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DVD REVIEW: Bruce Dickinson – Anthology (2006)
I acquired this DVD for ridiculously cheap at my old place of employ via their web order service, but after I left their employ so no staff discount. Its condition is impeccable! Very impressive.
BRUCE DICKINSON – Anthology (2006 Sanctuary)
Bruce Dickinson is that rare kind of artist, one whose solo work has the same level of quality, integrity and emotional impact as the work with his better-known band. I think it is safe to say that most Iron Maiden fans have enjoyed Bruce Dickinson’s solo work, or at least most of it. This DVD Anthology is a complete collection of all of Dickinson’s solo video material in one 3-disc package.
Up first is Bruce’s live video supporting his first solo album whilst still in Maiden, Tattooed Millionaire. This video, which was extremely rare when it first came out (I never located a copy), was called Dive! Dive! Live! and featured Maiden guitarist Janick Gers. It also features every song from that Tattooed Millionaire performed live, plus several B-sides and a handful of covers. No Maiden. As Bruce was proud to say, this video is very raw. Also on the first DVD is the video Skunkworks Live, which was released in the mid 1990’s. It featured Dickinson’s new solo band, also called Skunkworks, featuring guitarist Alex Dickson. I was not a huge fan of Skunkworks, as I found their style (particularly the bass by Chris Dale) not to mesh so well with Bruce’s songs. Most of the Skunkworks album is performed live, plus some older songs and B-sides, and one Maiden cover (“The Prisoner”). This is another very rare performance as once again, the original video was very hard to find.
Disc 2 is the Scream For Me Brazil show, featuring my favourite lineup of Bruce’s band. Roy Z and Adrian Smith on guitars, the hulking Eddie Casilias on bass, and the talented tribal and bizarre Dave Ingraham on drums. This to me was Bruce’s finest moment as a solo artist. The performance itself was never meant to be released at first, this is a rough and raw video feed. However, as grainy as it is, the raw energy and sheer performance chops of Bruce and his ace band come through. The tracklist is a mix of songs from the three albums featuring Roy Z (Balls to Picasso, Accident of Birth, and Chemical Wedding).
Disc 3 is my personal favourite disc, seeing as Bruce’s music videos were rarely shown on Much. Every video is included here. There are some really off the wall videos directed by Storm Thorgerson (check out “Tattooed Millionaire”! Shoes for hats?) and some really cool horror-chiller-theater-type videos directed by Julian Doyle. Further on, I loved “Accident Of Birth” (directed by Bruce himself), mainly because Dave Ingraham makes awesome faces while playing the drums, and is wearing this funny leather aviation hat through the whole thing. But that’s nothing, wait until you see “Road To Hell”. Ingraham is now wearing a gas mask through the whole thing! Julian Doyle’s “Abduction” video is also cool, as Bruce himself is captured by mysterious Men in Black, and experimented upon….
But there are some pretty bad videos too. “Tears of the Dragon” comes to mind, a great song, but a terrible video. Here’s Bruce, looking all pensive…then there’s some weird sumo wrestler looking guy…fire…a beach…Bruce wrecking stuff…I would have preferred to see his band. It was the early 90’s, and this was the kind of video that people were sick of seeing, pompous and self-important. Awful video.
Lastly as a bonus there is an old Samson video directed by Julian Temple. I don’t even know what to say about Biceps of Steel except it’s an odd one! There is also a lot of supplimentary bonus material, including some introductions and explanations from Bruce himself….
This package was extremely well assembled, and is very enjoyable for all Bruce Dickinson fans. You won’t be let down. Completists in particular will appreciate that Bruce is very hands-on with his product and tends to give the fans what they wanted along with stuff they didn’t know existed. Full endorsement from LeBrain.
More BRUCE DICKINSON at mikeladano.com:
Accident of Birth (1997) Man of Sorrows EP (1997)
Balls To Picasso (1994 & deluxe edition)
The Chemical Wedding (1998 Japanese import)
Skunkworks, Skunkworks Live EP (1996)
Tattooed Millionaire (1990, 2005 Sanctuary 2 disc set)
Tyranny of Souls (2005, Japanese version)
RECORD STORE TALES Part 148: Navigate the Seas of the Sun
Posted in Reviews and tagged accident of birth, alessandro elena, alex dickson, anthology, balls to picasso, bruce dickinson, chris dale, dave ingraham, Dive! Dive! Live!, DVD, Iron Maiden, Julian Doyle, Julian Temple, roy z, Sanctuary, Scream For Me Brazil, skunkworks, Skunkworks Live, Storm Thorgerson, The Chemical Wedding, the prisoner, william blake on January 10, 2014 by mikeladano. 29 Comments
REVIEW: Bruce Dickinson – The Chemical Wedding (1998 Japanese Import, single)
Part 27 of my series of Iron Maiden reviews!
BRUCE DICKINSON – The Chemical Wedding (1998)
Disclaimer: I know nothing of the writings of William Blake. Curious because of this album, I decided to take a crack at them. I did not get far!
Suffice to say The Chemical Wedding is a swirling Blake-inspired non-concept album, a distinct up-ratchet from the excellent Accident of Birth. Upon hearing The Chemical Wedding, I said, “Well that’s it — Bruce has buried Iron Maiden, and his own back catalogue too!”
Seriously heavy, much heavier than anything Bruce has done before or since, The Chemical Wedding is an absolute triumph. The lineup remains the same: Bruce and Roy Z with Adrian Smith, Eddie Casillas, and David Ingraham. With a little bit ‘o narration from Bruce’s hero Arthur Brown (The Crazy World of Arthur Brown). The lyrics range from alchemy to the legend that Christ once went to England during his missing years, it’s a spellbinding listen, as long as you don’t hurt your neck from all the headbanging you’re going to do.
I had one customer who was a Christian. He asked me what was good in new metal, so I put The Chemical Wedding on for him. He ripped the headphones from his ears — couldn’t stand the lyrics! He told me they were “too demonic”, particularly the lead single “The Killing Floor”:
Satan has left his killing floor
Satan – hellfires burn no more
Although there is also a line about “Panzer divisions burning in the mud” so to me this is another commentary on the evil present in the world.
Going through the album track by track would get monotonous. So choose from the adjectives below: “fast”, “powerful”, “scorching”, “heavy”, “grinding”, “wailing”, “throbbing”, “headache-inducing” for the various songs.
There are numerous highlights, but my two favourites are:
“The Tower” – this one has a unstoppable pulse thanks to Eddie Casillas, and is one of the more melodic songs on the album while retaining its heaviness.
“Book of Thel” – with velocity comes the album epic, this one picks up where “Darkside of Aquarius” left off from the last album. I don’t know what a book of Thel is, but judging by the heavy evilness coming from my speakers, maybe I don’t wanna know!
Not to be outdone are the scorching opening “King in Crimson” (does not seem to be about a Stephen King character!) and the melodic Maiden-esque Japanese bonus track “Return of the King”.
The single for “The Killing Floor” had two unique B-sides, “Real World” and “Confeos”, neither of which are as strong as anything on the album. These songs plus “Return of the King” have been collected on the Bruce Dickinson deluxe editions.
When Accident of Birth came out in 1997, I said, “This is incredible, Bruce is back and better than Maiden are. How the hell is he doing to top this one?” Unlike previous solo albums, Bruce didn’t do a complete 180 and change direction. Instead he simply added more fuel to the fire and created one of the best albums of his entire career, one he should be very proud of.
But again, I had to ask the same question, “How the hell does he top The Chemical Wedding“? I couldn’t see him turning up the gas any hotter without foraging into thrash metal territory, or losing what melody he still had. Luckily, fate intervened.
It turns out that Iron Maiden themselves were looking for another new singer. And Bruce was looking to finish his career off doing arenas, not clubs. A phone call was made….
…And it is here that we shall pause again. Stay tuned for more Maiden in the days to come.
Posted in Reviews and tagged adrian smith, arthur brown, bruce dickinson, david ingraham, eddie casillas, Iron Maiden, roy z, the crazy world of arthur brown, william blake on November 15, 2012 by mikeladano. 14 Comments
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Tourism in Haridwar
motivationaltricks January 14, 2017
Haridwar is district of Uttarakhand state in India. Haridwar is place where the river Ganges enters in plain areas north India after flowing 250 kms from its origin Gaumukh. It is the place where people from across the India visit for pilgrimage and to take a holy dip into the holy river Ganges. Haridwar city is an ancient and it is one of the most sacred cities in India.
The holy city of Haridwar is situated at a distance of 214 km from Delhi and lies in the north India state of Uttar Pradesh. it is one of India’s most eminent pilgrimage sites and is spread over an area of 2360 sq. Km. It is known as the “Gateway to the Gods” and is situated on the banks of the holy Ganges.
It has been proved by archaeological findings that terracotta culture had an existence in Haridwar during 1700B.C. and 1800 B.C. Haridwar has been in people’s mind from the period of Buddha to the British arrival and still in the 21st century. Haridwar was ruled by Maurya Empire from 322 BCE to 185 BCE and later it came under the rule of Kushan Empire according to historical evidences. Well-known Chinese traveller Huan Tsang visited India in 629 AD.
Haridwar is mentioned in various ancient Indian scriptures as a Mayapur, Kapilsthan, Mokshdwar or Gangadwar.
The most famous festival of haridwar is Kumbh Mela. It celebrated once in every 12 years. The city excited for this festival and prepares in full swing to arrange this event. During the Mela the group of millions of saint, devotees, tourist, photographers, and followers come here and become the part of this event.
Ardh Kumbh Mela also celebrated here, once in the every 6 years. On that event people from all around come here for a dip in the holy Ganga River.
Holi and Diwali festival also celebrated here with great pomp and show. On the occasion of Diwali evening, ganga ghat looks golden lamp because people floating the diyas (lamp) in the water.
Haridwar is also known as the ‘Gateway of God’ which is attract to most of the religious people, it is the most popular amongst the Hindu Followers because there is number of place for them.
Hari-ki-Pauri- It is commissioned by Emperor Vikramaditya in the memory of Bhartrihari. It is the most sacred ghat. In the evening time this ghat reflects a amazing view because of floting diyas in the Ganges.
Mansa Devi Temple- this temple dedicated to the Devi Mansa. It is considered that Maa Mansa Devi fulfil the all wishes of devotees. It is situated at bilva Parvat.
Neeleshwar Temple- Neeleshwar Temple is a Hindu temple dedicated to Hindu god Shiva in the holy city of Haridwar. Neeleshwar Temple is another religious site in Haridwar.
Neel Dhara Pakshi Vihar- it is the bird Sanctuary in Haridwar, and it is a heaven for bird watchers and home of many birds in the winter season.
There are numbers of interesting place for visit Gurukul Kangadi University, Chandi Devi Temple, sapt Rishi Ashram. These places are touch to heart and leave a good memory in mind.
Winters season is best for visit in Haridwar. The months from October to March are also favourable for tourism from the festival point of view. In the summers season weather is very warm and temperature up from 18 degree to 40 degree C.
By Air- the nearest domestic airport is Jolly Grant in the Dehradun which is 20 km far from the city. And the nearest International airport is situated in Delhi.
By Rail- haridwar railway station is first railhead that connected it’s to al the selected cities of the country. From Haridwar train is available for all metro cities of country.
By Road- Haridwar is well connected to all the major cities of India by an excellent road route. The National Highway 45 connected to various cities of the state.
best place to visit Haridwar
Haridwar in india
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Tourism in Uttarakhand
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THE NUMBERS STATION – Blu-ray review
James Plath May 24, 2013
After watching John Cusack play a cold-blooded Black Ops agent in “The Numbers Station,” I’m convinced that I could probably handle the job. All you have to do is look numb and detached as you walk through the film, taking aim at the bad guys and masking a growing fondness for a civilian code transmitter (Malin Akerman) with a few more semi-straight faces.
Akerman does a better job in the acting department than Cusack, who seems to be going the Steven Segal route this stage in his career. Including “Numbers,” Cusack’s last three films have been mid-tier thrillers.
There are films with more suspense, more action, more originality, better dialogue, and better effects than “The Numbers Station.” Yet, like so many two-and-a-half star action thrillers, this one still somehow manages enough tension to keep you from shutting or writing it off. And in fairness, the “civilian” part is far more interesting and has more range than what Cusack is asked to do.
The first screenplay by F. Scott Frazier seems awfully familiar and lacking in significant twists and turns. It may be a thriller, but it feels like a thrill ride that you’ve been on before. In fact, this 2013 film feels like a cross between “Knight and Day” and “Panic Room.” And a whole lot of other films.
“The Numbers Station” implies that, like the mafia or any street gang, you just don’t quit the CIA if you’ve been involved in Black Ops. Cusack plays Emerson Kent, a field agent whose most recent job is to kill a former agent who quit, established a new identity, and opened a bar. But when his higher-up boss (who, inexplicably, is a ride-along on the job) tells him he also has to dispose of a customer who saw the hit and he does, the man’s daughter sees him and asks, “Why did you do this?”
That question is enough to make him holster his weapon and head back to the car. But when his boss (Liam Cunningham) sees that he left a loose end, he gets the Black Ops equivalent of an assignment in Siberia: he’s teamed with a civilian code transmitter in a work shift at a numbers station in an old bunker with Fort Knox security. We’re told that both sides use such stations because transmissions via short-wave radio are not traceable.
Somehow the bad guys DO find the place, and when Emerson and Katherine arrive for their shift, they’re fired upon. So for the bulk of its 89-minute runtime, “The Numbers Station” is a siege movie, with very little variation. Maybe that explains why it never got a wide theatrical release—debuting instead on iTunes, followed by a limited theatrical release before this home theater version hit the streets.
The film is rated R for “violence and language.”
“The Numbers Station” looks as good as any thriller, though. Most of the scenes are dimly lit or shot at night, and cinematographer Ottar Gudnason does a nice job of capturing the claustrophobic conditions while still managing to flesh out a pleasing level of detail. Thankfully he doesn’t rely on tilted camera shots to manufacture tension, or it would have been too much. But he does make effective use of spot color, and black levels are strong. Skin tones seem natural in these conditions, with edges or people and objects nicely delineated. I saw no issues with the AVC/MPEG-4 transfer to a 25GB disc.
“The Numbers Station” is presented in 2.40:1 aspect ratio.
The audio is an equally solid English DTS-HD MA 5.1 (48kHz/24-bit) that has a nice heft to it. There’s no rumble in the bass, but it has presence, so when the bullets fly they don’t sound like a boys choir pinging around. I will say that the mix itself can be startling. One scene that stands out is a pool hall shot in which Emerson cues up and the crack of balls coming from the rear speakers sounds more like an explosion. Is that done deliberately, for style, or is it a deficiency? I wasn’t able to tell. But there are at least a half dozen moments when the rear speakers startle like that and seem out of proportion to the mix and spread of sound across the other speakers. Subtitles are in English SDH and Spanish.
Besides trailers for other films, all we get is “The Making of The Numbers Station,” a 14-minute behind-the-scenes mix of footage and talking heads that feels like a preview but gives way too much away. So don’t make the mistake of watching this before you see the film.
“The Numbers Station” is a competent film and it does manage to create some tension. But you’re conscious of the fact that it all feels familiar and wondering why there isn’t a little more to it—why everything in this Black Ops world is so simplistically black and white.
Steven Spielberg and I are of the same generation, and …
WAR HORSE – Blu-ray review
I left the Marvel Universe when I started college and …
GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY – Blu-ray review
Harry Potter movies in order of greats and faves
Listing the Twilight movies in order of interests
10 Awkward Teen Romantic Movies like Flipped
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YELLOW SUBMARINE (1968, animation) revisited
Greetings again from the darkness. “It was 50 years ago, Sgt Pepper taught the band to play”. OK, I know that’s not the lyric, but 50 fits better than 20 when we are talking about the latest re-mastered 4K version of the classic animated YELLOW SUBMARINE from The Beatles. Originally released in 1968, the story is by Lee Minoff and is based on the Lennon-McCartney song of the title. Additional dialogue and story elements were contributed by (at least) four other writers, including Erich Segal of LOVE STORY fame, and after all these years, the film not only remains quite entertaining, it has attained a certain legendary status.
Directed by George Dunning (animation producer), also instrumental in The Beatles “unaffiliated” animated TV series of the same era, the film requires a bit of historical perspective to bring the full picture into focus. This was the year before Woodstock, and the Beatles were no longer the four fresh faced lads from Liverpool. Their songs had not only changed the music world, it had changed them as individuals. Much of their charm had turned to cynicism, and drug use was prevalent. The band reluctantly agreed to allow production of this animated movie for the sole purpose of fulfilling their 3 film contract with United Artist (A HARD DAY’S NIGHT, HELP!). Other than the songs and a closing segment, they were barely involved … not even voicing their own characters.
The true legacy is what we see on screen, and after 50 years, it remains magical. The psychedelic pop art visuals were unlike anything most of us had ever seen. The colors and images seemed to explode in vibrancy and come alive before our eyes. Some have mistakenly credited pop artist Peter Max as the man behind the colorful images, and fans of Monty Python (especially Terry Gilliam) will easily recognize the stylistic influence. Sharp ears will pick up references to Beatles lyrics not included on the soundtrack, and much of the dialogue captures the droll tone of Lennon or the whimsy of McCartney. However, we never stop thinking about how much more effective this could have been with John, Paul, George and Ringo providing the voices.
An extended opening sequence provides the basics of the story – The Blue Meanies are coming (!) and they intend to expunge all music and color from Pepperland. The only way to stop them is with Beatles music. Once we ‘understand’ the story, we hear Ringo’s vocals kick off the title song over the opening credits. Through the adventure we meet some fascinating and creative characters, see an abundance of green apples (the logo for Apple Records), play spot the icon (with actual photographs), laugh along with Ringo and his “hole” in the pocket, and catch the essence of Beatles wit, though the dialogue is sometimes a bit muddled.
