor Arms for the InStyle party.
A plethora of C & D list names populated the Canadian version of this party. I was disappointed to miss Covert Affairs stars Chris Gorham and Piper Perabo, both of whom walked right by me. I managed an autograph from Anton Yelchin and 1 from Jessica Chastain, before |I opted to call it a night.
A few other names went to the party. Ashley Greene of Twilight fame went there, snubbed the crowd, and got loudly booed for her disrespect. This girl will be doing TV Movies of the week within 2 yrs. She has little to no talent, and a sour attitude and the Twi-fame is about to be done...and she seems oblivious to it. The Trailer Park Boys also showed up, and greeted, signed and took pics with anyone who asked. They have always been terrific at fan interactions, this time was no different. Kim Cattrall was seen leaving the party and snubbed most requests, although she did sign 1 autograph, most of the requests for the aging star were ignored.
All toll, considering how abysmal the day started, getting what I did in the end seemed like a small victory.
A+ Trailer Park Boys
A- Sarah Bolger
A- Sarah Gadon
A- Christopher Gorham
B Scott Speedman
B- Jessica Chastain
B- Lyndsy Fonseca
C+ Anton Yelchin
C Lily Cole
C- Alicia Silverstone
C- Piper Perabo
C- Kim Cattrall
D+ Jennifer Garner
D Ashley Greene
D Chase Crawford
D Kyle MacLachlan
The 2011 Toronto International Film Festival starts this week - here is MY top 30 want list for TIFF 11.
My Top pick for TIFF last year, Michael C. Hall signing autographs at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival on the red carpet at his premiere for Peep World.
The 36th annual Toronto International Film Festival begins later this week, and we will again be there.
Last year, I gave you a list of 20 people I wanted to get. http://canadagraphs.weebly.com/1/post/2010/09/my-top-20-wants-at-tiff-2010.html I managed to see 15 of them, only managed to nab 8 of those 20 though for autographs, but I did get my #1, so that was a victory.
This year, I have pushed the list to 30. So here it is....my top 30 want list for TIFF 2011.
1 Chloe Moretz - Didnt get Hit Girl last year at film fest when she cancelled for a family birthday party. This year, shes committed to coming. Must get.
2 Hugh Laurie - Last year it was Dexter. This year its Dr. House. My must get TV person.
3 Antonio Banderas - Puss In Boots. If he wasnt PIB, I wouldnt even care he was there.
4 Madonna - Really? Are you even remotely shocked? Its Madonna. Theres few names in the entertainment universe as big as this.
5 Saoirse Ronan - She was terrific in Hanna. An Academy Award nominee at just 13 for Atonement. Must get IMO.
6 Maggie Gyllenhaal - Loved Secreatary, loved The Dark Knight.
7 Brad Pitt - Normally, a guy dumb enough to leave Jennifer Aniston for Angelina Jolie I would assume has bad decision making skills...but he seems to make blockbuster movies despite this severe retardation.
8 Michelle Williams - Huge Dawsons Creek fan. Actually got her autograph way back when she was still on DC, but was working for someone else at the time & despite asking for 1, never got 1. Chance to rememdy that now.
9 Jeffrey Dean Morgan - Huge Supernatural fan, always looking to add new things to my collection.
10 Jason Statham - Its JasoN Statham, nuff said.
11 Neil Young - Hes ahead of U2 and Pearl Jam simply because I've somehow never got him before.
12 Elena Anaya - Never knew who she was till I found some hot pics of her from a movie she did.
13 U2 - If you havent heard of them, its ok. They might be big someday.
14 George Clooney - In 2007 I literally missed getting him by less than 3 ft. Chance for redemption.
15 Julia Maxwell - Key figure in season 6 of Supernatural was Eve. Played by this hot specimen.
16 Kyle MacLachlan - The Captain on How I Met Your Mother. Nuff said.
17 Keira Knightley - Hopefully redemption for not getting her in 2007.
18 Gerard Butler - Its Gerard Butler. Nuff said.
19 Alison Pill - She was the only character in Milk I liked.
20 Gael Garcia Bernal - In 2007 I was naive enough to think "ah I'll just walk right up and get this guy. No one cares about him". Now I am sart enough from my prior experience to know "I NEED to get him".
21 Nicholas Cage - Got his autograph before when he filmed Ghost Rider, but it was on a Colorado Avalance team card because I wasnt expecting him. Never seen him since. Chance to finally get the photos I printed back then done.
22 Jennifer Lawrence - Even though I know nothing about The Hunger Games, I also am smart enough to know from my Twilight experiences, dont poo-poo these book driven series.
23 Pearl Jam - Despite having got them more times than I can recall, I will always want more.
24 Viggo Mortensen - Funny enough, I got him in 2007 and didnt really know who he was then, since then I've seen him in Eastern Promises and A History Of Voilence, so now I WANT to get him.
25 Ewan McGregor - Star Wars. Nuff Said. Got him in 2007.
26 Jennifer Garner - should have got her 4 yrs ago at my 1st film fest, but some deaf hounds ruined it for everyone when they disregarded her demand to not push. Fingers crossed I get to her this time before they ruin it again.
27 Lily Cole - Dont know anything about her except she looks hot, and isnt opposed to being naked.
28 Sarah Silverman - She was 14th on my list last year, and I got her. Thus why shes not too high up this year, but still someone I hope to get again.
29 Liana Liberato - Had photos for her last year, but missed out. Second crack, maybe this time I'll get her.
30 Robin Wright - I am really assuming she will be much nicer than her ex, Sean Penn.
Others I would be happy to find.... Selma Blair, Willem Dafoe, Kirsten Dunst, Ryan Gosling, Leighton Meester, Chris Pratt, Scott Speedman, Rachel Weisz & Anton Yelchin.
Hoping they show up - Ralph Fiennes, Brendan Gleeson, Hugh Jackman, Ashley Greene, Eric Peterson, Alicia Silverstone, Nicole Kidman, Ed Helms, Jason Segal, Bryan Cranston
Supernatural star Jensen Ackles (Dean Winchester) leaves the WB press junket
This past weekend, Supernatural took part in the WB press junket & photo shoot.
Both Jared Padalecki & Jensen Ackles made the trek out to South Vancouver. However, only Mr. Ackles took the time to come over to the street to sign some autographs & talk.
Jensen told us he would only sign 1 each because as he put it "we must have a tonne of them signed now" & I explained to him that there was always new shots out there...and in this particular instance, I was getting a photo done that I didnt want to start till I got the 1 non-regular on it first.
While talking to Jensen, he looked at my photo, a trio photo of him, Jared & Jeffrey Dean Morgan (already signed by JDM from the encounter in the previous blog last week). He asked me when I got it signed, I told him on the set of the Dibbuk Box, which he is here doing, which Jensen replied "I know".
I then told him how JDM only had good things to say about him & Jared & Jensen replied "he better if he knows whats good for him".
Then he was asked if he might see JDM while here, which he then told us he was going to be seeing him that night for dinner (night BEFORE their Superbowl rendevous at Red Card).
I then asked if he thought any chance of JDM ever being on SPN again, and he answered that JDM was "too big for us" now as he was walking away.
He was then on his way...likely to get ready for his dinner plans that evening.
Supernatural & Greys Anatomy star Jeffrey Dean Morgan on set of "Dibbuk Box"
*THIS POST MAY CONTAIN VERY MILD SPOILERS ABOUT THE FILM...DO NOT READ ON IF YOU DONT WANT TO KNOW ANYTHING. PHOTOS DO NOT CONTAIN ANY SPOILERS... OUTSIDE OF WHAT JDM WILL BE WEARING IN THE FILM*
Yesterday I caught up with the set of a new thrilled "Dibbuk Box" in South Vancouver.
The feature film stars Kyra Sedgwick (The Closer) & Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Supernatural & Greys Anatomy) who are divorced from each other, but are brought together to try and find a way to end a curse on their daughter after she buys a box that containts an angry evil spirit.
The film is based on a "true story" in the sense that its premise is based on an article from an L.A. Times reporter about a similar box bought by a girl on ebay some time ago that caused its owners a variety of bad luck.
So on this day Jeffrey Dean Morgan was on set. Prior to Mr. Morgans scenes there was another series of scenes done with a different actor. The other actors scene showed him arriving home, and going inside to find his mother had been killed. In Mr. Morgans scene, he would show up in a car, get out, walk to the door & knock on the door. The other actor would answer it & a conversation between the pair took part where the other actor tells Jeffreys character about the box and its danger... then Jeffrey goes inside to continue the talk... and thats all we were able to see outside.
After his scene, the movies publicist brought Mr. Morgan over to the 3 people waiting across the street to take photos & sign autographs. While my friend knew of his work on Grey's Anatomy, it was his work on Supernatural I knew best. He asked me if I had gotten the boys before while I was getting him to sign a trio photo that featured him with his TV sons, I told him yes a few times & he called them "great guys" & we wrapped up out meeting with him & he went off his way we went off ours.
And for the record..I have NO IDEA what is happening in photo 6.
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Best Of TV Awards 2015 - Best Sci-Fi or Fantasy Actress - WINNER - RUTH CONNELL "Supernatural"
Photo Credit - The CW
The 2015 Best Of TV Awards Winner for Best Sci-Fi or Fantasy Actress is Ruth Connell (Supernatural).
Ruth Connell becomes the 1st actress from Supernatural to win the Best Sci-Fi or Fantasy Actress award. Despite the show winning several Recurring Actress awards in the past, this was the 1st chance for the most decorated show in these awards to win an award in the main actress category. Connell brought the double crossing mother of the King Of Hell, Rowena to life this past couple seasons. Ruth hit another impressive mark in 2015, the most episodes by any actress on SPN when she passed Genevieve Padalecki for that honour.
Hayley Atwell "Agent Carter" came on late in the voting to nab 2nd. Eliza Taylor "The 100" had an early lead, but momentum stalled after a couple days & eventually finished 3rd. Rebecca Romijn "The Librarians" narrowly finshed 4th ahead of Lana Parrilla "Once Upon A Time" in 5th.
Last years winner Jenna Coleman "Doctor Who" ended up 6th this year in a tie with Melissa McBride "The Walking Dead". Candice Patton "The Flash" started strong, even leading for a bit on day 1 before her momentum stalled & finished 8th. Jennifer Morrison "Once Upon A Time" the 2012 winner finished 9th. Tatiana Maslany "Orphan Black" finished just behind in 10th.
2013 winner Zoie Palmer "Lost Girl" finished down in 11th in her 3rd finals. Emilia Clarke "Game Of Thrones" 13th in her 3rd, Ming Na Wen "Agents Of SHIELD" 14th in her 2nd, Anna Silk "Lost Girl" 17th in her th, Ginnifer Goodwin "Once Upon A Time" i18th in her 2nd, Chloe Bennet "Agents Of SHIELD" 19th in her 2nd, Elizabeth Henstridge "Agents Of SHIELD" 20th in her 2nd finals.
Rose McIver "iZombie" 12th, Danai Gurira "The Walking Dead" 15th, Maisie Williams "Game Of Thromes" 16th, Lindsey Morgan "The 100" all made the finals for their 1st times.
This is the 6th different winner in this category, from the 6th different show.
Complete results
1st RUTH CONNELL "Supernatural" 457
2nd HAYLEY ATWELL"Agent Carter" 259
3rd ELIZA TAYLOR "The 100" 236
4th REBECCA ROMIJN "The Librarians" 218
5th LANA PARRILLA "Once Upon A Time" 210
6th (tie) JENNA COLEMAN "Doctor Who" 188
6th (tie) MELISSA MCBRIDE "The Walking Dead" 188
8th CANDICE PATTON "The Flash" 158
9th JENNIFER MORRISON "Once Upon A Time" 134
10th TATIANA MASLANY "Orphan Black" 132
11th ZOIE PALMER "Lost Girl" 124
12th ROSE MCIVER "iZombie" 118
13th EMILIA CLARKE "Game Of Thrones" 114
14th MING-NA WEN "Agents Of SHIELD" 90
15th DANAI GURIRA "The Walking Dead" 83
16th MAISIE WILLIAMS "Game Of Thrones" 65
17th ANNA SILK "Lost Girl" 61
18th GINNIFER GOODWIN "Once Upon A Time" 56
19th CHLOE BENNET "Agents Of SHIELD" 50
20th ELIZABETH HENSTRIDGE "Agents Of SHIELD" 46
21st LINDSEY MORGAN "The 100" 30
22nd ZOIE PALMER "Dark Matter" 27
This is Ruth Connell's 1st BOTVA award, this is the 39th award for Supernatural all time in the BOTVA awards.
You can follow this years finalists, or congratulate them on their social media platforms.
Ruth Connell Twitter facebook
Eliza Taylor Twitter
Rebecca Romijn Twitter facebook
Lana Parrilla Twitter facebook
Jenna Coleman Twitter
Melissa McBride Twitter
Candice Patton Twitter facebook
Jennifer Morrison Twitter facebook
Tatiana Maslany Twitter facebook
Zoie Palmer Twitter
Rose McIver Twitter
Emilia Clarke Twitter
Ming Na Wen Twitter facebook
Danai Gurira Twitter facebook
Maisie Williams Twitter facebook
Anna Silk Twitter
Ginnifer Goodwin facebook
Chloe Bennet Twitter facebook
Elizabeth Henstridge Twitter
Lindsey Morgan Twitter facebook
Best Of TV Awards 2015 - WINNER - Sexiest Actress - AMY ACKER
Photo credit - CBS
The 2015 Best Of TV Awards Winner for Sexiest Actress is Amy Acker.
This years winner has been on somewhat of a rollercoaster whirlwind of success in 2015. Amy Acker, who plays deranged Root on the CBS hit show "Person of Interest" has garnered a lot of fan love in the past year. Besides her first BOTVA, Acker's character won our annual May Madness Favorite Character tournament last year, as well as Spoiler TV's version of it , the Character Cup. As well she has at least 1 more award coming this year. Acker a recurring role on Con Man and a 2 episode guest spot on Suits.
The 39 year old actress beat out a trio of former winners in Emily Bett Rickards (2014), Jennifer Lawrence (2013) and Stana Katic (2012) for the award. The two leaders Acker, and Rickards leapfrogged each other a couple times during the voting, with Acker actually being behind by 11 votes at the start of the last day of voting. But, as we will see several more times in this years awards, last day voting pushes made the difference in the end.
The 2014 winner Emily Bett Rickards finished 2nd with a notable lead over the 2012 winner Stana Katic who finished 3rd. Perennial top 4 finisher Zoie Palmer nabbed 4th, making it her 5th time in the top 4. Gillian Anderson, hot off her return of The X-Files nabbed 5th in her 1st ever Sexiest Actress BOTVA appearance.
Scarlett Johansson in her 2nd consecutive finals slipped 1 spot this year to 6th. The 2013 Winner Jennifer Lawrence dropped two spots from last years 5th place finish to 7th this year. Sarah Shahi in her 1st ever Sexiest Actress appearance took 8th. Lana Parrilla dropped 2 spots from last years 7th to finish 9th this year. Jennifer Morrison dropped 1 spot from last year to take the final spot in the top 10.
Anna Silk, Katrina Law, Kat Dennings, Yvonne Strahovski, Jenna Coleman, Anna Torv & Jamie Chung all made the finals this year again after being there last year. While Grace Park, Hayley Atwell & Elizabeth Henstridge made the finals for the 1st time.
WINNER- AMY ACKER 1,235
2nd EMILY BETT RICKARDS 1,188
3rd STANA KATIC 496
4th ZOIE PALMER 261
5th GILLIAN ANDERSON 221
6th SCARLETT JOHANSSON 155
7th JENNIFER LAWRENCE 144
8th SARAH SHAHI 136
9th LANA PARRILLA 107
10th JENNIFER MORRISON 94
11th ANNA SILK 83
12th GRACE PARK 58
13th HAYLEY ATWELL 43
14th KAT DENNINGS 40
15th JENNA COLEMAN 39
16th KATRINA LAW 36
17th ANNA TORV 34
18th YVONNE STRAHOVSKI 26
19th JAMIE CHUNG 22
20th ELIZEBETH HENSTRIDGE 18
You can congratulate the finalists & follow them on their social media outlets.
Amy Acker Twitter
Emily Bett Rickards Twitter facebook
Stana Katic Twitter facebook
Gillian Anderson Twitter facebook
Jennifer Lawrence facebook
Sarah Shahi Twitter
Kat Dennings Twitter
Katrina Law Twitter facebook
Yvonne Strahovski Twitter
Jamie Chung Twitter facebook
Best Of TV Awards 2015 - Results for Semi-Finals and FINALISTS for Best Sci-Fi or Fantasy Program, Actor and Actress
The 2015 Best Of TV Awards finals are under way. The 6th annual BOTVA's have already shattered the previous record for votes in the first round combined. With over 487,000 votes. The 2015 BOTVA's all time record is 575,000 votes in a year has also fallen now.
The Semi-Final rounds for Best Sci-Fi or Fantasy Actor, Actress and Program categories took place a couple weeks ago.
Best Sci-Fi or Fantasy Program
LOST GIRL (Showcase) 200
THE LIBRARIANS (TNT) 166
FOREVER (ABC) 145
SUPERNATURAL (CW) 137
THE FLASH (CW) 130
ONCE UPON A TIME (ABC) 116
AGENTS OF SHIELD (ABC) 78
THE WALKING DEAD (AMC) 77
GAME OF THRONES (HBO) 73
DOCTOR WHO (BBC) 70
Orphan Black (Space) 65, The 100 (CW) 63, Sleepy Hollow (FOX) 51, Outlander (Starz) 36, Haven (Syfy) 35
Best Sci-Fi or Fantasy Actor
JENSEN ACKLES "Supernatural" 241
JARED PADALECKI "Supernatural" 240
CHRISTIAN KANE "The Librarians" 193
IOAN GRUFFUDD "Forever" 174
ROBERT CARLYLE "Once Upon A Time" 147
GRANT GUSTIN "The Flash" 117
JOHN LARROQUETTE "The Librarians" 98
KRIS HOLDEN-RIED "Lost Girl" 80
CARLOS VALDES "The Flash" 74
COLIN O'DONOGHUE "Once Upon A Time" 68
CLARK GREGG "Agents Of SHIELD" 66
PETER DINKLAGE "Game Of Thrones" 66
TOM CAVANAGH "The Flash" 63
NORMAN REEDUS "The Walking Dead" 62
JOSH DALLAS "Once Upon A Time" 60
MISHA COLLINS "Supernatural" 59
ANDREW LINCOLN "The Walking Dead" 59
PETER CAPALDI "Doctor Who" 58
LUCAS BRYANT "Haven" 58
RAHUL KOHLI "iZombie" 56
IAIN DECAESTECKER "Agents OF SHIELD" 51
BOB MORLEY "The 100" 50
Qualified with enough votes, but did not finish in the top 3 from their show.
Mark Sheppard "Supernatural" 58, Sean maguire "Once Upon A Time" 56
Jesse L. Martin "The Flash" 48, Ricky Whittle "The 100" 45, Tom Mison "Sleepy Hollow" 44, Kit Harington "Game Of Thrones" 42, James D'Arcy "Agent Carter" 41, David Anders "iZombie" 41, Brett Dalton "Agents Of SHIELD" 38, Eric Balfour "Haven" 36, Ian Somerhalder "The Vampire Diaries" 31, Lennie James "The Walking Dead" 28, Sam Heughan "Outlander" 27, Malcolm Goodwin "iZombie" 25, Robert Buckley "iZombie" 17, Stark Sands "Minority Report" 17, Aaron Stanford "12 Monkeys" 13, Kirk Acevedo "12 Monkeys" 11
Best Sci-Fi or fantasy Actress
LANA PARRILLA "Once Upon A Time" 317
ZOIE PALMER "Lost Girl" 258
ANNA SILK "Lost Girl" 205
REBECCA ROMIJN "The Librarians" 203
CANDICE PATTON "The Flash" 179
RUTH CONNELL "Supernatural" 166
ZOIE PALMER "Dark Matter" 163
JENNIFER MORRISON "Once Upon A Time" 155
MELISSA MCBRIDE "The Walking Dead" 115
HAYLEY ATWELL "Agent Carter" 103
JENNA COLEMAN "Doctor Who" 96
TATIANA MASLANY "Orphan Black" 92
MING NA WEN "Agents Of SHIELD" 86
ROSE MCIVER "iZombie" 82
ELIZA TAYLOR "The 100" 74
DANIELLE PANABAKER "The Flash" 72
ELIZABETH HENSTRIDGE "Agents Of SHIELD" 70
DANAI GURIRA "The Walking Dead" 67
EMILIA CLARKE "Game Of Thrones" 64
GINNIFER GOODWIN "Once Upon A Time" 64
LINDSEY MORGAN "The 100" 64
CHLOE BENNET "Agents Of SHIELD" 63
MAISIE WILLIAMS "Game Of Thrones" 62
Nicole Beharie "Sleepy Hollow" 55, Emily Rose "Haven" 51, Sophie Turner "Game Of Thrones" 47, Rebecca Mader "Once Upon A Time" 47, Lauren Cohan "The Walking dead" 46, Lena Headey "Game Of Thrones" 42, Caitriona Balfe "Outlander" 42, Paige Turco "The 100" 38, Phoebe Tonkin "The Originals" 38, Meagan Good "Minority Report" 27, Tuppence Middleton "Sense8" 25, Leah Pipes "The Originals" 17
The Best Sci-Fi or Fantasy program category has been historically dominated by Supernatural, winning 4 of the 5 honours. This year however, in their 11th season SPN might be in a fight for the 2015 award. Lost Girl, the 2013 runner up made noise in the semi-final voting leading the way over 2nd year TNT hit The Librarians, and Forever from ABC. Both making the finals for the first time. Supernatural was still in the mix, finishing 4th, just ahead of The Flash, the 2014 Best New Program winner. Once Upon A Time, the 2011 New Program winner is also in the finals, along with the 2012 Best Sci-Fi /Fantasy Program Winner The Walking Dead. Agents Of SHIELD is back in the finals after last years final appearance. Game Of Thrones is back for their 3rd straight finals appearance. Doctor Who, last years runner up & the 2013 3rd place finisher, sneaks into the finals in the last spot by only 5 votes.
The Best Sci-Fi or Fantasy Actor Category semi-final vote was led by Jensen Ackles from "Supernatural". This shouldnt seem like a shock to anyone considering Mr. Ackles is the owner of the most awards in BOTVA history. The shocker... he only led by ONE vote over his co-star Jared Padalecki. This is the 5th year in a row Jared has made the finals, unfortunately, in each of his previous attempts, he has managed to never finish better than 3rd in 2011. Also making the finals from SPN is Misha Collins for his 5th time. Christian Kane from "The Librarians" & Ioan Gruffudd "Forever" finished 4th & 5th & finds their way to the finals for the 1st time.
Robert Carlyle "Once Upon A Time" is in the finals for a 4th time, hoping to better his 4th place finishes of 2011 and 2013. Colin O'Donoghue returns to the finals for his 2nd time & Josh Dallas for his 1st time join Robert from the Once cast in the finals. grant Gustin last years runner up is back for his 2nd finals, along with his other cast mates from The Flash, Carlos Valdes & Tom Cavanagh both make the finals for their 1st times. John Larroquette joins his co-star from The Librarians, Christian Kane, as 1st time finalists. Kris Holden-Ried "Lost Girl" is in the finals for his 2nd time in this category, and 3rd time total for this role. Clark Gregg from "Agents Of SHIELD" is back after a 4th place finish last year in the finals, along with 1st time finalist Ian DeCaestecker. Peter Dinklage "Game Of Thrones" is back for his 3rd time. The only person to ever win this award besides Jensen Ackles, Nornam Reedus "The Walking Dead", the 2012 winner, is back for his 4th time, this time joined by Andrew Lincoln in his 1st finals after 3 consecutive times being a semi-finalist. Peter Capaldi "Doctor Who" is back after his 3rd place finish last year. Lucas Bryant "Haven" makes the finals for the first time, seemingly replacing his co-star Eric Balfour, who was in the finals the last two years. Rahul Kohli from "iZombie" makes the finals in the shows 1st season, and Bob Morley "The 100" makes the finals for the first time.
The Best Sci-Fi or Fantasy Actress Category will have the last 3 winners of the award all in the finals this year. Still never having had a 2 time winner, the Sci-Fi/Fantasy Actress award is the only main acting award to not have had such. This year, it could finally be the year as the 3 former winners, Jenna Coleman "Doctor Who" 2014, Zoie Palmer "Lost Girl" 2013, Jennifer Morrison "Once Upon A Time" 2012 are all in the finals this year. Palmer in fact is pulling double duty in the finals as she is also up for "Dark Matter".
However, they find some stiff competition in their way. Another OUAT actress led semi-final voting, Lana Parrilla., last years Runner Up is in her 5th consecutive final. Ginnifer Goodwin joins her two castmates in the finals for her 3rd time. Anna Silk "Lost Girl" will join her castmate in the finals for the 4th time in this category, 5th time for the character. Rebecca Romijn "The Librarians" makes the finals for the first time. Candice Patton and Danielle Panabaker "The Flash" both make the finals for the first time.
Ruth Connell "Supernatural" is a finalist for the first time, and is the first ever actress from SPN to make the finals of the main category despite the show having 37 all time BOTVAs, including 4 Recurring Actress BOTVAs. "The Walking Dead" star Melissa McBride is back in the finals for her 2nd time after a 3rd place finish last year, joining her is Danai Gurira for her 1st finals. Hayley Atwell "Agent Carter" makes the finals for the 1st time in her shows inagural year, as is Rose McIver from "iZombie". Tatiana Maslany "Orphan Black" is back for her 3rd time. Ming Na Wen and Elizabeth Henstridge "Agents Of SHIELD" both are back for their 2nd finals. Eliza Taylor & Lindsey Morgan "The 100" are in the finals for their 1st times. Emilia Clarke "Game Of Thrones" is back for her 3rd time, along with 2013 Best Youth Actress winner Maisie Williams in her 1st finals for this category.
The Final round of the 2015 Best Of TV Awardsis under way. Each voting round will last 3 to 6 days..
Best Of TV Awards 2014 - Sexiest Actress Winner - EMILY BETT RICKARDS
2014 Best Of TV Awards Winner Sexiest Actress - EMILY BETT RICKARDS Photo Credit - Canadagraphs
The Winner of the 2014 Best Of TV Award for Sexiest Actress is.... Emily Bett Rickards
Something is for certain this year in the BOTVAs, Arrow fans are making their mark. The Sexiest Actress this year went to the actress from Arrow with a category record 1,365 votes (oddly, exact same total as the Sexiest Actor winner had this year) & 1/4 of all the votes. With 388 more votes than the 2012 Winner Stana Katic, this marks the largest margin of victory in the 4 years of the award. Formerly Erica Durance in 2011 with 176 was the largest margin of victory, Jennifer Lawrence last year had the largest vote total prior to this year with 1114
The 2012 Winner & last years 6th place finalist Stana Katic came in 2nd with 976. Last two years runner up Zoie Palmer finished 3rd this year, and last two years 3rd place finalist Anna Silk finished 4th.
Other finalists from last year, the 2013 Winner Jennifer Lawrence finished in a tie for 5th with 314 votes, Jennifer Morrison (5th) was 9th this year with 93, Kat Dennings (9th) finished 10th this year wth 85 & Anna Torv (11th) finished 14th with 49 votes.
Yvonne Strahovski, a finalist in 2012 returned to finish 11th with 81 votes. Jennifer Love Hewitt, 9th in 2012 & in 2011 finished 13th this year with 59.
Newcomers to the finals, Scarlett Johansson 5th with 314, Lana Parrilla was 7th with 253, Katrina Law was 8th with 124, Jenna Coleman was 12th with 67, Jamie Chung was 15th with 33 votes, and Molly Quinn in her 1st year of eligibility finished 16th with 31.
This is the 4th different winner of the award in the 4 years of its existence.
1st EMILY BETT RICKARDS 1,365 *New Record*
2nd STANA KATIC 979
3rd ZOIE PALMER 664
4th Anna Silk 619
8th Katrina Law 124
9th Jennifer Morrison 93
13th Jennifer Love Hewitt 59
16th Molly Quinn 31
Best Of TV Awards - FINALISTS for Best Sci-Fi or Fantasy Actor, Actress and Program
The results below are for the categories of Best Sci-Fi or Fantasy Actor, Actress & Program
Vote totals are in RED TEXT
Finalists are in BOLD TEXT
JENSEN ACKLES (Supernatural) 445
GRANT GUSTIN (The Flash) 307
PETER DINKLAGE (Game Of Thrones) 242
CLARK GREGG (Agents Of SHIELD) 204
NIKOLAJ COSTER-WALDAU (Game Of Thrones) 200
ERIC BALFOUR (Haven) 198
PETER CAPALDI (Doctor Who) 192
JARED PADALECKI (Supernatural) 185
COLIN O'DONOGHUE (Once Upon A Time) 177
ROBERT CARLYLE (Once Upon A Time) 172
MISHA COLLINS (Supernatural) 161
NORMAN REEDUS (The Walking Dead) 157
ANDREW LINCOLN (The Walking Dead) 148, TOM MISON (Sleepy Hollow) 143, JOSH DALLAS (Once Upon A Time) 132, IAIN DE CAESTECKER (Agents Of SHIELD) 123, SEAN MAGUIRE (Once Upon A Time) 87, BILLY BURKE (Revolution) 83, VICTOR WEBSTER (Continuum) 52, ROGER CROSS (Continuum) 41
TATIANA MASLANY (Orphan Black) 297
LENA HEADEY (Game Of Thrones) 235
MING NA WEN (Agents Of SHIELD) 227
EMILY ROSE (Haven) 222
LANA PARRILLA (Once Upon A Time) 221
JENNIFER MORRISON (Once Upon A Time) 208
EMILIA CLARKE (Game Of Thrones) 200
CHLOE BENNET (Agents Of SHIELD) 191
ELIZABETH HENSTRIDGE (Agents Of SHIELD) 158
GINNIFER GOODWIN (Once Upon A Time) 139
MELISSA MCBRIDE (The Walking Dead) 129
JENNA COLEMAN (Doctor Who) 129
LAUREN COHAN (The Walking Dead) 107, EMILIE DE RAVIN (Once Upon A Time) 103, ELIZABETH MITCHELL (Once Upon A Time) 95, GEORGINA HAIG (Once Upon A Time) 91, DANAI GURIRA (The Walking Dead) 86, RACHEL NICHOLS (Continuum) 80, REBECCA MADER (Once Upon A Time) 74, TRACY SPIRADAKOS (Revolution) 74, LEXA DOIG (Continuum) 40
GAME OF THRONES 336
ONCE UPON A TIME 283
AGENTS OF SHIELD 247
DOCTOR WHO 225
HAVEN 216
ORPHAN BLACK 209
THE VAMPIRE DIARIES 140
SLEEPY HOLLOW 131, GRIMM 119, AMERICAN HORROR STORY 97, CONTINUUM 93, REVOLUTION 85, FALLING SKIES 63, WITCHES OF EAST END 58, UNDER THE DOME 57, DEFIANCE 49
The Best Sci-Fi or Fantasy Actor category has generally belonged to Supernatural star Jensen Ackles (2012 Norman Reedus of The Walkign Dead being the only 1 to topple his reign). This year he looks poised for another victory barring another Norman Reedus tweet style like in 2012 from 1 of the challengers. This year, the main challenger appears to be rookie sci-fi or fantasy drama star Grant Gustin from The Flash. With only 7 of last years 12 finalists back this year in the finals (although the entire top 6 is back), there is some new blood. Led of course by semi-finals runner up Grant Gustin, 4th place Clark Gregg of Agents Of SHIELD who was a semi-finalist last year, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau from Game Of Thrones who seemingly replaced Kit Harington as the GoT 2nd challengers this year to Peter Dinklage. Another newcomer, Peter Capaldi from Doctor Who also makes it, and finally Colin O'Donoghue, a semi-finalist last year makes the finals this year. Last years runner up, Eric Balfour from haven is back, as are Peter Dinklage, Robert Carlyle & Misha Collins. Dinklage managed to place 3rd, but the other 2 barely scraped into the finals, in 10th & 11th, just ahead of the 2012 winner Reedus who slipped into the final spot by a mere 9 votes.