Of course, beyond the animation, it’s the music that matters. Two songs that stand out because of the corresponding animation are “Eleanor Rigby” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”. Some of the 11 Beatles songs mish-mashed from various albums include: “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, “All You Need is Love”, “All Together Now”, and “When I’m Sixty-Four”. There are also a couple of George Harrison songs that aren’t otherwise available, and a personal favorite, “Hey Bulldog”, which has its own sequence, and was originally only included in the UK movie version. We also notice the beautiful orchestra music composed by long-time Beatles producer George Martin.
At the time it was released, hippies would claim the movie looks better when you’re stoned, and it’s likely for those folks, that sentiment held true for most things in life. The message of the day and one present in much of the Beatles’ work, is that of Love. It’s a message that rings true today, and also part of why the film works so well for both kids and adults. Although we may be a bit disappointed that the fab four don’t provide the voices of their characters, the stunning visuals and classic songs make this a film for everyone. The short live action sequence at the end where we see the real John, Paul, George and Ringo is simply the cherry on top … or is that an Apple?
watch the (U.S.) trailer:
This entry was posted on Saturday, July 7th, 2018 at 8:57 am and is filed under Animation, Classics, Fantasy, Musical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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Tag Archives: Pandora’s box
May 2, 2018 by gozzter
Noceboes? How Cute.
I have always been fascinated by neologisms –new words that substitute for more commonly used ones. They can be clever, rude, or just plain silly, but often their point is to get noticed –or perhaps draw attention to their inventors. There was a time –before social media, at least- when we used to applaud people like Shakespeare for turning nouns into verbs, or adjectives into more active participants. And it was a time when elders, if they forgot the word for which they were searching, would simply come up with a new one. Of course, they still do, but it is often lost in the ebb and flow of media utterage (pardon the neologism). I have written about this before in another context, but the subject continues to intrigue me: https://musingsonretirementblog.com/2016/05/22/what-did-you-say/
This time, however, I was more interested in the clever contrast of nocebo with the word it was replacing, placebo, that was reported in an article in the CBC health news: http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/nocebo-effect-greater-expensive-drugs-1.4358664
I suspect we’re all acquainted with the placebo effect: the ability of a harmless, inactive substitute to have a beneficial effect if it is believed to be the treatment. Again, I have covered this in a previous essay: https://musingsonwomenshealth.com/2016/04/20/rethinking-placebos/
But there seems to be no end to our ability to fool ourselves, and the concept of ‘noceboes’ is yet another illustration. ‘The opposite of the placebo effect — perceived improvement when no active medicine is given — nocebo is the perception of negative side-effects from a benign “medication” in a blind trial.’
The article reports on a study published in the journal Science, which suggests that ‘Expensive medicines can seem to create worse side-effects than cheaper alternatives.’ This particular investigation ‘focused on the pain perceptions of patients who were treated with creams they believed had anti-itch properties but actually contained no active ingredients.’ And, as one could no doubt predict from the title of their publication, Nocebo effects can make you feel pain, ‘Though the scientists ensured the temperatures applied to the two creams were consistent, those who received the expensive cream rated their pain as nearly twice as intense as those who received the cheaper cream. The study suggested that patient expectations related to price can trigger brain responses resulting in higher perception of pain, said Alexandra Tinnermann, a co-author of the study and neuroscientist at University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf.
‘Tinnermann’s team used a functional MRI scanner to identify areas along the spinal cord that were activated during participants’ experience of side-effects. They also pinpointed two brain regions that were more stimulated among participants who believed they received the expensive drug.’
The ethics of using placebos –tricks- is one thing, but what about those of choosing between several recognized and approved medications where the only difference is the price? On the surface, it might seem to be a saving for all concerned. If the data hold up in further studies, why prescribe new and probably higher cost medications, if they’re more likely to have side effects?
Unfortunately the very ethics that require medical practitioners to discuss the possible side effects of any medication, are also known to influence the experience. Knowledgeable patients report more side effects than those who, for whatever reasons, are blissfully unaware of what to expect. Perhaps it’s more a question of which of Pandora’s boxes the practitioner should open -a zero sum game, no matter.
I was sitting on a park bench in the shade of a tree one sunny summer day, trying to finish a book a friend had loaned to me. It wasn’t very interesting, despite her recommendations, and although I was determined to discover what she had liked about it, I found my mind looking for excuses to put it down. My ears soon found a distraction. Two little boys had abandoned their bikes on the grass nearby and were engaging themselves in scaling the leafy tower of what I had assumed was my own special shade tree. Hidden by several bouquets of leaves fluttering gently in the afternoon breeze, I suppose they thought they were invisible in their private redoubt.
“Thought you were sick, Jay,” one of them said, as if he wondered if he was in danger of catching whatever Jay had.
“I’m on antibiotics, Jordan,” the other answered defensively.
They were silent for a few moments, although I could hear them grunting as they climbed ever higher.
“My mother doesn’t believe in them,” a voice, probably Jordan’s, said very firmly.
“Why?” was Jay’s surprised reply.
Jordan was silent for a moment, clearly trying to remember. “She says they can make you sick.” Even from my position far beneath them, I could almost feel Jordan’s italics.
Another, grunt-filled silence as they switched branches. “She says they can make your skin go red…” He hesitated for a minute while he combed through his memory. “And give you… make you wanna throw up.”
Jay seemed to hesitate before answering. “Well, I’m not red or anything, but… uhmm, sometimes I do feel a little like throwing up, I guess. Anyway I have to go to the toilet a lot, so it’s hard to tell.”
“She says that’s what happens with them too, Jay. It’s why I just take vitamin pills.”
“My mother says those don’t usually work… People only think they do.” Jay felt a need to defend his antibiotics. “Mom says we imagine things sometimes…”
“Like what?” Jordan sounded sceptical. For a while, I could only hear the leaves rustling, so I wasn’t sure if they’d already climbed too high to hear.
“Like… Like that vitamins can keep us from getting sick.” I could hear one of them shifting somewhere above as a branch cracked. “And she says some people won’t take antibiotics because they’re afraid of, uhmm…” He hesitated, while he searched for the right word. “…the side-stuff.”
“You mean ‘side-defects’?” Jordan pronounced the words carefully, condescension fairly dripping from his words.
“Yeah. She says if they hear about the defects, they figure they’ll get them.”
“Well my mom says doctors have to tell people about them, though, Jay… It’s the law.” He added smugly.
Jay seemed to think about it for a second. “Then no wonder, eh?” he said, as if he finally understood.
“No wonder what?”
“No wonder people get ‘em,” Jay answered, triumphantly.
From the mouths of babes.
Tagged Alexandra Tinnermann, ethics, Functional MRI scanner, neologisms, noceboes, Pandora's box, placebo effect, placeboes, Science, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, zero sum game
December 13, 2017 by gozzter
I’ve always liked the poetry of metaphor with its imagery revealing nuances hiding shyly in the background. Words alone sometimes convey their meanings too narrowly, whereas metaphors allow imagination to roam more freely, only loosely tethered to definitions. After all, depending on the context of its use, meaning is often reliant on Weltanschauung. Such is communication; language is only the messenger.
Usually one can imprison meaning, of course -confine it in a cramped little box from which, should it ever escape, it would cease to be useful. Indeed, it would be a Pandora’s box from which it escaped. And yet, even there, what remained inside after all the mischief and malevolence had escaped, was Hope. Maybe that’s what metaphors are: unexpected colours leaking from behind the bars… Liberations.
Of course, metaphor is value-laden as well as culture-dependent. One society’s metaphors do not always translate into that of another -hence the difficulty of truly understanding and appreciating the poetry of another nation, especially if it must be converted into a different language. It made me wonder whether there may be similar disparities with gendered interpretations of metaphor.
There was an interesting article in BBC Future a while ago that caught my eye: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170718-the-metaphors-that-shape-womens-lives It made me realize that there are many ways the genders differ. Of course, it may be that when we hear an unusual expression for the first time, we (either sex) cling too firmly to denotative -definitional- aspects of the words for interpretational safety, when the more imaginative and unexpected connotative sense is what was intended all along. And it’s in the connotation -the metaphoric significance- where we differ…
For example, what is a ‘glass ceiling’? ‘Originally popularised by Gay Bryant at the height of the feminist movement in the 1980s, it’s a widely used term today that describes an invisible barrier that keeps women from occupying executive positions. The metaphor suggests that women should aspire to ‘break through’ the ceiling – but the problem is that it describes only the women reaching up, rather than, say, the men that are peering down from the top. This arguably places unfair responsibility on women to smash the ceiling, rather than focusing on the role of men in creating and maintaining it.’
There are other metaphors in use of course, often involving glass -presumably to convey the idea of invisible barriers to movement for women. So, the ‘glass cliff’ which depicts the idea of ‘how senior women are often hired for risky and precarious roles at times of crises’ and therefore making them look bad if they fail to succeed. Or, the non-glass example of the ‘sticky floor’, which describes how women often feel stuck in low-wage jobs where career ascension is unlikely.’
But, handy as they are in explaining often complex topics, metaphors -in these contexts anyway- tend to oversimplify the problems ‘offering only a specific angle or viewpoint that isn’t the full picture.’ They confine us to viewing the world through a narrow aperture -a spotlight that illuminates only one small part of the stage. ‘“Women are the effect to be explained,” says Michelle Ryan, a psychology professor at the University of Exeter. “We never talk about men being overconfident, we always talk about women being underconfident. And we never talk about men having privilege or finding it easy; we always talk about women finding it difficult.” Ryan believes that the metaphors we’re using to describe women at work reflect the world’s androcentricism [sic] – our insistence that, even in 2017, we consider the male experience as “the norm”’
The issue is not entirely one-gendered, though. There is the concept of the ‘glass escalator’, a term occasionally applied to men in female-dominated industries that ascend to upper ranks more quickly than women. And yet, as Caren Goldberg of Bowie State University in Maryland points out, metaphors are employed when there is an “exception” to the rule or gender stereotype.’ So in the example she cites, it was applied to a male nurse (in a predominantly female dominated profession at the time) and implied that he probably chose nursing because he wasn’t able to get in to medical school.
‘The obvious upside of any these metaphors, however, is that they highlight social phenomena that might otherwise remain invisible and therefore impossible to resolve. But in order to address the circumstances that lead to women being held back, and men rising seamlessly, it shouldn’t be forgotten that metaphors simplify complexity.’
In an admittedly convoluted way, it reminds me of a woman I met the other day at a bus stop. I suppose I only met her by default, really -nobody would stand beside her because she was exhibiting a rather odd behaviour -probably Tourette’s syndrome, I’d thought at the time. She would be standing quietly at the curb, and then suddenly bend forward and seem to be vigorously cleaning and polishing something above her. This would last for a few seconds, often becoming more and more frantic, and then subside, leaving her once again peaceful, although by the look on her face, perhaps not content.
She was in her thirties, I would guess, and dressed quite respectably in a blue pant-suit, with a spotless white blouse and short stubby earrings that would be unlikely to achieve any unwanted momentum during her seemingly randomly timed tics. Her auburn hair was sensibly short and her makeup intact as far as I could tell. Apart from her odd movements, she seemed like a typical business woman on her way home from work.
And, when she moved beside me in the now-disrupted line up, she smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said -hurriedly, I thought, in order to explain herself before she was once again overcome by the movement. “It’s just my latest tic…”
At that point and without any obvious warning, she launched into another bout of scrubbing something invisible over her head. I tried to pretend I didn’t notice, but she wasn’t fooled.
“I think stuff at work must have kicked this one off,” she said and then blushed.
“What do you mean?” I asked, genuinely interested.
She stared at me for a moment, perhaps wondering if it was something appropriate to confess to a stranger at a bus stop. Then her smile returned briefly before the tic arrived again.
“They’re all used to me at work,” she explained when she was able to. “But the boss isn’t.” She risked a sigh to indicate her frustration. “I mostly just repeat words to myself so they’re not as disruptive. But occasionally a movement takes over, and that’s what he doesn’t understand… Or like. I think he wonders if I’m actually mentally handicapped, or something.
“Anyway, even though I’ve been working there as an accountant for almost ten years, he’s never promoted me. I’m well regarded by my colleagues, and they’re almost all men…but…”
I could see a sudden change in her face as she leaned over the curb and the tic began again.
“But my friend Amrita thinks it’s just the glass ceiling that’s holding me back,” she said, once again in temporary control. “And yet, I’m not certain that reassures me…”
Her bus pulled up suddenly, and she stepped onto it like any other passenger, and was gone. I saw her smile at me through the window when she found a seat though, and I nodded in a friendly recognition of what she’d shared with me. But, like her, I’m not sure her friend was right -ceilings are not the only battles.
Tagged androcentricism, BBC future story, Bowie State University in Maryland, business woman, Caren Goldberg, Feminist movement, Gay Bryant, Gender, glass ceiling, glass cliff, glass escalator, labyrinth, metaphor, Michelle Ryan, Minotaur, Pandora's box, sticky floor metaphor, tic, Tourette's syndrome, University of Exeter, Weltanschauung
July 15, 2015 by gozzter
Why do we Know something?
Knowledge is interesting. But what is it, exactly? What does it mean to say you know something? Plato defined it as being justified true belief, but is it? Take Bertrand Russel’s famous thought experiment: the ‘stopped clock case’, for example. Alice looks at a clock and says it is two o’clock. Well, because the clock does indeed confirm that it is two o’clock, it seems justified; and because it is, in reality, two o’clock, it also seems a true belief. She could therefore be said to know that it is two o’clock… But, unknown to Alice, the clock had actually stopped working exactly 12 hours previously, so did she know that it was two o’clock? Or was it a fortuitous guess and not knowledge?
All this is a little out of my comfort zone to say the least, so I’m not even going to attempt straying into such philosophical realms as the ‘Gettier Problem’ (whether something that happens to be true but is believed, as with Alice, for incorrect or flawed reasons should be counted as knowledge). It is truly thought-provoking, though, isn’t it?
But Knowledge is not just a list of facts that happen to be true –whatever truth is- nor a compilation of disparate evidentiary items. It is not only an encyclopedia, it is a diary as well: the story of why it exists. There is often a purpose to it –or at least in its acquisition there may have been a reason, even if you stumbled upon it by accident.
In other words, there is another way of approaching the concept of knowledge other than how we know something to be true –the Scientific Method, for example- and that is why we know it. And I don’t mean to stir the lid of Pandora’s box with the ‘why question’, nor to intimate some sort of heterodox Creationist linkage, but merely to introduce something that I learned from a patient a few years back -a professor of philosophy at one of the local universities.
Nancy was a thin, forty-seven year old woman who had been sent to me for a recent episode of irregular menstrual bleeding. She was otherwise healthy and somewhat embarrassed at having to see me for something her mother and aunt had managed to work through without having to seek medical advice. Her family doctor had ordered an ultrasound of the pelvis and it had not revealed anything suspicious. In fact it had stated that no abnormalities had been seen to explain the bleeding.
I suggested it would be a good idea to sample the uterine cells with an office endometrial biopsy as a final reassurance that nothing had been missed. But I could see that she was uncomfortable with the idea.
“What are you hoping an endometrial biopsy will find, doctor?” she said suspiciously.
“Actually, I’m hoping to find nothing,” I said in my best, confident voice. “The ultrasound didn’t see anything to worry about…”
An eyebrow slowly crawled up one side of her forehead. “I realize that; my GP showed me the result.” The other eyebrow shot up to join its sister. “So… Why would you want to do a biopsy?”
I get asked this a lot. “Well, the ultrasound is not a microscope. It can’t tell anything about the type of cells that are in there.” She still looked unconvinced, I have to say, so I pulled out another of my usual analogies. “I suppose it’s something like trying to make a diagnosis from a shadow. You can guess a person’s height and perhaps her weight from her shadow, but even if you could tell she had long hair, you would have no idea of its colour. Nor would you know anything about her heart.”
Nancy was quiet for a moment, obviously thinking it through. I could tell from her face that she thought it was a rather clumsy explanation -not well conceived, and not terribly illustrative of her problem. “So,” she finally said, looking up at the ceiling for help, “The ultrasound is normal, the blood tests my GP did suggest I’m in the menopausal transition now, the abnormal bleeding only occurred in one menstrual cycle a few months ago, and I’ve been doing well since then…” She dropped her eyes onto my face and left them hovering there for a moment as she shook her head. “Tell me again why you think a biopsy would be a good idea.”
I have to admit that when she put it like that I had second thoughts, but nevertheless I pushed on, regardless. Was I just trying to save face, or was there truly a principle at stake? “Well… clearly there are different ways of approaching your bleeding… But if we do the biopsy, and it is normal, then at the very least we will have a baseline that reassures us that if it happens again in the near future, we can probably assume the cells are still normal…”
Nancy was good; she could read the hesitation in my voice. She smiled gracefully, but it was a polite smile. “Wouldn’t it make equally good sense to wait and see if it starts to happen more frequently and then do the biopsy?”
She had me. “Yes, I suppose that is an equally acceptable option.”
She sat back in her chair, crossed her legs, folded her arms across her chest and stared at me –not unkindly, not aggressively, but curiously, like a mother might watch a mischievous child. “I won’t ask you how you came to that conclusion, or how you know that a biopsy might be justified. Those are all fairly standard medical teachings, as I understand…” Her face wrinkled in concern. “But I’d be curious as to why you know that.”
I returned her stare. Why I knew that? Why does anybody know something? Because they read it, or were taught it, or figured it out… Why indeed?
“We all have options in our learning,” she continued. “There are many opinions to which we are exposed, rival paradigms, competing theories. And they all promise success; they all answer the questions differently. Like a hundred people crossing a single bridge, it’s not the same bridge for any of them. It’s a hundred bridges…”
Her face softened, like a teacher that realizes she has confused her pupil. “From all that reality has to offer, we have to decide what to privilege. There are just too many routes to the truth to take them all. We have to choose…
“But why do we choose one view, one approach instead of another? That’s what I’m asking.” She sighed, as if even the question, let alone the answer to it, was hopeless. “Why do you know one thing and not something else?”
Her question still troubles me. I had no answer for her then; nor do I now. I still wallow in the permutations and combinations of perpectives I confront daily and wonder how I manage to choose my direction without getting lost. Maybe it’s a confirmation bias: I have come to believe in the correctness of a particular viewpoint over the years and so only consider the evidence that confirms it. The diagnosis that points that way. And if the results don’t justify the approach? Well, there’s always rationalization to light the path I’ve chosen.
But do I really know why I know what I do, believe what I believe, think what I think? No, not so far… and yet the fact that I’m even aware of the discrepancy, and see the signs to other roads, is a good start isn’t it? As Marcel Proust wrote: The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.
Tagged Bertrand Russel, Creationism, endometrial biopsy, Gettier Problem, irregular menstrual bleeding, Justified true belief, knowledge, Marcel Proust, menopause, Pandora's box, Plato, the Why Question, ultrasound
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Michael Foster Photography Contest
Capturing Muskoka's natural beauty
The Michael Foster Photography Award is presented annually to the photographer whose image best represents Muskoka's natural or built environments in a way that demonstrates the beauty of the area.
2019 THEME: FOREST BATHING
Submit your photos on Instagram to @muskokaconservancy using the hashtag #mccontest
Deadline for submissions: April 1, 2019
About Michael Foster:
A professional photographer and artist from Toronto prior to moving to Muskoka in 1994, Michael took great pleasure in the visual arts, music, and canoeing. His other great passion was nature and he was actively involved in the Muskoka Conservancy, with a special interest in preserving the area's natural beauty for generations.
For many years he was on the Board of the Muskoka Heritage Foundation, which later merged with the Muskoka Heritage Trust to become the Muskoka Conservancy. He was also a volunteer in the Technical Advisory Group, which assesses the ecological significance of land offered to the Conservancy, photo-documenting the properties being assessed and protected. During the 1990s, Michael was a leader in the Master Steward Program, which helped landowners maintain and enrich the biodiversity of their properties. He showed that a combination of protection and active stewardship on his own property enhanced the ability of the plants and animals to prosper.
His commitment to Muskoka was such that he and his spouse, Lola Bratty, permanently protected a portion of their property by donating the Foster/Bratty Nature Reserve to Muskoka Conservancy in 2012. Michael was passionate about protecting this significant wetland for the resident species (some of which are rare), so that future generations would be able to enjoy the area in its natural state.
View our Award Recipients
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Ashton Kutcher & Mila Kunis' Response To A Report They Split Is Incredible
InTouch Weekly got shamed on Wednesday (June 19) when Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher took to Instagram to make fun of the tabloid's inaccurate report that they have split from one another.
In the Instagram video, the pair appear in a car as Kutcher asks Kunis what the publication reported. "Babe, what’s happening? What’s going on?" he says, to which she responds by showing the cover of the magazine and reporting their fabrication. "It's over between us," she replies. "I guess it’s over @intouchweekly have fun selling magazines this week. Maybe next week my wife will be having twins. For the third time. But who’s counting," Kutcher captioned the post. As per the gossip outlet, the pair had split up after Kutcher was "exposed" over a "dark secret" that prompted Kunis to take away their children.
Meanwhile, the pair's friend, Dax Sheppard, responded to the video with even more sarcasm, writing, "DAMNIT!!! I was gonna take a run at MK!!! I want a refund!" Demi Lovato was also quick to chime in with a reply. "This is amazing. Miss ya'll," the pop star wrote.
As you probably remember, the former That 70s Show co-stars married in July 2015. The couple currently have two children together, Wyatt, 4, and Dimitri, 2.
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A favourite of Pro Surfer Kelly Slater, The Beautiful Girls from Australia tour Canada and fast become more popular than BC starlet Pamela Anderson
April 8, 2012 Roberto AngottiLeave a comment
Although these are gorgeous girls from Australia, Mat McHugh and The Beautiful Girls are playing five live concerts in British Columbia, Canada.
The Beautiful Girls are an Aussie band led by Mat McHugh (center), an internationally acclaimed singer/songwriter who also tours solo while not surfing the break
at Sydney's world-class beaches.
Move over former lovers Tommy Lee and Kid Rock because Mat McHugh and The Beautiful Girls have arrived at Pamela Anderson’s old stomping grounds. Whether it be at one of Kelly Slater’s secret surfing spots on the rugged West Coast of Vancouver Island in Tofino or at the site of Shawn White’s 2010 Winter Olympic brilliance in Whistler, The Beautiful Girls are playing there. Weaned on punk rock, reggae and hip hop while growing up and surfing in Sydney’s Northern Beach community of Dee Why, frontman Mat McHugh has filled his cup with a cornucopia of influences after spending extended periods of time away from his peaceful Aussie abode in such diverse places as New York, India and Nepal. A lover of dub and dancehall with an ear for wicked riddims, McHugh has his pulse on the international global beat. The Beautiful Girls’ 2010 “Spooks” release showcased the group’s signature sound of folk, reggae, rock, and roots. Mat said, “Our albums tend to sell over time. they never seem to come out with a bang. We rely on word of mouth and like the feeling of people discovering our music for themselves, which I guess is the opposite of how the media-driven music industry would tend to operate. We are just an independent band that
The Beautiful Girls are bassist
Pauly B, guitarist Mat McHugh
and drummer Bruce Braybrooke.
has to find a foothold with every release. By choice we don’t have a major label budget or marketing plan to help us be established. The only way we can even compete in the circus that is the music industry is by having something to say and saying it as honestly as we can. It’s a constant battle, but I wouldn’t have it any other way because, for the most part, the music industry and it’s style of hyping every ‘next best thing’ makes me sick.” The long drought for a new release from The Beautiful Girls is by design. Mat McHugh has been busy touring nonstop as a solo act after releasing an EP and two full-length efforts, including the new CD entitled “Love Come Save Me”–which is available as a FREE DOWNLOAD at www.lovecomesaveme.com.
McHugh said, “My only goal is to spread love and give something back to the Universe. I would love for anyone that the music reaches to share it and send it out into the World. The power of ‘word of mouth’ is almighty.” In the spirit of giving, all net profit of CDs sold will be donated to the Surfrider Foundation.
The Beautiful Girls enjoy some positive beach vibes.
Currently on tour solo supporting Sublime with Rome in Australia, Mat McHugh is an Aussie one man punky reggae party. “I love the really early dancehall and rocksteady stuff. It’s as crusty and weird as early punk to me. King Tubby, Johnny Osbourne–that’s the more influential side of reggae to me–the originators, who led to the punky stuff like The Specials, The Clash, The Beat,” McHugh said.
World Surfing icon Kelly Slater (center) sang and jammed on traditional Hawaiian ukulele with
The Beautiful Girls at the 2007 Pro Music Festival at Duranbah Beach on Australia's Gold Coast.
Kelly Slater and Eddie Vedder surfing together.
Mat McHugh, Kelly Slater and Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam are passionate about surfing and music. So it would come as no surprise to see the three of them onstage singing about the sport they love and the special connection they all share with the ocean. Slater and Vedder have been friends for 15 years. Vedder also was very close to the late legendary punk rocker Johnny Ramone. Pearl Jam paid tribute to the Ramones by covering the classic “I Believe in Miracles”, which is one of Slater’s favorite jams.
Born on Vancouver Island and "discovered" after being shown on the BC Lions big screen,
Comox Valley native Pamela Anderson welcomes The Beautiful Girls to her childhood digs.
The Beautiful Girls are happy to be returning to their huge loyal fan base in B.C., Canada.
Dressed in a Labatt beer T-shirt, Pamela Anderson was “discovered” at a football game when her image was transmitted on the British Columbia Lions stadium’s big screen. Fans fell in love with the 22-year-old blonde bombshell, who was signed immediately to become Labatt’s Blue Zone Girl. The Beautiful Girls have had a tough act to follow in swaying the Blue Zone vote their way, but they are well-known for giving their ever growing BC audience intimate sold-out shows like no others. The Beautiful Girls Canadian show schedule is as follows: April 18th from 2:30-5:30 pm with Ash Grunwald opening @ Telus World Ski and Snowboard Festival-Skiers Plaza and later that night at Kokanee FreeRide @ Moe Joe’s Nightclub;
April 19th @ Club 9one9 in Victoria; April 20th @ The Legion Hall in Tofino; and April 21st 7 pm with Ash Grunwald opening @ The Venue in Vancouver. The prolific and bona fide McHugh said, “I want to take this opportunity to deeply thank everybody that has supported me and my music, whether solo or with The Beautiful Girls, throughout the years. You’ll never know how much it means. Please accept this music how it was intended, with love…”
Net profit of Mat McHugh's "Love Come Save Me" CD will be donated to the Surfrider Foundation.
Pop CultureAustralia, BC Lions, British Columbia, Canada, Dancehall, Dee Why, Dub, Eddie Vedder, Hip Hop, Johnny Osbourne, Johnny Ramone, Kelly Slater, King Tubby, Mat McHugh, Pamela Anderson, Pearl Jam, punk rock, reggae, Shawn White, Sublime with Rome, Surfing, Surfrider Foundation, Sydney, The Beat, The Beautiful Girls, The Clash, The English Beat, The Ramones, The Specials, Tofino, Tommy Lee, Vancouver, Victoria, Whistler
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Spreading the Rule on many Shoulders: How Diocletian 'cloned' himself into Tetrarchy in order to stabilize the Empire – Coins from Pavia, 295 AD
How do you reign an empire without being equipped with telephone and internet? Share the work! Like Diocletian did. He created the tetrarchy and ruled the Roman empire very successfully with a little help of his colleagues.
Come along with us on our journey through the world of money. Today we are stopping in Roman Ticinium, modern-day Pavia. We are in the year 295 AD.
The Roman Empire was huge, damn huge. It was so huge that it became impossible for only one man to defend it. What could he do when the Parthians invaded from the east while he was fighting Germanic tribes at the northern frontier?
Wherever the soldiers believed that their emperor did not give their frontier the proper attention, they proclaimed a counter-emperor, who first repulsed the enemies and then turned his steps towards Rome in order to win the empire in its entirety. How many resources have been wasted simply because the Romans did not fight against enemies from outside but against each other!
To please everybody, the emperor would have had to clone himself. Sons were not an option. Most of them were too young or too incompetent. How to spread the great task on many shoulders then?
Oops, what have we got here? It is not one emperor who sacrifices in front of the camp but four at once. All look alike. They wear identical garments, they are all the same size, nothing marks one of them as being of superior rank.
That is exactly how the four men look like who are immured in a corner of the Venetian St. Mark’s Basilica. All of the same size, all clad in the same way, all holding the same magnificent sword and all exhibiting the same facial features. The cloned emperor. Four for the price of one. Or, as the historians call it: tetrarchy.
The man who managed to share his power with three other men was called Diocletian. He came from a humble background. The only thing we know about the first forty years of his life is that he joined the army and made a career there. On 20 November 284, his fellow soldiers proclaimed him Roman Emperor.
Diocletian had to solve the same problems as his predecessors. The Quadi and the Marcomanni had crossed the Rhine frontier, and the Sasanians would do the same in their part of the world soon. There was trouble in Britannia, revolts in Germany, and these were only the more important hotspots.
Other rulers had had relatives to delegate tasks to. The ones appointed usually turned out to be unable to cope. Diocletian had no one. He could choose his assistants freely. Diocletian was great at that. He shared his power with capable men who were willing to subordinate to him.
His first helper was called Maximinianus. He too had made a career in the army and it is highly possible that Diocletian knew him well.
Diocletian divided the empire. He took care of the east, Maximian of the west. They weren’t on an equal footing, of course. Diocletian had the final say. As it is made abundantly clear on the gold coins. They were intended for the upper class that was to be made aware of where the real power in the empire lied.
While Diocletian associated himself with Jupiter, he assigned Hercules to Maximian. Being the son of Jupiter, Hercules was clearly inferior in rank. Here we see Hercules fighting the Hydra. The story is well-known: the Hydra was a beast that grew two heads for each cut off. Diocletian and Maximian may have felt much the same. There was no end to their day. For every victory two new riots erupted.
And so two additional emperors joined the team: Galerius whose coin we see here, and Constantius Chlorus. And they all looked alike. An illiterate person had no chance of telling which emperor he saw on a coin.
That was policy. The minting was done in the entire empire, mostly in those places where the army had to be paid.
All mints struck coins for all four emperors. The portraits were harmonized to such a degree that they stopped exhibiting any individual traits.
The coins of the different mints likewise were almost impossible to distinguish. The die cutters were given clear specifications as to what the obverse and the reverse had to look like.
Our specimen comes from Ticinum, the modern city of Pavia in Northern Italy.
Its depiction is not that different from a contemporary coin from Thracian Heracleia, Syrian Antiochia or Gallic Trier.
The illustrations became interchangeable, as did the man at the top.
It is hardly surprising that, after 21 years, Diocletian thought that he had worked long enough and decided to retire. He considered himself replaceable.
That was a mistake. The unemotional support of the most capable military leaders stopped at once because his colleagues had begot children.
They wanted to be succeeded in office by their offspring. The next civil war was only a matter of time. Much blood was shed until the most ruthless of all tetrarchs’ sons re-united the Roman Empire in his hands.
Thank you for listening. And you can find more podcasts about coins and money on the Sunflower Foundation Web page.
MoneyMuseumHistory
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This article is from the Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, 6 volumes, edited by William S. Powell. Copyright ©1979-1996 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. For personal use and not for further distribution. Please submit permission requests for other use directly to the publisher.
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Fuller, Edwin Wiley
by E. T. Malone, Jr., 1986
30 Nov. 1847–22 Apr. 1876
Edwin Wiley Fuller, poet and novelist, was born in Louisburg, Franklin County, the son of Jones Fuller, a cotton broker and merchant, and of Anna Long Thomas, a lady of culture, religion, and gentility, who provided a home atmosphere that nurtured his literary bent. She was the great-granddaughter of William Richmond, who was the brother-in-law of Sir Peyton Skipwith of Prestwould, near Boydton, Va. Her grandfather was Colonel Gabriel Long, of Halifax, whose residence, Quankee, had more than a state reputation. Colonel Nicholas Long, her great-grandfather, had been a Continental officer from North Carolina during the American Revolution.
Contemporary records describe Edwin Wiley Fuller as a man short in stature; with "eagle eye" and "gentile, winsome manners," he was respected for the strength of his character. He completed his secondary education at Louisburg Male Academy during the Civil War and entered The University of North Carolina as a freshman in the fall of 1864. After two years' study in Chapel Hill, he returned home and helped his father with his business for a year. In October 1867 he and his roommate and first cousin, George Gillett Thomas of Wilmington, enrolled in the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, from which Fuller received diplomas in the schools of English literature and moral philosophy in 1868.
Interested since childhood in literary pursuits, Fuller joined Delta Psi fraternity and was chosen as its anniversary orator his freshman year. In 1866, he was one of the sophomore declaimers at commencement. Although he wrote some verse before entering the university, his first published items were the poems "The Village on the Tar" and "Requiescam", which appeared in the University Magazine at Chapel Hill. After a year's lapse his publications resumed with the printing of a number of items—poems, "The Angel in the Cloud," "An Elegy, Written on the Rotunda Steps," and a short story, "The Cat and the Corpse"—in the University of Virginia Magazine, 1868 spring issue.
Poe, Tennyson, and Dickens were Fuller's favorite writers. Some of his early poems were parodies—"The Village on the Tar" apes Caroline Norton's famous "Bingen on the Rhine," and his "Lines Written on an Analytical Geometry" is patterned after Poe's "The Raven." Another poem, "Requiescam," and his single published short story, "The Cat and the Corpse," are after the manner of Poe. At Charlottesville in 1867–68 Fuller and his roommate often made forays into the Ragged Mountains, about which Poe had written, and they taught brief ly at a rural school.
In a letter written in the spring of 1867, while he was at home working in his father's store, Fuller expressed dissatisfaction with the idea of a merchant's career. He said he wanted to be a lawyer. Because of his father's failing health, however, he returned to Louisburg in the summer of 1868 after graduating from college. In a letter of 12 Mar. 1870 Fuller told a friend that he had for a time desired to enter the ministry, but, after "wrestling with the great cross" of leaving his father to conduct the business alone, he had decided against it. On 17 July 1870 Fuller's father died, leaving the young man in charge of the business, which was renamed E. W. Fuller's.
By January 1871 he had completed the manuscript of his first book, a lengthy revision of his didactic poem, The Angel in the Cloud ; it was published that summer by the transplanted Tar Heel firm of E. J. Hale & Son in New York City. The book, which received favorable notice in such newspapers as the New York Times and the St. Louis Advocate, remains his best-tailored literary production. An 1892 reviewer for The Wake Forest Student, a North Carolina college magazine, said, the poem "rises to almost Miltonic grandeur," and an 1876 obituary notice in The Evening Review, Wilmington, N.C., opined that, had he lived, Fuller might have become "the Milton of America." The Angel in the Cloud was reprinted with a new author's preface in 1872. In 1878 a third edition was brought forth, enlarged to contain a twenty-five-page biographical sketch, and a number of Fuller's minor poems. The book was reprinted again in 1881 and, by the author's family, in 1907.
Fuller's novel, Sea-Gift, published by Hale in 1873, did not achieve its greatest popularity until after his death. Its frank treatment of sensitive aspects of southern life offended many North Carolinians who had been "inspired to rapture" by his religious poetry. It was to be a writer of prose, however, rather than of poetry, that Fuller aspired. He was sensitive to criticisms that his novel's manuscript was, in some respects, crudely done, and he planned to make revisions but did not live to do so. Sea-Gift is, in some respects, autobiographical. It describes the youth of one John Smith, his career at The University of North Carolina, and his participation in the Civil War. The novel is interesting for a number of reasons. It was the first novel set, in part, in the town of Chapel Hill. Second, it contains a tall-tale telling contest including a definition of the tall-tale presented over thirty years before Mark Twain's essay was published on the same subject. Third, the plot incorporates the university's "Dromgoole Myth" concerning a famous duel fought near Piney Prospect in Chapel Hill. The book became known as "The Freshman's Bible" in the latter nineteenth century and its influence probably had a bearing on the formation of the Order of the Gimghoul at The University of North Carolina and the construction there of Gimghoul Castle. Finally, elements of the Sea-Gift plot involving, first, a long train ride to enter college, and second, the burning of a plantation house by Yankee soldiers, may have influenced Thomas Wolfe and Margaret Mitchell in the writing of their later novels, Look Homeward, Angel, and Gone With The Wind, respectively.