The Sci-Fi or Fantasy Actress category will more than likely have a new Winner this year. Last years winner Zoie Palmer is ineligible for the category this year because of the schedule that her show Lost Girl had this season. The 2012 winner Jennifer Morrison from Once Upon A Time is in the finals, but came in 5th, and was 2nd from her own show behind Lana Parrilla, and along with Ginnifer Goodwin makes 3 finalists for her show, and likely will cause a vote split to water down her chances of reclaiming the title. Tatiana Maslany from orphan Black comes in as the odds on favorite after her opening round 3rd place standing, she managed to win the semi-final vote. A 1st time finalist Lena Headey from Game Of Thrones finished 2nd in the semi-final vote ahead of another 1st time finalist Ming-Na Wen for Agents Of SHIELD. Last years runner up Emilia Clarke from Game Of Thrones came in 7th, while last years 3rd place finalist Emily Rose of Haven came in 4th. Agents Of SHIELD nabbed 2 other finalist spots with Chloe Bennet & Elizabeth Henstridge, giving them as many finalists as Once Upon A Time. Melissa McBride of The Walking Dead and Jenna Coleman from Doctor Who tied for the last 2 spots. Notable ommisions this year are Rachel Nichols from Continuum who finished 6th last year, Emilie de Ravin from Once Upon A Time who finished 8th & Lexa Doig from Continuum who finished 10th. All who made the semi-finals, but missed making the finals by varying margins.
The Sci-Fi or Fantasy program category looks like it could be a battle for Supernatural to try & take its 4th title in the category. The semi-final vote went to Game Of Thrones with 336, a bit behind them was Supernatural still well in the mix at 308. Once Upon A Time managed a 3rd place showing. Last years runner up Lost Girl limped in at 9th, while the 3rd place finalist last year Doctor Who was 5th. Newcomers to the finals this year include Agents Of SHIELD in 4th, Orphan Black in 7th & The Vampire Diaries re-entering the finals for the 1st time since 2010 when it was entered as a Drama before the guidelines of the categories were more solidified, snuck in at 10th place. Only absentees from last year were the now retired Fringe, and Continuum.
The Finals for these categories will take place in January 2015 HERE
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Best Of TV Awards 2015 - WINNER - Sexiest Actor - STEPHEN AMELL
Photo Credit - WWE, Just Jared.
The 2015 Best Of TV Awards Winner for Sexiest Actor is Stephen Amell.
A repeat winner, Stephen Amell takes home his 2nd BOTVA Award. The star of Arrow has spread his wings a bit since last year, being a semi-regular guest star on The Flash and will be in the upcoming feature film Teanage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 as Casey Jones. Oh and is undefeated as a WWE wrestler.
After last years shocking upset of the former 3X champion Jensen Ackles by Stephen, Amell repeats as this years sexiest actor. Just like last year the 3 time winner came in 2nd, although this time narrowly doing so. In 3rd was Mads Mikkelsen in his 3rd consecutive finals beating out his previous 5th & 6th place finishes in the years prior. Jared Padalecki in his 5th consecutive finals finishes 4th, his best finish since a 3rd in 2011. Newcomer to the Sexiest Actor BOTVA appearance managed a tie for 5th. Nathan Fillion in his 3rd finals, and 2nd consecutive managed to tie for 5th, a slight drop from his 3rd last year. Jim Caviezel also finished tied for 5th in his 1st ever finals.
Colin O'Donoghue in his 3rd consecutive finals moved up 1 spot from last year to finish 7th. Kris Holden-Ried in his 4th finals slips from 4th down to 8th this year. Alex O'Loughlin nabs 9th in his 1st ever BOTVA finals appearance in the category. John Barrowman in his 1st BOTVA finals in this category took 10th by 3 votes.
Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddleston, Johnny depp, Chris Evans, Chris Pratt & Shemar Moore all return this year to the finals list. Chris Hemsworth returns for the first time since 2013 after missing last year. While newcomers to the BOTVA finals in this category Grant Gustin, Tom Hardy, Ian Somerhalder, Josh Dallas and Liam Hemsworth all make their mark for the 1st time.
WINNER - STEPHEN AMELL 971
2nd JENSEN ACKLES 554
3rd MADS MIKKELSEN 521
4th JARED PADALECKI 389
5th (tie) JIM CAVIEZEL 299
5th (tie) NATHAN FILLION 299
7th COLIN O'DONOGHUE 109
8th KRIS HOLDEN-RIED 86
9th ALEX O'LOUGHLIN 81
10th JOHN BARROWMAN 63
11th CHRIS HEMSWORTH 60
12th BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH 54
13th TOM HIDDLESTON 52
14th JOHNNY DEPP 49
15th GRANT GUSTIN 47
16th CHRIS EVANS 46
17th TOM HARDY 46
18th IAN SOMERHALDER 40
19th JOSH DALLAS 35
20th CHRIS PRATT 34
21st SHEMAR MOORE 31
22nd LIAM HEMSWORTH 28
You can congratulate the finalists, or follow them on their social media accounts
Stephen Amell Twitter facebook
Jensen Ackles Twitter facebook
Mads Mikkelsen facebook
Jared Padalecki Twitter facebook
Nathan Fillion Twitter facebook
Colin O'Donoghue Twitter facebook
Kris Holden-Ried Twitter
Alex O'Loughlin facebook
John Barrowman Twitter facebook
Chris Hemsworth Twitter facebook
Tom Hiddleston Twitter facebook
Grant Gustin Twitter facebook
Chris Evans Twitter facebook
Ian Somerhalder Twitter facebook
Josh Dallas Twitter
Chris Pratt Twitter facebook
Shemar Moore Twitter facebook
Liam Hemsworth Twitter facebook
Best Of TV Awards 2014 - Sexiest Actor Winner - STEPHEN AMELL
2014 Best Of TV Awards WINNER Sexiest Actor - STEPHEN AMELL Photo Credit - Canadagraphs
The Winner of the 2014 Best Of TV Award for Sexiest Actor is.... Stephen Amell
The 3 time winner Jensen Ackles has been dethroned by another CW stud. Stephen Amell from Arrow wins this years Sexiest Actor with 1,365 votes & a 479 vote margin of victory, breaking both previous records held by Ackles for total votes in 2011- 1087 and largest margin of victory in 2012- 270. The 3X winner made the list still in an unfamiliar place for him, 2nd, with 886 votes, his lowest total in the 4 years of this award.
In 3rd was the 2012 runner up to Ackles, who somehow wasnt even in the finals at all last year, Nathan Fillion with 660 votes. Coming in 4th was another 2012 finalist that did not make it in 2013, Kris Holden-Ried, 9th in 2012, made 4th this year with 560 votes after not making the finals last year.
Finalists from last year that finished in the finals this year as well include, Mads Mikkelsen (5th last year) in 6th this year with 451 votes. Last years 3rd place finalist Colin O'Donoghue comes in 8th this year with 186. Benedict Cumberbatch, the 2013 runner up slips to 9th with 155. Johnny Depp who was 8th last year, 1 of only three men to make every final finished 10th with 154. Jared Padalecki, the 2 time 3rd place finalist, who was tied with this years winner Stephen Amell last year in 6th, finished in 11th.
Chris Evans in 5th with 483 votes returned to the finals for the first time since 2011 where he finished 11th.
The highest ranked newcomer to the finals was Ian Somerhalder finished 7th with 214. Tom Hiddleston in 12th with 134, Shemar Moore in 13th with 125, Chris Pratt in 14th with 91, Jamie Dornan in 15th with 63 and Hugh Dancy in 16th with 57
1st STEPHEN AMELL 1,365 *New Record*
3rd NATHAN FILLION 660
4th Kris Holden-Ried 560
5th Chris Evans 483
6th Mads Mikkelsen 451
7th Ian Somerhalder 214
9th Benedict Cumberbatch 155
10th Johnny Depp 154
11th Jared Padalecki 142
12th Tom Hiddleston 134
13th Shemar Moore 125
15th Jamie Dornan 63
16th Hugh Dancy 57
Best Of TV Awards 2013 - Sexiest Actor Winner - JENSEN ACKLES
Best Of TV Awards 2013 Winner Sexiest Actor Jensen Ackles Photo courtesy - Canadagraphs
The Best Of TV Awards 2013 winner in the category of Sexiest Actor is Jensen Ackles.
The Supernatural stud won for the 3rd time in a row with 1,057 votes, almost 200 clear of his closest competitor "Sherlock" star Benedict Cumberbatch, who made his run too late. Cumberbatch was 6th with 2 days left in voting before finally catching some fire, only to end up short in the end as Ackles made it a hat trick of Sexiest Actor honours.
In 3rd was Colin O'Donoghue. The man who brings Captain Hook to life on "Once Upon A Time" was consistently in the top 3, but never managed to keep the momentum going as he dropped what was a close race between him & Ackles early on in the final days.
Rounding out the top 5 "Supernatural" angel extraordinairre Misha Collins, just ahead of Hannibal Lecter himself, Mads Mikkelsen.
A tie for 6th between Jared Padalecki & Stephen Amell. In 8th Johnny Depp. 9th Chris Hemsworth. 10th Chris Evans. 11th Tom Mison. Well back in last place was 3X finalist, Gale Harold.
Several lead changes happened in the 1st day. Johnny Depp, Chris Evans, Stephen Amell, Colin O'Donoghue & Jensen Ackles all held leads on the 1st day. Ackles would take the lead on day 2 & did not lose it again after.
Benedict Cumberbatch 862 vote is a new record for a runner-up, previously held by Tom Welling at 851 from 2011.
1st JENSEN ACKLES 1057
2nd Benedict Cumberbatch 862
3rd Colin O'Donoghue 715
4th Misha Collins 687
6th (tie) Jared Padalecki 578
6th (tie) Stephen Amell 578
8th Johnny Depp 572
9th Chris Hemsworth 511
10th Chris Evans 305
11th Tom Mison 245
12th Gale Harold 108
Best Of TV Awards 2013 - Sexiest Actor & Actress in TV and Movies semi-finals results
The Sexiest Actor & Actress categories have plenty of fresh new blood in this years finals.
On the mens side. 1/2 of last years top 10 list didnt make the finals this year. While a "Supernatural" star did top the polls again, this time it wasnt 2X winner Jensen Ackles. In fact Mr. Ackles finished 2nd with 616 votes, well behind his castmate Misha Collins at 721 votes. In 3rd is 2012 5th place finalist & 2011 9th place finalist Gale Harold at 427 votes. The final part of the "Supernatural" trio Jared Padalecki nabbed 4th with 397 votes and the man best known as "Sherlock Holmes" Benedict Cumberbatch came in 5th with 349 votes.
The rest of the finalists are Mads Mikkelsen from "Hannibal", "Thor" star Chris Hemsworth, "Arrow" star Stephen Amell, the iconic Johnny Depp, Colin O'Donoghue from "Once Upon A Time" Tom Mison of "Sleepy Hollow" & "Captain America" Chris Evans.
Missing the finals were Ian Somerhalder by 19 votes & Chris Pine by 20. A bit further further back were last years finalists Kris Holden-Ried 61 votes back, and Tom Welling a distant 116 votes back.
The ladies also had some new blood in the finals. Last years 6th place finalist Jennifer Lawrence from "The Hunger Games" franchise led the way with 495 votes narrowly nudging the 2 time runner-up Zoie Palmer of "Lost Girl" with 486, rounding out the top 3 is another "Lost Girl" Anna Silk who will make the finals for her 3rd time in a row with 302 votes. Newcomer to the finals is "Arrow" star Emily Bett Rickards with 235 & former 2X finlist Olivia Wilde with 184 round out the top 5.
The rest of the finalists are Lana Parrilla & Jennifer Morrison from "Once Upon A Time", Nina Dobrev "The Vampire Diaries", Kat Dennings "2 Broke Girls", last years winner Stana Katic from "Castle", "Fringe" star Anna Torv & "The Big Bang Theory" star Kaley Cuoco round out the finalists.
Missing the finals - Alaina Huffman by just 8 votes. Finalists from last year who didnt make it were Yvonne Strahovski by 39, the 2011 winner Erica Durance by 70 votes and Alison Brie by 71 votes.
The finals will start January 5 , 2014 HERE
Best Of TV Awards 2012 Finalists for - Favorite Show & Character. Sexiest Actor & Actress
Here are the results for the Semi-finals categories of the Canadagraphs BEST OF TV AWARDS 2012.
This set of categories dealt with Favorite TV show & Character. Sexiest actor & actress
FINALISTS are in BOLD text.
The Favorite TV show category, a new 1 to the awards had very little in the way of surprises to me. The top 5 shows were basically45 of the top vote producing shows in these awards & 1 minor shocker. Lost Girl beat out Supernatural for top spot, while Hawaii Five-O nabbed a slightly surprising 3rd. Castle was 4th, Fringe 5th. A show that missed the list just barely, Person of Interest, which just proves if fan sites dont check the polls every couple of days, they might miss 1 of their nominees.
Results for Favorite TV Show Semi-finals voting
Hawaii Five-O 215
Castle 106
Fringe 105
Dexter 75
Arrow 70
The Walking Dead 70
Person Of INterest 49
Psych 45
Elementary 42
How I Met Your Mother 42
Burn Notice 37
Leverage 37
Revenge 36
2 Broke Girls 26
Eureka 21
Favorite Character category has historically been dominated by Dean Winchester from "Supernatural" was still his, but only barely, as "Psych" fans pushed hard for Carlton Lassiter to narrowly come in 2nd. A bit back was an unexpected 3rd & 4th for "Dexter" star Dexter Morgan & Burton Guster from "Psych". Dr. Lauren Lewis from "Lost Girl" rounded out the top 5.
Results for Favorite TV Character Semi-finals voting
Dean Winchester "Supernatural" 938
Carlton Lassiter "Psych" 925
Dexter Morgan "Dexter" 643
Burton Guster "Psych" 603
Dr. Lauren Lewis "Lost Girl" 329
Bo "Lost Girl" 276
Peter Bishop "Fringe" 271
Richard Castle "Castle" 229
Parker "Leverage" 220
Castiel "Supernatural" 208
Kenzi "Lost Girl" 194
Sam Winchester "Supernatural" 186
Dr. Walter Bishop "Fringe" 171
Sam Axe "Burn Notice" 134
Kate Beckett "Castle" 128
Olivia Dunham "Fringe" 119
Emma Swan "Once Upon A Time" 108
Dr. Sheldon Cooper "The Big Bang Theory" 103
Barnet Stinson "How I Met Your Mother" 98
Shawn Spencer "Psych" 96
Michael Westen "Burn Notice" 93
Penny "The Big Bang Theory" 90
Oliver Queen/Arrow "Arrow" 88
Amy Farrah Fowler "The Big Bang Theory" 62
Damon Salvatore "The Vampire Diaries" 45
Sexiest Actor category is the only category open to TV & movie men, but it always seems to get dominated by the TV portion. No different this time as the top 5 spots were all taken by TV actors. Jensen Ackles, the winner last year was the leader again in this round. Misha Collins, Kris Holden Ried, Gale Harold & Jared Padalecki round out the top 5. Only 2 men Nathan Fillion & Henry Cavill are on the finalists list this year who were not last year.
Results for Sexiest Actor Semi-finals voting
Misha Collins 204
Kris Holden Ried 197
Gale Harold 189
Henry Cavill 141
Tom Welling 78
Stephen Amell 55
Ryan Gosling 53
Cory Monteith 47
Robert Pattinson 38
Sexiest actress was much like the mens side in the lack of turn over. Only 3 newcomers from last year, Yvonne Strahovski, Stana Katic & Jennifer Lawrence. Last years runner up, Zoie Palmer comes in as this years leader, Anna Silk took 2nd, Anna Torv 3rd, Stana Katic 4th & last years winner, Erica Durance 5th. Lasy years 3rd, Mila Kunis missed the finals by 1 spot & 10 votes.
Results for Sexiest Actress Semi-finals voting
Anna Torv 110
Stana Katic 86
Erica Durance 80
Jennifer Lawrence 74
Olivia Wilde 69
Alison Brie 66
Mila Kunis 56
Kaley Cuoco 55
Lea Michele 16
FINALS VOTING will start in early January Here
http://canadagraphs.weebly.com/best-of-tv-awards.html
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Azzy/photo by Catherine LaSota
Catherine LaSota
@CatherineLaSota
Mavis Gallant and Me; or, Where Are You From?
Mindy Hung
Where the Stars Are Strange: J. R. R. Tolkien and Me
Austin Gilkeson
Mary McCarthy’s “The Group”: Three Queer Readings
Callum Angus
Things | Books
Annie Dillard, Azzy, and Me: On Motherhood and Loss
“I was left dazed and sad and missing my cat while tending to a newborn.”
“I close my eyes and I see stars, deep stars giving way to deeper stars, deeper stars bowing to deepest stars at the crown of an infinite cone.”
In the middle of the night at the end of summer, I was sleepily nursing my month-old son in the rocking chair by my bed, the moonlight falling on us from a window. My husband snored a few feet away. As I so often did in those small hours, I picked up a book to keep me company while soothing and feeding my son, The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old and New by Annie Dillard.
I turned to page 151 and began reading “Seeing,” a selection from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek , through waves of exhaustion and grief from a recent loss. In “Seeing,” Dillard writes about the fleeting quality of the rich gifts this world provides to us:
“Unfortunately, nature is very much a now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t affair. A fish flashes, then dissolves in the water before my eyes like so much salt. Deer apparently ascend bodily into heaven; the brightest oriole fades into leaves.”
When I was twenty-seven years old, I adopted a sweet gray street cat or, rather, she adopted me. One day she came inside and decided she didn’t want to leave. She was affectionate and skinny and covered in fleas. I fell in love immediately. I’d never had a furry pet before, and I’d been wanting a gray cat, so I was thrilled at the serendipity of the situation. I named her Azrael—Azzy for short—and we became fast friends.
I grew up in a cramped and sometimes unstable household, in a bedroom I shared with my sister, and I decided early on that I wanted to break free from the confines and stresses of the family I was born into and find my own path. For this reason, as an adult I had always enjoyed living by myself, but I sometimes got lonely. Azzy helped to alleviate this loneliness. She was my loyal companion through several apartments where I lived with no other humans. She was the anxious meow I returned home to at the end of the day. As the years went by, Azzy became more and more attached to me, letting me hold her for extended periods and do things you’re not supposed to be able to with a cat, like trim her claws and pet her at will. I became a special person in her life; I was her mommy.
I thought I’d possibly have human children of my own someday—as part of an urge to create the family I wish I had—and, considering my age, and the young, undetermined age of Azzy, it was probable that she’d be in my life once kids entered the picture. That thought made me smile.
“I’ve been thinking about seeing. There are lots of things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises. The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from some generous hand.”
When I was thirty-seven years old, Azzy had a sudden dip in appetite and was given a very poor prognosis of lymphoma. I was told she could die in a matter of months. Children take nearly ten months to gestate, and I wasn’t pregnant. It was too soon for her to leave me. I told the vet I wanted to do all I could for her as long as she was still living a comfortable and happy life. Over the next weeks, Azzy thrived on the extra attention and supplements she received from me, and a couple of months later I got pregnant.
My pregnancy was extremely healthy and problem-free, despite doctors’ warnings that I was in the realm of Advanced Maternal Age. Through those long months as my belly grew, Azzy was beating the odds of feline life expectancy with cancer. She spent her days curled up by the feet kicking inside of me, her own soft belly under my hand. She continued to keep me company in my lonely moments.
Once my son Gaius was born, I was decidedly no longer alone—ever. Even when I wasn’t tending to Gaius myself, he was on my mind twenty-four hours a day. Like Azzy, he was a constant companion, but a completely helpless one. Even with her lymphoma, Azzy was able to clean herself, put herself to sleep, and entertain herself as she pleased. With Gaius, it was my job to comfort this crying new human, as I would do in the middle of the night, nursing my son as I read books or closed my eyes, depending on my level of exhaustion and sleep deprivation. Gaius needed my care and feeding just as Azzy did, but Gaius did not know how to respond to my own crying, to curl up next to me and offer consoling words, or soft purring.
“I walked home in a shivering daze, uphill and down. Later I lay openmouthed in bed, my arms flung wide at my sides to steady the whirling darkness. At this latitude I’m spinning 836 miles an hour round the earth’s axis; I often fancy I feel my sweeping fall as a breakneck arc like the dive of dolphins, and the hollow rushing of wind raises hair on my neck and the side of my face.”
In the years before my son was born, Azzy spent most of her days in my home office, snuggled in the seat of my writing chair, right behind me. I thought of her as my work companion, and I was grateful to be living a life where I had the luxury of spending so many hours with her, giving her the attention her old, increasingly sick body needed during the days and evenings of her final years. I was able to take notice of any small development in her health and treat her promptly and carefully.
“It’s all a matter of keeping my eyes open. Nature is like one of those line drawings of a tree that are puzzles for children: Can you find hidden in the leaves a duck, a house, a boy, a bucket, a zebra, and a boot?”
Newborns, of course, demand quite a bit of their mother’s time, and after I came home from the hospital I was no longer able to spend hours tending to Azzy, or even hours simply sitting with her in quiet as I typed, an activity I believe was just as important for her continued happiness and health as all of the pills, powders, and injections she received on a regular basis. Azzy couldn’t have me all of the time anymore, and she started to break down, physically.
She acted so calm around the baby, so undisturbed by his crying—protective of him, even. But then she started licking her front leg, often and a bit too aggressively. It was stress licking, and her fur was being removed by her tongue. All of a sudden, it seemed, she had a large bald patch on her inner leg that wouldn’t go away. How had it progressed so quickly without my noticing? My close observation of Azzy had diminished, and as my witnessing of her life faded, so indeed did her actual life fade.
I had never lost a pet before, and I’d never had a child before. It was a lot of change to absorb all at once. I was only just learning how to love my son, and it wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped it might be to love him wholly and immediately, as I had loved Azzy when she first walked through my door.
Azzy looked so vulnerable in that bare spot on her leg, her pink wrinkled skin such a thin layer of protection for her muscles, veins, and bones. I put a cone around her neck for a couple of weeks, to deter her overzealous licking, and she seemed happy still. But then she started coughing, like she had a hairball but not quite. Within a day, a disturbing amount of discharge was coming from her nose, and she’d stopped eating. An emergency visit to the vet for antibiotics and an appetite stimulant didn’t help, and by the next day, I was beginning to realize that she wouldn’t be with us much longer. I had to process what was happening while also tending to my son, and my energies were torn. No one received the full attention I wished I could give to those who were and are so vulnerable.
“A fog that won’t burn away drifts and flows across my field of vision. I can’t distinguish the fog from the overcast sky; I can’t be sure if the light is direct or reflected. When you see a fog move against a backdrop of deep pines, it’s not the fog itself you see, but streaks of clearness floating across the air in shreds. So I see only tatters of clearness through a pervading obscurity.”
Azzy was indeed around to witness this major development in my life, my shift to the role of human mother, but just barely. She stayed with us for a few weeks after my son’s birth, and then she was done. I was left dazed and sad and missing my cat while tending to a newborn.
I had only been a mother for a few short weeks, and everyone was telling me to cherish every moment, that this time would pass so fast. But I was tired. Just tired.
Azzy had a few near-death scares during her last two years, being an old and sick cat, but her veterinarian always assured me that I’d know when it was really “time.” The vet was right. In her last couple of days, Azzy had developed an upper respiratory infection, and her immune system was too compromised by a year of steroid use to fight it off. She was saying goodbye.
“ . . . shadows spread, and deepened, and stayed. After thousands of years, we’re still strangers to darkness, fearful aliens in an enemy camp with our arms crossed over our chests.”
Gaius was there when she died. He’d been sleeping upstairs from the living room, where Azzy had chosen to spend her last hours; right before the vet was set to administer the juice into Azzy’s veins to stop her heart, Gaius let out a wail. Even in her final moments, my son was reminding me that there was new life in our home for me to direct my care to. My husband went upstairs to get Gaius, and brought him back with a bottle to keep him calm. He held our baby as we each laid a hand on Azzy’s heart, feeling it beat, until it didn’t anymore.
“Everywhere darkness and the presence of the unseen appalls. We estimate now that only one atom dances alone in every cubic meter of intergalactic space.”
I’m trying so hard to live in the present moment, especially now with my son in my life. But it’s quite difficult to focus on anything, let alone the present moment, when I am so sleep deprived, up at night nursing my baby. Reading Annie Dillard helped my mind to be still, to focus, to just be in that rocking chair with my child.
I’ve barely had a chance to mourn my cat. But mourning my cat, I suppose, would be living in the past, and not in the present, so maybe my baby, in his gift of sleeplessness to me, is also forcing me into the gift of present-ness. I don’t have the energy to go anywhere else.
“Oh, it’s mysterious lamplit evenings, here in the galaxy, one after the other. On one of those nights, I wander from window to window, looking for a sign. But I can’t see. Terror and a beauty insoluble are a ribbon of blue woven into the fringes of garments of things both great and small. No culture explains, no bivouac offers real heaven or rest. But it could be that we are not seeing something.”
Catherine LaSota is the founder of the LIC Reading Series in Long Island City, Queens. Her essays and interviews appear in Vice, Electric Literature, Literary Hub, and The Brooklyn Rail, among other places. Follow her on Twitter @catherinelasota
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People | Portrait Of The Artist As A New Parent
Two Freelance Artists and a Baby
“A baby has two superpowers: the ability to suck productive time out of a day and the ability to bleed a wallet dry.”
A Room of One’s Own: Sharing (Brain) Space with My Baby
“My former home office, with its glorious door separating it from our bedroom, is now our son’s domain.”
People | Brains!
Postpartum Tea: Taking Care While Changing Identity
“It is a bewildering and lonely thing to be so attached to another human and also feel so adrift and so alone.”
On Power Between Women: The Handmaid’s Tale Revisited
We know the damage of othering. What about the ravages of Same-ing?
The Threat Within: Harry Potter and the Cultural Baggage of Orphan Stories
“Unlike most popular orphan characters, I wasn’t too young to remember my parents.”
Kristen Martin
On Cruising a Writer’s Oeuvre
“By reading the debut texts of the writers whose books I’ve at one point set down, I tried to find my way further into the work.”
Tyler Flynn Dorholt
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Brickthology
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Category Archives: Feasts
Jólasveinar
Posted by silverfox57
Other Names: Jólasveinar, Yule Lads, Yuletide-Lads, Yulemen
These mischievous pranksters are the present bringers in Iceland, not Santa Claus. Not one Santa Claus, it’s thirteen! How exciting is that!
Though, the Yule Lads didn’t always start off so friendly. These lads used to work for their mother, Grýla to help her hunt down naughty children as well as wreak all sorts of havoc and mischief during the long, dark winter days. The oldest versions and stories of the Yule Lads come from East Iceland.
Dimmuborgir
This is reportedly the home of the fierce some Grýla and the Yule Lads. It is a labyrinth field of lava in North Iceland.
Reykjavik – This is another place that the Yule Lads can be spotted around in December. This place serves more a tourist destination where there’s a game to find all the Yule Lads and visit the local Troll Garden to sit in Grýla’s cauldron.
The descriptions of the Yule Lads have varied over time. In their pre-Christmas descriptions, they are troll-like beings who have no torsos.
Later, when they became more associated with Christmas, the Yule Lads would dress much like the American and European Santa in all red garments. Another push was made to have the Yule Lads dress in a more traditional medieval Icelandic garments in an effort to push away from the often overly commercialized versions of Santa and Christmas that are seen.
Grýla – The infamous Icelandic Christmas Ogress or Trolless is the mother of the Yule Lads, it would explain so much of their behavior. Grýla is known for eating misbehaving children and goes out in search of them at Christmas time.
Leppalúði – He is Grýla’s current husband and the father of the Yule Lads. Leppalúði is known for being very lazy. He lives in their cave found in the Dimmuborgir lava fields. Aside from the Yule Lads, Grýla and Leppalúði also have twenty other children.
Leppalúði had an affair with a girl by the name of Lúpa while Grýla was very ill and bedridden for an entire year. The girl, Lúpa was to play nurse to Grýla while she was sick. It’s no small wonder then, that when Grýla finds out that Leppalúði and Lúpa had an affair, resulting in a son by the name of Skröggur, that the trolless would become enraged and drive the girl and her son off from the cave.
The last children Grýla had with Leppalúði, when she was 50 years old, were twins. The twins died very young, still needing a crib.
Dark Winter Spirits
This ties into why Grýla is said to have so many children. As it concerns the Yule Lads, in the beginning their number varied wildly. The Yule Lads and their mother, Grýla in their pre-Christmas traditions, represented the dark, dangerous and capricious spirits of Winter. This time of the year, the weather is colder, the nights longer and it’s just more treacherous to go out into the wilderness if one is not prepared or wary.
Jól – The midwinter holiday that predates the modern Christmas, marks a time of people gathering together to feast and celebrate family both living and deceased. This older holiday is generally darker as elves, trolls and other mystical creatures that inhabit the Icelandic countryside are also out and would sometimes come to visit homes and farms, often as masked figures.
The Yule Lads at this time were portrayed as being trolls with no torso who would come down to the various villages and towns to cause havoc and chaos with their pranks or to outright carry off naughty children to their mother to feast on. The Yule Lads were just some of the many dangerous, unpredictable spirits and supernatural entities that wandered the countryside during winter.
Christianity – This religion was introduced to Iceland around 1000 C.E. after the King of Norway made a decree that everyone should convert to Christianity and sent out missionaries to the island nation. As with many ancient customs and traditions, the people weren’t that ready and willing to give up all their beliefs. As the Icelandic traditions and those of the introduced Christianity began to merge, one of the many points of note was a change to the calendar that shifted from the old Julian Calendar to the Gregorian Calendar.
Sometime during the 1500’s and up to the 1700’s, the Julian Calendar was beginning to fall out of step and the celebration of the Winter Solstice was occurring on December 13th. As more European countries made the shift to the Gregorian Calendar, it placed the Winter Solstice back to the 21st. The change of calendars also so some 13 to 14 days getting removed.
For Iceland, many people didn’t like this and still wanted to celebrate December 13th as the Winter Solstice or Jól. To have the two traditions Iceland and Christianity merge more easily, the thirteen days of Christmas with the Yule Lads coming to visit began to form, starting from the eve of December 12th and stretching out all the way to the 25th and beyond to January 6th with Epiphany as the Yule Lads come visiting and then depart, back up to the mountains.