Fuller was interested in local politics and believed in participating. He was elected, first, a town commissioner, next, mayor of Louisburg, and, finally, a Franklin County commissioner.
On 26 Sept. 1871, he married Mary Elisabeth Malone, daughter of Dr. Ellis Malone of Louisburg. Their first child, Ethel Stuart, who died in December 1874 at the age of sixteen months, inspired several poems of mourning such as "The Last Look" and "Out in the Rain," which were widely reprinted in newspapers in several states. Another daughter, Edwin Sumner, was born only five weeks before the author's death; she married Asa Parham of Henderson. The author's only sister, Anna Richmond Fuller, married Dr. James Ellis Malone, brother of Fuller's wife, in 1878.
Ill with consumption for many months before his death, Fuller composed verses entitled "Lines, Written After Having a Hemorrhage From the Lungs," which he instructed his wife to unseal and read only after either his recovery or his death. He died after dramatically dictating in his last moments a poem for the Ladies Memorial Association of Wilmington, which was sung at Confederate memorial services at Oakdale Cemetery by a choir of two thousand persons on 10 May 1876.
Fuller died in Louisburg and was buried in the Green Hill House Cemetery. He was a Democrat and a Methodist. A photographic portrait and many of his letters belong to the Fuller-Thomas Collection in the manuscript department of Duke University Library, Durham. A limited edition of Sea-Gift was reprinted in 1940.
E. A. Alderman, J. C. Harris, and C. W. Kent, eds., The Library of Southern Literature, vol. 4 (1909).
Samuel A. Ashe, ed., Biographical History of North Carolina, vol. 7 (1908).
R. L. Flowers, "Edwin W. Fuller," Trinity Archive 9 (1896).
Greensboro Daily News, 15 Aug. 1940.
Louisburg Franklin Courier, 9 June 1876.
Ted Malone, "Edwin W. Fuller and the Tall Tale," North Carolina Folklore 20 (1972).
New York Times, 31 Aug. 1871.
North Carolina Biography, vol. 2 (1941).
Raleigh News and Observer, 13 July 1887.
Rufus Weaver, "Southern Literary Portraits—Edwin W. Fuller," Wake Forest Student 11 (1892).
"Edwin Wiley Fuller." N.C. Highway Historical Marker E-77, N.C. Office of Archives & History. https://www.ncdcr.gov/about/history/division-historical-resources/nc-highway-historical-marker-program/Markers.aspx?sp=Markers&k=Markers&sv=E-77 (accessed February 26, 2013).
Winston, Robert Watson. "Edwin Wiley Fuller." Library of southern literature. New Orleans: The Martin & Hoyt company. 1909. 1751-1754. https://archive.org/stream/cu31924021970490#page/n381/mode/2up (accessed March 27, 2013).
Search results for 'Fuller, Edwin Wiley, 1847-1876' in North Carolina Highway Historical Marker Program: https://www.ncdcr.gov/about/history/division-historical-resources/nc-highway-historical-marker-program/marker_photo.aspx?sf=a&id=E-77 (accessed February 26, 2013).
Search results for 'Fuller, Edwin Wiley, 1847-1876' in North Carlolina Highway Historical Marker Program: https://www.ncdcr.gov/about/history/division-historical-resources/nc-highway-historical-marker-program/marker_photo.aspx?sf=c&id=E-77 (accessed February 26, 2013).
American Revolution (1763-1789)
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Writers, journalists, and editors
Malone, E. T., Jr.
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Mortimer B. Zuckerman Announces Transformative Program to Support Future Generations of American & Israeli Leaders In Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Fields
American business leader and philanthropist Mortimer Zuckerman announced today the launch of the Zuckerman STEM Leadership Program, a transformative initiative designed to support future generations of leaders in science, technology, engineering and math in the United States and Israel and, over time, foster greater collaboration between two of the world’s most advanced scientific research centers.
The Zuckerman STEM Leadership Program will give the highest-achieving American post-doctoral researchers and graduate students the ability to collaborate with leading researchers at Israel’s top research institutions — the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology; Tel Aviv University; and the Weizmann Institute of Science — which are among the world’s most advanced.
By providing American graduate students and post-doctoral researchers with exposure to Israel’s renowned cutting-edge research and startup culture, the Zuckerman STEM Leadership Program will raise a generation of academic, scientific and industry leaders in the United States infused with a unique spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation. The program will simultaneously bolster Israeli research institutions as world-leading centers for cutting edge research by providing Israeli institutions access to large-scale funding needed to develop top-tier research labs, projects and programs.
“At a time when collaboration is essential to advanced scientific research, this program gives the next generations of leading American and Israeli academics the ability to work together on cutting edge research in ways that stand to benefit their fields for years to come,” said Mr. Zuckerman. “The result will help transform not just the work of the scholars involved, but the way the United States and Israel approach collaboration and cooperation across the sciences.”
“Mort’s friendship is demonstrated yet again through this important initiative,” said Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu. “Together with the Technion, The Weizmann Institute, The Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University, this project will help bring back home some of Israel’s most brilliant sons and daughters, allow them to advance their own careers here and in so doing contribute to Israel’s growing scientific excellence. It will also enable some of America’s brightest young scientists to conduct their research in Israel.
“New York and Israel share a deep and unparalleled connection – and the Zuckerman Scholars Program is a prime example of how we can keep that relationship strong today and in the future,” said New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. “By helping some of America’s best and brightest students work and learn alongside leading researchers in Israel, this program gives us a new model for cooperation and partnership that will ultimately better society as a whole. This is a great way to strengthen the bond between Israel and the Empire State, and I applaud Mort Zuckerman for launching this program today.”
“Science is the only language with no borders or limits; it belongs to all,” said Prof. Menahem Ben-Sasson, President of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “The new Zuckerman initiative will strengthen connections between two important academic communities, North America and Israel, at a critical juncture – that where a new generation of scientists begin their careers, who will develop with roots firmly planted in the best institutions in both regions and will continue throughout their careers as catalysts for collaboration, enriching both Israeli and North American science and advancing knowledge for the benefit of humanity.”
The Zuckerman STEM Leadership Program will be supported by funding from Mr. Zuckerman’s foundation to inaugurate the program and ensure that the first class of Zuckerman Scholars will begin with the 2016–2017 academic year. The foundation’s long-term intent is to ensure that the Zuckerman Scholars and the program’s related educational activities continue in perpetuity. In the next twenty years alone, the program intends to provide over $100 million in scholarships and related educational activities that will benefit not only the participating scholars and universities, but the general public as well.
The Zuckerman STEM Leadership Program will, over time, help strengthen the U.S.-Israel partnership as Zuckerman Scholars return to the United States after building long-lasting relationships based in mutual collaboration. Israeli academic leaders returning to research institutions in Israel will similarly advance the overarching collaborative effort in science between the two nations as they continue to build bridges with their American colleagues.
The Zuckerman Scholars Program will initiate with the two main tracks: (1) the Postdoctoral Scholars Program, which is open to highest-achieving postdoctoral researchers from the United States to pursue research at leading Israeli research institutions; and (2) Zuckerman Faculty Scholars, which is designed to support Israeli academic leaders by fostering world-class labs, programs and projects at the Israeli institutions.
Additional information on the program, including how to apply, is available through the program’s website at http://zuckerman-scholars.org.
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Read more about Mortimer B. Zuckerman Announces Transformative Program to Support Future Generations of American & Israeli Leaders In Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Fields
Mortimer B. Zuckerman honored for $100 Million STEM Initiative
Donation by Zuckerman Institute will herald unprecedented collaboration between Israel’s major research universities
The President of the State of Israel, Reuven Rivlin, honored the American business leader and philanthropist Mortimer B. Zuckerman at the President's Residence in Jerusalem today, for the Zuckerman Institute’s $100 million initiative to provide scholarships to the next generation of STEM leaders in the United States and Israel.
Photo, L to R: http://media.huji.ac.il/new/photos/hu170116_zuckerman.jpg - Prof. Hanoch Gutfreund, former president of the Hebrew University, Mortimer B. Zuckerman, and Prof. Asher Cohen, rector of the Hebrew University, at the President's Residence on January 16, 2017 (Photo: Israel Hadari)
Mortimer Zuckerman launched the Zuckerman STEM Leadership Program to support future generations of leaders in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math in the United States and Israel and, over time, foster greater collaboration between two of the world’s most advanced centers of scientific research.
President Rivlin said: “The essence of science is rules. But maybe the most important rule is that collaboration and modern development can only happen together. As an Israeli, I know that you, Mr. Zuckerman, are one of the great people that has helped us create something that allows Israel to be appreciated all over the world for its education and responsibility. It is a great honor to welcome you at the President's Residence today.”
Mr. Zuckerman said: "I was a guest in this country many times and have been fascinated and always moved by the many achievements of Israel. This is a society that knows how to develop and created a state that is absolutely a miracle. I have always admired what the Israelis could achieve in the country that is not rich in natural resources but rich in human resources. It is not oil, not gold or silver, but people who are willing to work hard and sometimes fight hard and I'm an advocate of Israel. I am deeply honored to be here.”
Mr. Zuckerman, Eric J. Gertler and James S. Gertler, Zuckerman Institute Trustees, Prof. Menahem Ben-Sasson, President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Prof. Joseph Klafter, President, Tel Aviv University, Prof. Peretz Lavie, President, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Prof. Daniel Zajfman, President, Weizmann Institute of Science were in attendance along with a number of Zuckerman Scholars.
Prof. Menahem Ben-Sasson, President of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said: "The Zuckerman STEM initiative will strengthen connections between the academic communities of North America and Israel, and enrich the science and knowledge emerging from both regions for the benefit of people everywhere. As a new generation of scientists begin their careers, this initiative will allow them to develop roots in the best institutions in both regions, and to serve as catalysts for collaboration going forward.
By providing American graduate students and post-doctoral researchers with exposure to Israel’s renowned cutting-edge research and startup culture, the Zuckerman STEM Leadership Program will raise a generation of academic, scientific and industry leaders in the United States infused with a unique spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation.
Prof. Peretz Lavie, President of Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, said: "Today, Israel is in the front-line of scientific research and Israeli universities are at a stage where they are attracting post-doctoral students from around the world, creating networks and fellowships. The power of this $100 million donation will help create coherent scientific endeavors. Four leading universities working together is absolutely unprecedented.”
The program will simultaneously bolster Israeli research institutions as world-leading centers for innovative research by providing Israeli institutions access to large-scale funding needed to develop top-tier research labs, projects, and programs.
Prof. Joseph Klafter, President of Tel Aviv University, said: "Through the Zuckerman STEM Leadership Program, creativity will soar, discovery will soar, and the American-Israeli cooperation will soar farther than ever. We are deeply grateful for this vote of confidence in Israel by Mort Zuckerman."
The Zuckerman STEM Leadership Program will, over time, help strengthen the US-Israel partnership as Zuckerman Scholars return to the United States after building long-lasting relationships based in mutual collaboration. Israeli academic leaders returning to research institutions in Israel will similarly advance the overarching collaborative effort in science between the two nations as they continue to build bridges with their American colleagues.
Prof. Daniel Zajfman, President of the Weizmann Institute of Science, said: “The Zuckerman program aims at supporting the collaboration of the best minds between Israel and North America. This is one of the better ways to make a major impact in the world of STEM and an efficient way to support the world of science and technology. I can already imagine, in 10 years, the room full of Zuckerman fellows who have gone through this program, the impact of their work in the various Israeli and North America research programs, and the incredible network which will be created among these people."
The first cohort of 14 Zuckerman Scholars began with the 2016–2017 academic year. In the next twenty years alone, the program intends to provide over $100 million in scholarships and related educational activities that will benefit not only the participating scholars and universities, but the public as well.
Read more about Mortimer B. Zuckerman honored for $100 Million STEM Initiative
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Courtesy Netflix
The Best Thing to Come Out of the Romney Campaign: This Documentary Movie
The biggest surprise of Mitt, which debuts today at Sundance and premieres on Netflix January 24th, is that Mitt Romney makes a riveting subject for a documentary. The reason has nothing to do with any newly uncovered characterological insights or revelatory candor on Romney’s part. In the privacy of his ski-lodge-chic Utah home as at the debating podium, he has the same animatronic poise and patrician good humor. He uses words like “stumblebum.” He wears a "Salt Lake 2002" windbreaker while sledding with his family. “I don’t think we necessarily break any misnomers about the man,” filmmaker Greg Whiteley admitted on the phone. But Romney makes for one of the most interesting campaign documentary subjects in recent memory, simply because, in his pathological politeness, when it came to access he was seemingly unable to say no.
Whiteley, who is also a Mormon, started lobbying the Romneys to let him film them back in 2006. First he met with Tagg, who was moved by Whiteley’s entreaty but couldn’t persuade his father. But then Ann decided she liked the idea. So Whiteley got permission to attend Christmas with the Romneys in Park City, and from there he never stopped filming. The documentary begins on election night 2012, as the results are rolling in. The atmosphere is mingled gloom and relief; “Does someone have a number for the president?” Romney asks, with a pained half-smile. But then the film slides backward in time to another family scene—that first Christmas in Park City, with the whole clan sitting around the living room and listing the pros and cons of a presidential run.
If this documentary has a theme, it is: grandchildren. Romney spawn are everywhere, holding Mitt’s hand as he leaves the first presidential debate, toddling around him as he talks strategy with his sons, playing on the floor nearby while he bemoans the loss of Charlie Crist’s endorsement. New ones appear in every scene, like so much Ralph-Lauren-clad spillover from a tiny clown car. (Whiteley told me that over the course of the six years he spent filming, he could not believe how many Romney grandchildren there were. “It’s insane,” he said.)
And the film’s main revelation is that the family’s Hallmark public image seems to be pretty close to accurate. Ann is a sane and stabilizing presence, urging Mitt to “get a little something in [his] tummy” as they sit together in their hotel room before his first debate against Obama. When Romney nails one Republican debate, she looks about to faint from pride. “You knocked ‘em dead!” she says, and musses his hair. The square-jawed Romney sons, of which there are allegedly five, also make for likable characters. Their clear admiration for their father is the movie’s central humanizing force. Even their platitudes, i.e. “If you don’t win, we’ll still love you,” have the ring of simple, straight-faced truth.
In one of the documentary’s best scenes, Whiteley interviews a Romney son—I called them all “Tagg” in my notes, but this one appears to have been Josh—about whether he’s ever thought that the stress of the campaign trail wasn’t worth it. “You know it’s hard for me to do these interviews, because I’m so used to doing interviews with the media,” he says with a laugh. “Do the media version and then translate what’s really going on in your head,” Whiteley tells him. So Josh begins with a speech about how important his dad’s candidacy is to the country, and then shifts to real-talk: “This is why you can’t get good people to run for president. What better guy is there than my dad?....But you just get beat up constantly….You kinda go, man, is this worth it?” Even his off-the-cuff answer sounds somewhat canned, but by then the Romney school of chronic appropriateness has begun to seem oddly sweet. Their civility may be pre-programmed, but they mean it.
Mitt Romney and his family in the Netflix documentary Mitt.
At first, Whiteley said, he was interested in making a documentary about Romney’s Mormonism. And the Mormonism is impossible to avoid; in Whiteley’s words, “you can’t film the Romneys for 12 hours without filming a prayer.” But the religious aspect proved less interesting than he’d thought. And as Romney’s profile rose in the political world, Whiteley found he could barely get any access to his campaign staffers. “That was something that used to make me feel insecure about the movie,” Whiteley said. But in the end it forced him to feature the family, which was ultimately his luckiest stroke. And throughout the whole ordeal, he had remarkably little difficulty accessing Romney himself.
He recalls that when they all arrived in Vegas for a day of campaigning, the plane landed at 2 a.m. and Whiteley hopped into the car back to the hotel with Romney, which somehow raised no objections. And then, as Romney walked down the hotel hallway flanked by a whole team of advisers, the staff peeled off one by one—but Whiteley followed Romney into his room and kept asking questions, which an exhausted Romney gamely answered.
Whiteley took an extended break from filming in 2008, and the ratcheted-up stakes in Romney’s second stint on the campaign trail make for a stark contrast. In one early scene, the family eats at a restaurant while Whiteley approaches some diners and informs them that they are sitting next to a presidential candidate. “Sorry guys,” says Mitt, swiveling around to confront their blank faces. “I’m running for president.” So an hour into the film, it is genuinely exciting to see him summoning as much awe as the president himself. "They're even bigger in person," says a young man in 2012 as Romney and Paul Ryan make smalltalk nearby.
But as a campaign documentary, Mitt has none of the logistical intricacy of The War Room (about Clinton’s 1992 race) or Street Fight (Cory Booker’s 2002 mayoral bid in Newark). In fact, the actual mechanics of campaigning are notably absent. Though Whiteley is present at many politically crucial moments—before and after both presidential debates, through some of the fallout from the 47 percent gaffe, during the election night moment where Romney drafts his concession speech—Romney never seems more than mildly distressed about the actual prospect of losing. It’s a family drama much more than a campaign drama, and Whiteley’s willingness to embrace that fact is the source of the film’s unexpected warmth. In one scene, the Romneys sit together at the kitchen table laughing loudly, and somewhat uncannily, at a David Sedaris monologue on “This American Life.”