In the 16th century, a law was put into place that: “All disorderly and scandalous entertainment at Christmas and other times and Shrovetide revels are strongly forbidden on pain of serious punishment.” Parents still used the stories of Grýla and the Yule Lads coming to carry away naughty children during Wintertime and at Christmas. Things got so bad that in 1746, parents were forbidden and banned from using these stories to scare their children. It’s shortly after this, that the imagery of the Yule Lads would begin to further change.
Huldufólk – According to folklorist, Skarphéðinsson, the Yule Lads are the Huldufólk or the hidden people who live in Iceland right along humans, just another dimension that can’t be seen.
If you go for the Christian connection to religion and folktales, the Huldufólk were the dirty, strange and unusual children of Eve that she hid from God. When they were discovered, these children were sent to another world or dimension. Other ideas are that the Huldufólk are actually Fallen Angels.
Christmas Associations
Once the Yule Lads began to be associated with the celebration of Christmas, their image softened so that instead of being more malicious troll spirits that cause havoc and chaos, they became more benevolent. They’re still pranksters and the imagery saw them become more humanized to be half-troll figures.
The Thirteen Days Of Christmas – Yes, instead of one day of presents, children in Iceland get eight thirteen crazy nights!
The Yule Lads arrive during the thirteen days of Christmas, coming one at a time. Once December 25th comes, the Yule Lads depart back to their mountain home in the order that they arrived until the last day of January 6th, Epiphany.
Borrowing from Dutch tradition, children place a shoe out on their window sills during the thirteen nights of Christmas leading up to Christmas Day. In the hopes of receiving a gift or treat, children leave out small snacks for the Yule Lads such as laufabrauð (“leaf bread”), this is a thin, crisp flatbread. If a child has been good, they will receive a present or treat in their shoe. If a child has been particularly naughty, they will receive a rotten potato in their shoe.
If you ask me, that’s much better than getting carted away to their mother, Grýla to be eaten.
The Thirteen Yule Lads
The number of Yule Lads has varied over the years with as many as 82 and in more recent times with the 20th century, that number settled on there being thirteen. As the stories go, the Yule Lads live up in the mountains and come down in December during the Thirteen Days of Christmas. As there are thirteen of these lads, the various names they possess also speak of their particular quirk, feature or talent they have.
Jólasveinarnir – The Yule Lads Poem was written by the poet, Jóhannes úr Kötlum in 1932, this poem is still a popular piece recited each year in many homes and schools during December. This poem is where the Thirteen Yule Lads were made cannon for Iceland’s Christmas Tradition. The English translation of the poem is done by Hallberg Hallmundsson.
The sections below in italics are Kötlum’s poem in English.
Stekkjastaur – Sheep-Cote Clod (Or Stiff Legs)
Arrives: 12 December
Leaves: 25 December
The first of them was Sheep-Cote Clod.
He came stiff as wood,
to prey upon the farmer’s sheep
as far as he could.
He wished to suck the ewes,
but it was no accident
he couldn’t; he had stiff knees
– not too convenient.
Giljagaur – Gully Gawk
The second was Gully Gawk,
gray his head and mien.
He snuck into the cow barn
from his craggy ravine.
Hiding in the stalls,
he would steal the milk, while
the milkmaid gave the cowherd
a meaningful smile.
Stúfur – Stubby
Stubby was the third called,
a stunted little man,
who watched for every chance
to whisk off a pan.
And scurrying away with it,
he scraped off the bits
that stuck to the bottom
and brims – his favorites.
Þvörusleikir – Spoon-Licker
The fourth was Spoon Licker;
like spindle he was thin.
He felt himself in clover
when the cook wasn’t in.
Then stepping up, he grappled
the stirring spoon with glee,
holding it with both hands
for it was slippery.
Pottaskefill – Pot-Scraper
Pot Scraper, the fifth one,
was a funny sort of chap.
When kids were given scrapings,
he’d come to the door and tap.
And they would rush to see
if there really was a guest.
Then he hurried to the pot
and had a scraping fest.
Askasleikir – Bowl-Licker
Bowl Licker, the sixth one,
was shockingly ill bred.
From underneath the bedsteads
he stuck his ugly head.
And when the bowls were left
to be licked by dog or cat,
he snatched them for himself
– he was sure good at that!
As a side note, askur is a type of dish that Icelanders would eat from and keep under the bed as a means of storing it.
Hurðaskellir – Door-Slammer
The seventh was Door Slammer,
a sorry, vulgar chap:
When people in the twilight
would take a little nap,
he was happy as a lark
with the havoc he could wreak,
slamming doors and hearing
the hinges on them squeak.
Skyrgámur – Skyr-Gobbler
Leaves: 1 January
Skyr Gobbler, the eighth,
was an awful stupid bloke.
He lambasted the skyr tub
till the lid on it broke.
Then he stood there gobbling
– his greed was well known –
until, about to burst,
he would bleat, howl and groan.
Skyr is a type of yogurt found in Iceland.
Bjúgnakrækir – Sausage Swiper
The ninth was Sausage Swiper,
a shifty pilferer.
He climbed up to the rafters
and raided food from there.
Sitting on a crossbeam
in soot and in smoke,
he fed himself on sausage
fit for gentlefolk.
Gluggagægir – Window-Peeper
The tenth was Window Peeper,
a weird little twit,
who stepped up to the window
and stole a peek through it.
And whatever was inside
to which his eye was drawn,
he most likely attempted
to take later on.
Gáttaþefur – Doorway Sniffer
Eleventh was Door Sniffer,
a doltish lad and gross.
He never got a cold, yet had
a huge, sensitive nose.
He caught the scent of lace bread
while leagues away still
and ran toward it weightless
as wind over dale and hill.
Ketkrókur – Meat-Hook
Meat Hook, the twelfth one,
his talent would display
as soon as he arrived
on Saint Thorlak’s Day.
He snagged himself a morsel
of meat of any sort,
although his hook at times was
a tiny bit short.
I’m a told a favorite meat is lamb. The 23rd is also St. Thorlak’s Day, the patron saint of Iceland.
Kertasníkir – Candle Beggar (Or Candle Stealer)
The thirteenth was Candle Beggar
– ‘twas cold, I believe,
if he was not the last
of the lot on Christmas Eve.
He trailed after the little ones
who, like happy sprites,
ran about the farm with
their fine tallow lights.
Candles at this time, were once made of tallow and thus edible. It is little wonder that Candle Beggar is often the most favorite of the Yule Lads and seen as being the most generous as he comes on the last day just before Christmas. Some children will leave a candle out for Kertasnikir next to their shoe.
Lost Yule Lads & Lasses
More recent times sees the Yule Lads numbering as thirteen in all. This wasn’t always so and there were a few others, that were once part of their number.
Flórsleikir – His name translates as “dung channel licker.” Luckily this has something to do with the channel in the cowshed.
Flotsokka – One of two sisters who would place a piece of fat on a half-knitted sock or stuff a piece of fat up her nose. Eww!?!
Flotnös – The second of two sisters who would place a piece of fat on a half-knitted sock or stuff a piece of fat up her nose. Eww!?!
Lampshadow – He would go and put out all of the lights.
Litlipungur – His name translates to mean “small balls”. What he did, I’m not sure I want to know.
Lungnaslettir – Or Lung Flapper, he gets his name from his penchant for walking around with a set of still wet sheep lungs and hitting anyone who gets in his way.
Smoke Gulper – He would sit on the roof and swallow the smoke coming from the chimney.
Bunch of weirdos.
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Also Known As: Saint Nicholas, Saint Nick, Kris Kringle, Father Christmas, Santa (Santy in Hiberno-English), Mikulás (Hungary), Weihnachtsmann “Christmas man” (German)
That’s right, the jolly, big man in red who brings presents to all of the good boys & girls around the world on Christmas Eve or December 24th for Christmas Day.
The American Santa Claus that many have come to know and love, is often shown as a jolly, stout or portly man with a white beard who wears a red coat and pants with white trim, black boots and belt with a large sack of gifts ready to pass out for children. This imagery of Santa Claus became ingrained in the American psyche with Clement Clark Moore’s poem: “A Visit from St. Nicholas.”
But how did we get here to this beloved holiday figure?
A Santa By Any Other Name….
The mythos of Santa that we have all come to know and love is ultimately a composite and influenced by many numerous cultures, especially those found throughout Europe.
Amu Nowruz – This was the most interesting one to learn about. The figure of Amu Nowruz is a familiar one in Iranian and other Middle Eastern cultures for their celebrations of the New Year that coincides with the official start of Spring. In Iranian tradition, Amu Nowruz appears every year at the start of Spring along with his companion Haji Firuz. Their appearance marks the beginning of Nowruz, the New Year. Amu Nowruz is often depicted as an elderly, silver or white-haired man wearing a felt hat, long blue clock, sash, pants, sandals, and carrying a walking stick. Amu Nowruz’s role is to pass on the story of Nowruz to the young.
I mention bring up Amu Nowruz because of the timing for the Christmas celebrations and how close it is to the European celebrations of the New Year. Anyone who looks at Christmas as the celebration of the birth of Christ, knows that shepherds guard their flocks in the springtime, when its lambing season. If you study the change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, you know that the date for the start of the New Year was altered.
Father Christmas – The British Santa who dates to 16th century England during King Henry VIII’s reign. Father Christmas is depicted as a large man dressed in green or scarlet robes lined with fur and is seen as the spirit of good cheer during Christmas, bringing joy, food, drink and revelry much like the Spirit of Christmas Present in Dickenson’s “A Christmas Carol.” By this time, England no longer observed Saint Nicholas’ Day on December 6th. The Victorian revival of Christmas, has Father Christmas as a symbol of “good cheer.” Along with the Dutch Sinterklaas, Father Christmas is a major influence on the imagery of the American Santa Claus.
Saint Nicholas – The historical Santa Claus that many love to point out. Saint Nicholas was a 4th century Greek bishop from Myra, Turkey. Saint Nicholas is a Catholic Bishop who rides on his white horse, Amerigo as he travels. He is the patron saint of children, archers, pawnbrokers, sailors and the cities of Amsterdam and Moscow. There are stories of Saint Nicholas leaving gifts in choir boys’ shoes and throwing money down chimneys to pay for a girl’s dowry that have contributed to the modern celebrations of Saint Nicholas’ Day and Christmas. Saint Nicholas’ Day is celebrated on the 6th of December by many instead of having him come on the 24th and 25th. Martin Luther suggested the Christ kind or Christ Child is who brings presents on Christmas Day.
Sinterklaas – A figure from the Netherlands and Belgium who is a tall, stern figure known for handing out gifts to good children and switches to the naughty ones. Sinterklass rides a horse named Amerigo or Slecht Weer Vandaag. Next to Saint Nicholas, Sinterklass is another prominent figure whom many point to as the most likely progenitor to Santa Claus. In the Netherlands, Santa Claus is known as de Kerstman, “the Christmas man.” In French, Santa Claus is known as Père Noël or “Father Christmas.” Sinterklass is most noted too for his assistant(s) known as Zwarte Pieten or Pères Fouettard in French. Sinterklaas has a strong connection and influence with Saint Nicholas and his festival in Myra, Turkey. Santa Claus’ name has been pointed out as an easy phonetic spelling from the Dutch into English when Dutch immigrants in the 17th & 18th century brought their Christmas traditions and thus Sinterklaas with them to America.
Woden – Or Odin, is a Germanic god. Before the Christianization of Europe, the Germanic peoples celebrated a midwinter holiday known as Yule. Many of the Yule traditions have easily found themselves incorporated into the modern celebrations of Christmas. Yule was also a time for when the Wild Hunt would ride throughout the land. Other supernatural and ghostly happenings were to occur as well. The leader of this hunt would be Woden. Additionally, it has been pointed out, that Woden is a god of poetry and wisdom. He is also the god who brought and introduced runes, the writing system. This is seen in the Dutch traditions of singing songs, writing poems and the passing out of pepernoten which are chocolate letters, what used to be runes that Woden would pass out to men. It has been theorized by many that Woden has influenced the imagery associated with Saint Nicholas as seen with the white beard and the horse he rides.
Other Pagan Figures – There are a number of other pagan deities such as the Roman god Saturn and his celebration of Saturnalia, the Greek god Cronos, the Holly King of Celtic mythology who signifies the dying year, the Norse god Frey, even Thor who all have some influence into the modern portrayal of Santa Claus and Christmas time celebrations.
Codifying A Legend
It’s generally agreed by many that the figures of Saint Nicholas, Sinterklass and Father Christmas all play a part in merging together to create the American Santa Claus, with a few remembering Woden’s part in it too. After all, the name Santa Claus can be pointed out as a variant spelling and pronunciation to Sinterklass. The first real mention of “Santa Claus” is in 1773 in any American publications.
History of New York – A book by Washington Irving, writing in 1809, intended as a satire of the Dutch figure of Sinterklaas, he is pictured as being a thick-bellied Dutch sailor with a pipe wearing a green winter coat.
A New-Year’s Present – A book published in 1821 for children, it has the poem: “Old Santeclaus with Much Delight” written by an anonymous author. Here, Santeclaus is described as riding a reindeer pulled sleigh as he brings gifts for children.
A Visit From St. Nicholas – Better known as “The Night Before Christmas” written by Clement Clark Moore in 1823. There’s a bit of dispute, that a Henry Livingston, Jr. who passed away nine years earlier is the actual author. This book really codified and made much of Santa’s appearance lore surrounding him cannon. Here, Santa or St. Nick is described as: “chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf” with a round belly. He is also assumed to be small in stature given the description of his sleigh as miniature and being pulled by tiny reindeer. This story also gives us the names for the eight reindeer who pull Santa’s sleigh: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen. It should be noted that Donner and Blitzen names mean thunder and lightning in German. Additionally, their names had been the Dutch variations of Dunder and Blixem before getting changed.
William Gilley – A friend and neighbor to Clement Clark Moore. Gilley wrote a poem in 1821 titled Sancte Claus that also describes a Santa Claus who drives a reindeer pulled sleigh and delivers gifts by going down a chimney.
Kris Kringle – By 1845, Santa was also known by the name of Kris Kringle. Some places in the U.S. such as Pennsylvania, Santa was known as Krishkinkle.
Thomas Nast – An American cartoonist who defined the image of the American Santa as being large and heavy set. Nast did an illustration for Harper’s Weekly on January 3rd of 1863 where Santa is dressed in an American flag and a puppet by the name of “Jeff.” This was a reflection of that publication’s Civil War articles. Nast is likely the source for the part of Christmas lore that Santa lives at the North Pole with his illustration on December 29th, 1866 captioned Santa Clausville along with several other illustrations showing Santa in his workshop. Nast’s influence is been so great, that later songs, children’s books, movies, T.V. specials and even advertising continue to use it.
George P. Webster – In the same 1869 Harper Weekly publication, Webster had a poem appearing alongside some of Nast’s illustrations where Santa is described living near the North Pole, to the point, that this bit of lore has become well established in the Holiday Mythos surrounding Christmas time.
Coca-Cola Santa! – Another change to Santa’s image came in the 1930’s with Haddon Sundblom’s depiction of Santa. This of course, has led many to jump a band wagon conspiracy theory that the Coca-Cola Company invented Santa as the colors of red & white that Santa wears are the same colors as the Coca-Cola brand.
To put this conspiracy to rest, Coca-Cola is not the first soft drink company to use Santa in his familiar red & white get up to promote their products. White Rock Beverages did so in 1915 for their mineral water and then later in 1923 for ginger ale. In addition, Puck magazines used a red & white garbed Santa on their covers for the first few years of the 20th century.
He’s Making A List!
One of the things Santa is known for is maintaining a list of who all the good children are and who the naughty ones are. The good children of course get presents and the naughty ones get coal.
This is one of many traditions done by children at Christmas time. Frequently this letter is a wish list of what they hope that Santa will bring them. Wise children will know to keep the list short and not to get too greedy with their wants. Many children will also assure Santa that they’ve been doing their best to be good. Many different post offices and services will accept the letters that children have written for Santa.
The very image of Santa as a gift giver has been strongly tied to many charity organizations such as Salvation Army and the number of people who seek during the holiday season to help out others. Department Store Santas and just about anyone dressed as Santa to bring gifts or to aid in fundraising efforts for those in need. In this respect, Santa Claus keeps strong connections to Father Christmas and Saint Nicholas with promoting goodwill and people being more giving and caring during this time of the year.
Whether it’s Yule or Christmas, it goes without saying, we should always be showing goodwill, giving and caring about others all year long. Since the Christmas celebrations take place in Winter, it’s especially important to remember those in need. Which is where Santa’s role as a patron Saint of Children comes into play: giving to those in need and helping to keep the magic of wonder, belief, innocence, giving and love. Life gets rough and it can get hard during the dark, cold winter months.
Coming Down The Chimney – The idea of Santa coming down the chimney to deliver his gifts, clearly connects him to his older European roots with those like Odin who would come down the chimneys on the winter solstice or the stories of Saint Nicholas where he tosses down bags of coins through a window or down a chimney to pay for a daughter’s dowry if she came from a poor family. In much of ancient European folklore, the hearth or fire place is a sacred place where the guardian spirit or fairies of a household would bring their gifts.
Stockings Hung By The Chimney With Care
Many families who celebrate Christmas have some sort of tradition with leaving stockings hung up by the fire place or laid out. This naturally references back to Saint Nicholas who was known for leaving gifts in children’s socks or shoes.
Lumps Of Coal – If a child has been particularly naughty, he or she may receive lumps of coal or a switch instead. Granted that doesn’t usually happen and is more of a warning for children to always do their best to be good.
Cookies For Santa
An offering of cookies and milk Santa Claus when he visits is fairly standard among many American families. Some will leave a carrot or two for the reindeer too.
Just what is left or offered can vary too by country.
Australia & Britain – Sherry or Beer along with mince pies are left out.
Canada & United States – Milk and Cookies are the norm.
Denmark, Norway & Sweden – Rice porridge with cinnamon sugar is left out.
Ireland – Guinness or Milk along with Christmas pudding or mince pies.
Santa’s Laughter
“Ho, Ho, Ho! Merry Christmas” is perhaps the most iconic saying associated with Santa Claus. No just any laugh, but a deep belly laugh that is associated with happiness. Anything less, just isn’t Santa. The imagery of Santa Claus be rather rotund is seen as an important attribute of his and immortalized in Clement’s iconic poem: “A Visit from St. Nicholas” for the classic lines:
“. . . a little round belly
That shook when he laugh’d, like a bowl full of jelly”
The north pole is where Santa is said to reside, far away from much of the world so he and especially his elves can craft toys to be delivered. The idea of Santa living at the North Pole likely originated with the artist Thomas Nast and author George P. Webster. This locality has grown up from a simple House and Workshop to a full-blown village where Santa and his helpers live.
Canada – According to the Canadian Post, Santa Claus’ postal code is H0H 0H0, as in his traditional “Ho, Ho, Ho” laugh that Santa is well known for. In 2008, Santa Claus was awarded Canadian citizenship by the Canadian minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, Jason Kenney. This way, after Santa Claus finishes his annual, nightly rounds, he can return straight home to Canada and the North Pole without hassle.
Kyrgyzstan – There is a mountain peak named for Santa Claus. A Swedish company suggested that this mountain was more likely to be a better place for Santa to launch is gift-giving campaign from to all over the world. In 2007, a Santa Claus Festival was held in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital. 2008 was declared the Year of Santa Claus.
Lapland – A region in Finland. It was pointed out in 1925 that Santa couldn’t possibly live at the North Pole as his reindeer would nowhere to graze. Radio Host “Uncle Markus” Rautio for the Finnish radio show the “Children’s Hour” revealed that Santa lives in Lapland’s Korvatunturi, meaning “Ear Fell.” It makes sense as the whole of Lapland has been pointed out to be shaped like a rabbit’s ear and it would enable to Santa to be able to hear the Christmas wishes of children the world over.
Nordic Claims – Several Nordic countries claim that Santa lives within their borders. Norway for example says that Santa lives in Drøbak. Meanwhile, Denmark claims that Santa lives in Greenland. In Finland, Korvatunturi is claimed as Santa’s home.
At first, early depictions of Santa show him making his gifts by hand in a workshop. Later, Santa is shown with a number of helpers in his annual, nightly task. After all, Santa can’t be everywhere, though he’ll do his best.
Babouschka – In Russia, Babouschka is an elderly woman who misled the Wise Men on their way to Bethlehem. Later, she regretted the decision and unable to find the Wise Men, Babouschka has since then, visited the homes of Russian children, hoping that one of them is the baby Jesus when she leaves her gifts.
Belsnickel – A figure who follows Santa Claus in some regions of Europe such as Germany and Austria, he is similar to Krampus in that he will punish naughty children.
Christkind – Or Kris Kringle is known to deliver gifts to children to Switzerland and Germany. Christkind, meaning “Christ child” is an angelic being who helps Santa.
Ded Moroz and the Snow Maiden – Ded Moroz or Grandfather Frost is accompanied by his granddaughter, Snegurochka the Snow Maiden in the Slavic countries. Ded Moroz was once an evil wizard who kidnapped children. Ded Moroz and his granddaughter arrive on the New Year’s Eve or Day bringing gifts as he tries to atone for his one evil ways.
Elves – To make all of the toys that Santa gives out on Christmas Eve, he has the aid of a number of elves who work in his workshop. As time went on and moved into the industrial era, the means by which the elves craft and then manufacture the toys has changed.
Fake Santas! – No! That can’t be! Yet, inevitably, some bright and clever child will point out that the Mall Santa isn’t really Santa Claus. As a wise adult will point out and counter, that is because Santa Claus can’t be everywhere and that the adult dressed as Santa is just one of many, numerous helpers throughout a busy and chaotic holiday season. Many young children will generally except this explanation without question. Though older children do seem more prone to skepticism.
Father Christmas – Father Christmas, however similar to Santa he is, it is Father Christmas who comes filling stockings in Britain.
Jultomten – If you’re in Scandinavia, an elf by the name of Jultomten is who brings gifts in a sleigh drawn by goats.
Krampus – German for “claw,” the figure of Krampus hails from the Alpine countries in Austria and Germany. Krampus has seen a revival in more recent years as a dark figure and companion to Santa Claus where he scares or beats naughty children into behaving.
La Befana – The Italian Christmas Witch, La Befana is very similar to Babouschka as she too searches for the baby Jesus and delivers gifts to children on January 6th, the Epiphany.
La Pere Fouettard – “The Whipping Father,” Pere Fouettard accompanies the French Pere Noel on his nightly visit of December 5th where like Belsnickel, Krampus and Zwarte Piete, he will punish naughty children.
Pere Noel – Or Papa Noel, is a figure like Father Christmas and Santa, he is who comes bringing gifts to children in France. Instead of reindeer, Pere Noel rides a donkey named Gui, meaning “mistletoe.”
Reindeer – And not just any reindeer, eight of them that help pull Santa’s sleigh and fly through the night delivering gifts. The eight reindeer are as follows: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen. It should be noted that Donner and Blitzen names mean thunder and lightning in German. Further, only female reindeer keep their antlers in winter.
Rudolph – The ninth reindeer who has a glowing nose. Rudolph entered the Santa Claus mythos in 1939 when Robert L. May wrote the story for the Montgomery Ward department store to help drive up holiday traffic and sales. May used a similar rhyme like Moore’s “Twas the Night Before Christmas” to tell Rudolph’s story. Later, one of May’s friends, Johnny Marks turns Rudolph’s story into a well familiar song. The rest is history as there are television specials and books featuring Rudolph and his adventures.
Tomte – Hailing from the Scandinavian countries, the Tomte or Nisse as small gnome-like characters who bring gifts.
Zwarte Piete – A helper and companion to the Dutch Sinterklaas. Early depictions of Zwarte Piete show him as a punisher while later depictions have tried to soften the image.
What About Mrs. Claus?
As this seems to have been a thing that weighs on some people’s minds, many authors have written, saying that yes, Santa Claus is married.
Just what does she do? Besides stay home and take care of the house and all of the elves? I personally imagine her being La Befana, the Italian Christmas Witch. Hey, not everyone believes in Santa and there’s other Christmas time figures who all likely deliver gifts to their respective areas and those who believe in them.
Tracking Santa On His Nightly Runs
With the arrival of the internet age, there have come many websites and even a few T.V. programs that will track Santa Claus on his nightly run during Christmas. Many of these sites have come and gone over the years. The most amusing origin of one such site, NORAD came about when in 1955, a Sears ad misprinted the phone number that had children calling the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) instead on Christmas Eve. When Colonel Harry Shoup, the then Director of Operations received the first phone call, he told children that there were indeed signs of Santa heading south. This kicked off a whole tradition of tracking Santa with NORAD when later in 1958, Canada and the United States created the North American Air Defense Command.
Many parents will use the websites as a means of enforcing a bedtime. That Santa can’t come if you’re still awake.
The Life And Adventures Of Santa Claus
Written by L. Frank Baum who also wrote the Wizard of Oz series, “The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus” was written in 1902 before much of the lore surrounding Santa Claus became cannon. It tells of Santa, then known as Neclaus, meaning “Necile’s Little One” how he was raised among the immortal fairy and would latter take on the role of Santa Claus after Ak, the Master Woodsman shows Neclaus the misery and poverty that other humans know.
There has been a Rankin/Bass Stop-Motion animation adaptation of this story as well as a traditionally animated adaptation of this story. Since so much of the lore surrounding Santa Claus seems pretty well set and known, “The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus” often provides an alternative spin and take on the Santa legend. To me, it’s rather satisfactory in answering how Santa got his start and became the well-known, beloved Holiday figure he is today.
Shaman Santa!
With the strong connections to Wodin/Odin in the mythology behind Santa Claus, many have pointed out the more pagan origins of Christmas, of which there are indeed a lot. With Santa Claus, they will point that his garb is reminiscent of what Shamans would wear.
Santa Controversy
It was true way back then, when the colonists, mainly Puritans arrived in North American during the 17th century and first founded the American Colonies; that would later become the United States, that Santa Claus wasn’t welcomed and even banned. For the Puritans, the image of Santa Claus was too pagan, too much a part of the Roman Catholic Church and took away from the celebration of Christmas, focusing on the birth of Jesus Christ. Hell, Christmas celebrations were even banned at first. The celebrations at this time involved a lot of riotous, drunkenness and public displays of disorder. Christmas as it would be known today didn’t exist.
At this time, with the harvest season clearly over, many of the lower class laborers coming in from the fields now had plenty of leisure time. Workers and Servants alike sought to take the upper hand with the higher-ups, demanding largess in the way of money and food. Industrialists in America were all too willing to increase the work hours and fewer holidays than in Europe.
I get it, Christmas got started in the first place with the Roman Catholic Church trying to appease and convert Pagans to Christianity. Many pagan holidays got replaced with those of Christian ones, the imagery from Pagan ones replaced with Christian ones. So you clearly get a Pagan and Christian side to the celebration of Christmas. One that can get some strongly devout followers trying to denounce the more pagan overtones, of which, Santa Claus is just one of may holiday symbols caught in the crossfire of a millennia old religious and holiday feud. Combined with the riotous drunken revelries, its easy to see why early devout Puritans and Calvinists didn’t want to observe Christmas.
Not until after the Revolutionary War did Christmas start being celebrated, this time they included Santa Claus. We can thank all the later immigrants who brought their Christmas traditions and brought Father Christmas and Sinterklaas who would blend together to become the familiar, beloved Santa Claus. Otherwise, Christmas as many in the U.S. would come to know it, wouldn’t exist.
The 19th century saw a cultural change. There was getting to be more focus on family home life and seeing childhood as a precious time to be protected. Part of this saw Christmas become “tamed” and the image of Santa Claus as a friend and protector of children became prominent.
Even today, the controversy continues, you still have those who feel that Santa Claus’ presence takes away from the focus of the season, that he’s too pagan. It didn’t stop some like Reverend Nedergaard, from Copenhagen, Denmark in 1958 calling Santa a “pagan goblin.” Really?
You have those, rightfully so, who feel the holiday has gotten far too commercialized and materialistic. You can’t blame them as many retailers do take advantage of the holiday as a time to boost and market sales. So yes, you can reclaim the holiday by making sure to give others and charity, spending time with family and spend less on pricey gifts so that they are more meaningful.
Then you get into those clergies and parents who feel you shouldn’t lie to children about Santa Claus being real. Which is hard, because, you can certainly point towards the historical Saint Nicholas of Myra, Turkey. He was real and lived. If you’re Christian, he became a Saint for his actions, a patron saint of children.
In a twist of irony, while some Churches still try to stamp out Santa Claus, others have found that having Santa there along with a Christmas tree and gifts actually gets people coming in. Go figure.
Childhood should be a time of wonder and hope. Yes, this is the time when many beliefs and conceptions about the world will be formed. Many children will figure out the reality of Santa Claus on their own. It should be a parent who decides to inform their child or not. Not some random stranger with a grudge who must go out of their way to destroy someone else’s fun, festivities and celebrations by enforcing their views.
In theater, we have the “Suspension of Disbelief.” You can at least do that before destroying someone else’s holiday good cheer. Go take over and live in the Grinch’s cave if you’re going to have to bah humbug the holiday season.
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Etymology: Originating in the Old Norse, Þórr or þunraz, meaning: “Thunder.”
Pronunciation: thor
Alternate Spelling: Þórr (Old Norse), ðunor (Old English), Thorr, Thunor, Thonar, Donar (Old High German/ Teutonic), Donner, Thur, Thunar (Old Saxon), Thuner (Old Frisian) or Thunaer
Other Names and Epithets: Thor is known by a number of names and epithets in Norse mythology, poetry and literature.
Tor, Ásabragr (Asabrag, Æsir-Lord), Ása-Þórr (Asa-Thor Æsir-Thor), Atli (The Terrible), Björn (Bjorn, Biorn Bear), Einriði (Eindriði, The One who Rides Alone, The One who Rules Alone), Ennilangr (Ennilang, The One with the Wide Forehead), Harðhugaðr (Hardhugadr, Strong Spirit, Powerful Soul, Fierce Ego, Brave Heart), Harðvéurr (Hardveur The Strong Archer), Hlóriði (Hlórriði, The Loud Rider, The Loud Weather-God), Öku-Þor (Oku-Thor, Ukko-Thor, Cart Thor, Driving Thor), Rymr (Rym, Noise), Sönnungr (Sonnung, The True One), Véþormr (Vethorm, Protector of the Shrine), Véuðr (Véuðr, Véoðr, Veud, Veod), Véurr (Veur, Guard of the Shrine, Hallower), Vingþórr (Vingthor, Battle-Thor, Hallower), The Thunderer and many others
Thor, the Germanic god of Thunder is found in many Germanic mythologies such as the Teutonic and Norse mythos! Much as I love the Marvel version, what follows will be the proper mythological versions of the legend.
Among the Norse, Thor was a very popular deity who even surpassed the worship of his father Odin. As a god of thunder, strength and war, Thor protected both gods and mortals against evil.
Animal: Goat
Day of the Week: Thursday
Element: Air, Earth
Instrument: Drums
Metal: Iron
Patron of: Farmers, Sailors, Common Man, Warriors
Planet: Jupiter
Plant: Oak
Rune: Thurisaz
Sphere of Influence: War, Protection of Mankind, Sky, Rain, Strength, Fertility, Hallowing, Healing, Thunder, Lightning, Storms
Symbols: Hammer, Swastika
Norse Depictions
Not the Marvel comic character of Thor who is blonde and muscular.
In Norse mythology, Thor is described as a large man with red hair and beard that gives off sparks when he’s angry. Further, he is described as having a wide forehead and fierce looking eyes. Thor is also known for not being very smart and having an insatiable appetite, he however, is always dressed for battle.
Another important aspect to Thor is that he is known for being able to change his size. Due to how hot and heavy he is, Thor is unable to cross the Bifrost bridge. He has to wade through the Northern Sea and enter Asgard the long route.
While Thor is known to be overly hasty in his judgments, is a reliable friend and battle companion who will have people’s backs.
What’s In A Name? – Syno-Dieities!
For one, the Romans, as they did with many other cultures that they encountered would equate their gods with those, whom they had in many cases, just conquered. In the case of Thor, while the Norse may not have ever been fully conquered, the Romans saw their god, Jupiter, a god of lightning and thunder in Thor. If the Romans weren’t equating Thor with Jupiter, they were equating Thor with Hercules. Other Indo-European gods equated with Thor have been the Celtic god Taranis, the Baltic Perkunas, the Estonian Taara, the Finno-Ugric Tiermes and Tordöm or Torum, the Slavic Perun and even the Hindu god Indra.
There were several Germanic cultures with incredibly similar mythologies throughout Europe at the time. So many of the deities were often extremely similar in function and myths. The Anglo-Saxons knew Thor by the name of Thunor. In Old English, Thor is known as Þunor where it becomes Donar in the Old High German or Teutonic mythos. Donar is thought to originate from the Common Germanic word Þunraz, meaning “thunder.”
During the Viking Age, many personal names using some form of Thor began to appear and be recorded with increasing frequency. It’s thought that the increased usage for the name Thor was in direct response to the growing Christian religion and resistance to it.
Donar – This is the South German or Teutonic name for Thor. The first record of this name was found on a piece of jewelry dating from the 7th century C.E. during the Migration Period of the Germanic people.
Donar Oak – In the 8th century C.E., there is an account how the Christian missionary, Saint Boniface knocked down an oak tree dedicated to “Jove” in Hesse, Germany.
Indra – A Hindu god, many have pointed towards both Thor and Indra having red hair and Scholars have compared the slaying of Vrita, a demon serpent by Indra with Thor’s battle with Jörmungandr, the Midgard Serpent.
Thunor – this is the Anglo-Saxon storm god and name for Thor.
Germanic Origins & Worship
Thor finds his roots in the Proto-Indo-European religion. He is a very prominent god who is mentioned many times throughout the history of the Germanic peoples from the Bronze Age, to the times of Roman occupation, to their expansions during their Migration Period, to seeing the height of his popularity during the Viking Age and persisting even during the Christianizing of Scandinavia.
Even into modern times, Thor is still found in the rural folklore in many Germanic regions. Many Nordic personal and place names often contained Thor’s name.
A hypothesis put forward by Georges Dumézil for the old Indo-European religion says that Thor represented strength when comparing him to the Hindu god Indra. However, it’s noted that many of Indra’s functions have been taken over by Odin.
Scholars have taken note of Thor’s association with fertility, especially as seen in later folklore where Thor is referred to as Sami Hora galles, the “Good-man Thor.” The equation is made as peasants seeing the side-effects of Thor’s aerial battles in the heaven that bring rain. Which makes sense when seeing Thor as a storm god, fertility would be a side-effect. Further proof is pointed in Thor’s marriage to Sif of whom not much is known about, but may very well be a memory for the divine marriage between the primary Sky God and Earth Goddess.
I’m not sure how much I agree with, but when you’ve got people wanting to connect everything, okay….
What is more practical and pointed out is Thor’s primary and principle function as the god of the second class, common man. Archaeological evidence points towards a three-tiered social hierarchy among the Norse. The first being the nobility and rulers, second being the warriors and the third being the farmers, commoners and everyone else. Thor was primarily the god of warriors and due to his being a storm god, easily stood for the farmers and commoners. As a result, Thor became the most important of the Norse gods, especially during the Viking Age as the lines between the second and third classes began to blur as social changes among the Germanic peoples.
Odin, who was the principle god for the first class appealing to the nobles, rulers, outcasts and anyone who was considered elite. Odin was often seen at odds with Thor as seen in many of the Eddas. One episode has Odin taunting Thor how Odin’s warriors are the nobles who fall in battle and that the thralls who fall in battle belong to Thor. Another episode has Odin blessing a favored hero of his, Starkaðr. For every blessing that Odin would impart, Thor gave a matching curse for Starkaðr.
Thunor’s Mound
This is an example of place names containing the name for Thor, but later forgotten as Christianity replaced the older Pagan religions.
In Kentish royal legends from about the 11th century C.E., there is a story of a reeve of Ecgberht of Kent known as Thunor. He was seen as being so wicked that he was swallowed up by the earth at a place known as þunores hlæwe or “Thunor’s Mound.
Thor’s hall of Bilskirnir is found in the region of Thrudheim (or spelt Thruthheim and Þrúðheimr), meaning: “Land of Strength.” Another place known as Þrúðvangr is mentioned as one of Thor’s abodes.
One of Thor’s temples located in Gamla Uppsala, Sweden, here, there is a statue showing Thor wielding a mace with Odin and “Fricco” standing to his right. Uppsala was replaced by a Christian church in 1080 C.E. Priests were appointed to each of the gods who offered up sacrifices. Sacrifices to Thor were only made during times of famine and plague.
Parentage and Family
Odin – Not just Thor’s father, Odin is also The All Father in Norse Mythology
Jord – Mother and Earth Goddess
Sometimes, Thor is said to the son of either Fjorgynn, also an Earth Goddess or Hlodyn.
Frigg – Thor is sometimes portrayed as Frigg’s stepson.
Sif – Wife, a fertility goddess
Jarnsaxa – “Iron Cutlass,” A Jötunn and Thor’s Mistress. I guess that means Thor was in a polyamory relationship.
Thor is the oldest of several brothers.
Baldr, Höðr, Víðarr, Váli, Hermóðr, Heimdallr, Bragi, Týr
Thrud – Also spelled as Þrúðr. She is likely a Valkyrie. Thor’s daughter with Sif
Magni – Thor’s son with Járnsaxa
Modi – Thor’s son with an unknown mother.
Ullr – Thor is the stepfather to this god of hunting.
Attendants of Thor
Thialfi – Not only Thor’s servant, but the messenger for the gods.
Þjálfi and Röskva – A pair of mortals, brother and sister who accompanied Thor as they ride around in his chariot.
Aesir Versus Vanir
The Aesir gods and Vanir gods of Norse mythology were two different tribes of gods who at first fought each other then started working together.
Thor belongs to the Aesir tribe of gods.
Thursday – Eight Days A Week!
In Western culture, the fourth day of the week is called Thursday or Thor’s Day, named after and for Thor himself. In Old English, this name is Thunresdaeg or Thunor’s Day. In German, the name of this day was known as Þonares dagaz or Donnerstag, meaning: Donar’s Day. Others believe the name of Thursday derives from Jupiter Tanarus, the Thundering Jupiter. In this case it’s taking the name of a Celtic deity and attaching them to a Roman god.
Interpretatio Germanica – This was a practice used during the time of the Romans when the Germanic people adopted the Roman weekly calendar and simply replaced the names of the Roman gods with their own. It easily explains how the Roman calendar and Dies Iovis, “Day of Jupiter” becomes Thursday, “Thor’s Day.”
God Of Thunder & Lightning
Thor is best known as a god of the sky and thunder among the Norse. Since thunder & lightning often mean rain, Thor is also the god of agriculture and fertility.
The 19th century scholar Jacob Grimm wrote how a number of phrases in the Germanic languages refer to Thor. Phrases such as: Thorsvarme meaning “Thor’s Warm” in Norwegian used to describe lightning; godgubben åfar meaning “The good old fellow is taking a ride” in Sweden along with tordön, meaning: “Thor’s rumble” or “Thor’s thunder” to describe when it thunders. According to Montelius, thunderbolts were known as Thorsviggar.
In Scandinavia, there is a folk belief that lightning will frighten away trolls and jötnar. This is likely a reflection of Thor’s pen chance for fighting giants. The evidence for a lack of trolls and ettins in Scandinavia is given that it is due to Thor’s accuracy and proficiency with his lightning strikes.
Once upon a time, this symbol was a protective religious symbol. While many who are already familiar with the history of this symbol are familiar with the sun or solar wheel. The swastika was also associated with Thor as this symbol was thought to represent Mjollnir or lightning.
As a protective sigil, it had been worn by women and archaeological searches have found the swastika depicted on many women’s graves. It’s thought to have been used by warriors too as it represented Thor’s lightning and used alternatively with a hammer symbol when going into battle. The symbol has been found on many memorial stones throughout Scandinavia next to inscriptions for Thor and a sword was found with an image of the swastika on the pommel. This symbol appears in many places on many Germanic artifacts dating from the Migration Period and Viking Ages.
God Of Craftsmanship
As a god of craftsmanship, it also made him the common man’s god from farmers to sailors.
God Of Healing
A Canterbury Charm dating from the 11th century C.E. has a runic inscription calling upon Thor to heal a wound by banishing a þurs or thurs.
In the Elder Futhark, the rune ᚦ or Thurs may have likely referred to dark magic or an evil spirit often called trolls or nisse.
God Of Protection & Strength
For the Germanic peoples, Thor represented the very archetype of the loyal and honorable warrior that warriors would aspire to. He was the defender of Asgard and the Aesir gods, protecting them from the jotuns, their enemies.
Going hand in hand with his role as protector is Thor’s great strength. Without his strength, power or even courage, Thor would not have been able to do his job as a protector of the gods, Asgard and Midgard. Sure Odin and Loki have the brains, it was often Thor with his brawn leading the way to muscle past faceless hordes of jotuns, ogres and trolls to defend everyone while the brains of the operations got their plans working.
A Kvinneby amulet dating from the 11th century C.E. has a runic inscription invoking protection from both Thor and his hammer.
As a weather god, Thor would also protect sailors traveling over the seas.
Hallowing
I find it interesting that Thor specifically is a deity noted for hallowing, that is to make something or someplace sanctified, sacred or holy. I suppose any deity can and do so, just not so explicitly like this.
As many called on Thor for protection and defense, for comfort, it does make a certain sense that he does bless items and places. A number of runic inscriptions found at many archeological sites all testify this. Even weddings were blessed by Thor as seen in the use of a hammer placed on a bride’s lap during marriage ceremonies. Early Icelandic farmers were known to call upon Thor to bless their plot of land before they built or planted crops.
Often Thor’s hammer, Mjollnir was used for blessing and hallowing just as often as he would use it to destroy. So, if he is seen as having the power to banish or destroy, having the power for just the opposite of hallowing is a given.
Thor’s Birthday
Interesting, some sources cite December fifth or even December 25th as the day for Thor’s birth. Imagine that, the same day for Saint Nicholas’ Day (December fifth) and Christmas (December 25th).
Mjollnir – Thor’s Hammer
Meaning “Destroyer” or “Crusher,” Mjollnir is represented as a stylized hammer. Whenever Thor threw Mjollnir, lightning would flash. The hammer would return to Thor’s hand after being thrown, a move symbolic of lightning. The myths describing Mjollnir say it could crush mountains. Mjollnir was crafted for Thor by the dwarven brothers Sindri and Brokkr.
In addition, Mjollnir held another power, that of returning the dead to life. In connection to Thor’s association to fertility and life, there was an old Nordic tradition of placing a hammer in a bride’s lap at her wedding and that of raising a hammer over a newborn.
Mjollnir’s Origins – Loki, the Norse god of trickery was in a rather mischievous mood, deciding it would be a good idea to cut off all of Sif’s hair. With Sif being Thor’s wife, the might god of thunder was not amused one bit. He swore to break every bone in Loki’s body to defend Sif’s honor and Loki pleaded with Thor to let him go to the caves of the dwarves to see if they could help fix the problem of Sif having no hair.
Loki went to the dwarven home where he implored the dwarf, Ivaldi to fashion some new hair for Sif. Ivaldi’s sons crafted a wig composed of the finest strands of gold. In addition, the dwarves made two other gifts, a ship that could easily fold down into a person’s pocket and would always have wind to move it and a magnificent, yet deadly spear.
Seeing these, Loki made a wager with two dwarven brothers, Sindri and Brokkr, betting his own head that the brothers couldn’t craft three gifts of their own for the gods that would be greater than what Ivaldi’s sons had crafted.
As the brothers began working at their forge, Loki shape-shifted into a fly as he attempted to interrupt their work to try and win the bet. While crafting the last gift, a hammer, Loki succeeded at interrupting the brothers enough that the handle of the hammer was too short. Despite this, the hammer was still considered the best of all of the gifts created and it was presented to Thor as he was the only one capable of welding it.
Holy Symbol – This major symbol of Thor’s has appeared in a many archaeological sites in iron, silver and other metal. Hammer shaped amulets were worn as necklaces by worshipers and followers of Thor, even during the Christianizing of Scandinavia as a means of defiance to the incoming religion. Both crosses and hammer shapes have been found side by side at archeological and burial sites.
Megingjard – Belt Of Strength
Meaning “Strength Increaser,” this is another of Thor’s mystical items and regalia. This belt doubled his already considerable strength while wearing it.
Járngreipr – Iron Gloves
These gloves were given to Thor by the female Jotunn Gríðr to defend himself against the giant Geirröd. These gloves were needed when Thor wielded Mjollnir.
Gríðarvölr
An unbreakable staff provided by the female Jotunn Gríðr to defend himself against the giant Geirröd.
Thor’s Chariot
Thor rode around the heavens in a chariot pulled by two goats. These goats’ names are: Tanngnjostr (Teeth-Grinder) & Tanngrisnir (Teeth-Barer or Gap-Tooth.) Thor would kill and eat these goats, after which, they would be resurrected by placing their bones back within their hides. The Old English expression of: þunnorad (“thunder ride”) is likely an allusion to Thor riding around in his chariot.
Thor Versus Giants
The giants or Jotun lived in Jotunheim, one of the nine worlds of Norse mythology. The Jotun of were the main enemies of Thor whom he would strike down by hitting them on the head. While many of the dealings between the gods and Jotun were often civil, the fights and battles were frequent. Thor would lead the charge against the Jotun as he rode his chariot and swinging around his mighty hammer. The lightning and thunder seen during storms were believed to be Thor fighting the Jotun on behalf of the mortal realm of Midgard.
In Norse mythology, the jotun represented the forces of chaos, destruction and entropy that would destroy all of Midgard and the Cosmos if Thor and the other gods didn’t keep them in check.
Half-Giant – Well… more like three-quarters giant really. It seems a little odd that for all that Thor is the protector of the Aesir and Asgard, that Thor is three-quarters giant himself. Odin, his father is a half-giant and his mother, Jord is a giant herself. Despite that lineage, it doesn’t stop Thor or any of the other gods from getting along and standing against the jotuns.
Thor Versus Geirrod – In this story, Loki had been flying around in the form of a falcon when got captured by the jotun, Geirrod. The jotun refused to release Loki unless he could find a way to get Thor to come to his court. Thor did agree, thinking that this would be a peaceful invitation and came without his hammer, Mjollnir.
Along the way, Thor stopped at the home of a friendly female jotun by the name of Grid. She warned Thor how Geirrod really intended to kill Thor. Grid loaned Thor her unbreakable staff, Gríðarvölr.
Finally arriving at Geirrod’s court, Thor was taken to a room where he sat in the only chair present. When Thor sat, the chair began to raise towards the ceiling. Just as Thor was about to be crushed to death, he braced Grid’s staff against the ceiling and pushed his way back to the floor. There were two loud cracks and screams that followed. When Thor looked to see the source, he saw Geirrod’s two daughter laying there in pain as Thor had broken their backs when forcing himself back to the floor as they had been lifting the chair.
Geirrod rushed into the room in a rage, throwing a molten iron rod at Thor. Undaunted, Thor caught the rod easily and Geirrod in a panic, hid behind a pillar. When Thor threw the rod at the pillar, it not only pierced the pillar, but continued through to impale Geirrod, killing him.
The Sun, The Moon & Freyja – One such story has Asgard, the home of the Norse gods getting damaged during a war between the gods. One of the Jotun offered to help rebuild the walls for Asgard, vowing to get it done in a short span of time. The gods accepted this offer, believing it would be an impossible task. The gods promised the Jotun a reward of the sun, the moon and the hand of Freyja in marriage. This Jotun nearly finished the task in the stated time period. However, to prevent having to fulfill the gods end of the bargain, Thor killed the Jotun.
Defeated By Utgard-Loki
This is a story that has two parts to it, beginning easily enough one winter when the jotun were causing huge blocks of ice to fall from the sky down into Midgard into people’s homes and causing vast amounts of snow to cover the fields to prevent planting any crops. As the defender and champion of humanity, Thor journeyed to the realm of Jotuneim with Loki and a couple of other companions.
Part One – Thor Versus Skrymir – In this first part, Thor and Loki met the Jotun known as Skrymir. This giant was so immense, that Thor and his companions mistook him for a hill. There was an oddly shaped mansion that the group found and decided to sleep in for the night. In the morning the group discovered that this mansion was actually one of Skrymir’s gloves. When the group awoke n the morning, they realized what they had taken for a hill was actually the giant, Skyrimir still asleep. Thor tried to crush in the Jotun’s skull with his hammer, Mjollnir. In response, Skrymir merely brushed the blow away as if it were nothing but a fly or leaf.
Despite the efforts of Thor to murder Skyrimir in his sleep, when the giant awoke, he offered to lead the group on their way to Utgard, a city of the jotun.
Part Two – Visiting Utgard – Skrymir led the group to the jotun city of Utgard where the group lost sight of Skrymir and was greeted by a group of jotun, including the king himself, Utgard-Loki. Given the general animosity between the gods and jotun, it’s no surprise that Thor, Loki and their other companions were not welcomed, unless of course they could complete a series of seemingly impossible challenges.
Loki was challenged and lost an eating contest when his opponent not only ate all the meat, but the bones and plate itself. Thialfi, one of the companions with the group, lost a series of three footraces.
It now fell to Thor to fulfill three challenges. As Thor boasted he could drink anyone under the table, a large drinking horn was brought to him with the challenge to finish it all in one gulp. After taking three huge swallows, Thor had only managed to drain the horn a few inches.
With the next challenge, Thor boasted his immense strength and Utgard-Loki challenged Thor to pick up a cat off the ground. After three attempts at moving the cat, Thor was only able to succeed at moving one paw.
Enraged by this, Thor accepted the last challenge of a wrestling match with anyone willing to match strength with him. The only one who would, was an old, frail looking woman. Thinking this would be easy, once again Thor was met with defeat at the hands of a feeble opponent who easily bested the mighty god, bringing him to his knees.
After this, Utgard-Loki declared the contests over and allowed the gods to stay the night and rest before returning home in the morning.
Come daylight, Utgard-Loki led the group out of Jotunheim. Once they were well past the borders, Utgard-Loki revealed himself to have been the giant, Skrymir who lead them to the city. Utgard-Loki proceeded to reveal the secrets of all of the challenges that Thor and his companions undergone.
Loki had been competing with fire, that burns and consumes everything it touches. That Thialfi’s opponent was thought, whom no one can outrun. As to Thor, the drinking horn he had drunk from was connected to the ocean and that he had succeeded in lowering the sea levels. The cat that Thor had tried lifting was none other than Jormungand, the Midgard serpent that encircles the world. As for the old woman, she was Age itself whom no one can defeat. That no matter how fiercely and bravely Thor fought her, even he would fall to her.
Angry at being tricked, Thor raised his hammer Mjollnir only to have the king of giants and his city vanish into thin air.
Thor Versus Hrungnir – One day Odin was out wandering near Jotunheim when he meets the jotun, Hrungnir. Odin challenged the jotun to a horse race back to Asgard. While Odin still won the match, he invited the jotun, Hrungnir to stay for dinner. During the dinner, Hrungnir gets drunk and boasts about how he could destroy Asgard and keep the goddesses as his concubines, including Thor’s own wife, Sif.
Needless to say, Thor didn’t take too well to this boasting and challenged Hrungnir to a fight. The jotun agreed and as Hrungnir had brought no weapons, they went back down to meet up near Jotunheim.
Before getting there, the other jotuns crafted a huge clay figure, some 30 miles high and 10 miles wide whom they brought to life. This clay figure would be Hrungnir’s right-hand man during the upcoming fight.
When Thor arrived, he was unfazed by seeing Hrungnir’s massive clay figure fighting beside him. Using his own trickery, Thor sent his own servant to keep the clay figure busy while Thor battled Hrungnir. When Hrungnir threw a giant whetstone, Thor responded with hurling his hammer, Mjollnir that broke the stone in half before continuing through to smash in Hrungnir’s head.
The Poetic Edda & Other Sagas
Much of what we know about Thor and the other Norse deities comes from the surviving Poetic Edda that was compiled in the 13th century C.E. It is a collection of various poems as follows: Völuspá, Grímnismál, Skírnismál, Hárbarðsljóð, Hymiskviða, Lokasenna, Þrymskviða, Alvíssmál, and Hyndluljóð.
Alvíssmál – In this poem, Thor manages to trick the dwarf, Alviss. When the story starts, Thor meets the dwarf, Alviss who is talking about marriage. Finding the dwarf to be ugly and repulsive, Thor comes to realize that it is own daughter, Thrud who is to be married. Further angered, Thor learns that this marriage was arranged by the other gods while he was away. Alviss however, must still seek Thor’s consent.
In order to get Thor’s permission, Alviss must tell Thor all about the worlds that he has visited. It becomes a rather long question and answer session as Alviss goes into detail about the terrains, different languages of various races and a goodly amount of cosmology.
This long question and answer session is nothing more than a delay tactic by Thor. While Thor comments that he has never met anyone with more wisdom, he has succeeded in delaying Alviss long enough that when the Sun rises, it turns him to stone. Now Thor’s daughter won’t be marrying someone he doesn’t approve. Of course, Thor could have made it easier by simply denying Alviss’ request, but it might have been more problems.
Grímnismál – In this poem, Odin is disguised as Grimnir wherein he is tortured, starved and thirsty. In this state, Grimnir tells a young Agnar about the cosmology of Norse believes, that Thor lives in Þrúðheimr and every day, Thor wades through the rivers Körmt and Örmt and the two Kerlaugar. At the base of the world tree, Yggdrasil, Thor sits as a judge.
Hárbarðsljóð – In this poem, Thor is the central figure. After having traveled “from the east,” Thor comes to an inlet where he tries to get a ride from a ferryman by the name of Hárbarðr (Odin in disguise). The ferryman shouts at Thor from the inlet, being rude and obnoxious. Thor takes this all-in stride at first, keeping his cool. As Hárbarðr becomes more and more aggressive, the two eventually fall into a flyting match.
Flyting? Epic Rap Battles way back in the day. As the match continues, it is revealed that Thor has killed several jötnar (giants) in the east and berserk women in Hlesy (the Danish island of Læsø). Thor loses the match to Hárbarðr and finds himself forced to walk.
It should be noted that the name of Hárbarðr or Harbard means Greybeard.
Hymiskviða – In this poem, Thor is the central character. After the gods have been out hunting and finished eating their prey, they begin to drink. As they drink, the gods decide to “shake the twigs” and interpret what is said. The gods then decide that they will find some cauldron’s at Ægir’s home. Thor gets to Ægir’s home and tells the other god how he needs to prepare a feast for the gods. Annoyed by this, Ægir informs Thor that he and the other gods will need to bring him a suitable cauldron in which to brew some ale in. Searching to no avail, Thor and the other gods are unable to locate such a cauldron. Tyr tells Thor that there may be a proper cauldron to use at Hymir’s place over east in Élivágar.
Stabling his goats, Thor and Tyr head to Hymir’s hall for a large enough cauldron to meet Ægir’s demands. When they arrive, Tyr see his nine-hundred-headed grandmother and his gold-clad mother who welcomes the two with a drinking horn. Hymir comes in and he’s not happy to see Thor. Tyr’s mother helps with finding a large enough cauldron for Ægir’s need for brewing. Thor in the meantime, eats a huge meal consisting of two oxen (while the others only have one) and then falls asleep.
In the morning, Thor awakens and tells Hymir that he wants to go fishing, intending to catch a lot of fish, but he will need bait. Hymir has Thor get bait from his pasture. Thor does so, going out and rips the head off of Hymir’s best ox. I can see why Hymir isn’t happy with seeing Thor.
There’s a break in the poem and it picks up with Thor and Hymir out at sea in a boat, fishing. Hymir manages to catch a few whales. Thor goes and baits his line with the head of the ox and when he throws it out, it is Jörmungandr, the monstrous sea serpent that takes the bait. Undaunted, Thor pulls the serpent up and slams Jörmungandr’s head with his hammer. Jörmungandr lets out a mighty shriek.
There is another break in the poem. However, other sources have commented that what is likely to have happened, is that Hymir cut the line holding Jörmungandr and he slipped back down into the ocean. This incident is also probably the source of the enmity between Thor and Jörmungandr at Ragnarok when the two kill each other.
The poem picks back up with Hymir completely unhappy and quiet as the two row back to shore. Back at shore, Hymir tells Thor to help him carry one of the whales back to his farm. Thor’s response is to pick up the boat, whales and all to carry them back to the farm.
Back at the farm, Thor smashes a crystal goblet that he throws at Hymir’s head at the suggestion of Tyr’s mother. Thor and Tyr are given the cauldron that they came looking for and while Tyr is unable to lift it, Thor is able to at least roll it along.
After leaving Hymir’s place and getting some distance from the farm, Thor and Tyr are attacked by an army of multi-headed creatures all led by Hymir. Thor kills all of the attacking creatures and presumably Hymir. One of Thor’s goats ends up lame, however Thor and Tyr are successful at bringing back a large enough cauldron for Ægir who is able to brew enough ale for everyone. Clearly the feast is enough of a success that the gods return every winter to Ægir’s place for more ale.
Hyndluljóð – In this poem, Freyja offers the jötunn woman, Hyndla a blót or sacrifice to Thor so that she can be protected. The comment is made that Thor doesn’t care much for jötunn women. Which begs the question of why make the offer? Unless because it was Freyja making the offering, knowing that Thor would honor it?
Lokasenna – In this poem, Loki enters a flyting match the gods in Ægir’s hall. Thor isn’t present for this incident. Towards the end of the poem, as things get more heated, the attention is turned towards Sif, Thor’s wife and Loki makes a bold claim to have slept with her. Beyla, a servant of Freyr’s, interrupt and announces that since the mountains are shaking, it must mean that Thor is on his way home. Beyla continues with how Thor will bring an end to the argument. Loki responds with more insults.
Thor does arrive and tell Loki to keep quiet or else he’ll rip off Loki’s head using his hammer. Loki taunts Thor, asking why he is so angry, he won’t be in any mood to fight the wolf, Fenrir after it eats Odin. All this is about the events of Ragnarok that have been foretold. Thor again tells Loki to keep quiet with a threat to throw the trickster god so far into the sky he would never come back down.
Not daunted in the least, Loki tells Thor how he shouldn’t be bragging about his time in the east as the mighty Thor had once cowered in fear inside the thumb of a glove. Once more Thor tells Loki to keep silent with threats to break every bone in his body. Loki continues the taunts, saying he still intends to live, throwing in references to when Thor had met Útgarða-Loki.
Thor gives a fourth and final demand to Loki for silence or else he would send Loki to Hel. At this, Loki ceases his taunts saying that he will leave the hall, knowing that Thor does indeed strike. The segment of the poem containing Thor ends here, but continues on.
Skírnismál – In this poem, Freyr’s messenger, Skirnir threatens the lovely Gerðr with whom Freyr is in love with. Skirnir’s many threats and curses include those of having Thor, Freyr and Odin himself be angry with her if she doesn’t return Freyr’s advances. I would hope that Gerðr held her ground and said no.
Þrymskviða – Also known as the Lay of Trym, this comedic poem features Thor as a central figure. Thor awakens one morning to discover that his hammer, Mjöllnir is missing. Thor confides in Loki about the missing hammer and that no one knows it’s missing. The two then head to Freyja’s hall to find the missing Mjöllnir. Thor asks Freyja if he can borrow her feathered cloak to which she agrees. At this, Loki takes off with the feathered cloak.
Loki heads to Jötunheimr where the jotunn, Þrymr is making collars for his dogs and trimming the manes of his horses. When Þrymr sees Loki, he asks what is happening among the Æsir and elves and why it is that Loki is alone in Jötunheimr. Loki replies by telling Þrymr how Thor’s hammer, Mjöllnir is missing. Þrymr admits to having taken Mjöllnir and hiding it some eight leagues beneath the earth where Thor will never get it back unless the goddess Freyja is brought to him to be his wife. Loki takes off again, flying back to the Æsir court with Freyja’s cloak.
Thor enquires with Loki if he was successful. Loki tells of what he has found out, that Þrymr took Thor’s hammer and will only give it back if Freyja is brought to Þrymr to be his wife. At this news, Thor and Loki return to Freyja to tell her of the news that she is to be a bride to Þrymr. Angry, Freyja flat out refuses, causing the halls of the Æsir to shake and for her famous necklace, Brísingamen to fall off.
The gods and goddess hold a meeting to debate the matter of Þrymr’s demands. The god Heimdallr puts forth the suggestion that instead of Freyja, that Thor should dress as the bride as a way to get Thor’s hammer back. Thor balks at the idea and Loki seconds Heimdallr’s idea, saying it will be the only that Thor can get his hammer back. For without Mjöllnir, the jötnar will be able to invade Asgard. Relenting, Thor agrees to dress as a bride, taking Freyja’s place. Dressing as a maid to the disguised Thor, Loki goes with Thor down to Jötunheimr.
After arriving in Jötunheimr, Þrymr commands the jötnar of his hall to make the place presentable for Freyja has arrived to be his bride. Þrymr then tells how of all of his treasured animals and objects, that Freyja was the one missing piece to all of his wealth.
Disguised, Loki and Thor meet with Þrymr and all of his jötnar. At the feast, Thor consumes a large amount of food and mead, something that is at odds with Þrymr’s impressions of Freyja. Loki, feigning the part of a shrewd maid, tells Þrymr how that is because Freyja had not eaten anything for eight days in her eagerness to arrive. Þrymr decides that he wants to kiss his bride and when he lifts “Freyja’s” veil, fierce looking eyes stare back at him. Again, Loki says that this is because Freyja hasn’t slept either during the past eight nights.
A poor sister of the jötnar arrives, calling for the bridal gift from Freyja if she cares anything at all for the jötnar. The jötnar then bring out Thor’s hammer, Mjöllnir in order to sanctify the bride as they lay it on “Freyja’s” lap. Þrymr and Freyja will be handfasted by the goddess Var. When Thor sees his hammer, he grabs hold of Mjöllnir and proceeds to beat all of the jötnar with it. Thor even kills the poor sister of the jötnar. Thus, Thor gets his hammer back.
Völuspá – In this poem, a dead völva tells the history of the universe and the future to Odin in disguise about the death of Thor. The völva foretells how Thor will battle with the Midgard serpent during the great mythical battle known as Ragnarok. How after slaying the serpent, Thor will only be able to take nine steps before dying from the serpent’s venom.
After the battle, the sky turns black before fire envelops the world, the stars vanishing, flames dancing across the sky, steam rising and the world becoming covered in water before it raises again, once more green and fertile.
The Prose Edda & Other Sagas
Not to be confused with the Poetic Edda, the Prose Edda consists of four books: Prologue, Gylfaginning, Skáldskaparmál, and Háttatal written by Snorri Sturluson.