Mitt does not exactly save Romney from his reputation as a robot. But his formality begins to look less like an artifice and more like a kind of dorky tic that binds the Romneys, like a well-intentioned, alien tribe, against the larger world. In one scene from his 2008 campaign, Matt Lauer interviews Romney on NBC. Lauer had been scheduled to travel to Dearborn, Michigan, to do the interview in person, but a storm grounded his plane in New York. So while the split-screen on NBC is a close-up of Romney’s face, Whiteley’s camera finds him standing in a huge, deserted auditorium, looking as stiff as ever, his hands clenched at his sides. And yet there is something newly sympathetic about the sight of him alone in that empty hall. “My rule was that I was going to keep filming until Mitt told me no,” Whiteley said. “Everybody who was not a Romney told me no. Everyone else told me, ‘you’re not welcome here.’” But Romney, he said, “is polite to a fault.”
television, Politics, Culture, Mitt Romney
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A Tribe Called Quest sounds the alarm in the first video from its new album
We Got It From Here, Thank You For Your Service
"We The People"
Anyone who feels their resolve flagging as the results of last week’s election grow less surreal and more realized should stop what they’re doing, take a deep breath, and watch the video for “We The People,” the first single off of A Tribe Called Quest’s newly released sixth and final album, We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service. It’s invigorating, inspiring, and infuriating all at once. If the sight of Q-Tip spitting out angry rhymes in opposition to hatred and bigotry from behind a lattice of microphones don’t supply you with a fresh jolt of seditious excitement, not much will.
It’s also pretty cool to see how they visualized Phife Dawg’s verses. After his diabetes-related death back in March at the age of 45 (you’re the worst, 2016), the Five Foot Assassin left an impressively immense hole in the influential hip-hop group, making any future Tribe projects impossible to imagine. The way the rest of the Tribe addresses his absence is both moving and thematically resonant for a song about carrying on the fight.
It’s hard to believe that was all almost certainly conceived and compiled before election day. Had the results been different, this would not have been nearly as powerful.
[via Rolling Stone]
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Jackie composer Mica Levi will also score Marjorie Prime
Photo: Rob Ball / Getty Images
Normally, the composer chosen to work the score of an upcoming science-fiction film project wouldn’t be considered particularly newsworthy. But Mica Levi’s involvement makes this an understandable exception. The 29-year-old Surrey-born experimental pop musician (she originally gained notoriety with her band Micachu & The Shapes) has been racking up the accolades lately for her haunting soundtrack to Pablo Larraín’s biopic Jackie, which The A.V. Club’s A.A. Dowd muses “might be the soundtrack of the year.” Before that, she ingratiated herself with cinephiles for the truly disturbing discordant soundscape she created for Jonathan Glazer’s 2013 cult film Under The Skin.
So, the fact that Levi has signed on as composer for the forthcoming Marjorie Prime, as Fact reports, means that the sci-fi “dramedy” will have at least one truly interesting component. Though, the whole thing actually seems pretty promising. Written and directed by Michael Almereyda (Nadja), based on the play by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Jordan Harrison, it will tell the story of an elderly woman in the near future who gets the chance to spend time with a younger version of her deceased husband, via artificial intelligence and holographic projection technology. On top of that, Jon Hamm, Geena Davis, and Tim Robbins have joined the cast. But even if the talent involved somehow blows this, we’ll at least have some gratingly beautiful background music to pleasantly unsettle us as we squirm in our seats.
[via Fact]
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Report: Premature thrust during rolling takeoff caused runway B737 excursion
According to a French investigation report, the runway excursion incident involving a Boeing 737 in August 2009 was caused by the premature application of thrust during a rolling takeoff.
On August 29, 2009 an Air Algérie Boeing 737-8D6 departed the right side of runway 36L at Lyon-Saint-Exupéry Airport (LYS/LFLL), France during takeoff. It rolled for about 250 meters on the grass verge alongside the runway. The aircraft joined the track after hitting a runway edge light and continued the takeoff.
On arrival in Sétif-Ain Arat Airport (QSF/DAAS), Algeria, minor damage was found on the right engine, the airframe and nose gear. There were 39 passengers and seven crew members on board.
The BEA report states: “The overrun is due to a non-compliance with the procedure of “rolling takeoff” by premature application of takeoff thrust as the aircraft, light and with a rear centre of gravity, had not yet entered the runway. A possible tendency of the Pilot Flying to add thrust before the complete alignment of the aircraft on the centreline of the runway contributed to the occurrence of this serious incident.
The decision to continue the takeoff after having returned to the track with a speed of less than V1, led the crew to continue the flight with a plane of which they did not know the extent of damage.”
Takeoff path on runway 36L
Tags: Air Algerie, BEA, Boeing 737-800, incident, Lyon, takeoff
< FAA proposes $275,000 civil penalty against Continental Airlines Study: Aircraft loading occurrences July 2003 to June 2010 >
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In memory: ECpE Professor Emeritus and Alumnus Robert Weber
November 28, 2018 • Kristin Clague 2 Comments
Alumni CoE News Electrical and Computer Engineering
Robert Weber, professor emeritus and alumnus of Iowa State University‘s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECpE), passed away in Des Moines, Iowa, on Nov. 21, 2018, at the age of 76.
Weber received his bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and Ph.D. from Iowa State in Electrical Engineering between the years of 1963-67. While a student at ISU, Weber was a member of Sigma Xi, a national honor society for research scientists and engineers; and Tau Beta Pi, an engineering honor society. He also was a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
Weber had a 25-year career with Rockwell Collins, now Collins Aerospace, before becoming an ECpE professor in 1988. At Iowa State, he worked with the Microelectronics Research Center (MRC) and the Analog and Mixed-Signal VLSI Design Center and was named the David C. Nicholas Professor, a title he held from 2002-09. Weber received the Warren B. Boast Undergraduate Teaching Award three times, in 1996, 2002 and 2005. He retired from ISU in 2010 but stayed active in the department, continuing his passion for research and mentoring young engineers as professor emeritus until his death.
“Professor Weber was a valuable colleague. He and I came ISU concurrently in the late 1980s from industry, he from Rockwell and I from Polaroid. The two of us together worked to make the Microelectronics Research Center into a productive laboratory for new electronic and optical devices,” said Vikram Dalal, Anson Marston Distinguished Professor and Thomas M. Whitney Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Dalal is also the director of the MRC.
“Early in his career at ISU, Dr. Weber was instrumental in the work at MRC on new sensor devices based on thin film resonators. Dr. Weber also obtained significant donations of research equipment from industry to MRC, which has benefited many students. Many graduate students and P&S [professional and scientific] scientists worked with him and benefited greatly from his exceptional knowledge in the field of microwave devices and circuits,” Dalal said. “In addition to his work at Iowa State, Dr. Weber also volunteered in Zambia (in Africa) to improve the education and health facilities in that country. He was always willing to help everyone, and we all benefited greatly from his knowledge, wisdom and friendship.”
We received several memories from Robert Weber’s friends and colleagues, which we are happy to share below. If you would like to contribute a memory, please send an email here or add a comment at the bottom of this story.
“Bob and I worked on many joint projects at the Microelectronics Research Center and in the EE Department. I knew him from his days at Collins Radio (now Collins Aerospace) in Cedar Rapids. He was a real hardware engineer’s engineer. He was also a pack rat like me, maybe worse. He had shelves and shelves of test equipment and parts in his lab. I was cleaning out my office in preparation for my move to become ECE Department Head at the University of Minnesota Duluth in 1998. He arranged with the ISU EE powers-that-be to trade his old office for mine; more room, more book shelves, and more windows. I stacked piles and piles of journals, technical magazines, textbooks, lab stuff, and parts outside my office in the hallway since students like to sort through the materials and take what they want. After many hours of backbreaking labor, I had finished the cleaning, and Bob stopped by and asked, ‘What are you going to do with that stuff?’ I replied that my moving allowance was such that I couldn’t take it all with me. He started going through the piles of stuff and finally said, ‘This is all good stuff. Don’t throw it away. Let’s move it back in to my new office.’ We did, and hopefully the floor didn’t collapse.”
—Stanley Burns, Professor and former Department Head of Electrical Engineering at the University of Minnesota Duluth; former Associate Dean of the UMD Swenson College of Science and Engineering; former Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University
Ratnesh Kumar (far left), Jing Huang (middle standing), Robert Weber (far right) and Herman Sahota (seated); Huang and Sahota were the first Ph.D. students to work on agri-sensors in Kumar’s group.
“I have had the fortune of a long and productive association with Dr. Weber. At the time I joined the ISU ECpE Department in 2002, sensor networks were coming up the research horizon. Being in Iowa, it occurred to me that making sensors for agriculture may be cool, although I had little idea at that time. I started thinking and reading about the problem, putting a team together, and sending out the ideas for funding as early as 2003, eventually winning the first award on the topic from NSF in 2006. At this time, I was on the Dept. P&T committee, chaired by Dr. Weber. Our hallway interactions about our ongoing project made it clear that Dr. Weber would be the best addition to take our project to a next level. Dr. Weber became a CoPI in a second incarnation of the project, which started in 2009, and thus began our close association of weekly meetings with joint students. Although he retired a year later in 2010, he and I enjoyed the project and our collaboration. He continued to be on campus on a weekly basis, implementing the project ideas and mentoring the jointly supervised Ph.D. students. This continued for nearly 10 years, and until the week before his sudden departure. Our last research interaction was on Nov. 15, 2018, the Thursday before the Thanksgiving week, the week in which he left us. Over this period, he and I were successful in getting two additional external (NSF) and two additional internal (RIF) funding, completed the co-supervision of two Ph.D. students, and a third in progress on the respective topics: A first-of-a-kind in-soil wireless moisture and salinity sensor (by Gunjan Pandey, now with Skyworks), whose publication (2014) and patent (2018) together have already been cited 157 times; a broadband and broad-amplitude motion energy harvester (by Kanishka Singh, joined NextEra Energy, now with his own startup)— Dr. Weber thought of the idea that perhaps the earth movement from thunder could be used to supplement the power requirements for the in-soil sensors, which was published in 2015 and its patent was approved recently (Oct. 2018); and an impedance spectroscopy based in-soil nutrient measurement approach (by Bhuwan Kashyap) — an external proposal is pending on this idea. Dr. Weber helped with the electronics portion of a fourth Ph.D. project, a first-of-a-kind soil nutrient sensor, published in 2018 with its patent under review. All these works were immediately noticed by several industries in the ag sector, and he and I made numerous trips and presentations to different industries, one of which signed options licensing agreements for two of the patents (soil moisture and soil nutrient sensing, respectively). The agri-sensor work is ongoing and has also branched into biosensing and environmental sensing. Our first sensor work (of in-soil moisture and salinity) was also noted by Texas Instruments, a leading electronics industry, which invited us for collaboration on new projects and has awarded gift funding for supporting the collaboration. Dr. Weber has been a father figure to our sensors related research, and he will remain forever a guiding force for our group as we carry forward his legacy. He is among the finest scholars and persons I have had the fortune to interact with and learn from. May he always keep smiling.
—Ratnesh Kumar, Murray J. and Ruth M. Harpole Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University
“Dr. Bob Weber hired me in 1980, as a fresh-out electrical engineer for the Microwave Technology Department of the Advanced Technology and Engineering Group of Rockwell International (formerly Collins Radio). Bob had already achieved legionary status within the company at that time. It was a privilege to be his mentee and collaborate with him. What impressed me the most was Bob’s ability to take the somewhat disparate (at the time) sub-disciplines of electrical engineering, such as antennas, microwave circuits, electromagnetics, control systems, analog circuits, digital circuits and digital signal processing, etc., and uniquely synthesize this deep knowledge to cleverly solve microwave technology challenges. Rob was a true renaissance man and an ‘out-of-the-box thinker’ before this term became popular.”
—Jim West, Technical Fellow, Antenna & RF Systems/Mission Systems/Advanced Technology Engineering at Collins Aerospace
Robert and Joan Weber with Jie Long’s family in Boone, Iowa, on June 19, 2003.
“Dr.Weber is such a great educator and meticulous engineer that I and many other students have had lifelong benefits from his knowledge, experience, diligence and wisdom. I got to know Dr. Weber long before I officially became his student. I was in Dr. Udpa’s group at the beginning, and every day I passed Dr. Weber’s office and labs on the 3rd floor of Durham Center. When he first spotted me, he would greet me with a smile: ‘Ha… Another new student.’ He then introduced himself and asked for my information, and said, ‘You may take full use of our labs.’ At that moment, my thought was, wow, this professor must be very good at soldering stuff. Of course later I learned he was from Rockwell Collins before becoming a professor, and we chatted more in elevator, on hallway, in offices, and I got more and more respect for his passion in teaching and experimenting. So when the opportunity came for me to change a group, I stepped in his office and asked if I could be his student to finish my degree, and he smiled and said, ‘OK, then come in!’ Only with direct daily interaction with Dr. Weber could I truly understand how he dedicated himself in teaching and training curious yet sometime careless youngsters like me into creative and disciplined engineers. I remember in his Microwave Engineering class, there’s a lab session for amplifier design; I thought I put every component correct, but just no output. While I was frustrated not being able to find out why, he asked me, ‘Did you put the bias correctly?’ I said, ‘Yes, I have the right voltage here.’ He said, ‘Are you sure? Where is your DC-blocking capacitor?’ I said, ‘It’s right there… Oh my God! It’s shorted!’ His response: ‘As an electrical engineer, a short is an unforgivable mistake… You need to be very careful with your equipment and components. Don’t let that happen ever again.’ Years have passed, but his soft yet very firm words, every one of them, are still hanging vividly in my ears. After leaving Ames and Dr. Weber with my Ph.D. in 2004, I have moved from east coast to west coast while pursuing my career. What I’ve learned from him is invaluable with me all the time. His faith in God, love for family, fascination for engineering and passion for perfection are priceless treasures for every one of us. May he rest in peace, and may his family find comfort knowing that he is home. God Bless.”
—Jie Long, Iowa State Ph.D. ’04
“What I remember most about Dr. Weber is the incredible passion he had for teaching and helping students learn. He was always willing to stay after class to answer questions and clarify understanding. He was one of the best at teaching the theory and then teaching how to apply it in the real world. The classes that I took from Dr. Weber were among the most valuable of any classes in my undergraduate and graduate programs. His passion for microwave electronics inspired me to pursue a master’s degree focused in that area, and I had the good fortune of being a teaching assistant for him. Without question, he had a big impact on the success of my career, and I am very saddened to learn of his passing.”
—Joe Ellerbach, Iowa State BSEE 1990 and MEngEE 1991
“Robert Weber’s mentorship as professor went above the bar and can be witnessed by numerous students in the industry, making meaningful impact to everyone’s daily life. He believed in the concept of ‘give man a fish, you feed him for day; teach man to fish, you feed him for lifetime.’ I was recently asked how I derive my ideas. My reply was that an idea is formed by culmination of previous experience. Dr. Weber was a significant experience for numerous amounts of students. Most recently, I had a chance to attend a distinguished lecture by one of Robert’s first students, Charles Campbell. We joked about how Robert used to compare devices physics to farm activities, such as cow drinking water from bucket. Robert Weber truly cared about Iowa as a community and in terms of economic success. A significant amount of his research activities centered on improving Iowa’s small and large businesses.”
—Shannon Wanner, Principle Design Engineer
2 thoughts on “In memory: ECpE Professor Emeritus and Alumnus Robert Weber”
James Y says:
Bob had a large impact on my career and my life. As my manager at Rockwell Collins he taught me several lessons and was a great example. I can still clearly recall the day he reviewed my VCO design and said, “this is acceptable, but I believe you can do a much better design.” This motivated me to improve my work, not just on this design, but to always consider how I could do better and if in fact I had done my best. Bob lived a Godly life and from this I could see how a leader and manage could be effective while at the same time be respectful and caring toward others. Bob was the EE PHD who was amazing at translating theory to practice and able to communicate the theory and practice to others. I am always thankful that I had the privilege to work with Bob.
Arun Somani says:
Bob was a great human being, a great colleague, a great educator, and always willing to collaborate and help. At multiple occasions, I had opportunity to work with him on different projects, multiple senior design groups, research projects, setting up of High Speed System Engineering Laboratory, and dealing with high frequency signals in optical and wireless (networking) circuit applications. Whenever any of my students needed help where Bob had expertise, it would not be surprising to see Bob working in laboratory with them trying to debug their circuits, teaching them how they must have been designed correctly, and helping them make progress. Bob maintained his cool irrespective of any siltation. I have never seen him get agitated about anything al all. As a colleague, it was always pleasure to work with him. When I heard of his passing away, it was a big shock. Just about a month ago, I was with him in a PhD defense and had chance to chat about life after his (really not) retirement. And he was describing to me his plans for the holiday season. The lesson on unpredictability of life got reinforced once again.
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Report: NSA contract worker is surveillance source
KIMBERLY DOZIER
WASHINGTON (AP) — A 29-year-old intelligence contractor who claims to have worked at the National Security Agency and the CIA allowed himself to be revealed Sunday as the source of disclosures about the U.S. government's secret surveillance programs, risking prosecution by the U.S. government.
The leaks have reopened the post-Sept. 11 debate about privacy concerns versus heightened measure to protect against terrorist attacks, and led the NSA to ask the Justice Department to conduct a criminal investigation into the leaks.
The Guardian, the first paper to disclose the documents, said it was publishing the identity of Edward Snowden, a former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, at his own request.
"My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them," Snowden told the newspaper.
Stories in The Guardian and The Washington Post published over the last week revealed two surveillance programs, and both published interviews with Snowden on Sunday.
One of them is a phone records monitoring program in which the NSA gathers hundreds of millions of U.S. phone records each day, creating a database through which it can learn whether terror suspects have been in contact with people in the U.S. The Obama administration says the NSA program does not listen to actual conversations.
Separately, an Internet scouring program, code-named PRISM, allows the NSA and FBI to tap directly into nine U.S. Internet companies to gather all Internet usage — audio, video, photographs, emails and searches. The effort is designed to detect suspicious behavior that begins overseas.
Snowden said claims the programs are secure are not true.
"Any analyst at any time can target anyone. Any selector. Anywhere. Where those communications will be picked up depends on the range of those sensor networks and the authority that that analyst is empowered with," Snowden said, in accompanying video on the Guardian's website. "Not all analysts have the power to target anything. But I, sitting at my desk, had the authority to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president if I had a personal email."
He told the Post that he would "ask for asylum from any countries that believe in free speech and oppose the victimization of global privacy" in an interview from Hong Kong, where he is staying.
"I'm not going to hide," Snowden told the Post. "Allowing the U.S. government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest."
The Post declined to elaborate on its reporting about Snowden.
The spokesman for the Director of National Intelligence, Shawn Turner, said intelligence officials are "currently reviewing the damage that has been done by these recent disclosures," adding that "Any person who has a security clearance knows that he or she has an obligation to protect classified information and abide by the law."
He referred further comment to the Justice Department.
"The Department of Justice is in the initial stages of an investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of classified information by an individual with authorized access," said Nanda Chitre, Justice Department spokeswoman. "Consistent with longstanding department policy and procedure and in order to protect the integrity of the investigation, we must decline further comment."
In a statement, Booz Allen confirmed that Snowden "has been an employee of our firm for less than 3 months, assigned to a team in Hawaii." The statement said if the news reports of what he has leaked prove accurate, "this action represents a grave violation of the code of conduct," and the company promised to work closely with authorities on the investigation.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has decried the revelation of the intelligence-gathering programs as reckless and said it has done "huge, grave damage." In recent days, he took the rare step of declassifying some details about them to respond to media reports about counterterrorism techniques employed by the government.
Snowden told The Guardian that he lacked a high school diploma and enlisted in the U.S. Army until he was discharged because of an injury, and later worked as a security guard with the NSA.
He later went to work for the CIA as an information technology employee and by 2007 was stationed in Geneva, Switzerland, where he had access to classified documents.
During that time, he considered going public about the nation's secretive programs but told the newspaper he decided against it, because he did not want to put anyone in danger and he hoped Obama's election would curtail some of the clandestine programs.
He said he was disappointed that Obama did not rein in the surveillance programs.
"Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world," he told The Guardian. "I realized that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good."
Snowden left the CIA in 2009 to join a private contractor, and spent last four years at the NSA, as a contractor with consulting giant Booz Allen Hamilton and, before that, Dell.
The Guardian reported that Snowden was working in an NSA office in Hawaii when he copied the last of the documents he planned to disclose and told supervisors that he needed to be away for a few weeks to receive treatment for epilepsy.
Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald, who filed the initial news reports on the programs, declined comment Sunday when contacted in a Hong Kong hotel lobby by The Associated Press.
"I'm not going to talk to you, and I don't have any information to give you," he said.
A sign advertising Century 21 realtor Kerri Jo Heim sits on the grass outside the blue-and-white house where Snowden and his girlfriend lived in a quiet neighborhood in Waipahu, West Oahu.
Heim says the couple moved out on May 1, leaving nothing behind. She said last Wednesday police came by asking where they went, but she didn't know.
Snowden left for Hong Kong on May 20 and has remained there since, according to the newspaper. Snowden is quoted as saying he chose that city because "they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent", and because he believed it was among the spots on the globe that could and would resist the dictates of the U.S. government.
"I feel satisfied that this was all worth it. I have no regrets," Snowden told The Guardian, which said he asked to be identified after several days of interviews.
Iceland's International Modern Media Institute, a free press group, said it had yet to hear from Snowden directly. But in a statement the institute said it would do what it could to help the former intelligence worker find asylum and was already working to set up a meeting with Iceland's newly appointed interior minister.
Snowden could face decades in a U.S. jail for revealing classified information if he is successfully extradited from Hong Kong, said Mark Zaid, a national security lawyer who represents whistleblowers. Hong Kong had an extradition treaty with the United States that took force in 1998, according to the U.S. State Department website.
"If it's a straight leak of classified information, the government could subject him to a 10 or 20 year penalty for each count," with each document leaked considered a separate charge, Zaid said.
Hong Kong, though part of China, is partly autonomous and has a Western-style legal system that is a legacy from the territory's past as a British colony. A U.S.-Hong Kong extradition treaty has worked smoothly in the past. Hong Kong extradited three al-Qaeda suspects to the U.S. in 2003, for example.
But the treaty comes with important exceptions. Key provisions allow a request to be rejected if it is deemed to be politically motivated or that the suspect would not receive a fair trial. Beijing may also block an extradition of Chinese nationals from Hong Kong for national security reasons.
Snowden told the newspaper he believes the government could try to charge him with treason under the Espionage Act, but Zaid said that would require the government to prove he had intent to betray the United States, whereas he publicly made it clear he did this to spur debate.
The government could also make an argument that the NSA leaks have aided the enemy — as military prosecutors have claimed against Army Pvt. Bradley Manning, who faces life in prison under military law if convicted for releasing a trove of classified documents through Wikileaks.
"They could say the revelation of the (NSA) programs could instruct people to change tactics," Zaid said. But even under the lesser charges of simply revealing classified information, "you are talking potentially decades in jail, loss of his employment and his security clearance."
Officials said the revelations were dangerous and irresponsible. House intelligence committee member Peter King, R-NY, called for Snowden to be "extradited from Hong Kong immediately...and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," in an interview with The Associated Press Sunday.
"I believe the leaker has done extreme damage to the U.S. and to our intelligence operations," King said, by alerting al-Qaida to U.S. surveillance, and by spooking U.S. service providers who now might fight sharing data in future with the U.S. government, now that the system has been made public.
King added that intelligence and law enforcement professionals he'd spoken to since the news broke were also concerned that Snowden might be taken into custody by Chinese intelligence agents and questioned about CIA and NSA spies and policies.
"To be a whistleblower, there would have to be a pattern of him filing complaints through appropriate channels to his supervisors," said Ambassador John Negroponte, the first director of national intelligence, in an interview with the AP Sunday. "For me, it's just an outright case of betrayal of confidences and a violation of his nondisclosure agreement."
President Barack Obama, Clapper and others have said the programs are authorized by Congress and subject to strict supervision of a secret court.
"It's important to recognize that you can't have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience," Obama said. "We're going to have to make some choices as a society."
Associated Press reporters Phillip Elliot in Washington, Anita Hofschneider in Waipahu, Hawaii, Gillian Wong in Beijing, Rafael Wober in Hong Kong and Raphael Satter in London contributed to this report.
Follow Dozier on Twitter at — http://twitter.com/kimberlydozier or at http://bigstory.ap.org/tags/kimberly-dozier
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8 May, 2008 — jonathan
While the Belgian government is today wriggling over the constituency issue of Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde (BHV) which once again might throw the country into a government-less limbo and renewd chaos, you can play an online dead pool game to predict when Belgium will cease to exist. The prize: your weight in Belgian French Fries.
“The symptoms are pointing towards a terminal disease”, unknown pranksters write as they invite you to bet on when Belgium will die. You can place your bet by clicking here: http://www.wanneergaatbelgiedood.be/
The organisers promise to give the winning prediction his/her weight in frites, the Belgian invention that has travelled the world under the name of French fries; yet another example of how this country has failed to gain a profile of its own. (The world apart from the UK, that is, where Belgian French fries are called ‘chips’ and chips are called ‘crisps’, because we love to confuse things, but let’s not get technical now).
Predictions range (as of yet) from today’s date, May 8, to July 1, 2013. “Flanders first!! then the frites…!” writes Mathias, who put that date down, while “Better late than never” is the verdict from Eric de Bel, who anticipates the split at September 17 this year.
I refrain from casting a vote, being an impartial journalist.
Meanwhile, the Belgian government is amking another attempt at forcing a vote in Parliament over the BHV issue. The government is at a 50-50 per cent chance/risk of having to resign shold things not go their way, which would mean that the executive body that was so painfully forged dduring nine months of anguish will have stayed in power for only two months. Since that govermnent almost never happened, and was the end of the road or a lengthy consitutional crisis, the resulting problems may prove too difficult to overcome, and early predictions on the demise of the Belgian state may therefore prove correct after all.
Stranger things have happened.
Posted in Belgian crisis, Belgium, Europe, Only Half Funny. Leave a Comment »
30 April, 2008 — jonathan
Thought the Belgian Crisis was averted with the inauguration of a new government? Think again. The trickiest question of them all yesterday forced a scheduled Parliament session today to be cancelled, to the tune of cries of foul.
Even though the largest parties eventually managed to form a government, some nine months after last year’s elections, the country remains fundamentally divided over the issue over the Brussels-Halle-Vilvoorde constituency. Not much to squabble about, British readers may wonder, as constituency borders in Britain are redrawn all the time. But in a country so delicately balancing on a knife’s edge between different and diverse interests, the question of how to draw the borders of a simple constituency has become a major issue as a focal point for the tensions that still hold the country in deadlock.
In short, the Flemings want the constituency split, and the French-speakers do not. Flemings argue that its composition gives the Francophones a disproportionate say, which the Francophones unsurprisingly refutes. The Flemings, though, have a verdict from Belgium’s Constitution Court in their favour, saying that the constituency does discriminate against them and must be split. The Francophones continue to obstruct this verdict to this day, which is why it has not been implemented yet. But the same court has said that no new elections can be held until the split is carried out. Ergo: Deadlock.
The new government, a fragile alliance between members who fought against each other during the height of the crisis, has the unenviable task to resolve all this.
The issue was to be debated in the Belgian Parliament’s equivalent of the House of Commons/House of Representatives – the Chamber – on Wednesday (30th April). But that debate has been cancelled since the Speakers of the house cannot agree on how to hold it. Meanwhile, the government says it has no new agreement on the issue to put forward, according to the Belgian magazine Knack.
Of course, the opposition is crying foul, saying that “Parliament is virtually abolished”. “An absolute low point”, raves the Flemish Socialist Party leader Peter Vanvelthoven, and the far-right if not right-wing extremist and separatist Flemish Vlaams Belang is equally outraged.
They will try again next week, after the extended weekend due to the May 1 holiday tomorrow and the extra day off that most businesses are taking during Friday. It remains to see whether the speakers have agreed enough by then to even have the issue discussed – but don’t put your money on it.
Posted in Belgian crisis, Belgium. 1 Comment »
20 March, 2008 — jonathan
Against all odds, Belgium today gets its new government, under the leadership of Fleming Yves Lterme, nine months after the general election was held. It took one final 21-hour negotiation session to put things in place, as usual, but now there is a deal that will be presented in Parliament today.
Not only is it against all odds that Mr Leterme actually was able to put together a government: domestic and internaitonal press alike are seriously sceptical of its ability to survive. Five parties are enough to make any government shaky, already without adding the extra dimension in Belgium of ethno-lingual conflicts on top of the political-ideological ones. And Mr Leterme will try to keep the government together that he basicaly wasn’t able to forge on his own. Indeed, according to recent polls, not only 90 per cent of the Walloons but also more 55 per cent of the Flemings do not trust him as Premier.
Against all odds is also the fact that “Madame Non”, Joëlle Milquet who played a large part in derailing the attempts to form a government last year by stubbornly letting go of Walloon opposition to the constitutional reform the Flemings in general and Mr Leterme’s CD&V party in particular demand, will take place in the same government. She will be minister of Labour and Equal Opportunities; not exactly a top post in the government, but she’s still there. (Edit: She will have the status as vice Premier, together with all the other party leaders in the coalition as well as one more member from CD&V).
We shall see if the two are capable of cohabiting.
Apart from the Christian Democrat parties CD&V and Ms Milquet’s cdH, the new government also consists of Flemish and Francophone liberal parties Open VLD and MR, and the Francophone socialists PS.
Posted in Belgian crisis, Belgium, Leterme. 2 Comments »
Belgian Crisis: Leterme In Hospital
21 February, 2008 — jonathan
Belgium’s next Prime Minister, the Fleming Yves Leterme, has been hospitalised during the last few days because of gastro-intestinal bleeding. As current deputy premier, he has participated in governmental deliberations by telephone.
His spokespeople say that he will be fit to assume the role as Prime Minister on March 20 as planned, in spite of the strain it will mean to try to hold the conflicting interests together.
We shall see what happens.
Posted in Belgian crisis, Leterme. Leave a Comment »
Belgian Crisis: Soon It’ll Start All Over Again
Belgium’s interim Prime Minister, Guy Verhofstadt, has announced that he will hand over power to the controversial Flemish politician Yves Leterme on March 20.
That is three days early, but Mr Verhofstadt – who lost the election last year – believes that he has fulfilled his obligations to take the country out of the immediate rut by then.
However, today, just one full month before the handover, it is still unclear exactly which parties will be part of the new government, let alone which ministers it will consist of. Mr Leterme’s primary coalition partner, Francophone Liberal Didier Reynders, is out shopping around among the various political groupings as we speak, but there is not yet any firm commitment of whatsoever among any number of parties that could form a majority in Parliament.
In other words… here we go again.
Posted in Belgian crisis, Belgium, Leterme, Verhofstadt. 2 Comments »
Verhofstadt For President?
23 January, 2008 — jonathan
Gearing up for the election of a new President of the European Commission next year, the Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt is emerging as a candidate who might have strong support.
Little has been said so far in public about whom the member states will appoint to head the EU’s executive body (there are no public elections to this powerful entity), and the current holder of the function. José Manuel Barroso, is expecting re-election. But now, it seems that three-time Premier Verhofstadt might be one of the favourites.
Mr Verhofstadt, a Liberal, enjoys the backing of the Socialist party group in the EU Parliament, Metro writes quoting Le Soir, and the group, second largest in the EU Parliament with 215 out of 785 seas, is hoping to forge a centre-left coalition to support his candidacy. Mr Verhofstadt’s ideological friends, the Parliament’s liberal group, seem less enthusiastic, but will not rule out supporting him.
We shall see what will happen once the mightier movers of the Union such as the French and German governments have put forward their opinion, and Mr Verhofstadt himself has not commented or disclosed if he would be available as a candidate at all. But holding together the increasingly disparate nation of Belgium under the recent crisis might prove good exercise for anyone who would want to make 27 nations pull the same direction.
Posted in Barroso, Belgian crisis, EU, European Commission, Verhofstadt. 2 Comments »
Belgian Crisis: A Government For Christmas (Gone By Easter)
20 December, 2007 — jonathan
Belgium will finally ge a new government tomorrow, almost 200 days efter the general election. But it won’t last beyond Easter – actually.
The solution to the stalemate has been to form an “emergency government” dealing with the most urgent things, such as working out a new state budget. This caretaker government will be voted on on Christmas Eve, and will be led by present Premier Guy Verhofstadt, and comprise his Flemish liberal party and its Francophone sister party, the Flemish and Francophone Christian Democrats, and the Francophone Socialists.
The Francophone Christian Democrats – led by Joëlle Milquet, dubbed “Madame Non” for her repeated refusals of all previous governmental constructions, almost opted out of the interim government. That would have meant that the Flemish Christian Democrats would have governed together with its ideological opponent, the Socialists, while not together with its ideological twin party on the other side of the language frontier. In other words, that would have once again proven that in Belgian politics, language is far more important than ideology.
By Easter, the helm is to be handed over to Yves Leterme, the leader of the Flemish Christian Democrats, who after all did come out as the election’s biggest winners. But he has repeatedly failed to unite enough parties on both sides of the language frontier to achieve a government, and the premiership he is going to take over is the doing of Mr Verhofstadt. Thus, he will be governing on someone else’s mandate.
It remains to be seen how that will work.
Posted in Belgian crisis, Belgium. 3 Comments »
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6013 Views 17 Jul 2012 3 Comments science Aurélie Coulon
The phenomenon of crowdfunding, the collective financing of a project by Internet users, is a big one. It covers many fields today from creative arts to video games to charities to new devices.
On June 19, the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab meeting in Palo Alto, California, presented Crowdfunding: Disrupting Traditional Funding Models, where some impressive numbers verified the trend: More than 500 web portals for crowdfunding exist today and $1.5 billion was raised in 2011 for more than 60,000 projects in a variety of fields. Those figures are expected to double for 2012.
Meanwhile, the June issue of Technology Reviewmagazine identified the practice of crowdfunding as one of the top 10 emerging technologies alongside 3D transistors and nanopore sequencing. The majority of crowdfunding platforms (452 of them as of April 2012) are based in the US. The most well known is Kickstarter, which launched in 2009 and has raised $200 million for over 20,000 selected projects. Sites focused more on social entrepreneurship include Indiegogo and Kiva. But portals are also flourishing in Europe, with 44 sites in the UK, 28 in France, 20 in Germany, and five in Switzerland.
As crowdfunding grows in popularity, so does its reach into fields with traditionally very different funding schemes—science and research.
Crowdfunding Science and Research
For a couple of years now, scientists have also been getting into the race for the public’s direct financial backing, and the number of crowdfunding sites dedicated to science and research projects has been increasing. In the US, there are more than 10 platforms today, including Petridish, #SciFund Challenge (in partnership with RocketHub), FundScience, Sciflies, FundaGeek, and EurekaFund (which specializes in energy and environment). Through these sites and others, the public can choose to give money for fundamental research on bowel cancer, contribute to a study of ancient Roman DNA, and help find the first exomoon.
In most cases, contributions are around $25 each and the campaign goal is generally less than $10,000. Scientists decide gifts for donors, called “fuelers” or “backers.” Dr. Brian Fisher, a passionate entomologist at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, raised $2,000 on Petridish to support his work on new ant species in the tropical forest of Madagascar. For a $20 contribution, his research team sent a personal Thank You note. For $100, they gifted a small stone souvenir taken from the highest point on the island. For $5,000, Fisher would name a new species after the donor.
Not quite the stock options and equity handed out to high stakes backers of startups on some of the other crowdfunding sites, but perhaps more enticing for science enthusiasts.
Campaign goals can be much higher than $10,000 on the UK-based platform Myprojects, a division of the Cancer Research UK charity, where totals have topped $135,000. Projects on this site are led by academic researchers who have already received grants from the funder.
“The reason why projects in Myprojects are able to raise so much money is because they already have an audience,” commented Dr. Jai Ranganathan, co-founder of #SciFund Challenge. “The key thing for a crowdfunding platform is to create a strong network of engaged people in the field of research.”