In the Prose Edda, Thor is a prince of Troy, the son of King Memnon by Troana, the daughter of Priam. In this account, Thor is also known as Tror who is to have married the prophetess Sibyl, identified with Sif. It continues that Thor was raised in Thrace by the chieftain Lorikus whom Thor later kills and takes on the title: King of Thrace. Like later Marvel versions of Thor, this version of Thor also has blonde hair.
Snorri Sturluson explains how the name of the Aesir gods means: “men from Asia” and that Asgard was an “Asian City” that is, Troy. Given that Troy is located anciently in Tyrkland (Turkey) and is part of Asia Minor, that explanation works. So Asialand or Scythia is where Thor is to have founded a new city by the name of Asgard. Odin in this version is a descendant of Thor by twelve generations, who leads an expedition across Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway.
If Snorri can play around with Thor’s mythology, so can Marvel comics.
This is another of Snorri Sturluson’s books, written in the 13th century C.E. Statues attributed to Thor are found mentioned in a number of different sagas. Namely the Ynglinga saga, Hákonar saga góða, Ólafs saga Tryggvasonar, and Óláfs saga Helga sagas. In the Ynglinga saga, Thor is described as having been a pagan priest who was given by Odin, another powerful, magic using chieftain to the East, a place in the mythical place of Þrúðvangr, that is now Sweden. A number of popular names for Thor likely originate from the Ynglinga.
Ragnarok – Twilight of the Gods
The final end game of the Norse Gods, this not exactly a happy time as a good many of the gods end up dying.
Jormungand – On the day of Ragnarok, Thor would kill the Midgard Serpent known as Jormungand and then die in turn from the serpent’s poison. Thor’s sons, Magni and Modi would inherit the hammer. Though just how they would split it between them is unknown.
Norse Versus Christianity
Dating from the 800’s C.E., there’s a story how a bunch of priests of Thor had shown up at a Christian monastery of monks. Apparently, word had gotten around and the priests of Thor weren’t happy with how the monks their God were transgressing on Thor’s territory.
The priests of Thor were considering wiping out all of the monks, but knew if they did that, more monks and followers of Christianity would soon arrive.
Thor’s priests then decided on a pretty clever plan, let the gods fight it out for who would be the supreme deity. Thor’s priests were very confident that Thor would show up, leaving the Christian monks to have their God show up. The monks declined the challenge.
It’s an interesting story of people so certain in the reality of their faith and deities.
Old Saxon Baptismal Vow
This codex dating from the 9th century C.E. has the names of three Old Saxon gods, UUôden (Old Saxon “Wodan”), Saxnôte, and Thunaer, listed as demons to be renounced by the Germanic pagans converting to Christianity.
Holtaþórr
This is a specific breed of fox found in Iceland. The name translates to “Thor of the Holt” and receives the name due to their red coats.
Thorwiggar – Thor’s Wedges
In Swedish folklore, these are smooth, wedge-shaped stones that were thrown by Thor at a troll.
In a similar vein, meteorites are considered memorials to Thor due to how heavy they are.
Thorbagge
On the Swedish island of Gotland, this is the name of a beetle named after the god Thor. It is believed that when this beetle is found upside down, that a person can gain Thor’s favor by flipping the beetle back over.
Unfortunately, in other parts of Sweden, this beetle has become demonized with the Christinization of Europe as seen in the name of Thordedjefvul and Thordyfvel, both of which mean “Thor-Devil.”
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Matariki
Etymology – “Eyes of God”
Also known as: Pleiades, Mata Rikie (“Little Eyes”)
Alternate Spellings – Mata Ariki (“Eyes of God”)
For the Maori of New Zealand, Matariki is the name of the Pleiades star cluster. When this asterism is seen rising during late May and June, it marks the beginning of the New Year.
Eyes Of God
In one story, Ranginui, the sky father and Papatuanuku, the earth mother became separated by their children. When Tawhirimatea, the wind god, heard that his parents had been separated, he became so angry that he ripped out his eyes and threw them up into the heavens to become the star cluster Matariki.
Yes, as there are seven stars in Matariki, it means that Tawhirimatea had seven eyes.
Maori Goddess
As a goddess, Matariki is accompanied by her six daughters: Tupu-a-Nuku, Tupu-a-Rangi, Wai-Tii, Wai-Ta, Wai-puna-Rangi, and Uru-Rangi.
Assisting The Sun
In Maori stories, the Sun god, Te Rā begins his northward journey with Takurua, his winter bride and represented by the star Sirius. The Sun will later make his southward journey with Hineraumati, his summer bride. Matariki and her daughters are believed to appear so they can help Te Rā on his northward journey.
To Great Grandmother’s House We Go
When the New Year approaches, Matariki gathers up her daughters to go visit Papatuanuku, their great grandmother. During this visit, each of the daughters help Papatuanuku prepare for the coming year with each using a different ability to help get the earth ready. The daughters will also learn new skills and knowledge from Papatuanuku to pass on for others.
The Six Sisters
Tupu-a-Nuku – The oldest of Matariki’s daughters, she spends her time helping her great grandmother Papatuanuku tending plants needed for food, medicine and cloth.
Tupu-a-Rangi – She loves to sing. Papatuanuku has her singing to revive the forest and all the creatures of the land. Tupu-a-Rangi song is one of joy bringing the land back to life.
Wai-Tii and Wai-Ta – Twins, they care for the smallest and fastest creatures, typically insects who work in teams such as the bees to pollinate or ants building nests.
Wai-puna-Rangi – She goes with Papatuanuku down to the oceans, lakes and rivers to prepare the fish, who are the children of Tangaroa, the god of the sea for harvest to feed people. In addition, Papatuanuku also teaches her about the rain that falls from Ranginui to provide drinking water and how it evaporates by the sun to become clouds.
Uru-Rangi – She enjoys racing and helps set the tone when her sisters and great grandmother are getting the earth ready for the new year.
The star cluster Matariki was important to Maori sailors when navigating between their islands. Like many astronomers and star gazers, the Maori used the stars for calculating time and the seasons, preserving knowledge and passing on star lore and the history of the tribe.
The New Year begins in New Zealand among the Maori when Matariki is seen rising and the next new moon. Often, the pre-dawning rise of Matariki begins in the last few days of May and the New Year begins with the new moon that happens in June.
Rigel – Also known as Beta Orionis, Puanga in northern Maori, Puaka in southern Maori. This star is said to be the daughter of Rehua (the star Antares), the Chief of all Stars. When Rigel is first seen in the night sky, the rise of Matariki isn’t far behind. The Moriori of the Chatham Islands and some of the Maori use Rigel’s appearance to mark the start of the New Year.
Maruaroa o Takurua – Winter Solstice
Generally, between June 20th to June 22nd is the middle of winter, the new moon that occurs after Matariki can be seen in the morning sky.
If you didn’t already know, south of the equator, this marks the Winter Solstice, the shortest day and the longest night of the year.
The arrival of Matariki marks a time of celebration and preparing for the year’s coming harvests. Depending on how visible and bright the stars of Matariki are, would determine how warm the coming season would be and harvest size. When celebrating Matariki, different tribes would celebrate at varying times, though most festivities last around three days singing, dancing, feasting and sports.
Conservation – Living on an island meant that it was especially important for the Maori to practice conservation of their resources. The youth of the tribes would learn about the cultivation and care for the land, for not just crops, but certain birds and fish would be easy to hunt during this time.
For the Maori, they could ill afford to desecrate the land and over harvest or hunt on their islands if they wanted to continue living there. How they treated the land determined how long they could live on the land.
Offerings – Offerings of crops were made to different gods, like Rongo, the god of cultivated food. Other gods offerings were given too are: Uenuku and Whiro.
Remembering The Ancestors – Matariki also marks a time for the Maori to remember their ancestors, especially those who have passed during the previous year. Some tribes believe the stars of Matariki are where the souls of the departed have gone.
Official National Holiday
The Maori New Year celebrations had been popular for a while and stopped during the 1940’s. In 2000, a cultural revival was started that has come to be thought of as a “New Zealand Thanksgiving.”
Pakau – According to Hekenukumai Busby, an expert in traditional Maori navigation, said that the ancestors of the Maori celebrated Matariki by flying kites, known as Pakau. More modern celebrations have fireworks and hot air balloons to symbolize the ancient kites.
The Maori Language Commission – In 2001, a movement began by this organization to reclaim Matariki or the Aotearoa Pacific New Year. Since then, there have been various private and public institutions that celebrate Matariki that go from a week long to a month-long celebration.
Cultural Heritage – The years 2009 and 2011 saw efforts to pass a bill that acknowledge Matariki as an official holiday with New Zealand’s Parliament. The 2011 bill was successful in recognizing Matariki as an official holiday, it also honored a peace-making heritage founded by Parihaka.
Posted in Agriculture, Ancestors, Arts, Athletics/Sports, Chatham Islands, Clan/Tribe, Conservation, Dance, Death, Deity, Earth, Eyes, Feasts, Fertility, Festival/Holiday, Grief, Harvest, Knowledge, Life, Maori, Medicine, Moriori, Mother/Motherhood, Music, Nature, Navigation, New Year, New Zealand, Polynesian, Sacrifice, Sailing, Sisters, Sky, Solstice, Soul, Sun, Tradition, Travel/Traveler, Twins, Uncategorized, Weather, Wind, Winter
Etymology – The Altar (Latin), Incense Burner or Censer (Greek – Thymiaterion)
Pronunciation: AY-ruh
Also known as: θυτήριον, θυμιατήριον, Thymiaterion (Greek), Ara Centauri (Roman), Focus, Lar, and Ignitabulum, Thuribulum (Latin),
Ara is the name of a constellation in both Greek and Roman mythology that represents the altar that sacrifices to the gods were made on. The Milky Way galaxy was said to represent smoke rising up from the offerings on the altar. It is a southern constellation that lays between the Scorpius and Triangulum Australe constellations along the southern horizon on the Northern Hemisphere.
Western Astronomy
The constellation known as Ara is one of 48 constellations listed by the 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy in his book, Almagest. Ara was noted as being close to the horizon by Aratus in 270 B.C.E. Bradley Schaefer, a professor of astronomy, has commented that the ancient star gazers must have been able to see as far south on the southern hemisphere for where Zeta Arae lays, in order to pick out an alter constellation. The stars comprising of Ara used to be part of the Centaurus and Lupus constellations until the astronomer, Nicolas Louis de Lacaille created the Ara constellation during the mid-eighteenth century. Today it remains as one of the 88 current or modern constellations. It is one of the smaller constellations, ranking 63rd in size.
Constellations bordering with Ara are: Apus, Corona Australis, Norma, Pavo, Scorpius, Telescopium, and Triangulum Australe. The best time to spot Ara is during July in the Northern Hemisphere.
Chinese Astronomy
The stars for Ara are found in Dōng Fāng Qīng Lóng or the Azure Dragon of the East. In modern Chinese, Ara is known as Tiān Tán Zuò (天壇座), meaning: “the heaven altar constellation.”
Guī – Five of the stars (most likely Epsilon, Gamma, Delta, Eta, and Zeta Arae) in Ara form a tortoise that lived in the river formed by the Milky Way. Since tortoises are land animals, this likely a turtle as they were a prized delicacy. Another turtle found in Chinese astronomy is Bie who is located on the banks of the Milky Way in the Corona Australis.
Chǔ – Three stars (most likely Sigma, Alpha, and Beta Arae) in Ara form a pestle that is seen as pounding rice and separating the husks into a basket, Ji that is found in Sagittarius. Sometimes Chǔ is placed within the constellation Telescopium and depicted by the stars Alpha and Zeta Telescopii.
Judeo-Christian Astronomy
In Christian astronomy, Ara represents the altar that Noah built to make sacrifices to God on after the great flood.
Titanomachy
In Greek myth, Ara represents the altar that Zeus and the other Greek gods swore their oaths of allegiance on before they went to war against the Titans to overthrow Cronus. This particular altar that the gods swore on is held to have been built by the Cyclopes.
It should be noted that Cronus was one of twelve Titans who had also usurped his own father, Uranus, the previous ruler.
What comes around, goes around. A prophecy was given that Cronus would suffer the same fate of being displaced by one of his own children. To prevent this from happening, Cronus swallowed all of his children whole as they were born. These children being: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon who would all go on to be the Olympic gods.
When Rhea, Cronus’ wife gave birth to her youngest son, Zeus, she hid him in a cave on Crete and gave Cronus a stone, telling him that this was Zeus. Duped, Cronus swallowed the stone. Later, when Zeus had grown up, he managed to get Cronus to vomit up his siblings. Cronus’ children swore vengeance and to help Zeus overthrow Cronus and the other Titans.
The war lasted many years and had come to a standstill at one point and Gaia, goddess of the Earth and spouse to Uranus instructed Zeus to free the ugly, deformed kin of the Titans. These kin were the Hecatoncheires (hundred-handed giants) and the one-eyed Cyclopes who sorely wanted revenge against Cronus for having been imprisoned down in Tartarus.
Making his way down to the depths of the underworld of Tartarus, Zeus freed the Hecatoncheires and Cyclopes, asking them to join his side against Cronus and the other Titans. In gratitude for their freedom, the Cyclopes created a helmet of darkness for Hades, Poseidon’s trident and thunderbolts for Zeus.
Victory didn’t take long after, bringing a ten-year war to an end. Zeus would become the god of the sky, ruling over the other gods from Mount Olympus, Poseidon would become the gods of the sea and Hades would become the god of the underworld.
To commemorate their victory over the Titans, Zeus placed the alter up into the heavens to become the constellation Ara.
King Lycaon
Alternatively, Ara has been seen to represent the altar of King Lycaon of Arcadia. Yes, that Lycaon, who held a feast for the gods and dished up one of his sons, Nyctimus as the main course.
Why? Because Lycaon wanted to test Zeus to see if he was omnipotent. Okay dude, not a good idea, this sort of thing with testing and challenging the gods is called Hubris. It is never a good idea to anger the gods.
Needless to say, Zeus was not amused by this affront and turns Lycaon into a wolf (represented by the constellation of Lupus) before killing Lycaon’s other sons with lightning. As for Nyctimus, Zeus restored the child back to life.
Another version of this story given by an Eratosthenes, holds that Lycaon had served up his grandson Arcas at this feast. This would really anger Zeus as Arcas is his son by way of an affair with Callisto, who happens to be Lycaon’s only daughter.
In terms of predicting the weather forecast, it was said by the Greek poet Aratus, that if sailors saw the constellation of Ara, it meant that there would be wind blowing in from the south.
Other weather forecasting held that if the Ara constellation was the only visible constellation in a cloudy night sky, that there would be a storm coming.
Roman Mythology
The Romans called Ara by the name of Ara Centauri as it represented the altar that Centaurus used when sacrificing the wolf, Lupus.
In this version of the myth, Centaurus is shown in the night sky as carrying the wolf, Lupus to sacrifice on the altar, Ara.
Altar To The Gods, Hearths & Oaths
A more minor bit of lore, is that the Ara constellation represents the actual altar that people would burn incense on to show respect for Zeus.
Out of all the constellations for Ptolemy and other ancient Greek Astronomers to point out, why an Altar? It’s clearly important to the ancient Greeks. Many heroes in the Greek & Roman mythologies made sacrifices to different deities, so it does make sense that something so important would find a place of note in the heavens.
It is very likely that this is just a smaller constellation taken from a larger whole that tells a story narrated out in the night sky, much like the constellations for the story of Perseus and Andromeda or the three constellations that make up the Argo Navis for the story of Jason and the Argonauts.
Usually I want to roll my eyes when I come across an article while researching for a bit of mythology that gets too long winded about the etymology of a word and seems to try and make far too many linguistic connections.
This time it seems to bear some strong merit.
The interesting tidbit I came across is how the Latin word altar was adopted into the Old English word altar as a derivative from the plural noun “altaria”, meaning: “burnt offerings” and likely from the verb “adolere” meaning: “burn up.”
This word connection and etymology has been linked to Hestia, the goddess of the Hearth. The center of the home. That the description of Ara with the smoke from the Altar is that of smoke rising from the hearth of Greek and Roman homes.
More significant is that the Altar was the place where people would swear their oaths. Further etymology games and connections have brought up that the Greek word for oath is horkos and where the modern word exorcise, meaning: “’to bind by an oath” or “to drive out evil spirits” as seen in the Greek word of exorkizein (ex – out and horkos – oath). That seems to make sense in the story of the Titanomachy when Zeus swears an oath on the altar to kill his father and over throw the other Titans. Thus, making way for a new era ruled by the Olympian gods
Making a jump to Roman mythology, you have Orcus, a god of the underworld and punisher of broken oaths. There wouldn’t be this aspect to a deity unless it wasn’t considered important. Again, comes the linking of the Roman Orcus to the Greek orkos or horkos, meaning to swear and the variations of exorkezein, “to bind by an oath,” orkizein ‘to make to swear’, from the word orkos, ‘an oath.”
Continued word etymology has me looking at how the root orkos is very similar to the Greek erkhos or serkos, meaning: “an enclosure, hedge or fence” and is a cognate to the Latin “sarcire” meaning: “to patch or mend” with similar words of sark “make restitution,” sartoruis and sarcire, “to mend or repair.”
It used to be that your word was your bond and that giving one’s word or oath really meant something. Nowadays it feels like you need to have it in writing with the possibility of needing to take people to court if they don’t fulfill any contractual agreements of significant importance.
Hercules Family
The constellation of Ara, along with 18 other constellations of: Aquila, Centaurus, Corona Australis, Corvus, Crater, Crux, Cygnus, Hercules, Hydra, Lupus, Lyra, Ophiuchus, Sagitta, Scutum, Serpens, Sextans, Triangulum Australe, and Vulpecula.
All of these constellations have some connection to the overall legend and myth of the Grecian hero Hercules. They are the largest grouping of constellations found in the Western Hemisphere.
Stars of Ara
Alpha Arae – Also known in Chinese as Tchou or Choo, meaning “pestle.” Is the second brightest in the Ara constellation.
Beta Arae – This is the brightest star in the Ara constellation.
Gamma Arae – Is a blue-hued supergiant star thought to be 12.5 to 25 times bigger than the Earth’s own Sun.
Mu Arae – Is a sun-like star that has four known exo-planets orbiting it.
Delta Arae – Also known in Chinese as Tseen Yin, meaning “the Dark Sky.”
Zeta Arae – This is the third brightest star in the Ara constellation.
Stingray Nebula
Named for the distinct “stingray” shape, this Nebula is located roughly 18,000 light years away from the Earth. As of 2010, this is the youngest known planetary nebula found within Ara. While smaller than many other planetary nebulae that have been discovered so far, the Stingray Nebula is still 130 times larger than our solar system. The light for this nebula was first observed in 1987. It is a planetary nebula some 18,000 light years away from the Earth.
Water Lily Nebula
Also, catalogued as IRAS 16594-4656, this is a pre-planetary nebula found within the Ara constellation that is in the process of forming planets. It was first discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Westerlund 1 (Ara Cluster)
This is a compact cluster of relatively young (a few million years old) stars located some 12,100 to 16,000 light years from Earth. Westerlund 1 is named after the Swedish astronomer, Bengt Westerlund who first discovered it in 1961.
Posted in Altar, Cannibalism, Censer, Chinese, Christian, Constellations, Cyclops, Death, Deity, Dragon, Fate, Feasts, Flood Myths, Giant, Greek, Hecatoncheires, Incest-Inbreeding, Judaism, Lightning, Offspring/Descendants, Promise/Oath, Prophecy, Resurrection, Revenge/Vengecence, Roman, Sacrifice, Storms, Titan, Titanomachy, Tortoise/Turtle, Uncategorized, Underworld, War, Weather, Wind, Wolf
Cybele Part 2
Cybele Lore Continued…
Attis & Cybele
This story is one of the major myths involving Cybele and they often include her relationship with Attis, a youthful consort to the goddess. Attis is noted too as being the name of a Phrygian deity. Further, Attis doesn’t become a part of the myth with Cybele until the Roman poet Catullus references him with Cybele as Magna Mater and as the name of the head priest for the Galli. Additionally, pine cones are used as symbols of Attis’ death and rebirth.
Attis – As a Phrygian deity, Attis is the god of vegetation, his death and resurrection is symbolic of the death and rebirth of vegetation and the harvest with each winter and spring. The name Attis in Phyrgia was a common name and one used for priests. In the myths linking Attis with Cybele as her consort; wherever Cybele’s worship spread, Attis’ worship went as well.
Imagery portraying Attis has been found at a number of Greek sites. Whenever Attis is shown with Cybele, he is shown as a younger, lesser deity to her. He is possibly even one of her priestly attendants. During the mid-2nd century B.C.E., various letters from the king of Pergamum to Cybele’s shrine in Pessinos all address the chief priest as “Attis.” So deity or priest tends to be a matter of personal interpretation with the myths of Attis.
Attis was Cybele’s young lover who had devoted himself to the goddess. He had a made a promise that he would always be faithful. As fate would have it, Attis in time fell in love with a nymph by the name of Sagaritis (or Sagaris) and they decided to marry. When Cybele learned of this marriage, she burst in on the marriage ceremony, inflicting Attis with madness and sending the other guests into a panic.
In his maddened state, Attis fled for the mountains. There, he stopped under a pine tree and proceeded to mutilate himself to the point of castrating himself and bleeding to death there beneath the pine tree.
When Cybele found her lover, the young Attis dead, she mourned her actions and deeply regretted them. She pleaded with the god Jupiter to restore Attis to life. Jupiter vowed that that pine tree would remain sacred and like the tree, Attis would live again. The blood that Attis shed is said to have become the first violets.
In the versions of the myths where Maeon is Cybele’s father – Maeon kills Attis, the baby whom he sires after committing incest with his daughter. Cybele manages, in this myth to restore Attis back to life.
Pausanias’ Version – Another story of Attis, this time with Agdistis as another name for Cybele follows much of the same story as previously mentioned. Only now, when the baby, Attis is born, he is left exposed and a ram comes, standing guard over the child. As the baby grew, his beauty became ever more apparent as more than human. Agdistis saw Attis and fell in love with him.
When Attis finally came of age, he was sent to Pessinos, a city in Phrygia to wed the King’s daughter. After the marriage ceremony was completed, Agdistis appeared, causing Attis, driving him mad in her jealously to the point of cutting off his own genitals. The madness was such, it effected other nearby, that even the king cut off his own genitals.
Shocked, Agdistis sought amends for what she had done and begged Zeus to restore Attis to life so that he would be reborn.
Ovid’s Version – In this one, Attis had fallen in love with Cybele who wanted to keep the boy at her shrine as a guardian. She commanded Attis to always be a boy. Attis declared in kind that if he lied, let the lover he cheated be his last.
As happens with these kinds of stories, Attis does cheat with the Nymph Sagaritis (or Sagaris). Her tree is cut down by Cybele, killing her the Nymph. Attis in response goes mad and hallucinates that the roof to his bedroom is collapsing on him. Attis runs towards Mount Dindymus where he calls out for Cybele to save him.
Hacking away at his own body with a sharp stone, Attis continues to cry out to Cybele that she take his blood as punishment and cuts off his genitals as that is what has caused him to cheat on Cybele.
Ultimately, this story of Attis’ self-mutilation and castration is the basis for the Galli, Cybele’s priest to castrate themselves as a show of devotion to the goddess.
Cybele & Dionysus
Similar to the story of Attis & Cybele, is the story of Dionysus & Cybele. The earliest reference to this myth in Greek mythos is around the 1st century B.C.E. in Apollodorus’ Bibliotheca.
Like Attis, Cybele also cures Dionysus of his madness. Considering she’s the one who caused Attis’ madness, I would hope she would cure it too.
Both Dionysus’ and Cybele’s cult shared many similarities. As foreign deities worshiped among the Greeks, both gods would arrive in chariots drawn by large exotic cats. Dionysus would come in his chariot pulled by tigers whereas Cybele’s chariot was drawn by lions. Both deities would be accompanied to the fanfare of wild, raucous music and a parade of exotic foreigners and lower class citizens of Greek society.
For the Hellenic Greeks, these two gods held wild temperaments that didn’t sit well with many affluent Greeks and were thus, warily worshiped.
Due to the similarities of both Dionysus’ and Cybele’s cults, in Athens, by the end of the 1st century B.C.E., the two cults were often combined.
Cybele & Sabazios
Sabazios is the Phrygian version to the Greek Dionysus. Under Greek influence, the name Sabazios is often used as an epithet for Dionysus and the two’s myths have become very intertwined.
Further Greek influences have Cybele equated with Rhea. By Phrygian traditions, Cybele is the mother of Sabazios. When Cybele is equated with Rhea, she is the nurse-maid and tutor to a young Dionysus after his mother Hera rejects him.
Orgia – It is thought that the Orgia, the Orgiastic cult of Dionysos-Sabazios may have originated with Cybele. When Sabazios had been wandering in his madness, he made his way to Cybele in Phrygia where she purified him and taught him the initiation rite for the Orgia. Sabazios is to have received his thyrsus and panther-drawn chariot while he went throughout all of Thrace to spread the Orgia. The Orgia certainly seems to have become associated with the celebrations of Cybele as the Great Mother or Mountain Mother in the writings of Strabo or as Euripides makes mention of in his play Bacchae.
As Nurse-Maid – In a story very similar to Dionysus’ being rejected by his mother Hera, it is Cybele, identified as Rhea and Grandmother to Dionysus who takes up the infant to care for him much like she did her own son Zeus. The god Hermes, tells Cybele how Dionysus will become a god later when he’s grown to manhood. Cybele’s priests the Korybantes use their loud drumming and chanting to drown out the cries of the infant in order to prevent Hera’s wrath from finding him to finish what she had started with trying to kill Dionysus when she cast him out. The story of Dionysus’ youth with Cybele continues with him grabbing lions for the Mother Goddess to hitch up to her chariots and later acquiring a lion-drawn chariot of his own.
Atalanta & Hippomenes
These two were turned into lions in myth by either Cybele or Zeus as punishment for having sex with one of their temples. The Greeks believed that lions were not able to mate with other lions. Another version of the story will have Aphrodite turn them into lions when they forgot to give her proper tribute or offerings.
Cybele was also especially noted for being a bee goddess.
Mother Of The Mountain – Goddess Of Mountains And Fortresses
As a goddess of mountains, cities and forts, Cybele’s crown was seen to take the form of a city wall, showing her role as a guardian and protector of Anatolian cities.
There is an inscription of “Matar Kubileya” found at a Phrygian rock shrine dating from the 6th century B.C.E. It is often translated to: “Mother of the Mountain.” It is a name that is consistent with Cybele and a number of other tutelary goddess who are all seen as “mother” and connected to a specific Anatolian mountain or other locations. In this sense, Cybele is seen as a goddess born from stone.
Cybele’s connection and association with hawks, lions and the mountainous regions of Anatolia show her role as a mother of the land in its wild, uninhabited state. She holds the power to rule, moderate or soften the unbridled power and ferocity of nature and to reign it in for the use of civilization.
Idaea – Mountain Goddess & Nymph
Cybele is often connected with Mount Ida in Anatolia where there is an ancient site of worship. Idaea is the name of the local mountain goddess or nymph who resided here. Where many goddess get absorbed into each, the name of one deity, Idaea in this case will become an epithet to the more well-known deity.
Goddess Of Nature And Fertility
As an ancient fertility goddess, Cybele’s worship is believed to have covered from Anatolia to Greece during the Archaic period, roughly 800 to 500 B.C.E and then into the Hellenistic era of 300 to 50 B.C.E.
Lions and sometimes leopards were shown to either side of Cybele to depict her strength.
Cybele is typically seen as a guardian and protector over all of a nature and a goddess of unbridled sex.
Along with Artemis, Cybele is seen as the “Great Huntress” and patron goddess and protector of the Amazons.
Magna Mātēr – The Great Mother
The Romans revered and knew Cyble as Magna Mātēr or the Great Mother, Rome’s protector. They also knew her as Magna Mātēr deorum Idaea, the great Idaean mother of the gods. It is a similar title to the Greek title for Cybele of Mētēr Theon Idaia, Mother of the Gods from Mount Ida. In the early 5th century B.C.E., she was known as Kubelē. In Pindar, she was known as “Mistress Cybele the Mother.” Cybele’s worship among the Greeks saw her easily identified and equated with the Minoan-Greek Goddess Rhea and the grain-goddess Demeter.
As Magna Mātēr, Cybele was symbolized by a throne and lions. She held a frame drum. A bowl used for scrying. A burning torch was also used to symbolize her bull-god husband Attis in his resurrection. For some like Lucretius, Magna Mater represented the world order. Her imagery hold overhead represented the Earth, thought to “hang in the air.” As the mother of all, the lions pulling her chariot represent the offspring’s duty of parental obedience. Magna Mater is seen as un-created and separate from and independent of all of her creations.
Under Imperial Rome, Magna Mater represented Imperial order and Rome’s religious authority throughout its empire. Emperor Augustus, like many of Rome’s leading families, claimed Trojan ancestry and a connection to Magna Mater. His spouse, empress Livia was seen as the earthly equivalent and representation of Magna Mater. Statuary of Magna Mater has Livia’s likeness.
While there are not a lot of documents or myths that survive regarding Cybele, it has been suggested that her Phrygian name of Mātēr indicated a role as a mediator between the boundaries of the known and the unknown, the civilized world and the untamed wilds, the living and the dead. The Imperial Magna Mater protected Rome’s cities and its agriculture. Ovid mentions how barren the earth was before Magna Mater’s arrival. The stories and legend of Magna Mater’s arrival to Rome are used to promote and exemplify its principles and Trojan ancestry.
Megalesia – Festival To Magna Mātēr
Also known as the Megalensia or Megalenses Ludi; under the Roman calendar, Cybele’s Spring festival of Megalesia was celebrated from April 4th to April 10th, a period of six days. This festival celebrated Cybele’s arrival in Rome along with the death and resurrection of her consort, Attis. This festival and the whole month of April were celebrated with an air of rejoicing and lavish feasts.
Exactly how the festival was celebrated is uncertain. What is known is that there were many religiously themed plays, games and activities. There are descriptions of mummery, war dancers wielding shields and knives and a lot of drumming and flute playing. As to the games, slaves were not allowed to participate. On the first day of Megalesia, there would be a feast held. These feasts were known for being very lavish and the Roman Senate passed a law limiting the amount that could be spent on these feasts. On April 10th, Cybele’s image would be publicly paraded to the Circus Maximus, chariot races would be held in her honor. A statue dedicated to Magna Mater with her seat on a lion’s back stood at the side of the race track barrier line.
Hilaria – Holy Week
In addition to the Megalesia festival, there is also a week-long festival known as Holy Week that starts from March 15th, also known as the Ides of March. That really gives a new meaning to Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar when he’s told to beware the Ides of March. The entire festival is meant to have an air of celebration for the arrival of Spring and the Vernal Equinox.
The festival itself seems to have been established by Claudius as a means of claiming and honoring Trojan ancestry. As a result, the festival very likely grew and expanded over time as a celebration for the death and resurrection of Attis.
The Reed Entered – Also known as Canna Intrat, from the 15th to the end of the month, there is festival for Cybele and Attis that starts on the 15th or Ides, with Attis’ birth and his being left along the reed bank of the Sangarius river in Phrygia before either shepherds or Cybele find him. People known as Cannophores will carry away the reeds. During this time, there is a nine-day period of abstinence from eating bread, fish, pomegranates, pork, quinces and likely wine. Only milk was allowed to be drunk during this period.