The #SciFund platform considers all projects submitted. Each is reviewed by two volunteer scientists, and the site organizer evaluates validity based on four criteria: risk of fraud, legitimacy of the scientific discipline, credibility of the person carrying out the experiments, and whether or not the amount of money asked for makes sense with the scope of the project.
Crisis in National Science Funding
“Funding for science is getting harder and harder to get,” Raganathan explained at the June meeting of ScienceOnline Bay Area, held at swissnex San Francisco.
In a blog post for Scientific American published last May, Raganathan wrote that “funding for research is becoming increasingly unattainable, with funding rates at their lowest levels in a decade at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of health (NIH), the two most important American science agencies.”
Of the 49,000 requests submitted to the NIH in 2011, only 17.7 percent received funding compared to a 32.1 percent success rate in 2001. Although the number of submissions doubled in 10 years, the budget only increased by 1.25 percent.
Besides, scientists who have left the academic structure to teach in secondary schools have almost no access to national funding. This was the case for Dr. Matt Medeiros, a science teacher at a prep school in San Francisco. He has been studying Hawaiian moths for the past ten years, but when he left academia he also left behind most of his funding opportunities. Through #SciFund Challenge, however, he was able to raise $2,450, a lot of money for an ecology project. “Crowdfunding helped to incorporate part of my research into my work with teenagers,” commented Medeiros, who also spoke at the SOBA event at swissnex.
Catalyzing Public Engagement
Crowdfunding offers an easy solution for people who are interested in giving money directly to science and research. When you support a bigger foundation where overhead costs can be high, you’re never quite sure where your money actually goes and how much of it gets spent on the research you care about. On the contrary, a direct donation through crowdfunding is considered a gift, even if the scientist is affiliated with a research institution. In the case of #SciFund Challenge, an eight percent fee is taken by platform host RocketHub, but otherwise the money goes to the researcher.
Is it all about money? No. According to Raganathan, crowdfunding is also a way to engage the public and connect science and society. When the public is directly involved in enabling research, they are also (hopefully) more engaged in the scientific process and care more about the results. And scientists are obliged to share their process more openly. Crowdfunding, therefore, should have the potential to improve science literacy and strengthen the bond between science and the public.
Most of the candidates for crowdfunded science projects are fervent defenders of the public understanding of science.
“We need to bring back science to the 99 percent,” says Fisher, the ant expert. “We need to bring bio-literacy to the general public. If you are bio-illiterate and you see a forest full of living beings, you don’t realize all the richness and patrimony it contains.”
More than a tool to improve science literacy and engage the public in science, crowdfunding is also a good exercise for scientists. Many of the successful projects on sites like #SciFund Challenge and Petridish involve video and story-telling devices that draw in fans and donors to care about the research. The scientists, therefore, if they expect to receive funding in this way, must learn to better communicate their research to a broad audience. That’s why the organizers of crowfunding platforms propose classes to help scientists communicate their work.
Greg Goldsmith, doctoral candidate at UC Berkeley and another participant of the #SciFund Challenge, raised $1,912 for his research on the effects of global climate change in a tropical cloud forest. “Crowdfunding should be mandatory to second year graduate students because it is necessary to be able to articulate why your research is important,” he says. How do we justify our existence in society? We need to articulate our work for people who fund research, whether it is the public or the Congress.
Could Crowdfunding Lead to Groupthink?
One criticism of crowdfunded research, and the requirement that scientists sell the public on their work in order to get money, is that the crowd may not choose the most important science, opting instead for the sexiest. Which is the general public likely to support first, studies of a devastating disease or a project on theoretical physics that is harder to explain and understand?
Crowdfunding could create an environment where more accessible science projects gain the largest audience, and where scientists who are the most charismatic benefit no matter how important the work of others with fewer social skills might be.
Crowdfunding research does seem to be a promising approach for dealing with the crisis in funding. However, the phenomenon is still young and needs to be observed with more hindsight. Crowdfunding has been shown to be able to raise huge amounts of money, and multitudes of people are jumping on the bandwagon.
But there’s a risk that some might take advantage. Organizers and donors of crowdfunding sites should be wary, be thoughtful, and consider how crowdfunding can be done best for the good of science and of scientists. In addition, state and federal agencies should not give up the responsibility of supporting science.
Crowdfunding research is indeed a complementary tool to traditional methods as long as it strives to reach two goals: the pursuit of science literacy and fair support for scientists.
http://www.technologyreview.com/article/427675/crowdfunding/
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v13/n10/full/nn1010-1151.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/12/science/12crowd.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2011/12/give-a-gift-to-research.html
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/05/23/crowdfunding-for-research-dollars-a-cure-for-sciences-ills/
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/young-scientists-embrace-crowdfunding/
Crowdfunding Sites
http://www.petridish.org/ (US, research)
http://www.fundageek.com/ (US, technology and research)
http://www.rockethub.com/ (US, general, partnership with SciFund Challenge)
http://apply.fundscience.org/ (US, research)
http://sciflies.org/ (US, research)
http://eurekafund.org/ (US, energy and environment)
http://myprojects.cancerresearchuk.org/ (UK, cancer research)
petridish
Aurélie Coulon
Aurélie Coulon previously led swissnex San Francisco’s scientific programming and was a co-organizer of ScienceOnline Bay Area (SOBA). She is now a science journalist for the Swiss newspaper, Le Temps, in Geneva.
View all posts by Author
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Epilepsy NL Purple Day Ambassador Lisa Pack shares her story of struggle and determination to spread awareness on a life-changing medical condition
When Lisa Pack of Hermitage was diagnosed with epilepsy in 2016, she knew her life was about to change. Pack was 18 years old at the time.
Pack has lived with anxiety since childhood. She had just moved to St. John’s for post-secondary studies when she was diagnosed with epilepsy, after having experienced vomiting and multiple seizures.
“I was really anxious about being away from home. Starting school in St. John’s had me really, really anxious. Then I was diagnosed with epilepsy. It’s like it all happened at once. It was very intense,” Pack said.
Sisters that care
Pack lost her license for awhile after the epilepsy diagnosis. Losing her independence and having to depend on others was hard, she said.
While epilepsy wasn’t something she ever thought she’d have to live with, she is grateful to her parents, Wade and Darlene, and friends who have been by her side over the years.
Pack said her sister has also helped her get through many trying times. “I’ve lived with Laura ever since I moved to St. John’s. When she’d see me having a bad day she would almost drag me out of bed. She’d get me to go to get groceries with her, she signed me up for a gym membership, she signed us both up for yoga lessons. She did everything she could to get me up and going,” Pack said.
Pack also credits her four-legged pooch, Sailor, for helping her get well and stay active. “Sailor came into my life at a time when I was really depressed. It was really hard for me to get out of bed. But when I got her I was forced to get up – to feed her, to walk her, to take care of her. She’s the number one reason why I’m doing as good as I am today,” she said.
Deal with the diagnosis
Gail Dempsey founded Epilepsy NL in 1983 after her child was diagnosed with epilepsy. Dempsey is Epilepsy NL’s executive director. The organization offers numerous programs and services to its members and the public to raise awareness and understanding and to help those living with epilepsy.
Pack said her involvement with Epilepsy NL has helped her come to terms with the diagnosis.
“I didn’t know much about epilepsy. I didn’t know anybody that had it and I was ashamed that I had it,” she said of her initial diagnosis.
Pack is this year’s Epilepsy NL Purple Day Ambassador. On March 26, people in countries around the world wear purple and host events in support of epilepsy awareness.
Pack is a student at the College of the North Atlantic. She takes her medication, lives a healthy lifestyle, and does her best to avoid stress.
She’s been seizure-free for over a year, sharing, “Everything that happened to me in a short period – the depression, the epilepsy, it really did make me a stronger person.”
Pack’s advice to people newly diagnosed with epilepsy? “It almost feels like the end of the world but it’s not. Epilepsy can be controlled. You just need to figure out what triggers your seizures and try to adjust your lifestyle. But you can live a very happy, normal life with epilepsy,” she said.
For more information about epilepsy visit www.epilepsynl.com.
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Broncos LB Davis carted off at 1st camp practice 16 hours ago
Duval cards 14, shoots 91 in Round 1 20 hours ago
Tiger struggles to opening 78 at The Open 20 hours ago
Holmes alone in lead after first round at The Open 20 hours ago
ACC Media Days notebook
The ACC Football Kickoff began on Sunday and continued on Monday at the Grandover Resort in Greensboro, N.C., as the road to the kickoff of preseason camps continued with the press gathering for commissioner John Swofford's league.
Here are some notes from the two-day event:
US PRESSWIREJohn Swofford called this past year a “monumental one” for the ACC.
– Swofford speaks: The commish addressed the media about a variety of topics, including the state of the conference. At his opening presser, he said the league “is playing the toughest non-conference schedule of any league in college football,” and he may have a point. ACC teams are playing a very good non-league slate, with Virginia Tech battling Alabama at a neutral site, Clemson playing SEC powers Georgia and South Carolina, and Boston College hitting the road to play USC, to name a few contests. The question, though, is how well the ACC teams will fare in those games. The league's members will have to win some of those contests to earn national respect. We'll find out right away if the league is up to the challenge as North Carolina opens the season against South Carolina on the opening Thursday of the season. Could the league ride the momentum of Clemson's win over LSU last year in the Chick-fil-A Bowl?
– What's ahead: Of course, the full slate of head coaches were available for interviews, including first-year ACC coaches Steve Addazio (Boston College), Dave Doeren (NC State), Paul Chryst (Pitt) and Scott Shafer (Syracuse). While conference realignment and expansion will never fully hit the backburner, there's no question that most everyone associated with the ACC has never felt stronger about the league. With new members Syracuse and Pitt as well as Louisville next year and Notre Dame as a partial member (Maryland will depart for the Big Ten in 2014), the conference has never been more prepared to be a strong football entity with its secured grant of rights and strong bowl lineup. Swofford called this past year a “monumental one” for the ACC. “It's hard to believe the many milestones that have taken place since we were in this same room at this same event last July,” he said. “As we look to the future, we do so with great anticipation in this league. The composition of the long-term membership of the ACC has never been stronger.” But, again, can the league make noise on the field against major non-conference opponents?
– Notre Dame: While the Fighting Irish will not be a full member and will not arrive until next year, Swofford said that if ND decides to join a football conference before 2027, the language in the contract states that it must be the ACC. Nationally and even within some ACC circles, the Irish have been criticized for not fully committing to the league. But Swofford maintains that he is pleased, as well as most people in the league, that Notre Dame is a part of the ACC under these current terms.
* The 120 media members picked Clemson to win the conference championship. The Tigers are starting to emerge as a darkhorse pick to play for the BCS national title. Meanwhile, Florida State didn't get much love, as the defending ACC champions received just 15 first-place votes.
* Clemson quarterback Tajh Boyd was picked to repeat as ACC player of the year, while Miami (FL) running back Duke Johnson was second.
* ACC officiating coordinator Doug Rhoads held a seminar where he talked about a new rule that calls for an automatic ejection for hitting a player with the crown of the helmet or making contact with a defenseless player. There were 190 such incidents last year (16 in the ACC).
Be sure to check out two pieces from Dan Wolken of USA TODAY Sports. The first is about Maryland head coach Randy Edsall supporting the Ed O'Bannon lawsuit vs. the NCAA. And the second is about Swofford saying that the next six months are critical to the NCAA's future and that he expects changes by January.
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News 18 July, 2003 – 2:25 pm EDT
Sprinkler system failed, Iqaluit fire chief says
Arson ruled out in Joamie School fire
By NUNATSIAQ NEWS
KIRSTEN MURPHY
About 100 people gathered beside the charred remains of Joamie School in an emotional tribute on July 13.
The 14-year-old building burned to the ground July 4. No one was injured. The cause of the blaze is under investigation.
What’s known at this point is that a safe and supportive haven for about 200 students is gone.
Members of the department of education, Iqaluit District Education Authority, staff and parents were meeting this week to decide where displaced staff and students will go this fall.
Meanwhile, fire officials continue with their investigation.
Iqaluit Fire Chief Cory Chegwyn said only two of the 100 sprinkler heads in the school worked that day.
“If a sprinkler system is properly [activated], we arrive to a fire that’s already out. That’s not what happened here,” Chegwyn said.
He declined to comment further on the sprinkler system while the investigation is ongoing.
Firefighters were called to the scene just after 5 a.m. An hour later the fire, which apparently started in the middle of the school, was “well developed” and spreading, Chegwyn said.
Firefighters abandoned the gym when the floor became unstable. Moments later, the floor collapsed. The crew moved to the opposite end of the building where they worked in whiteout conditions from the smoke, Chegwyn said.
When crew members radioed to say the heat was forcing them to the floor, Chegwyn told them to vacate the smoking building.
“It’s an accomplishment that none of the firefighters got hurt. They were wearing 65 to 100 pounds of equipment, constantly moving in extreme heat for about four hours and then cleaning up for another six hours. Most of them weren’t done until 7:30 p.m.,” he said.
Two airport fire trucks were called in to fight the blaze. However, the school was engulfed in flames by 10:30 a.m. The water was shut off at the city’s recommendation.
“At that point it made no difference,” Chegwyn said.
Responding to criticism that his 22 firefighters, most of them volunteers, could have done more to save the school, Chegwyn stood by his crew.
“Nobody likes to lose but we definitely lost this one. It was no fault of the firefighters. We did not fail. We did everything we could with the information we had,” Chegwyn said.
Fire Marshal Gerald Pickett said arson has been ruled out.
He said the school’s sprinkler system is one of several contributing factors being looked at.
However, Pickett referred further inquires to Nino Wischenewski, communications director for the Government of Nunavut’s department of external and intergovernmental affairs.
“This is a serious matter that deserves serious attention,” Wischenewski said, cautioning against speculation.
“It would be irresponsible to start responding until we have all the facts,” he said.
A report is expected to be complete in the next month.
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In Math for Teachers
U-boats, Enigma and an Apple: The story of Alan Turing
The British were deep in the throes of the Battle of the Atlantic. In six short months of 1940, German U-boats had sunk three million tons of Allied shipping. The U.S. Navy joined the quickly growing British forces in the region to help push back the German attack on convoys of Allied supplies and imported goods. The Germans had one goal: keep Britain isolated and vulnerable to attack.
But the Germans were also too confident in their system of sending encrypted messages from land to its seamen in the Atlantic. See, they were depending on a remarkable, typewriter-like encryption machine, called Enigma. Messages could be scrambled using a collection of wheels that offered billions of combinations. The complexity — and simplicity — of the Enigma machine was its greatest success and failure.
By 1939, the Poles had managed to get their hands on an Enigma machine, and just before the country was invaded, the Polish intelligence organization sent the machine to the British. A code-breaking headquarters was set up in Bletchley Park an estate in Buckinghamshire.
And this is where math — and Alan Turing — comes into the story.
Born in London in 1912, Turing showed great aptitude for mathematics at a young age — but like many of the great mathematicians before him, he was much more interested in following his own instincts and interests. As a result, his performance in school was checkered. In 1931, he enrolled in King’s College Cambridge to study mathematics, and after graduating in 1935, he became a fellow of the school.
Turing was fascinated by a variety of mathematical concepts, including logic and probability theory. He independently discovered the Central Limit Theorem, which explains why many distributions are close to the normal distribution (or bell curve). (Trust me, this is a really big deal.) He also began experimenting with algorithms, designing the Turing machine. This led him to Princeton, where he studied with Alonzo Church, before returning to England in 1938.
At first, Turning considered his “machine” to be an abstract concept — a computer was a person doing a computation. But over time, he began considering the possibility that an actual machine could be built that would follow algorithms to solve problems. Once back in England, he began developing this invention.
But in 1939, war was declared. Turing was asked to be a part of the Bletchley Park team in England. Using the stolen Enigma machine provided by the Poles, he and mathematician Gordon Welchman developed the first “bombe” or WWII, British code-breaking machine, which collected top-secret information the team called ULTRA. By the end of the war, Turing and his colleagues had developed 49 such bombes, which were instrumental in decoding German Navy U-Boat messages during the long Battle of the Atlantic.
While Turing’s inventions did not end World War II, historians estimate that his contributions shorted it by several years and helped save thousands of lives.
This work propelled Turing into the burgeoning field of computer science. Employed by the National Physical Laboratory, he set his mind to developing the first digital computer, but his colleagues dismissed his ideas. In 1949, he joined Manchester University, where he laid the groundwork for the field of artificial intelligence.
But something was simmering under the surface: Turing’s sexuality. He didn’t particularly hide his attraction to men, and in 1952, he was arrested and convicted for the crime of homosexuality. His choice was to go to prison or accept chemical castration, a process designed to reduce the libido and thus sexual activity. He chose the latter. Although he had continued to work in secret for the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ, the British intelligence agency), because he was an out, gay man, his security clearance was revoked. Still, Turing went back to work on his research in computers and applying mathematics to biology and medicine.
In the summer of 1954, his house cleaner found Turing dead in his bedroom, a half eaten apple near his body. The coroner found that he had died of cyanide poisoning, and the subsequent inquest ruled his death a suicide. However, his mother asserted that his death was accidental, a result of cyanide residue on his fingers.
In 2009, the British government issued a posthumous apology to Turing for his arrest, conviction and chemical castration. Prime Minister Brown called his treatment “appalling”:
While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him … So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.
This year, marking the 100-year anniversary of his birth, much of the math and science community around the world has celebrated Alan Turing Year, designed to elevate Turing’s contributions to the fields. (And in fact, Google introduced one of the most challenging of its Doodles on Turing’s 100th birthday. Check it out!)
What did you already know about Alan Turing? And what could more could he have accomplished had his life not been so short? Share your reactions in the comments section.
I have had a wonderful, wonderful time exploring these stories of math history this month. Let’s do it again sometime! If you’d like to learn something more about math history, drop me a line.
COMPUTER SCIENCEMATH HISTORY
Math at Work Monday: Colleen the Academic Advisor
Get the Party Started: Celebrate Pi Day!