The Tree Enters – Also known as Arbor Intrat, March 22nd marks the date of Attis’ death under a pine tree. It is observed. People known as Dendrophores or “Tree Bearers,” after sacrificing a ram, will cut down a tree and carry it to Magna Mater’s temple for a mourning period of three days.
Tubilustrium – March 23rd, this is an old, archaic holiday for the Roman god Mars. The tree has now been laid to rest in Magna Mater’s temple. Mars’ priest, the Salii will do a traditional beating of their shields accompanied by trumpets and other loud music from the Corybantes. Overall, this is a day of mourning.
The Day of Blood – Also known as Sanguis, Sanguem or Dies Sanguinis March 24th. The rites can only be described as frenzied as mourners and devotees whip or scourge themselves in order to sprinkle the alters and Attis’ effigy with their blood. Some of the rites involve castration and the tree is buried, symbolizing Attis’ placing within his tomb. This day was also to honor Bellona, a war goddess. Her priests were known as the Bellonarii and practiced mutilation along with using hallucinogenic plants.
The Day of Joy – Also known as Hilaria, on the Roman Calendar this marks the Vernal Equinox. It takes place on March 25th and celebrates Attis’ resurrection. It must be noted that is a day of celebration and not the previous mournful tones and rites. I’m also not the only one to have noted a similarity to the Christian association of Jesus’ resurrection.
Day of Rest – Also known as Requietio, March 26th. What can we say? Partying is hard work.
The Washing – Also known as Lavatio, March 27th. This is when Cybele’s sacred stone, the Pessinos’ black meteor is taken from the Palatine temple to the Porta Capena along a stream called Almo. This stream is a tributary to the Tiber river. Here, the stone would be bathed by a priest. The return trip back to the temple would be conducted by torchlight. It’s noted by Ovid as being an innovation by Augustus.
Initium Caiani – March 28th. This particular part of the festival is found on the Calendar of Philocalus. It is likely an initiation ceremony that was held at the Vatican sanctuary for the mysteries of Magna Mater and Attis.
Pine cones are symbols of Cybele and the related myth of Attis. They are believed to have been worn by Cybele’s priests and followers as one of her symbols. As a protective symbol, a pine cone would be affixed to the top of a pole and placed out in vineyards to protect the crops. Pine cones would also be placed at the entrances to homes, gates and other entrances.
Tympanon
A type of hand drum or tambourine, the tympanon was used by the Greeks to denote worship in a foreign cult or religion. Of the foreign deities the Greek adopted, only Cybele is ever shown holding the tympanon. On the cuirass of Ceasar Augustus’ Prima Porta statue, Cybele’s tympanon is shown lying at the goddess Tellus’ feet.
Among the Romans, Cybele was rewritten to be a Trojan goddess and thus making her an ancestral goddess through the Trojan prince Aeneas.
The Trojan War was a major and significant war among the Greeks. Many deities got themselves involved. Cybele was one of many such gods to do so. When Prince Aeneas was attacked by Turnus, leading the Rutulians, Cybele prevented Turnus from setting fire to the Trojan fleet by turning all of the ships into nymphs.
Virgil’s Aeneid – As Berecyntian Cybele, she is the mother of Jupiter and the protector of prince Aeneas. Cybele gave the Trojans her sacred tree to use for building their ships. Cybele then pleaded with Jupiter to make the resulting ships indestructible. Aeneas and his men are able to flee Troy, heading for Italy, where Rome would be founded. Once the they arrived in Italy, the ships all turned into sea nymphs or Oceanids.
Yes, you read that correctly. During the early Roman Imperial era, the poet Manilius introduces Cybele into classic Greco-Roman zodiac. It upsets the balance as there’s already twelve zodiac houses represented by a corresponding constellation. Each of which is ruled by a different deity, the Twelve Olympians in Greek and the Di Consentes in Rome. Manilius places Cybele as a co-ruler with Jupiter over Leo the Lion, which is noted for being in direct opposition to Juno who rules Aquarius.
Some modern scholars have taken note of how, as Leo rises over the horizon, that Taurus the Bull sets. Symbolically, this is seen as the lion dominating or defeating the bull. The idea then gets put forth that the celebrations of Megalensia includes this symbolism with lions attacking bulls. As a Spring festival, the date for the celebration of Megalensia is around April 12th when farmers would dig in their vineyards to break up the soil and sow their crops. This would also be when farmers would castrate their cattle and other livestock.
Mesopotamian Connection?
It has been suggested by some scholars that Cybele’s name can be traced to that of Kubaba, a deified queen who ruled during the Kish Dynasty of Sumer. Kubaba was worshipped at Carchemish and would later be Hellenized to the name of Kybebe. Kubaba was also known to the Hittites and Hurrians in the region. There isn’t enough etymological evidence to support this. However the names Kubaba and Matar do seem to have become closely associated. Such as the genital mutilations that are found both within Cybele’s and Kybebe’s cults. Much like many other localized mountain goddesses in Anatolia, who are called “mother” and among many who would become identified with Cybele.
Christianity And The Book Of Revelation
Of interest, is that the author of the Book of Revelations, identified by modern scholars as John of Patmos is likely to have been referring to Cybele when he mentions “the mother of harlots who rides the Beast.”
Christianity – Kept to a nutshell, the early Christians, once Christianity became the state religion of Rome, began to view and regard Cybele’s cult as evil, even demonic. Under Emperor Valentinian II in the 4th century C.E., he officially banned the worship of Cybele and the goddess followers and devotees fell under a lot of hate and persecution. Under the rule of Justinian, objects of worship for Cybele and her temples were destroyed and eventually by the 6th century C.E., Cybele’s cult seems to have vanished.
It has been noted by others how the Basilica of the Vatican is apparently the same exact spot for where Cybele’s Temple once stood and that Christians celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in the same place where Attis was once worshiped. Some will even go so far as to suggest that revering the Virgin Mary is merely another aspect of worshiping Cybele and many other ancient Mother Goddesses.
Montanism – Christianity – Also known as New Prophecy – Now I do find it fascinating that around 100 C.E. a former Galli priest of Cybele by the name of Montanus formed a Christian sect that worked to oppose Pauline Christianity.
In Pauline Christianity, those who followed the teachings of the Apostle Paul, it held a major influence into the formation of Christianity in terms of scriptural interpretations, cannon and dogma.
Montanus’ sect was considered very heretical to the Catholic Church and would eventually see all of its followers excommunicated.
In brief, Montanus believed himself to be a prophet of god and that women could also be bishops and presbyters. Where much of early Christian theology diminished the power and presence of women within religion, Montanus’ sought to keep it.
It’s also interesting to note a rather prominent example of a Pagan religion that Christianity and former followers of other religions attempting to adopt and add in their beliefs. Like Montanus equating Jesus with Attis and the celebrating of Easter with the resurrection of Jesus during Holy Week, the days between Good Friday and Easter is also the same period that Hilaria, observing and celebrating Attis’ resurrection was held.
Rhea – Greek Goddess
Just as Cybele is the Great Mother of the Roman Pantheon, Rhea, her Grecian counterpart is the Great Mother of the Greek Pantheon of Gods. Thanks greatly to the influence of the Romans, many people will identify and equate Cybele with Rhea.
The Romans were famous for subsuming many deities in their conquest across Europe, particularly the Mediterranean area, and identifying their gods with those of a conquered culture. The most famous being the Greeks, where many deities were renamed to those of Roman gods. Prominent examples like Zeus and Jupiter, Hera and Juno, Ares and Mars and so on down the line.
With the Hellenization of Latin literature, many Greek writers and even Roman writers rewrote and intertwined the myths of these two deities so that would virtually become one and the same. As the centuries have passed, the tradition of accepting both of these goddesses as one and the same has become generally accepted. Just that there are still some differences that separate the two.
Rhea’s best known story is with the birth of the Olympian gods. Cronus fearing that a son of his would kill him and take over, devoured all of his children as they were born. Rhea managed to rescue her youngest son, Zeus by tricking Cronus into swallowing a rock. She hid Zeus in the Dictean Cave in Crete. Zeus, after growing up, succeeded at overthrowing Cronus and rescuing his siblings.
Like Cybele, Rhea can help in easing the pain of childbirth and soothe the pain and difficulties that come with menstruation.
Demeter – Greek Goddess
The Greeks are who make the connection and equate Cybele with Demeter and Rhea, seeing in her a Mother Goddess. While Cybele does have her origins in Phrygian worship, when the Greeks encountered her, they just saw another deity like their own, just under a different name. Yes, all three are a Mother Goddess and Goddess of the Earth, you can see why the Greeks would equate all three together.
The Romans are clearer in acknowledging more clearly the genealogy of the Greek pantheon and equating Cybele whom they readily adopted as their own with Rhea and then equating Demeter with Ceres, a Roman Harvest goddess.
Antaea – This name and epitaph is one that is applied equally to Cybele, Demeter and Rhea by the Greeks. The meaning of the name is unclear, though it does denote a name for a goddess whom people could approach in prayer.
Posted in Agriculture, Amazons, Anatolian, Ancestors, Animal - Beast, Banned, Beauty, Bees, Birth, Blood, Book Of Revelation, Borders/Boundaries, Castration, Cat, Cattle - Bull/Cow, Cheating, Christian, Civilization, Cult, Death, Deity, Demon, Destruction, Devotion, Divination, Drum/Drumming, Earth, Equinox, Evil, Excommunication, Faith, Feasts, Fertility, Festival/Holiday, Flower, Foreign, Fortresses, Games, Grain, Greek, Grief, Guardian, Harvest, Hawk, Heretical, Home, Hunter, Imperial Order, Incest-Inbreeding, Insanity, Jealousy, Leopard, Lion, Love, Marriage, Mediator, Mesopotamian, Minoan, Montanism, Mother/Motherhood, Mountain, Murder, Music, Mutilation, Nature, Nurse-Maid, Nymph, Obedience, Offspring/Descendants, Orgia, Persecution, Phrygia, Pine Tree, Portals/Entrances, Power, Priest, Promise/Oath, Protector, Punishment, Purification, Queen, Reeds, Rejection, Resurrection, River, Rock/Stone, Roman, Sex, Sheep, Spring, Strength, Teacher, Thracian, Tiger, Transformation, Tree, Trojan, Trojan War, Vatican, Vegetation, Violet, Walls, Wild, Winter, World Order, Youth, Zodiac
Aesir
Aid/Help
Amnesia-Forgetfulness
Anger/Temper
Animal – Beast
Asphodel
Athletics/Sports
Banishing
Baptizism
Bible/Torah
Bident
Bison-Buffalo
Borders/Boundaries
Calydonian Hunt
Cattle – Bull/Cow
Chollo
Ciconian
Clan/Tribe
Cleanliness/Sanitation
Clone – Doppleganger
Commericialized
Cosmos/Universe
Creator/Creation
Crow/Raven
Cthonic
Cup-Bearer
Dacian
Decapitation
Diloggun
Disappearing/Vanishing
Disease – Illness
Divine Child
Drum/Drumming
Drunkeness/Intoxication
Eunuch
Everlasting Year
Festival/Holiday
First Man/Woman
Fish-Hook
Five Emperors
Flood Myths
Flying/Flight
Flyting
Folk Lore
Folkvangr
Fortean Phenomenon
Gems-Gemstones
Golden Apples
Hamadryad
Huldufólk
Hypnosis-Hypnotic
Immortal-Xian
Imperial Order
Impossible/Unattainable
Incest-Inbreeding
Incubus – Succubus
Interpretatio Germanica
Invisible/Invisibility
Jaw-Bone
Kupua
Lango
Liminal
Mangarevan
Medieval Age
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Montanism
Moriori
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Nereid
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Oread
Oyotunji
Paniskoi
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Presents/Gifts
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Psychopomp
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Sakha Republic
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Seven Against Thebes
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Shilluk
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Sky Tide
Slavery – Slave
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Smithing-Forging
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Soroko
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Tortoise/Turtle
Travel/Traveler
Trickery/Cunning
Triple Goddess
Twelve Labors
Unicorn-Qilin
Vengence
Wudi-Wushen
Yaoguai
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Most played PC games
Spotify's premium subscribers 2015-2019
Number of World of Warcraft subscribers
Global all time unit sales of Call of Duty franchise games as of February 2019
Advertising spending in the U.S. 2015-2022
Video Game Industry - Statistics & Facts
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Video Games & Gaming
Global top-selling console games in 2018, by unit sales
Published by Christina Gough, Aug 9, 2019
Red Dead Redemption 2 was the much-anticipated sequel to Rockstar’s 2010 classic, Red Dead Redemption. Despite only being released in October 2018, Red Dead Redemption 2 ended the year as the top-selling console game, with almost 14 million units sold worldwide for PlayStation 4. A further 5.77 million copies of the game were sold for Xbox One, bringing the total to almost 20 million for the year.
Is Call of Duty’s popularity starting to shrink?
The Call of Duty series of games has been a mainstay in the top-selling games lists for many years. In 2018, the latest offering in the series, Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII, sold a combined 14 million units worldwide on PlayStation and Xbox One. However, figures suggest that the series is suffering a dip in popularity in recent years. The most popular title in the series, 2011’s Modern Warfare 3, shifted 30.71 million copies worldwide, significantly higher than the unit sales of the most recent editions – Call of Duty WWII in 2017 and the aforementioned Black Ops IIII in 2018.
PlayStation king of the consoles?
With all three of the top-selling console games in 2018 being for PlayStation 4, it appears that Sony is not loosening its grip on the console market. Sony has also expanded into the virtual reality gaming market with the release of PlayStation VR in October 2016. In just over two years, the virtual reality headset has sold over four million units. Nintendo are hot on Sony’s heels with their console, the Nintendo Switch. The Switch has sold over 32 million units worldwide since its release in March 2017. Unsurprisingly, Nintendo’s Super Mario Universe of games are proving particularly popular and dominate the list of bestselling Switch games worldwide.
Top-selling console games worldwide in 2018, by unit sales (in millions)
Sales in million units
yearly sales column
Lifetime global unit sales of video game consoles as of February 2019
Global unit sales of video game consoles from 2008 to 2018
Global unit sales of Nintendo Switch console 2017-2019
Nintendo's unit sales of video game consoles 1997-2019
Statistics on "Game consoles"
Global digital games industry revenue 2018, by category
Game consoles computer graphics hardware market size worldwide 2013-2022
Leading gaming consoles in Europe 2018, by unit sales
Lifetime North American unit sales of video game consoles as of February 2019
Digital games industry revenue in North America 2017-2019, by category
Game consoles unit sales in the U.S. by device/platform 2007-2018
Sony unit sales of PlayStation consoles 2011-2019, by quarter
Global unit sales of Sony PlayStation 4 consoles 2014-2019
Installed base of Sony PS4 and Microsoft Xbox 360/Xbox One consoles 2012-2029
Xbox 360 and Xbox One annual unit sales worldwide 2005-2018
Global unit sales of Xbox One consoles 2017-2019
Xbox One: unit sales in Europe 2013-2018
Number of Xbox Live MAU Q1 2016 - Q4 2019
All-time best selling console games worldwide 2019, based on unit sales
Premium console games revenue worldwide in 2019, by region
Leading premium PC and console games worldwide 2018
Best selling console games in Europe 2018, by unit sales
All time best-selling PS4 video games worldwide as of 2018, by unit sales
Top selling Nintendo Switch games worldwide in 2019
Gaming console ownership among internet users worldwide 2014-2018
Game console brand purchase consideration worldwide Q1 2018
Share of U.S. teenagers with a game console 2018, by gender
Physical video game playing penetration in European countries Q1 2018
Console and computer gaming in the United Kingdom (UK) 2010-2018
Different uses for gaming consoles in the UK households in 2014-2018, by category
Most popular games consoles among teenagers in Germany 2018
Leading console games in Japan 2018
Physical retail sales of video games in the U.S. 1996-2015
Number of console games sold in Sweden 2015, by platform
Retail sales value of console games in Sweden 2015, by platform
Console video games: sales value market share in Spain 2012-2013
Console video games: sales volume Spain 2013, by console and game type
PC and console software sales in France H1 2014-2015, by type
Console games revenue in Norway from 2011-2020
Console games revenue in Denmark from 2011-2020
Console game market sales revenue in Japan 2009-2017
Leading digital console games worldwide 2017, by revenue
Monthly unique users of console games in Sweden 2013-2015
Average revenue per paying user of console games in Sweden 2013-2015
Digital sales value of console games in Sweden 2013-2015
Number of console game releases worldwide 2008-2014, by format
Gender distribution of PC console game users in China 2016
Share of people playing console games in Finland 2002-2017, by gender
Penetration of gaming in Germany in 2011 and 2012, by platform
Global seafood supply volume share 2013, by category
Nintendo Video Game Industry Microsoft Gaming Sony
VGChartz. (February 1, 2019). Top-selling console games worldwide in 2018, by unit sales (in millions) [Graph]. In Statista. Retrieved January 19, 2020, from https://cdn1.statista.com/statistics/273335/sales-of-the-worlds-most-popular-console-games-in-2011/
VGChartz. "Top-selling console games worldwide in 2018, by unit sales (in millions)." Chart. February 1, 2019. Statista. Accessed January 19, 2020. https://cdn1.statista.com/statistics/273335/sales-of-the-worlds-most-popular-console-games-in-2011/
VGChartz. (2019). Top-selling console games worldwide in 2018, by unit sales (in millions). Statista. Statista Inc.. Accessed: January 19, 2020. https://cdn1.statista.com/statistics/273335/sales-of-the-worlds-most-popular-console-games-in-2011/
VGChartz. "Top-selling Console Games Worldwide in 2018, by Unit Sales (in Millions)." Statista, Statista Inc., 1 Feb 2019, https://cdn1.statista.com/statistics/273335/sales-of-the-worlds-most-popular-console-games-in-2011/
VGChartz, Top-selling console games worldwide in 2018, by unit sales (in millions) Statista, https://cdn1.statista.com/statistics/273335/sales-of-the-worlds-most-popular-console-games-in-2011/ (last visited January 19, 2020)
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Indonesia: number of Facebook users 2017-2023
This statistic shows the number of Facebook users in Indonesia from 2017 to 2023. In 2023, the amount of Facebook users in Indonesia is expected to reach 80.8 million, up from 64.6 million in 2018.
With more than 1.71 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most popular social network worldwide. Popular activities on the social network include watching videos, liking content via button, reading articles and messaging friends on 1-1 basis. In July 2016, Facebook Messenger surpassed one billion monthly active users, placing it directly next to Facebook-owned competitor WhatsApp. Facebook successfully managed the transition from social network to mobile social platform, nearing one billion monthly active users and with mobile accounting for 77 percent of the social network’s total advertising revenue in 2015.
Mobile is also the keyword regarding the online market in Indonesia; in 2014, 56.52 million people accessed the internet through their mobile phone. In 2021, this figure is projected to amount to 104.91 million mobile phone internet users. As of July 2016, the internet penetration among the Indonesian population was 20.4 percent. A total of 76 million users access social media via mobile on a monthly basis, making it by far the biggest Facebook market in the Southeast Asian region. The average internet connection speed in Indonesia is 4.5 Mbps, less than a quarter of market leader’s, South Korea’s, average speed of 29 Mbps.
Number of Facebook users in Indonesia from 2017 to 2023 (in millions)
Number of users in millions
* Forecast
Internet usage in Indonesia
Indonesia: number of internet users 2017-2023
Countries with the highest number of internet users 2019
Indonesia: social network penetration Q3 2018
APAC: average internet connection speed in selected countries 2017
Statistics on "Internet usage in Indonesia"
Number of internet users in selected Asia-Pacific countries 2019
Distribution of internet users in Asia 2019, by country
Freedom House Index: internet freedom in selected countries 2019
Indonesia: number of fixed broadband subscriptions 2000-2018
Fixed broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants in Indonesia 2001-2018
Indonesia: mobile phone internet users 2017-2023
Indonesia: mobile phone internet user penetration 2017-2023
Indonesia: mobile phone internet user growth 2016-2022
Smartphone activity reach level Indonesia 2017
Average smartphone usage time Indonesia 2017 by activity
Active social media user penetration in selected Asia-Pacific 2019
Active mobile social media penetration in selected Asia-Pacific countries 2019
Monthly active social media users in APAC countries 2019
Active mobile social media users in APAC countries 2017-2019
Indonesia: preferred netizen social media 2016, by age
Indonesia daily reach of leading social platforms 2016
Indonesia mobile messaging user penetration 2015-2020
Total retail e-commerce revenue in Indonesia 2017-2024
Online retail users in Indonesia 2017-2024
Digital buyer penetration in Indonesia 2017-2024
E-commerce share of retail sales in Indonesia 2015-2017
Urban online shopping spending in Indonesia 2017 by category
Rural online shopping spending in Indonesia 2017 by category
Reasons online shopping platform preference Indonesia 2018
Popular product categories on e-marketplaces in Indonesia 2018
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Statista. (February 18, 2019). Number of Facebook users in Indonesia from 2017 to 2023 (in millions) [Graph]. In Statista. Retrieved January 19, 2020, from https://cdn1.statista.com/statistics/304829/number-of-facebook-users-in-indonesia/
Statista. "Number of Facebook users in Indonesia from 2017 to 2023 (in millions)." Chart. February 18, 2019. Statista. Accessed January 19, 2020. https://cdn1.statista.com/statistics/304829/number-of-facebook-users-in-indonesia/
Statista. (2019). Number of Facebook users in Indonesia from 2017 to 2023 (in millions). Statista. Statista Inc.. Accessed: January 19, 2020. https://cdn1.statista.com/statistics/304829/number-of-facebook-users-in-indonesia/
Statista. "Number of Facebook Users in Indonesia from 2017 to 2023 (in Millions)." Statista, Statista Inc., 18 Feb 2019, https://cdn1.statista.com/statistics/304829/number-of-facebook-users-in-indonesia/
Statista, Number of Facebook users in Indonesia from 2017 to 2023 (in millions) Statista, https://cdn1.statista.com/statistics/304829/number-of-facebook-users-in-indonesia/ (last visited January 19, 2020)
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Art Stream
Isaac Julien: A Marvellous Entanglement
By Sedition
Date July 23rd, 2019
Until 27 July at Victoria Miro Gallery in London, Isaac Julien presents a nine screen installation reflecting on the work of the influential modernist architect Lina Bo Bardi (1914–1992). A Marvellous Entanglement portrays the architect at different stages of life.
Starring Fernando Montenegro and Fernanda Torres and shot in seven locations designed by Bo Bardi (SESC Pompéia, MASP and the Teatro Oficina in São Paulo; the Bahia Museum of Modern Art, the Coaty Restaurant and the Gergório de Matos theatre in Salvador), A Marvellous Entanglement blends together Bo Bardi’s life story, writings and designs, and contributions from those who knew her, to meditate on her life and achievements and to celebrate the lasting influence of her work.
Born in Italy and known primarily for her work in Brazil (where she became a citizen in 1951), Lina Bo Bardi’s work is celebrated for designs that combined design and poetry and which challenged linear notions of space and time. She is known for her commitment to expressing the cultural and social importance of the arts and for introducing Brazillian folk cultures into her practice. Notable works include The Glass house, built in and interwoven with rainforest which has since been cut down, the monumental concrete São Paulo museum of art, the abstract staircase at the Solar do Unhão and the Teatro Oficina. Her works are landmarks of Brazilian modernism; they are pieces of visual poetry which unify the study of form and material with Brazillian culture and spirit.
Each of the seven locations featured in Julien’s piece become the stage for performative interventions or rituals which explore different facets of Bo Bardi’s life and work. Iconic structural elements of her designs, such as the staircase at the Bahia Museum of Modern Art, are loci for performances by artists, collectives, musicians and choreographers who worked in collaboration with Julien. A Marvellous Entanglement thus continues Bo Bardi’s efforts to make artistic spaces truly open and collaborative. The work also uncovers the struggles and stories connected to buildings designed by Bo Bardi today.
Julien’s poetic storytelling creates a multidimensional portrait of a nonlinear practitioner - someone whose work shaped space and materials, existing cultures and uncharted terrains. A Marvellous Entanglement not only gives insight into Bo Bardi’s life; it also, by foregrounding her buildings, opens a discussion about the importance of conserving her work.
Images: Isaac Julien, installation view, Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement © Isaac Julien, courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro, London/Venice
A Marvellous Entanglement is at Victoria Miro, 16 Wharf Road, London N1 7RW until 27 July.
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Dr. Barak Meraz
What Sets Dr. Meraz Apart
Chiropractic Methodology
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Chiropractor in Fort Lauderdale
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THE BENEFITS OF CHIROPRACTIC ADJUSTMENTS
If you are regularly prone to backaches, joint pains and headaches and have been in and out of hospitals, but to no avail and have only suffered continuously without a permanent cure, then there is one type of an ingenious medication that you should try: Chiropractic.
Chiropractic Adjustments would be the solution for your woes and with a qualified and experienced Fort Lauderdale chiropractor treating you, which is a holistic and non-invasive procedure. You could find a permanent cure to all those aches and pains in a natural way - the chiropractic way.
Millions around the world have undergone this scientific treatment and are today living normal lives without the curse of constant headaches, backaches, and other joint pains which could be quite uncomfortable and painful.
Chiropractic Adjustments by your favorite Fort Lauderdale chiropractor do not involve the intake or application of costly drugs but facilitates the important functions of the body through a natural healing process and is researched and recorded as ideal for the following:
• Headaches
• Neck pain
• Ear infections
• Stomach problems
• Blood pressure
• Prevention of surgery
• Improved vital organ function
• Mental alertness
• Healthy pregnancies
Chiropractic adjustments have been practiced around the world since 1896 when Daniel David Palmer first experimented and introduced the idea that the intricate manipulation of the spine could cure various illnesses without resorting to any other medication.
Though its popularity grew around the world, still there were certain apprehensions especially from the traditional medical fraternity who did not accept it with an open mind and welcome hands, for obvious reasons.
The medical fraternity and other interested sections of society challenged the training procedures of chiropractors, and also on how the treatment was effective on patients and its after-effects.
The chiropractic profession thundered back with the fact that many if not all, chiropractic training programs equated to an advanced year of Ph.D. training incorporated into advanced level nutrition training programs.
A comprehensive look at the chiropractic adjustment training programs, its benefits, and how it facilitates the various cures would educate any layman who would be interested in this very effective alternate medical procedure to cure some of the common ailments that we experience.
Chiropractic patients have experienced tremendous improvements in their condition and we look at the history behind this incredible form of cure, philosophically, its emergence historically, and based on the evidence in hand, its overall effectiveness as a holistic alternative to some traditional medication.
It is also observed that with the popularity of chiropractic adjustments increasing studies have shown increased overall bodily function in patients under treatment and a holistic improvement in their condition.
What really are Chiropractic Adjustments?
To understand what chiropractic really is, it would be prudent to know what it means and there could be many definitions of the word, apart from what the Oxford English dictionary would say, which is;
The treating of disorders in a patient’s joints, especially those of the spine by using pressure from one’s hands and fingers to move the defective bones.
The World Federation of Chiropractic would define the word and work of Chiropractors, in a more meaningful and elaborate way using a more appropriate collection of words to try to explain what they do better;
“A professional practice pertaining to the diagnosing, treating and preventing of any mechanical disorders in the musculoskeletal system and the effects of these disorders on the function of the nervous system and general health with an emphasis on manual treatments, including spinal adjustment and other joint soft-tissue manipulation.”
We know through experience that there are two sides to a coin, and the other side of the Chiropractic coin on which is stamped the Association of Chiropractic Colleges defines chiropractic as follows;
“Chiropractic is a healthcare discipline that emphasizes the inherent recuperative power of the body to heal itself without the use of drugs or surgery. The practice of Chiropractic focuses on the relationship between structure, of the spine and function which is coordinated by the nervous system, and how that relationship affects the preservation and restoration of health. In addition, doctors qualified in Chiropractic recognize the value and immense responsibility of working in close cooperation with other health care practitioners, in the best interest of the patient.”
It is envisaged by most Chiropractors that they would be able to work alongside regular doctors and help people to receive pain-free and drug-free medication for various sicknesses and also prevent injuries.
Successful treatment through Chiropractic Adjustments
The chiropractic adjustment procedure is holistic where it intends to treat the patient’s complete body optimizing the patient’s facilities to think, move and also perform specific tasks towards recovery.
Reducing inherent stress on the patient’s immune system and preventing the occurrence of any disease and stabilizing and maintaining homeostatic.
The benefits of the Chiropractic Adjustment procedures could be achieved by positioning the patient’s body in the ideal position to help the treatment take effect within and then work towards the cure are:
• The pride of the chiropractor, a professional who practices chiropractic adjustments is that they depend in totality on a natural procedure devoid of any drugs, externally or internally, to achieve the set health goals.
The body is helped by rejuvenating its inherent ability to cure any disease or sickness it would be afflicted with and creating the most conducive environment for the body to achieve it.
This is the essential principle on which chiropractic is built upon and is not a myth or fiction but what our body would generally do when confronted with a situation it has to take remedial action.
Safety is a primary concern in the chiropractic adjustment procedure because by applying the right pressures at the appropriate locations on the body the bone in the spinal cord could be effectively moved to ensure perfect alignment which facilitates the cure.
• Based on the principle that the central nervous system is the ultimate controller of everything in the human body chiropractors concentrate their focus and attention on it to ensure that it is aligned with perfection and nothing less.
If the spinal cord has shifted for any number of reasons the professional touch is provided under the right conditions to bring it to perfect alignment which would be the first step in the cure procedure.
• The concept at the center of the chiropractors successful or sometimes referred to as the “miracle procedure” is known in the chiropractic adjustment fraternity as “vertebral subluxation” a term synonymous with what they generally do and achieve with their patients.
The Chiropractors also call it the mechanical compression and irritation of the spinal joints and nerves.
Chiropractic history:
William Harvey Lillard, who had difficulty in his hearing due to compression of nerves leading to his ears, is recorded in chiropractic history as the first patient of David D. Palmer.
Lillard was treated by Palmer who made minute spinal adjustments using only his fingers and hands, thereby reducing the stress on the affected nerves and restored the hearing of the former after a few days of treatment.
Palmer conducted extensive research on Physiology thereafter and found that the problem of Lillard’s hearing was that there had been a misalignment of the spinal nerves which controlled the inner ear.
This was clearly an example of “vertebral subluxation” and based on these findings and after treating many more patients with similar or other problems which Palmer was able to sure he began training others in the procedure.
The drugless procedure called Chiropractic that Palmer adopted, and the ease of the treatment caught on, and many were trained by Palmer to help him with the influx of various patients and many were cured.
Under the guidance of Palmer the practice of Chiropractic developed around Davenport, Iowa where he lived and in 1897 the first Chiropractic learning institute, the Palmer Chiropractic School and Cure, was established.
The problem that patient Lillard suffered was pressure on nerves to the ear, while it could be a pressure on the nerves that run along the legs for another, or for someone else it could nerves that control gastrointestinal discomfort.
Whatever it would be, it is the bundle of nerves that run through our spinal canal that controls all the other nerves by being extensions of the main one and when there is undue pressure exerted on any particular nerve controlling any organ or part of the body it could affect the patient.
Corrective action which could be done to rectify the issue would be to realign the nerve and that could be done by an operation or using the Chiropractic Adjustment procedure which is painless and also drugless.
It would be incomprehensible and mind-boggling to understand the quantum of nerves that run through our spinal canal and to locate the exact one affecting the patient and applying the right amount of pressure, which Chiropractic does is even more mind-boggling.
Other common therapies that are within the purview of chiropractors include Spinal Decompression Therapy, which is the stretching of the spine employing a traction table or other mechanical device to relieve pain and rectify other problems which would be due to the undue pressure applied on the nerves inside the spinal canal.
Other complementary therapies that would encompass Chiropractic are acupuncture, deep tissue massage and other physical treatments that could complement each other to effectively treat a patient suffering from various pains and other physical and anatomical disabilities.
Who needs Chiropractic Adjustments?
There are many reasons that a patient could be treated with Chiropractic Adjustments and cured of “vertebral subluxation”, and some of the most common factors that could bring that necessity would be as follows:
• The misalignment of a vertebra, due to a fall, slip or even long hours at the desk
• Poor sitting, sleeping or standing postures affecting the total spine, could be “macro-trauma.”
• Damage or swelling in the intervertebral
• A poor diet, drinking impure water or psychological stress causing inflammation in the body.
• Degenerative changes or Osteoporosis which could change the intervertebral discs in the spinal cord.
• Muscles that could exert undue pressure on the spinal canal and dislodge discs in it.
A Good Posture is very important
In modern society, especially in the advanced and developed West, the tendency due to work-related activities and also when relaxing the habit, has been to be seated for long hours spending time in one and the same place for hours.
It may be sitting and working at a desk, watching television, fiddling around with the iPhone, tablet, laptop or smartphone which is becoming a standard norm in society.
Those who sit like “couch potatoes” would hardly get up, stretch their body from time to time, adjust their seats and let the flow of blood through their system more effectively could have umpteen number of health problems.
The lack of adequate physical activity, and the “hunched over lifestyle” which strains neck muscles and nerves which is also called “forward head posture” and a number of issues relating to improper sitting is causing many problems to the general populace.
Extensive studies have shown that when our necks stick out a mere one inch forward from its exact center of gravity the neck bears enormous stress of 10 pounds, and if this is a habitual sitting posture there could be detrimental results over time.
Further first-hand studies conducted by chiropractors, after observing possible patients, have concluded that many who sit have a two to three inches forward movement of their heads and this equivalent to 20 to 30 pounds of weight constantly being pulled down on the neck.
The results could be disastrous in the long term for such individuals by not only the neck being affected but the nerves being under strain too which could affect vital organs in the body.
5 Benefits Chiropractic Adjustments could provide
Finding the best Fort Lauderdale chiropractor is not the only thing in rectifying the issues caused by many years of wrong posture and other trauma, it is very important to take the right approach to protecting one's health.
There is no other profession that could cure any neuromuscular problems without drugs other than what Chiropractic could do and hence it is a very important sector in the treatment of patients with various nerve disorders.
Having oneself regularly checked by a professional Fort Lauderdale Chiropractor would keep you away from all that stress and aches and pains that could be caused due to slight variations in the nervous system.
The following could be some of the issues many would suffer and if proper treatment is taken at the right time a cure could be envisaged but if such problems are left to linger the situation could get worse and could be quite disastrous in the long term.
If you are prone to or are suffering from any of the following it would be prudent to see a Fort Lauderdale Chiropractor immediately as there is a painless cure and you could avail of it without aggravating the issue and even be bedridden in the future.
#1. SCIATICA
Few medical treatments could cure back pain compared to what Chiropractic Adjustments could and whilst others would only try to ease the pain what the latter could do, would be a cure that would totally take off the pain.
Findings have shown that there was 72% success in Chiropractic treatments especially in treating sciatica symptoms in patients who have suffered much and gone from pillar to post with any proper long-term relief.
While Chiropractic had recorded such a high success rate physical treatments was just a meager 20% and the more painful corticosteroid injections had a success rate of only 50%.
These figures were obtained after clinical findings published in the European Spine Journal and shows that Chiropractic whilst having a high success rate for treating Sciatica is also considered as a cure unlike the other two.
Another finding was that active treatment on patients suffering from the same condition had a better success rate than when it was stimulated and treated.
#2. LOW BACK PAIN AND NECK PAIN
Studies conducted on patients who had undergone Chiropractic Adjustments for chronic neck pain and who were satisfied with the treatment recorded a 96% “very satisfied” and another 98% as “definitely would” as far as their experiences and relief of pain was considered.
Another comprehensive study conducted and published by the British Medical Journal disclosed that 183 patients with Neck pains were treated with Chiropractic, physiotherapy and counseling, education and drugs.
The study was over a period of 52 weeks hence it had enough time to ensure a final outcome to whatever treatment that was initiated and at the end of the study, it was recorded that Chiropractic Adjustment provided faster recovery and at one third the cost of either of the other two.
In another study conducted and published in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics which had two groups of patients during a period of one month, one group treated by family physicians and the other by Chiropractors.
The group treated by the chiropractors recorded an incredible 56% satisfaction whilst the family physicians group recorded a meager 13%. And the audacity was that there were issues of the situation worsening in the latter and no such complaints in the former.
There have been many studies conducted by eminent scholars and published in reputed medical and other related journals of various results emanating from low back and neck pains which is a very common issue with many.
All of them have shown results greatly favoring the Chiropractic Adjustments over the others and also the other main factor that would provide additional favor would be the low-cost factor in this procedure than the others.
#3. Headaches, Tension, and Migraine
Another very common condition, second only to back pains, headaches are regular striking even the average healthy person and when it strikes the issue could be quite painful and could place many in a state of limbo not knowing how to react or what to do.
There are as many as or more than 230 peer-reviewed studies across the world, published about the ability of Chiropractic Adjustments to sure this very vulnerable physical condition in many with a cure recorded and not just relief from pain.
A study showed that 22% of those who had Chiropractic Adjustment had experienced a drop of 90% in headaches and in the same study they concluded that 49% experienced a pain reduction compared to before the treatment began.
Compared to any other treatment it has been strongly asserted that Chiropractic Adjustments has a better chance of recovery at a very much lower cost and without any drugs or other medication which could have after effects on some patients.
#4. Colic, Acid Reflux and Ear infections in children
Children are susceptible to Colic, Acid reflux and ear infections regularly on which the journal Explore conducted a review of 26 articles on the subject recently.
It also included three extensive clinical trials and four cohort studies, all of which concluded without an iota of doubt that Chiropractic Adjustments had a tremendous impact even in children and their Colic condition was reduced sharply after a few days of treatment compared to other methods tried alongside.
In completion and as a final conclusion it was recorded that Chiropractic Adjustments in children for Colic, Acid reflux and ear infections had higher success rates than any other procedure physical or otherwise.
#5. NEUROLOGICAL CONDITIONS
It is interesting to record that recent MRI Scans conducted is showing what Chiropractic Adjustments have been doing all these years and it is now shown very prominently in these very invaluable scans.
The Chiropractic Adjustments that started in 1896 is now being justified by science and it is hoped that all neurological conditions could be treated by a concerted concentration in this type of drugless and painless treatment.
Neurological conditions have been treated before with Chiropractic Adjustments and it is now being justified and it is hoped that this type of treatment would be considered by many more patients in the future.
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The Communicator • January 12, 2020 • https://chscommunicator.com/71978/a-and-e/2020/01/sotd-el-toro-combo-meal-by-earl-sweatshirt/
“EL TORO COMBO MEAL”
Samuel Dannug, Journalist
“EL TORO COMBO MEAL” by Earl Sweatshirt is a powerful, melancholy rap song that sees the artist let out some of his darker thoughts and feelings through an impressive lyrical performance. The song is the fifth track off of Earl’s latest project, Feet of Clay, an EP released on Nov. 1, 2019.
The song’s instrumental is a loop featuring a choir-like sample, a light piano, and cutoff drums. The entire beat has a very vinyl/vintage-like sound to it, which is contrasted by Earl’s clear-sounding vocals. On the first verse, Earl spits lines like “Lost my dawg to the staircase” and “I spun ’til the loss of my grandmama buried the dunk,” tackling problems he’s faced with fame, the death of loved ones, and losing friends to incarceration. The lyrical structure is complex, typical of Earl’s work, with unique uses of rhyme, alliteration, word play, and other techniques.
On the second verse, there is an added layer of intense, dynamic reverb, and Earl wraps up the song describing his struggle cutting out the fake people in his life and “figuring out his own thing.”
Earl’s powerful delivery of a lyrically masterful and cathartic reflection on life is what makes “EL TORO COMBO MEAL.” A project with immense meaning, Feet of Clay was an important project for the artist moving forward, and fans will be curious to see what Earl puts out in the future.
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Home » Breaking News » youth group set the seed for hope
Bishop Fintan Monahan
youth group set the seed for hope
October 14, 2017 1,976 Views
MEMBERS of a youth choir will set the seed for hope in churches this weekend, to create public awareness of children who are experiencing a difficult time.
The young people of Londubh Youth Choir and Celtic Ensemble have chosen lavender, a healing and native plant, to place in churches in Clarecastle, Ballyea, Ennis, Quin, Roslevan and Shannon.
They will also present symbols of hope, love, courage, friendship and knowledge, which were made recently for the Youth Helps Youth project at these churches this weekend.
They will team the symbols with encouraging quotes put together by the youth, such as ‘A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself’, ‘Don’t lose hope, you’ll never know what tomorrow will bring’ and ‘Once you choose hope, anything is possible’.
These will be placed around the lavender plant, along with a healing prayer during the launch.
The lavender plant is a symbol of growth, nature and the healing that will take place when young people get the support that they need.
The youth will express their thoughts and feelings on how it’s important to support each other and to share and use our talents as best one can.
Under the direction of musical directors, Claire Connellan and Tim Collins, the two groups are preparing for a concert, in aid of the Children’s Grief Centre, which is located in Limerick.
The concert is due to take place on December 3 in Clarecastle Church.
The Children’s Grief Centre reaches out to young people suffering loss, supporting them through art and play therapy, in Clare, Limerick and Tipperary.
Members of Londubh Youth Choir and Celtic Ensemble will be available after the allocated mass to meet with the congregation and tell them about this fundraising concert that the youth are working towards.
According to Bishop Fintan Monahan, this is a most welcome initiative in the diocese.
“Following on the success of the recent Youth Fest in St Flannan’s College, there is a great interest in increasing the involvement of young people in church-based activities.
“This is a great opportunity for that to happen. Best wishes to all involved in the launch of the ‘Healing Plant Project’ this weekend. It is thoroughly deserving of our support and backing for such a worthy cause,” he said.
Dan Danaher
Tags Bishop Fintan Monahan Celtic Ensemble Children's Grief Centre Claire Connellan Ennis Londubh Choir St Fannan's College Tim Collins Youth Helps Youth
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Self Esteem's Christmas Song Is One For The "Deep Stans"
‘All I Want For Christmas Is A Work Email’ is out now...
Self Esteem has shared her new festive hymn ‘All I Want For Christmas Is A Work Email’ - check it out now.
Rebecca Lucy Taylor's project conjured debut album 'Compliments Please' earlier this year, undoubtedly one of 2019's standout pop debuts.
Playing some wonderful live shows, Rebecca was offered time in London's historic Abbey Road studios, which she immediately snapped up.
New single ‘All I Want For Christmas Is A Work Email’ is the result, with Self Esteem commenting: "I am here to ruin your Christmas..."
It's a sad Christmas song, one that ruminates on the underlying anxiety that many of us experience across the festive season.
She continues: "I’ve always been into writing sad Christmas songs as deep stans will know - and that desire has apparently not left me."
"This was in my head as soon as I had decided to write something ‘Christmassy’. Because Christmas for me is more frustrating and difficult than any other time of year, I feel like it illuminates everything that might not be ok and makes it double not ok."
"A goal of mine is to one day enjoy it like a normal person, but I wanted to write a song for fellow people who cope with life by working and creating and moving forwards - the enforced stillness of Christmas can be so triggering. Also I referenced The Darkness in the studio which is a first and potentially not the last."
Witty and self-deprecating while still cutting deep, ‘All I Want For Christmas Is A Work Email’ is the alternative take on the festive season many of us have been crying out for.
Check it out now.
Catch Self Esteem at the following intimate piano shows:
18 London Laylow
19 Sheffield Picture House
20 Manchester YES
Introducing... Yehan Jehan
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Latino Education & Advocacy Days (LEAD)
Southern California Consortium of Hispanic Serving Institutions - SCCHSI
National Latino Education Network
I.E. Regional Collaborative
LEAD Summit X
LEAD Week
Cal State University, San Bernardino
5500 University Parkway /College of Education(CE) Room-305
emurillo@csusb.edu
Chapters (Town Hall Viewing Sites)
LEAD Townhall Viewing Event Chapters: 1600+ sites across 39 countries:
Academic and Student Success Division, Danville Community College
Academy for Teacher Excellence
Achieving the Dream National Initiative
Adelante Education
AG Consultants (multiple, 20)
AGUILA Youth Leadership Institute, Inc. - Phoenix www.aguilayouth.org
Alpha Zeta of Omega Delta Phi International Fraternity Inc.. University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
American Association of State Colleges and Universities (Headquarters)
American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (multiple sites)
American GI Forum of California Member
Asia-Pacific Association for International Education, Korea
Asociación Mexicana para la Educación Internacional
Asociación Nacional de Universidades e Instituciones de Educación Superior
Asociación Nacional de Universidades Tecnológicas
Asociacion Panamena de Lectura (APALEC)
Association for Promoting Science Technology Engineering Mathematics
Association of Canadian Community Colleges
Association of Caribbean Universities and Research Institutes, Jamaica
Association of Hispanic Educators, Metro Nashville Public Schools
Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada
Austin Community College - Austin Texas.
Austin Peay State University, Clarksville, TN - Hispanic Cultural Center
AVID Program, Colton High School
Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla
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ZigguratVertigo's Hideout
in search of the perfect pixel
Finding Next-Gen – Part I – The Need For Robust (and Fast) Global Illumination in Games
Figure 1: Direct and Indirect Illumination from a single directional light source. [1]
This post is part of the series “Finding Next-Gen“. Original version on 2015/11/08. Liveblogging, because opinions evolve over time.
Global Illumination?
Global illumination (GI) is a family of algorithms used in computer graphics that simulate how light interacts and transfers between objects in a scene. With its roots in the Light Transport Theory (the mathematics behind energy, how it transfers between various media, and leads to visibility), GI takes into account both the light that comes directly from a light source (direct lighting/illumination), as well as how this light is reflected by and onto other surfaces (indirect lighting/illumination).
As seen in Figure 1, global illumination greatly increases the visual quality of a scene by providing a rich, organic and physically convincing simulation of light. Rather than solely depending on a manual (human) process to achieve the desired look, the mathematics behind GI allow lighting artists to create visually convincing scenes without having to worry about how they can manually replicate the complexity behind effects such as light scattering, color bleeding, or other visuals that are difficult to represent artistically using only direct illumination.
A Family of Algorithms? But I thought GI was “Bounce” or “Radiosity”
The single directional light source reflecting on the yellow wall, which then reflects on the adjacent floor and walls as well on Shrek‘s body, is an example of what one could first notice in Figure 2. This phenomenon is what video game artists would describe as bounce or radiosity [2]. Of course, there’s a myriad of things happening in the image below, such as ambient occlusion, caustics, subsurface scattering, but for simplicity let’s focus on a specific (and significantly noticeable) visual element that’s part of global illumination: diffuse inter-reflection.
Figure 2: Diffuse Inter-Reflection, Light Bleeding, Ambient Occlusion and other GI effects [1]
In the context of video games, in order to create mood and visually pleasing complex imagery this element of indirect lighting is what lighting artists often wish for. While we should not forget that GI is more than just diffuse inter-reflection, in video games the term GI is often used to describe this diffuse ambient term. As we get closer to real-time, the use of the term GI will most likely evolve, but for now these terms might be used interchangeably in the field.
As seen above, the resulting light transport and color transfers unify spatially the objects in the scene, so that things look like they belong together. This visual feature is not always easy to achieve, given the various memory and performance limitations that one could have on a target platform.
But This Has Been Achieved Before…
Yup! And again depending on the limitations (static vs dynamic, memory, performance, fidelity) and what you can get away with in your game, indirect illumination has been achieved before in many ways. Here’s a sample of the various approaches:
Single ambient color
Precomputed, stored in geometry (ie.: vertex)
Precomputed, stored in a Light Map [3] [4]
Precomputed, stored in an Environment or Cube Map [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]
Precomputed, stored in a Volume [10] [11] [12]
Pseudo-Dynamic:
Geomerics Enlighten [31]
Manually placed lights simulating indirect illumination
Cube Map Relighting [13]
Virtual Point Lights via Reflective Shadow Maps [14] [15]
Light Propagation Volumes [16] [17]
Image-space approaches [18] [19]
Voxel-based Dynamic GI [20]
Sparse Voxel Octree Global Illumination (SVOGI) [21]
Alternatively, as suggested by [28], they could be arranged by family:
Spatial data structure tracing
Environment map approximations
Offline prebaked
Without a doubt, indirect illumination (and GI) improves the quality of a rendered scene, allowing artists to create visually coherent and rich images. GI provides a better understanding of 3D shapes and a better understanding of distances between objects. There’s a part of this process that simply can’t be mimicked by a human manually placing lights. GI also helps artists with their craft, permitting them to focus on other things that really matter and simplifying the process. In the end things just look better.
Figure 3: A scene from Assassin’s Creed Unity, showcasing visually convincing lighting from sky and a directional light
Indirect illumination remains a complex problem, or rather, it is not a problem that has been completely solved in a real-time. We wouldn’t be talking about it if it was! 🙂
Thus far, indirect illumination has been generally too expensive (or “unjustified” over other rendering systems that require resources and processing power) to compute within the real-time constraints of a video game. As we move towards the third year of titles to be released on the 8th generation [22] of video games hardware, the need for Cinematic Image Quality and visually convincing Illumination [23] is a hot topic of discussion among the various experts in the field.
We are getting there. Some games have managed to use the previously mentioned techniques to create great visuals because, in the end, they found a technique that was good enough for their use. Still, our work is not yet done, and there are a few things we should take into account when thinking about how this problem could be solved. To begin, we can put our users first. Video games artists generally prefer to have:
Robustness over correctness
Simple over complex (interfaces)
Fast iteration over extensive computations
Sound familiar? It should. Researchers were given these exact parameters when they asked how to make their techniques relevant and applicable to the game industry [24].
Global illumination is inherently computationally expensive because it requires computing visibility between arbitrary points in a 3D scene, which is difficult with rasterization. Moreover, GI requires integrating lighting over a large number of directions. This is part of The Rendering Equation [32]:
Figure 4: The Rendering Equation [32]
As explained by Julian Fong, this is the rendering equation using 1000 commonly used English words. 🙂
Figure 5: The Rendering Equation, using only 1000 most used English words. [33]
Additionally in red, why GI is not simple
With today’s massive content and ever-growing worlds, the outlined elements in Figure 5 explain why GI is not simple. Further, depending on the kind of game one is making, the limitations of the previously mentioned techniques can be seen as a positive, or a negative. Knowing these limitations and where a technique breaks upfront is huge, necessary, and is something that every paper should fully expose [24].
For example, in the case of an outdoor open world game, the global illumination contribution might come from the sky because the sun is often much brighter than punctual light sources. However, this could change depending on whether the game happens during day or at night. The sun and sky do provide a significant source of lighting for a day-time game, but in the case of a night-time game the moon is actually a retro-reflective source of light, making its contributions less noticeable. In this case, punctual lights and other potential sources of lighting become more important. Another example would be a game that could get away with a few parallax-corrected cubemaps [25], both used for diffuse inter-reflection as well as glossy reflections, dynamically updated [30] or not, versus another where this might not be sufficient. Or, the lack of occlusion in Light Propagation Volumes might be fine for one game, but not for another. Finally, you need a metric ton of VPLs to make techniques that revolve around this technology viable, there are cases where this will not scale in a game.
Each technique’s advantages and inconveniences have to be taken into account.
What doesn’t change, though, is that we should always favor approaches that are robust, simple, and fast over correct, complicated, and extensive computations. Video game artists need techniques that can provide reliable, expected results, even if they are not perfect. Getting around technological limitations is what they do on a daily basis, and they have become experts at it. So if a technique is not perfect, but it’s robust, simple to use and fast to author, you will (generally) make people happy. Also, as I’ve mentioned before [26], by limiting the complexity of the interface one can often get pretty interesting visual results, if not better results. People get creative around limitations.
And really, bounce lighting doesn’t need to be accurate, it needs to be robust. It causes the scene to coalesce and fit, so without it things tend to look extremely artificial. [29]
Robustness vs Correctness?
Robustness of GI is relative to your particular scenario [29], but generally speaking:
It doesn’t matter if multiple-scattering is not fully supported
But it does matter that propagation doesn’t leak through walls
Dynamic GI can’t look like it lags behind by a few seconds, nor can it “spike” as it travels through a grid
Consistency over distance is also key, especially for large worlds
Simple vs Complicated?
Friendly ranges (0-1) are a must, but you can also let them go over the range as you’re exploring and later readjust
A better unification of parameters between offline rendering (cinema) and (game) static/pseudo-static/dynamic GI. The distance between offline and real-time is getting smaller, though there are still huge differences in the interface. This would help with knowledge sharing across industries [27]
Fast Iteration vs Extensive Computation?
People have been waiting for lightmaps to compute since forever, and, quite honestly, they are tired of waiting for it, even if distributed
Okay results fast, progressive improvement over time
Selective updates
In the end, the objective of this post is to convince you that robust global illumination is essential in helping your artists create rich, convincing, and beautiful visuals. You may be able to use this post to convince your artists that there are benefits to some automation, relinquishing a bit of control can lead to great things, and that these techniques are another bag of tools to help them create awesome visuals. My hope is that you will include your users fully & truly in the process, because at the end of the day it’s the only way to create techniques that are tailored to them. People might not agree with you at first, and you might have to insist that it’s for the better, but I’m sure you can find great examples out there to convince people.
Through evaluating existing techniques and cross-referencing them with your game’s needs, it is possible to both find techniques that work for you and push them as far as possible (in collaboration with your best artists, of course). Hopefully you will not be satisfied with what’s out there, and this will lead you to adapt and improve an existing technique to your game’s need, or create something new that you will share at a future conference! 🙂 Whether fast means quick offline results or real-time, just remember that it’s all about what your game project would benefit from, and the need for robustness and simple interfaces is key.
That being said, we’re currently developing our own approach at WBGM, not perfect for every game (of course) but definitely tailored to our needs, which is also what your approach should be. We’re super excited about it, and hopefully we will be able to present it at a future conference. Our approach is being developed in tight collaboration with our lighting and technical artists, without whom the development wouldn’t have been possible. Stay tuned!
So, what does GI mean to you? Are you satisfied? What can we change? What can we do better? Looking forward to hearing your comments.
Other Great Examples of GI
Figure 6: Geomerics Enlighten in Unity (Unity Engine 5.2) [31] (Top Left/Right)
Fortnite (Bottom Left, Epic Games, Unreal Engine), Geomerics Enlighten in Mirror’s Edge (DICE, Frostbite Engine)
Jon Greenberg, Victor Ceitelis, Nicolas Lopez for the feedback and suggestions.
Sandra Jensen and Steve Hill for proofreading.
2015-11-08: Post!
[1] Tabellion, E. “Ray Tracing vs. Point-Based GI for Animated Films”. SIGGRAPH 2010 Course: “Global Illumination Across Industries”. Available Online.
[2] Cohen M., “Radiosity and Realistic Image Synthesis” Academic Press Professional, Cambridge, 1993.
[3] Abrash, M. “Quake’s Lighting Model: Surface Caching”, FlipCode Archives, 2000, Available Online.
[4] McTaggart, G. “Half-Life 2 Source Shading / Radiosity Normal Mapping”, 2004, Available Online.
[5] Greene, N. “Environment mapping and other applications of world projections”, IEEE Comput. Graph. Appl. 6, 11, 21-2. 1986
[6] Debevec, P., “Rendering Synthetic Objects into Real Scenes: Bridging Traditional and Image-Based Graphics with Global Illumination and High Dynamic Range Photography”, SIGGRAPH 1998.
[7] Brennan, C., “Diffuse Cube Mapping”, Direct3D ShaderX: Vertex and Pixel Shader Tips and Tricks, Wolfgang Engel, ed., Wordware Publishing, 2002, pp. 287-289.
[8] Devebec, P. et al. “HDRI and Image-based Lighting”, SIGGRAPH 2003. Available Online.
[9] Ramamoorthi, R., and Hanrahan, P., “An Efficient Representation for Irradiance Environment Maps” SIGGRAPH 2001, 497-500.
[10] Greger, G., Shirley, P., Hubbard, P., and Greenberg, D., “The Irradiance Volume”, IEEE Computer Graphics & Applications, 18(2):32-43, 1998.
[11] Sloan, P.-P. et al. “Precomputed Radiance Transfer for Real-Time Rendering in Dynamic, Low-Frequency Lighting Environments”, SIGGRAPH 2002.
[12] Tatarchuk, N. “Irradiance Volumes for Games”. GDC 2005. Available Online.
[13] McAuley, S., “Rendering The World of Farcry 4”, GDC 2015. Available Online.
[14] Dachsbacher, C., and Stamminger, M. “Reflective Shadow Maps”. In Proceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH 2005 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games, 203–213.
[15] Stewart, J. and Thomas, G., “Tiled Rendering Showdown: Forward ++ vs Deferred Rendering”, GDC 2013. Available Online.
[16] Kaplanyan, A. “Light Propagation Volumes in CryEngine 3”, SIGGRAPH 2009, Available Online.
[17] Kaplanyan, A. and Dachsbacher, C., “Cascaded light propagation volumes for real-time indirect illumination, SIGGRAPH 2010, Available Online.
[18] Ritschel, T. et Al., “SSDO: Approximating Dynamic Global Illumination in Image Space”. SIGGRAPH 2009, Available Online.
[19] Mara, M. et Al., “Fast Global Illumination Approximations on Deep G-Buffers”, 2014, Available Online.
[20] Doghramachi, H., “Rasterized Voxel-based Dynamic Global Illumination”, 2012, Available Online.
[21] Crassin, C. et al., “Interactive Indirect Illumination Using Voxel Cone Tracing”, Pacific Graphics 2011, Available Online.
[22] “History of video game consoles (eighth generation), Wikipedia.
[23] Andersson, J., “5 Major Challenges In Real-Time Rendering”, SIGGRAPH 2012, Available Online.
[24] Hecker, C., “A Game Developer’s Wish List for Researchers”, GDC 2011, Available Online.
[25] Lagarde, S., “Local Image-based Lighting With Parallax-corrected Cubemap”, SIGGRAPH 2012.
[26] Hill, S. et Al. “What Keeps You Up At Night”, ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games 2013, http://www.csee.umbc.edu/csee/research/vangogh/I3D2013/.
[27] Offline discussions with Victor Ceitelis @ WB Games Montreal
[28] Offline discussions with Nicolas Lopez @ WB Games Montreal
[29] Offline discussions with Jon Greenberg @ WB Chicago / Netherrealm
[30] Colbert, M. “GPU-based Importance Sampling”, GPU Gems 3, Available Online.
[31] Mortensen, J., “Awesome Realtime GI on Desktops and Consoles”, Unity Technologies featuring Geomerics Enlighten. Available Online.
[32] Kajiya, J., “The Rendering Equation”, ACM Transactions, Volume 20, Number 4, 1986, Available Online.
[33] Fong, J., “The rendering equation, using only 1000 most used English words (inspired by xkcd and theosanderson) #UpGoerFive“, On Twitter, 2015, Available Online.
Posted on November 6, 2015 July 5, 2016 by Colin Barré-BriseboisPosted in Global Illumination, Rendering
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MaltZero says:
Great post. Just wanted to point out that Geomerics Enlighten is the GI solution used in both Unity 5 and Frostbite. There is also an integration for UE4. It was developed with input from the Mirrors Edge guys with many of the goals you mention in mind: improving artist workflow, reducing iteration times, robustness. Sam and Per from Geomerics and DICE respectively gave a talk at SIGGRAPH 2010 that is worth a look if you haven’t seen it already: http://advances.realtimerendering.com/s2010/Martin-Einarsson-RadiosityArchitecture(SIGGRAPH%202010%20Advanced%20RealTime%20Rendering%20Course).pdf
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Hi, my name is Colin Barré-Brisebois. This is my personal blog about real-time rendering and video-game development.
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How NOT to Write and Record a CD
Tim Brennan
Embedded video for How NOT to Write and Record a CD
This fall, my Ohio band, Rambler 454, released a new CD. It’s our fourth. Through the years, we’ve played with some of our favorite bands, toured to some fun towns, and been nominated (but never won) local awards.
It’s a terrific band and includes my favorite people in the world. I wish we’d find a way to play in Charleston. I think you’d like us.
While I’ve been in bands for over 30 years, I’ve seen a lot of bands rise and fall. And some haven’t fallen yet—they keep getting bigger and better. I’ve been a part of the writing, recording, and releasing of a couple dozen CDs (or tapes, way back when there were cassettes). Through all this time, I’ve accepted some rules as to what a band needs to do in order to successfully write, record, and release a CD.
With Rambler 454’s Wire and Wood, I don’t think we adhered to a single one of my rules.
Rule #1:
Maintain a connection with, and build, your fan base so there is a market for what you will record and sell.
What we did: Haven’t updated our web presence in years, have played 1–2 shows a year, and do not maintain any online mail list.
Practice often to develop your sound and capture moments of inspiration that may become a next great song.
What we did: Yeah, we didn’t even practice for the couple of gigs we did play each year.
If you want a 10-song CD, you need to write and practice 30 songs. Only the top 10 will be good enough for a CD, if that.
What we did: In the spring of 2014, my singer, Dan, had to play a wedding in Charleston, so he traveled down here for a couple of extra days. He stayed in my studio, and the plan was that we’d get together frequently to write new songs. We worked on 10 songs. That’s all. And then we planned to record all of them.
When writing, avoid distractions.
What we did: Come on. My musical brother was in Charleston for a weekend. We drank. A lot. I tried to show him the sites, like our historical downtown and the oceanfront. However, the comment I remember him saying was, “Is there some law here that every girl here has to be hot and is required to wear yoga pants?” There were distractions.
Write. Then rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. Especially the lyrics.
What we did: Whatever sounded good the first time that we worked on the songs was what ended up on the record. No rewrites. However, we did have rules that we followed: Not one song could be about a girl. No relationship songs. In the end, as it turns out, nearly every song is either about a guitar or what has happened at one of our shows. We were writing a guitar record about a guitar.
When selecting a recording studio, many times you get what you pay for.
What we did: This is our fourth CD, and we have not spent a dime on the recoding of any of the first three. Not a penny. So our choice of studio was who would let us do it for free in the Cleveland area, where the other three members live.
Pre-production is important. The more the band practices the songs, the more polished the result will be. And new ideas can emerge.
What we did: Zero pre-production. Other than the fact that we sent rough iPhone-recorded versions of the songs to our drummer and guitarist, there was no pre-production. When we met in the studio to record, we had not been in the same room for almost a year, and that time one year prior was the last time our drummer had even played his kit. As a band, we learned the songs and played them together for the first time in the studio.
Avoid distractions in the studio.
What we did: Well, distractions are impossible to avoid. Especially when good friends had not seen each other in so long. But the bottles of whiskey, bourbon, and several cases of Pabst did not help matters.
Set aside as much time as possible to record. Expect perhaps eight hours per song.
What we did: The plan was that I’d arrive in town on Friday afternoon and be gone Sunday night. The drummer had an unexpected funeral to attend Friday afternoon. So we began recording about 9 p.m. Friday.
Rule #10:
Play to a tempo track (also called a click track) as much as possible. This will help keep consistent tempo and allows the mixing engineer to have a clean, predictable tempo to utilize the best of their effects processors. When done well, it makes the whole band sound “tight” and professional.
What we did: Never used a click track before in Rambler 454. We weren’t going to start now.
Record more takes than you think you need. Especially drums. Play it over and over until you are more than sure you have enough to work with.
What we did: No more than three drum takes per song. Partly, this is because we believe in instinct. The less you force things, the more you are true to who you are. But also, as I mentioned, our drummer has not played in a year. You ask a drummer to do multiple takes of multiple songs and you’re likely to see his arms fall off.
Maintain separation of instruments to ensure no bleed. This allows the mixing engineer to effect everything separately later, and thus control the sound.
What we did: My favorite moment of the process came when Jerome, our mixing engineer, said on Sunday, “OK, I’m going to clear those scratch guitar tracks and let’s set up your amp in the studio.” To which we replied, “Sorry dude, guitars are done. Those weren’t scratch tracks.” When Jerome stopped smiling (because he thought we were joking), I thought he might start to cry. The bass amp and two guitar amps had been in the mixing booth with all of us for the whole recording process. Each guitar part had bled into the mic for the other guitar amp. The drums coming through the mixing board speaker were also bleeding into those mics. The engineer thought we were going to just use those for reference so the drummer could play along with the band. Then he thought we’d wipe those clean and start fresh. That’s the way it is usually done. Not with us. We were OK with keeping it how it sounded live and live with it. Other than extra guitar parts, solos, and some other fun, the guitars were done. Jerome really did not know what to say.
We started on Friday about 9 p.m. Ended about 12:30 a.m. Saturday so we could close out a local bar. Saturday’s session began in the afternoon, broke for dinner, then we returned for a couple of hours before closing another bar. Sunday afternoon, we finished what we could do, including all guitar solos, and I got in my car for the long drive back to Charleston.
A few weeks later, Dan had finished adding his lead vocals and had recruited a couple of our friends to add some parts. That was it. One weekend in Ohio to record a CD with Rambler 454. Great friends. Lots of laughs. And a CD I love listening to at high volumes.
We didn’t follow any of my rules for writing and recording. We then continued to not follow any tried-and-true rules about promotion or sales. That’s fine by me.
We have no false aspirations about monetary success with this record or this band. We’ve been at this too long to lie to ourselves. We know who we are.
What we have is a weekend that was more fun for us than we could have expected. We have a CD that each of us enjoy. And we have some friends (hard to call people fans when you know them by name) who appreciate getting new music from us.
It’s hard to pick my favorite song off the CD. So, I'll just give you a link to listen to all of our songs for free on YouTube. If you feel like buying a copy to keep from me, at CDBaby.com, iTunes, or anywhere else, that would be cool, too.
#charleston / Charleston / charleston / in charleston / #and / #music / music / new music / #awards / local awards / #band / #bar / bar / #bourbon / bourbon / #dinner / Whiskey / #weekend / weekend / #clean / #fall / fall / #fine / #friends / Friends / #guitar / #inspiration / inspiration / #love / love / #local / local / #lyrics / #ohio / #online / #pabst / #pants / #play / #practice / #professional / #promotion / promotion / #record / #studio / The Who / #time / #wedding / wedding / #work / #yoga / yoga / ideas / Cool / Downtown / Bass / live / Friday / Fresh / Free / writing / Spring / fun / Fun. / YouTube / Success / LISTen / plan / pre-production / rambler 454 / recording / relationship / sorry
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Retuned
Toulouse Lautrec Jazz Club, Kennington
A dynamic 4-piece vocal group sing new arrangements of stage, screen and pop
Retuned are an incredible vocal quartet singing a broad range of styles in fantastic harmony. They really know how to interact with their audience and guarantee an exhilarating evening for all. The show ranges from Musical Theatre, crossover, golden era, swing to retro and contemporary pop and beyond. Retuned put their mark on beloved audience favourites with their fresh, bespoke and thrilling arrangements. "Fabulous." – TV’s Leslie Joseph "Sensational vocals, thoroughly fantastic." – Fenwick’s London 1) Tickets are non-refundable with 48 Hours of the event. 2) Attendees under the age of 18 must be accompanied by a responsible adult. 3) We operate a Check-21. If you are lucky enough to appear younger than 21 you may be asked for photographic ID. 4) Seating is available on a first come, first served basis only. Latecomers may be required to stand until seating becomes available. 5) Reserved seating is only available for ticket holders of 7 or more people.
Exclusive entry to ‘Kiki with Drag Queens’ at Concrete
Saturday 25 January, 8:00 PM + 13 more
Get Tickets £12
£12 for a men’s haircut at City Hairdressers
City Hairdressers,
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Mummy of Antjau
Mummy of Antjau - ROM2013_13340_1
ROM2013_13340_1
Medium:Mummified human remains, linen
Geography: Western Thebes (modern Luxor), Egypt
Date: c. 664-600 BC
Period: Early 26th (Saite) Dynasty, Late Period
155.05 cm
Object number: 910.12.C
Gallery Location:Galleries of Africa: Egypt
This mummified Ancient Egyptian man was purchased in Luxor, Egypt on February 19th, 1859 and brought to Canada by the Rev. Lachlan Taylor. After a long term residence in Victoria College in Cobourg, and later in Victoria College Toronto, he was transferred to the care of the Royal Ontario Museum, at the time a part of the University of Toronto.
Until the glyphs on his coffin were read by Winifred Needler, he was known as "The Princess," presumably because of his fine head of reddish hair. The hair is, however plentiful, not particularly long.
If he was the original inhabitant of the coffin in which he was purchased, his name is Antjau, and he was the son Ankh-hor and the nbt-pr Tjes-neith-peret, and the grandson of An-ta-nakht, whose title suggests he was a Libyan.
He had not yet had a modern CT-Scan, but was x-rayed while still in his coffin back in the early 1970s. His spine seems not to show any arthritic changes, and there is no trauma visible. A modern study would enable us to get to know him better.
Cataloguer: Gayle Gibson (ROM Staff 1990 - 2015, ROM Volunteer 2015-Present)
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Home Company Leadership
We believe people are the core assets to most businesses. That’s why ConnectAndSell is fortunate to be led by an intense and rowdy bunch who each have a track record of massive success. They are here because they see all the earmarks of a great company; amazing technology, a defensible space, a product that delivers unparalleled productivity to its customers, a big addressable market, and plenty of room to innovate. The leaders of ConnectAndSell are free-thinkers, intellectually curious, have work ethics that put others to shame, and are passionate about building great companies.
Shawn McLaren
Founder and Executive Chairman
In 2007 Shawn gave up his quest for the perfect golf game because he discovered, as he terms it, a system that liberates Sales Warriors (aka Conversation Pigs) by providing so many conversations with decision makers so efficiently that it removes all excuses for non-performance and brings smiles to the usually harried faces of VP of Sales and CMOs. Prior to connecting the dots at ConnectAndSell, Shawn’s early successes included selling encyclopedias door to door in the Michigan winter and building both code and company for the world’s first mainframe storage system, earning him the nickname ‘the father of storage.’ Thirty years ago, Shawn snubbed his nose at Big Blue and built a wildly successful technology company in their wake. Today, he brings his pioneer spirit to the leadership team of ConnectAndSell.
Chris has been participating in software start-ups as a founder or at a very early stage for most of the past 30 years. His focus has consistently been on creating and taking to market simple products that can be used successfully the first time they are touched, without taking a course or reading a manual. His belief is that the most powerful part of any software system is the human being that we inappropriately call a “user”, and that the value key in software is to let the computer do what it does well (go fast without getting bored) in order to free up human potential.
Manny Bulotano
20+ years experience in finance, administration and operations experience for public and private sector companies in the electronics services, software, distribution and defense contracting industries. Prior to joining ConnectAndSell, Manny served as the CFO of DPMS, Inc., a Gladstone Investment Company, Quantum3D as Vice President of Finance and Administration, and consulted to BT-INS (British Telecom), ESilicon, Verifone, Hitachi GST, Nanometrics, Alien Technology and Sanmina. He is also an outstanding member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.
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SVP Sales & Marketing
Jonti has 20+ years serial entrepreneurship and executive management experience as a co-founder, CEO, COO and CRO of funded enterprise software companies. He is a seasoned start-up executive having founded two pioneering identity management companies: Securant Technologies, the first web single sign-on enterprise company, where Jonti led as CEO; and Symplified, the first subscription based cloud security company, where Jonti served as President & COO. Jonti brings broad start-up through expansion stage expertise across the entire business spectrum with an emphasis in operations and Go-to-Market activities. Jonti also has extensive knowledge in SaaS, cloud computing, security and infrastructure technologies.
James Townsend
VP Customer Success
James Townsend is passionate about helping sales organizations achieve outstanding results using ConnectAndSell. A former ConnectAndSell customer himself, he brings a wealth of knowledge and a unique perspective to the organization. His recipe for customer success is rather simple – just like conversations, relationships matter. Once you get the relationship right, everything else is mechanics. He thrives on maximizing the value ConnectAndSell can deliver to our clients by leveraging his insight and experience to embed ConnectAndSell seamlessly into organizational workflows. He also contributes to ConnectAndSell product development through his extensive, SaaS focused, technology leadership experience. When he is not working James enjoys spending time with his young family, golfing and skiing.
Chris Beall CEO, ConnectAndSell, Inc.
Brian Feucht CRO, Predicta
Steve King COO and VP Sales and Marketing, Netswitch Technology Management, Inc.
Roger Lang CEO and Co-founder, Predicta
Shawn McLaren Founder, ConnectAndSell, Inc.
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Cementex Double Insulated Torque Wrenches 2019Hand Tools
Cementex Double Insulated Torque Wrenches
Double insulation ensures technicians will be free from risk to high-voltage exposure.
Cementex, the safety tool specialists, announces the availability of updated insulated torque wrenches featuring the company’s industry-leading double-insulation technology. Made of top grade materials, calibrated according to ASME B107 standards (traceable to NIST), and manufactured according to ISO standards,
Cementex double-insulated torque wrenches are designed to provide protection in potentially hazardous electrical work environments. They are the first choice for compliance with safeguarding both qualified workers and equipment.
Cementex insulated torque wrenches feature two separate layers of insulation for twice the protection. A yellow undercoat is covered by an orange overcoating to create a high-voltage barrier. The impact-resistant, flame-retardant insulation provides protection against flashover, shock, burns, and dropped tool shorts. It prevents dangerous accidents and injury that can occur with standard tools.
Use of Cementex double-insulated torque wrenches ensures that technicians will be free from risk to high-voltage exposure on the job. These calibrated torque wrenches are specifically designed in accordance with National Electrical Code 2017-110.14 (D) requirements for installation applications where a tightening torque is indicated as a numeric value on the equipment or in the installation instructions provided by equipment manufacturers. They can also be used to comply with NEC requirements for mounting electrical panels, as well as meeting NFPA 78 standards for tools required to protect workers in proximity to electrical equipment.
New updates feature a range of modified ratchet head profile styles that allow workers to access hard to reach areas quicker and easier without incident. The large lever control makes adjustments easy, even while wearing insulated gloves. Available options now include standard, low profile, clockwise only, and short drive models, as well as a fixed head style. Three additional sizes have been added to the line, which now includes seven sizes.
With Cementex’s torque wrenches, an audible “click” or a few degrees of rotation provide a simple, fast indication of micrometer-accurate torque settings. The wrenches feature a low-friction torque control mechanism to produce accurate readings in either direction. The wrenches’ spring-loaded or twist-locking collar keeps the scale on the desired reading and remains in a locked position, making accidental unlocking impossible. Dual-scale wrench models offer readings in inch-pounds and Newton meters or foot-pounds and Newton meters.
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Home2016August
Everett students publish apps for turtle conservation and healthy eating
August 2, 2016 January 15, 2017 fgmart
2016 CS Pathways summer camp at Everett High School, with students flanked by Gina Matarazzo of Energize Everett (left) and Emilie Schuler of Grassroots Wildlife Conservation Association.
Thirteen middle school students completed the CS Pathways app design camp held at Everett High School from July 11 through July 15. The camp was based on the use of MIT App Inventor, a blocks-based programming system for creating apps for Android tablets and phones.
The students were joined by two community partners:
Gina Matarazzo from Energize Everett, which works to “increase opportunities for Everett residents to eat healthy and be active in the places they live, learn, work, and play”
Emilie Schuler from the Grassroots Wildlife Conservation Association, which supports “informed and passionate people who work to protect the rare species that live in their neighborhoods.”
The community partners met with the students at the beginning of the week to share with the students their own personal stories and the missions of their organizations.
Ms. Matarazzo spoke about how she works with kids and adults to set goals and help them keep track of their progress in becoming more health conscious.
Ms. Schuler described her work helping a local wild species called the Blanding Turtle, once widely seen in Eastern Massachusetts, make a recovery. This turtle recently has seen its numbers decline as local wetlands are taken away by development.
The students then worked in pairs to brainstorm ideas and develop apps to assist with these missions. This year, campers used AppVis, a new technology developed by UMass Lowell which allows App Inventor users to publish data to the web-based iSENSE database.
By the end of the week, the students had developed eight apps, which are now published in the Google Play app store. The students developed six healthy-eating apps and two turtle conservation apps, including:
GrassRoots: The Wild Side, by Kiara Cordero and Aroshi Rahnuma. This app teaches you how to recognize turtles, take photographs of them, and publish turtle sightings.
Health, by Lulya Tesfamicael. This app provides information about healthy eating and exercise, lets you set goals for personal weight loss, and shows you a graph of your progress over time.
At the end of the week, the community partners returned to see the students’ work. Ms. Matarazzo remarked, “I was so fascinated by how innovative the kids were in creating the apps that met our specific needs. Their excitement and enthusiasm for not only building their app but also their interest in thinking about health and fitness was so inspiring.”
All students who participated in the camp week published an app in the Google Play store. Their apps can be downloaded from the Middle School Pathways in Computer Science Google Play developer storefront.
The camp lead teachers were Damian DeMarco and Lori Blank. UMass Lowell graduate students Farzeen Harunani and Mark Sherman and undergraduates Ashley Hale and Michael Kusmirek assisted throughout the week. Project staff member Akira Kamiya led camp logistics and also worked with students throughout the week.
The camp was conducted as part of the Middle School Pathways in Computer Science project, a collaboration among the school districts of Everett and Medford and the University of Massachusetts Lowell. The goal of the project is to institutionalize computer science instruction in the middle school curricula of the two districts.
The project is supported by a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation.
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The Myth of Retrospective Remaining
Marriage à-la-mode: 6. The Lady’s Death, by William Hogarth
(Source: Wikipedia)
There is a view gaining some traction among those who support the United Kingdom remaining in the European Union.
The view is that after 31 October 2019 it may be possible for the UK parliament to retrospectively annul the Article 50 notification so that the UK can be regarded as never having left.
This view is false.
To understand why the view is false, one first can go to Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union, which many will know provides for how a member state can unilaterally leave the EU.
The relevant part is in Article 50(3):
“The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.”
The significant phrase is at the beginning:
“The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question…”
This describes the position at international law.
The member state on departure shall cease to be party to the relevant treaties which govern EU membership.
The member state is out; a former member; a member no more.
The member state is then a “third country” as much as any other non-EU member.
This is the public international law equivalent of a decree absolute ending a marriage.
The marriage is over.
But so used are UK pundits and politicians to the supposed omnipotence of the UK parliament, it is believed that somehow this departure can by legal magic be disregarded. That the UK can, by some legal fiction, be deemed never to have left.
It will be too late.
The door has shut.
The cat, the horse and the genie are out of their respective containers.
No loud tearful banging or elaborate legalistic ruses can reverse the legal event of departure.
Once a member state has left the EU then there is only one way back in – the perhaps soon-to-be-famous Article 49.
Article 50 itself, at (5) provides that Article 49 is the one means of return:
“If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject to the procedure referred to in Article 49.”
This process would likely be a slow process, and even if the UK were eventually successful, there would be considerable doubt whether the rebate and various opt-outs would resume.
Some would question whether the UK would meet the Copenhagen Criteria.
And, as with the Article 50 revocation notice, an Article 49 application can be unilaterally revoked by the state in question at any time.
To place any reliance on the UK parliament retrospectively asserting it was an EU member after its departure under Article 50 is dangerous and delusional.
There can, of course still be an agreed extension of time, and the departure date can also be varied by agreement of the UK and EU27.
There can also be revocation of Article 50.
There are real options for UK politicians seeking to avoid a departure for the EU on 31 October 2019.
These options remain open, regardless of the breathless fanaticism of those in and close to the current government.
And these are the options that should be being taken seriously, rather than believing in a Remain breed of unicorn.
Thank you for reading me on this new(ish) blog.
Posted on 12th August 2019 13th August 2019 Author David Allen GreenCategories Uncategorized
26 thoughts on “The Myth of Retrospective Remaining”
John Waterton says:
12th August 2019 at 11:36
This is of course true. But the UK could align the UK arbitarily closely to the EU, even joining Schengen or pegging its currency to the Euro.
Joining Schengen would require the consent of the EU.
Giselle97 says:
Thank you for clarifying this David. Surely our parliamentarians must know this and if they don’t why don’t they?
Philip Booker says:
Oh, I’ve not heard that one?
You’d have thought it was bleedin’ obvious, would you not?
Still, worth confirming, to erase any doubt.
The following comes to mind from Monty Python Dead Parrot sketch.
‘E’s not pinin’! ‘E’s passed on! This parrot is no more! He has ceased to be! ‘E’s expired and gone to meet ‘is maker! ‘E’s a stiff! Bereft of life, ‘e rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed ‘im to the perch ‘e’d be pushing up the daisies! ‘Is metabolic processes are now ‘istory! ‘E’s off the twig! ‘E’s kicked the bucket, ‘e’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!
I reckon Johnson and co know this (Rees Mogg does) but are seeking to make political gain by blaming the EU et al. “How clever am I,” says Johnson “to thwart the EU” or “Look what the EU’s done now”.
Indeed. What is going on?
Is Mr Bogdanor so used to the famous “flexibility’ of the UK Constitution that he thinks other parts of The World are equally wack?
Most of us finally gave up reading Mr Bogdanor when he wrote an article which contained a hopelessly mangled misunderstanding of the Condorcet paradox, incorrectly suggesting that a “two-stage referendum … would avoid the paradox.” It wouldn’t and couldn’t (otherwise the paradox would not exist). It’s a pretty fundamental error for somebody in his business.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/23/brexit-broke-parliament-people-fix-election-dilemma
Simon Pike says:
I agree that the UK cannot rejoin if nothing is done before 31st October, but the EU institutions might be able to take unilateral action before that date to extend UK membership from its perspective (perhaps until a new Government is formed following a General Election).
Article 50 (1) of the Lisbon Treaty states: Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.
It is unclear whether the “in accordance with its own constitutional requirements” applies to “withdraw” or “decide”. If the former, then the EU might not want to impose withdrawal on 31st October if there was a legal challenge before the courts as to the constitutional validity of withdrawing without a deal, or a General Election in progress on that date .
Article 50 (3) is silent on what happens at the end of an extension:
3. The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.
For the first extension to happen, it requires the agreement of the country seeking to withdraw and the other 27 MS, but this is not stated for any subsequent extension. It would therefore not be inconsistent with this provision for the EU to suspend the implementation of the withdrawal for a short period beyond 31st October, to allow time for the legal judgement or an election to take place and for a new Government to be formed. As the Treaty is silent on this, such a course of action may not require the agreement of the UK Government.
Gerry Richardson says:
I think that “in accordance with its own constitutional requirements” is mere window dressing. If it had any real force, wouldn’t the EU27 have cancelled or suspended the A50 process, once the police started investigating the possibility of criminality in the conduct of the referendum campaign?
(by the way, does anyone know where that investigation is now?)
No, because it is up to the country concerned to decide upon its own constitutional requirements (with some limitations which don’t affect this issue), so it would be unduly presumptuous of the EU27 to act without some indication from the UK courts.
We have, however, with the ‘Miller’ case been treated to the international spectacle of an executive which demonstrably was ignorant of its county’s own constitutional requirements (or else was prepared to lie by feigning ignorance all the way to the Supreme Court in the vain hope of evading them). *That* was quite something!
As to what this extended debacle has revealed about the fitness for purpose or otherwise of our electoral laws and authorities … “far too little, far too late” would be an unduly generous assessment.
Colin MacKenzie says:
“The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on.
Nor all thy piety nor wit can lure it back to cancel half a line
Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.”
Ed Weissman says:
I am not sure I agree.
Article 50 begins with this:
1. Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.
After a writ of election has been dropped, the the government must serve only as a caretaker. That is to day, the government has been defeated on a vote of confidence and after two weeks the House has not expressed confidence in a government, the the house is dissolved .
The caretaker status is sometimes called purdah status.
The House has voted against crashing out of the EU.
The crashing out on October 31 is new policy and hence not valid.
Under the part of Article 50 I quoted above, the withdrawal from the EU has not been in accordance with the constitutional requirements of the UK.
It seems to me that means that the UK has not left the EU.
A Canadian example in which a major policy change did occur during purdah highlights why crashing out on October 31st is invalid.
In December 1979, the Joe Clark government’s budget was defeated in the House of Commons. Subsequently the writ was dropped for an election in March.
As we all know now, the Canadian Embassy in Teheran was home to US citizens who had escaped from the Embassy where hostages were being held.
The son of former Trudeau cabinet minister Gérard Pelletier was a journalist who informed the government privately that the word of the ‘house guests’ was known to others in the media.
The government broke off diplomatic relations with Iran enabling the Americans and the Canadians to leave the country (just in time).
The opposition was informed. A pro forma statement objecting to a policy change under the purdah rules was made by Ed Broadbent leader of the NDP.
We know the rest.
So we may that purdah rules allow for a policy change in an emergency with the knowledge and agreement of the opposition. It may be done in secret.
But that just won’t be the case on October 31.
Once the House is dissolved, no policy change can occur. To -paraphrase Ethel Merman “Call me Miss. Birdseye, this policy is frozen.”
Never know how to deal with comments which start with “I am not sure”!
Andrew Kitching says:
Thank you for this article David. I hope the unicorn retainers take note of it. I hadn’t heard of the ‘Copenhagen criteria’ before, so thanks for that in particular. I think it probably explains why the Corbyn gang are so pro- Brexit. Their desire for a planned economy would break the market economy criterion
Wolf Freitag says:
Parliament can vote a LAW to Revoke Article 50 before the deadline 31 Oct 2019. INB4 some people saying there is no time for that – well MPs can enact emergency Act of Parliament to revoke A50. Yvette Cooper got her act in law in 3 days. It is possible. The bad news:
EU will not give any new extension after 31 Oct without UK changing its red lines.
There are 2 options left for the UK now:
No Deal.
UK Parliament to revoke Article 59.
The really bad news is honestly nobody wants you in EU anymore.
I am sad to say that as been anglophile all my life. People in EU used to look up to British way of doing things. Now no one wants you in EU. Literally no-one. Even Le Pen and Orban. German magazine Stern cover last week (with picture of Johnson in suit standing like a prick and looking literally deranged): What is wrong with you Britain? Macron do warned the others NOT to give 6 months extension to the UK, just few weeks until end of April 2019. Moderate Merkel and Tusk have won last time. We all see now Macron was right. No more favors. 31 Oct and you’re kicked out of the EU. Barnier is polite and wants a deal because this is literally his job. But EU voters don’t want the UK. No offence, but No Deal will cost the EU 0.25% of our GDP. Meh… I would personally give 10% of my pay to see the back of Johnson his racists mates Farage, Trump and the UK. If UK wants to be in the EU again it will take many years and a lot of humble pie eating to let you in again.
This comment explains why I’d now like to leave the EU as soon as possible. The lid has been lifted. You don’t see us as equals, just people to take instruction or face retribution.
Boris Johnson is my Prime Minister. When you insult him you insult me and my country. And for the record his cabinet is a truly diverse cabinet of men and women from many races. He has recently produced a video for Eid celebrating the contributions of muslims to the UK. When I look at your governments ministers, it is just a wall of white, so think twice before you start complaining about racists.
Keep this up and it won’t be just about trade. Why would I share security commitments with a nation that disparages me like this? Bring the fighters back from Estonia. Russia, take what you want.
It’s funny when someone who has no qualms with pure defamation campaigns against other EU members gets exasperated when someone else slams his Prime Minister.
You complain that you’d not be treated as equals, but the truth is that that’s projection on your part – for you, the EU are suitable scapegoats whose sole purpose is to project blame on them, make them responsible for all the evils in the world, especially those caused domestically, vilify them and their policies, but at the same time expect that you don’t need to share in their duties while enjoying all rights.
Stating “Keep this up and it won’t be just about trade” only underscores that for you, it’s only about profiteering off other people and you don’t actually share the values of the EU. Trade was always and explicitly – contrary to the lies propagated by the Leave campaign – a means, and not the purpose of the EU.
With that attitude, don’t let the door hit you on the way out. We are not your doormats, nor your livestock. The gall to complain that others wouldn’t treat you as equals while you treat them like cattle speaks volumes.
Boris Johnson is not my Prime Minister.
I played no part in his election.
I don’t support his party.
I don’t share his mightily suspect values
I don’t share his vision of an Empire consisting of the Isle of Wight.
I believe he and his cardboard cut-out Cabinet, pose a greater threat to the principle of the UK’s Parliamentary sovereignty, than the EU allegedly ever did.
Alan Bell says:
This is all true. Another way to reach the same conclusion is to follow the hypothetical a bit further. We imagine that yes, the commission and EU27 and UK leaders all concur that a retrospective revocation is a fine idea, so they make a decision that Brexit never happened and we shall never speak of this again. Very shortly after this there will be a case before the CJEU complaining that this was entirely unlawful and that the treaties don’t allow it. They would surely win. If there was an attempt at a retrospective revocation it would be unpicked by the courts.
People need to look elsewhere for salvation, or buckle up for the ride.
Mark Johnston says:
I recognise there’s been a lot of mistaken commentary about this in London but still one could reasonable ask what specific EU law provision precludes the EU treaties being reapplied, e.g. after a short period of chaos, say 3 months, by political agreement of the European Council at 28 (i.e. UK included). Article 50 itself does not preclude this. The Wightman judgement e.g. showed how there can be other hidden escape routes, the principle being that what is not preclude can be accepted. In my own experience, in many or perhaps even most EU negotiations law and politics often represent two sides of the same coin.
Geoffrey M. Beresford Hartwell says:
May I respectfully submit that revocation of an Article 50 Notice does not exclude that, on mature reflection – and with intelligent arrangements in place or in hand – a Country may not later give notice again under the Article?
If the writ has been dropped, then there is no parliament to revoke Brexit on the 31st October. A massive change in policy occurs. This is certainly not what is supposed to happen during an election campaign (i.e purdah). How does this not conflict with the constitutional requirements of the UK?
The change in policy would have been agreed on long before, however, with the filing of article 50. So no conflict is given. That a significant change would occur was clear the moment article 50 was filed, as was the fact that it could be a “no deal” scenario.
K C Chu says:
Speaking as a Brexiteer… this is legally speaking in terms of Public International Law *in theory* quite perfectly possible if the EU could somehow suddenly agree to this and sign and ratify a supplementary protocol treaty (effectively) amending the TEU, and also manage to for this purpose bully ALL the (other) EU member states (and also Switzerland, Turkey and the member states of EFTA which are in the EEA) to agree to sign, ratify (and enact if necessary) and implement the same, with no reservations or concessions allowed… I just politically or realistically don’t see this as even remotely possible, however.
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Facebook Rejects Images Of Woman’s Bare Back, Just One Of Many Examples Of Apparent Censorship
Eric Lieberman Deputy Editor
March 02, 2018 11:23 AM ET
An author tried to purchase ads on Facebook depicting a woman showing her bare back, but the tech company ultimately removed it citing its policies against sponsored content “with a sexual undertone,” The New York Times reported Thursday.
Krista Venero, who writes under the pen name K.L. Montgomery, wanted to market her new romance novel “Fat Girl,” but was faced with the fairly strict, and often unequally applied, Facebook rules. The uncovered spine shown on her sponsored social media post was not very different from, for example, an advertisement from a cosmetic company like Olay, as NYT notes.
Facebook eventually admitted that it was wrong, but not after Venero had to struggle for some time to explain why. The situation epitomizes a constant battle between brands, businesses, organizations, independent entrepreneurs and the tech giant, as Facebook’s algorithms and human review teams attempt to analyze millions of ads any given week.
Facebook’s efforts to tidy up its platform by preventing or cleansing certain content aren’t just directed at sponsored posts, as all content could technically be on the chopping block.
Venero now feels forced to make her ads “extremely conservative,” she told The New York Times, even though writing romantic novels isn’t typically compatible with prudery.
“They usually just have a man and woman’s face on them,” she continued. “I do have one that has a man’s chest, and I’ve never had any problems with it. But a woman’s shoulder — we have a problem.”
The Swedish Cancer Society, an independent nonprofit, decided to change an instructional breast examination video by making the boobs square-shaped after Facebook censored its content.
Facebook apparently felt that viewing animated breasts in circular form was too much for the internet community to handle. Content like “nudity or other sexually suggestive content” is not allowed on the social media website, according to Facebook’s Help Center.
Monet Moutrie, a photographer focused on human birth, said somewhat recently that Facebook removed an extremely popular video showing mothers’ first encounters with their respective children, as well as her personal account.
The video, which racked up more than 100 million views, was uploaded seven months before it was ultimately taken down with no notice, according to Moutrie.
Facebook enumerates its litany of policies, which it partially describes as “encouraging respectful behavior.” It states that it restricts “the display of nudity and sexual activity because some audiences within our global community may be sensitive to this type of content — particularly because of their cultural background or age.”
Examples of censorship — some more clearly undue, and some mysterious and inconclusive — are aplenty.
In an exclusive story from The Daily Caller News Foundation, libertarian nonprofit The Atlas Society says its page on Instagram (which is owned by Facebook) was removed with little to no explanation. Instagram refutes that it took down the account itself, and operators of the group claim that it sure smells of censorship.
Facebook also fully removed a small town business’s advertising capabilities on the platform late in 2017. The Sportsman’s Shop of East Earl, Pa., tried to advertise products like American flags, but was told by the tech giant that it couldn’t essentially because it also happens to sell guns.
“Facebook owes the public a higher duty not to discriminate against free speech especially when that censorship stifles the exercise of a fundamental protected right enshrined in the Constitution,” Lawrence G. Keane, senior vice president and general counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association for the firearms and related industries, told TheDCNF.
The people involved in the latter two situations complained of bias due to an ostensible difference in ideology between them and Facebook. For Venero — as well as the Swedish Cancer Society and Moutrie — it appears that censorship, or content restrictions, transcend any considerations of partiality, and exhibit a rigid and stern rules of conduct.
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Tags : facebook new york times swedish cancer society
Eric Lieberman
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