Math at Work Monday: Amy the Pastry Chef
Algorithms: Good for machines, bad for people
Math at Work Monday: Matt the Quality Control Specialist
What is an Algorithm?
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CHILDREN WITH CANCER
Keegan Riley, 2000.
I photographed children with cancer between 1996 and 2000. This work is a collaboration with over thirty-five young people and their families from the Boston area. The young people range in age from ten months to twenty-seven years, and, at the time, they were in treatment for a variety of cancers.
My wish has been to create a body of work that will stand in contrast to much of the photographic record of disease. Instead of concentrating on the doctors, the procedures, and the medical technology that surrounds our contemporary experience of cancer, I want to make images that are about these young people and their uniqueness.
Jonah Faigel, 1996.
Craig Cardani as a helicopter, Rockport, Massachusetts, 1996.
Nicholas D’Amelio, Wilmington, Massachusetts, 1997.
Amy Ladd, Amherst, New Hampshire, 2000.
Keil Gaynor, 1997.
Jean Pion and his family, 1996.
Faith Walsh, 1999.
Lorimer Kaplan, 1997.
David and Wayne, Framingham, Massachusetts, 1997.
Jennifer Boyce, Dedham, Massachusetts, 1997.
David Schulman, Framingham, Massachusetts, 1997.
Justin Ruano, Pawtuckett, Rhode Island, 1997.
Rachel and Allison Spellman, Rocky Hill, Connecticutt, 1996.
Trip McClane, 1999.
Craig Cardani, Rockport, Massachusetts, 1996.
© Matthew Swarts
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Current Residents & Fellows ›
AAMC Financial Information, Resources, Services, and Tools (FIRST Program)
AAMC Handling Finances During Residency
GUIDE: University of Minnesota Residents/Fellows- Public Service Loan Forgiveness Process
Federal Student Aid - U.S. Public Service Loan Forgiveness
Minnesota Rural Physician Loan Forgiveness Program
Minnesota Urban Physician Loan Forgiveness Program
University of Minnesota - Medical School Loan Repayment Resources
FICA clarification - January 25, 2012
The IRS refunds referenced in the news today (January 2012) are not applicable to the University of Minnesota residents and fellows. The refunds referred to in the news are for the period of time prior to April 1, 2005. From 1998 to April 1, 2005, the University did not require residents and fellows to pay FICA taxes so no refunds are available. The University did receive refunds for the 1992-98 period, but those funds were distributed to residents and fellows many years ago.
Current IRS/FICA status
In compliance with final IRS regulations the University withheld the employer and employee portion of FICA from April 1, 2005 forward, and initiated a case against the United States of America, that was eventually heard by the US Supreme Court. On January 11, 2011 The Supreme Court affirmed the decision of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in favor of the Treasury Department and against the University of Minnesota and Mayo. This means that the Mayo and University refund claims are denied and NO refunds will be available to residents.
We continue to withhold the employer and employee portion of FICA today, in compliance with the IRS regulations, and we are not entitled to any further refunds.
Douglas R Peterson
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Dr. Helene Cummins finds joy as Brescia’s Associate Academic Dean (Student Affairs)
Dr. Helene Cummins has been appointed to the position of Associate Academic Dean (Student Affairs) at Brescia University College, where she has been on faculty since 1993.
Cummins joined Brescia as a lecturer, served as Chair of Sociology from 1998-2001, and is enjoying the challenges and rewards of her new administrative role, in which she manages the Scholars Electives, Brescia Scholars, and Preliminary Year student programs.
She has been recognized for 10 years on the Dean’s Honour Roll of Teaching and earned an Award of Excellence in Teaching in 2001. “I love my students first and foremost. I love teaching; I received the first teaching award at Brescia. I love my research that plays into teaching. All of my work prepares me for this job. My work is multi-faceted, as is the role, so it all fits. You have to be able to deal with a variety of issues to benefit and help students in the best way you can,” Cummins explains.
While the administrative duties keep Cummins very busy, she continues to teach as well because she thinks the ongoing classroom interaction with students makes her a better leader. “Helping students grow and guiding them to their full potential is very fulfilling to me.”
Cummins earned her Honors B.A. in Sociology at Wilfrid Laurier University, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Waterloo. Prior to joining Brescia’s faculty, Cummins taught at Laurier for five years. She describes working at Canada’s only women’s university as a blessing. “It’s wonderfully engaging. I found my passion. I have always felt blessed to be able to undertake teaching and research at a women’s university. I marvel at the ingenuity, wisdom, and dedication of the Ursuline Sisters. These were very savvy women who invested their lives for the enhancement of women’s education. To know that one is part of this vision that they crafted from the ground up is tremendously special.”
Cummins was appointed to the position of Associate Academic Dean (Student Affairs) in October. To date, she has most enjoyed exposing students to arts and culture to round out their educational experience and is embracing opportunities to improve existing programs for the benefit of students. “Being given the gifts to educate, assist, mentor, and socially interact with students inside and out of the classroom is tremendously rewarding. And, practising my life’s work is important and joyful. It’s also very humbling because I’m consistently reminded of how much more I need to learn and how much more I can grow.”
Dr. Helene Cummins 519.432.8353, ext. 28055 E-mail: hcummins@uwo.ca
Brescia University College, Canada’s premier women’s university college, is affiliated with The University of Western Ontario. The 1,100 women registered as either full or part-time students at Brescia study a wide variety of subjects in Arts, Social Sciences, and Foods & Nutrition in an empowering, compassionate, student-centred, and invigorating environment. Degrees are granted by Western. The Catholic College welcomes students from all backgrounds and values diversity. For more information, please visit www.brescia.uwo.ca
Transformational leadership class goes outdoors for unconventional exercise
Brescia professor earns award for research paper about justice in Mennonite community
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Born For Greatness
Last Resort - The Rework - Kayzo
Starting out as a hardcore punk- and rap-influenced outfit, Papa Roach eventually grew into a straight-ahead hard rock ensemble with strong heavy metal leanings and a knack for pairing uncompromising power with pure pop acumen.
Emerging in the mid-'90s, the group broke big in 2001 with the release of their sophomore effort and major-label debut Infest, which went triple platinum on the strength of the nu-metal- and hip-hop-inspired single "Last Resort." A move toward a less rap-forward style on albums like lovehatetragedy (2002) and Getting Away with Murder (2004) did little to hurt them commercially (the former went gold and the latter went platinum), and by the time of the release of their ninth studio long-player, 2017's industrial metal-tinged Crooked Teeth, the Grammy Award-nominated Northern California-based group had sold over 20 million albums and outlived many of their alt-metal contemporaries.
Consisting of Coby Dick, Jerry Horton, Dave Buckner, and Tobin Esperance, Papa Roach formed in 1993 and began releasing EPs soon after, including 1994's Potatoes for Christmas and 1995's Caca Bonita. By 1996, the group had replaced original bassist Will James with Esperance and hired a new manager; the following year, Papa Roach released their first full-length album, Old Friends from Young Years, which became a surprise hit on local radio.
The band's regional success led to more prominent gigs, including dates with Suicidal Tendencies, Sevendust, and Powerman 5000, and a deal with Dreamworks Records, which released Papa Roach's second album, Infest, in early 2000. The album went triple platinum thanks to the success of "Last Resort," an intensely popular single that helped make Papa Roach one of the most beloved hard rock acts of the new millennium. Two years later, frontman Coby Dick opted to go by his given name of Jacoby Shaddix, and a new album, lovehatetragedy, was released that June. Stylistically, the band had begun to grow beyond its rap-rock roots and the new tracks showcased a slightly more mature, melodic, and straightforward hard rock sound. That same summer, however, the band joined a number of rap acts -- including Ludacris and Xzibit -- on Eminem's Anger Management Tour.
In 2004, Papa Roach released their fourth studio effort, Getting Away with Murder. Buoyed by the success of the single "Scars," Getting Away with Murder sold well and eventually went platinum. Two years later, Papa Roach began work on their next studio album at the infamous and historical Paramour mansion in Hollywood, once the home of silent movie star Antonio Moreno. Released in fall 2006, The Paramour Sessions featured a heavy L.A. rock aesthetic and generated two Top Ten rock singles, although its sales stalled at around 400,000 copies. Drummer Dave Buckner exited the line-up one year later; after filling the empty seat with Unwritten Law's Tony Palermo, Papa Roach hit the road to support The Paramour Sessions with tour dates alongside Seether and Staind. They remained on the road after joining Mötley Crüe's Crüe Fest in 2008, but the band also found time to return to the Paramour mansion, where they launched songwriting sessions for another album. Released in early 2009, Metamorphosis found Papa Roach reprising their interpretation of metallic hard rock and reuniting with Infest producer Jay Baumgardner.
Papa Roach parted ways with Interscope in 2010 and signed a deal with the independent Eleven Seven label. The band's first album for Eleven Seven, Time for Annihilation, combined new cuts and live re-recordings of their hits and appeared in August of 2010. Also that year, they released the career-spanning collection The Best of Papa Roach: To Be Loved. In 2012, Papa Roach delivered their seventh studio album, The Connection. Featuring production from Sixx: A.M. frontman James Michael as well as Goldfinger's John Feldmann, the album showcased a mix of the styles and sounds the band had touched on over the years, from rap to more straight-ahead hard rock, as well as incorporating a distinct electronic influence. The electronic element became even more pronounced on their next album, 2015's F.E.A.R. ("Face Everything & Rise"), which boasted an even more radio-friendly, industrial-tinged pop-metal sound.
After spending much of the following year in the studio, Papa Roach emerged in May 2017 with their ninth full-length album, Crooked Teeth. Produced by Nicholas "RAS" Furlong and Colin Brittain, the album included the singles "Crooked Teeth" and "Help." It reached number 20 on the Billboard 200, and hit number one on the Top Hard Rock Albums chart. Two singles, "Who Do You Trust?" [sic] and "Renegade Music," were issued in October 2018 ahead of the release of the new studio LP, also titled Who Do You Trust?, which arrived in January 2019. ~ Heather Phares, Rovi
Mexico City, MX119,106 LISTENERS
Santiago, CL97,570 LISTENERS
Crooked Teeth (Deluxe)
F.E.A.R. - Commentary
Time For Annihilation: On the Record & On the Road
To Be Loved: The Best Of Papa Roach (Explicit Version)
To Be Loved: The Best Of Papa Roach (Edited Version)
Renegade Music
Born For Greatness (Felmax Remix)
Born For Greatness (Jameston Thieves Remix)
Born For Greatness (OddKidOut Remix)
Last Resort (The Rework)
00s Rock Anthems
Acoustic Rock
Rock Party
Listen to Papa Roach now.
Listen to Papa Roach in full in the Spotify app
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Let's Get Together - From "The Parent Trap"
Pollyanna Song
Enjoy It! - From "In Search of the Castaways" - Maurice Chevalier,
Femininity - From "Summer Magic" - Deborah Walley, Wendy Turner
Hayley Mills is known more for her acting skills and her Disney film role as Pollyanna than as a singer who made it into the Top Ten.
She managed that feat once, however, and almost repeated it when she was still a child star back in the '60s. "Let's Get Together," a song she originally sang in her second Disney movie, The Parent Trap, rose to number eight in 1961. In Hawaii, it went all the way to the top of the charts. Her next release, "Johnny Jingo," hit number 21 the following year. Buena Vista issued both singles.
Thanks to the success of "Let's Get Together," Walt Disney Productions deemed it feasible that an album by Mills should go on the market. Titled Let's Get Together With Hayley Mills, the release from Buena Vista, a Disney company, hit stores in 1962 with a dozen tracks, among them her pair of hit singles. The album was reissued in CD format in the late '90s. Also in 1962, Mills released another single, "Ding Ding Ding," which was backed by "Side by Side." That same year, Mills' role in In Search of the Castaways launched a few more singles, including the ballad "Castaway" and "Let's Climb," a song that paired her with Maurice Chevalier in a duet. All of the year's singles were released by Buena Vista. In 1963, Mills sang four numbers out of seven on Alcoa Wrap Presents Music From Walt Disney's Summer Magic. The release was issued by Wonderland Music. Three years later, to tie in with Mills' appearance in the film Gypsy Girl, Mainstream released a single that shared the film's title. Its flip side featured "Younger Than 17."
The actress/singer's full name is Hayley Catherine Rose Vivien Mills. A native of London, she hails from an acting family. Her father, John Mills, won an Oscar for his work in the 1970 film Ryan's Daughter. Her sister, Juliet Mills, is an Emmy Award-winning actress. Mother Mary Hayley Bell is a playwright and novelist, and son Crispian Mills had a successful British trad rock band, Kula Shaker, during the late '90s. For her role in Pollyanna, Mills won her own Oscar, a special juvenile award. Her parents, however, did not take her to the ceremony and only informed her of the award many months later in an effort to keeping their little girl modest.
In later life, Mills appeared in television's Saved By the Bell, which was formerly titled Good Morning, Miss Bliss. Other television work includes The Flame Trees of Thika for the BBC in 1981 and a trio of made-for-TV movies based on The Parent Trap. She later moved on to theater work, appearing in New York in Suite in 2 Keys, a play by Noel Coward, and touring with a production of The King and I during the 1990s. Despite her Top Ten hit decades earlier, critics were quick to point out her weaknesses as a singer. Mills, aware that her acting skills are mightier than her singing skills, took voice instruction.
Atlanta, US221 LISTENERS
Chicago, US221 LISTENERS
New York City, US213 LISTENERS
Dallas, US189 LISTENERS
Let’s Get Together with Hayley Mills (Remastered)
Let's Get Together With Hayley Mills
Disney Parks Collection
D23's Disney Fan Playlist
Bruce Healey
Kathryn Beaumont
Donald Novis
Listen to Hayley Mills now.
Listen to Hayley Mills in full in the Spotify app
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Statement by Robert Bertrand
Robert Bertrand on Speech From The Throne
In the House of Commons on February 28th, 1996. See this statement in context.
Speech From The ThroneStatements By Members
February 28th, 1996 / 2:10 p.m.
Robert Bertrand Liberal Pontiac—Gatineau—Labelle, QC
Mr. Speaker, we are very proud of our record after these first two years. Since the election we created more than half a million jobs, and the economic growth rate of our country ranks among the highest in the industrialized world.
The speech from the throne we heard yesterday highlighted the three broad objectives we intend to pursue during the second half of our mandate. They are complementary and fully reflect the tenor of the red book. These objectives are: job creation and economic growth, security for Canadians and modernizing the Canadian federation to strengthen Canadian unity.
Canadians want a united, prosperous and secure country for themselves and their children. Our government fully shares these priorities as indicated to us by the Canadian people, and we will do everything in our power to give them the country they want.
Developers (JSON)
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Mercury levels in Hawaiian bigeye, yellowfin tuna rising
by Jim Erickson, University of Michigan
Bigeye tuna. Credit: Allen Shimada, NOAA NMFS OST
Mercury concentrations in Hawaiian-caught bigeye and yellowfin tuna are steadily rising and mirror increases in North Pacific waters that have been linked to atmospheric mercury emissions from Asia.
Researchers compiled and re-analyzed data from previously published reports on yellowfin and bigeye tuna caught near Hawaii over the past four decades, then used a mathematical model to look for trends.
They found that mercury concentrations in yellowfin tuna increased about 5.5 percent per year between 1998 and 2008. Levels in bigeye tuna increased about 3.9 percent per year from 2002 to 2008. Mercury concentrations tended to be greater in bigeye tuna than in yellowfin tuna.
The work was reported in a study scheduled for online publication March 6 in the journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. The first author is Paul Drevnick, a former University of Michigan researcher who now works for the Alberta provincial government in Calgary. The other author is Barbara Brooks of the Hawaii Department of Health.
Most of the work was done while Drevnick was at U-M, and the research was funded in part by the university. The new study updates yellowfin findings that Drevnick reported two years ago and expands the effort to include bigeye tuna.
"This paper confirms our previous work showing that mercury concentrations in yellowfin tuna caught near Hawaii are increasing, and it demonstrates that the same phenomenon is happening in bigeye tuna," Drevnick said.
Both yellowfin and bigeye tuna are marketed as ahi and are widely used in raw fish dishes—especially sashimi—or for grilling. In January, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency added bigeye tuna to its list of fish to be avoided by pregnant women, women who might become pregnant, breastfeeding women and young children due to mercury concerns.
Mercury is a toxic trace metal that can accumulate to high concentrations in fish, posing a health risk to people who eat large, predatory marine fish such as swordfish and tuna. In the open ocean, the principal source of mercury is atmospheric deposition from human activities, especially emissions from coal-fired power plants and artisanal gold mines.
In North Atlantic waters, mercury concentrations peaked in the 1980s and '90s and are now declining in response to environmental regulations in North America and Europe.
But in the North Pacific, mercury concentrations in waters shallower than 1,000 meters increased about 3 percent per year between 1995 and 2006 and are expected to double by 2050 if current mercury deposition rates are maintained, according to Drevnick.
"The temporal trend in mercury concentrations in these waters is mirrored by the changes in mercury concentrations in yellowfin and bigeye tuna caught near Hawaii," Drevnick said. "For that reason, future monitoring efforts should include these species from this location.
"At the same time, more stringent policies are needed—especially in Asia—to reduce releases of mercury into the atmosphere, which eventually make their way into the oceans and into the fish we eat."
The researchers also looked at blue marlin in their latest study. But the data for that fish did not allow for a fair comparison among years.
The work involved reviewing previous studies that reported data for individual fish, including approximate location and year of capture, mass and total mercury concentration in white muscle, measured in parts per million in wet tissue. For yellowfin tuna, fish from 49 to 168 pounds were used. For bigeye tuna, fish from 35 to 168 pounds were used.
For both bigeye and yellowfin tuna, Drevnick and Brooks found that mercury concentrations in fish tissue rarely exceeded the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's "action level" of 1 part per million of methylmercury—the toxic organic form of the element—in an edible portion.
"The FDA action level is defined as 'a limit at or above which FDA will take legal actions to remove products from the market,' and according to the limit and the data here, no action should be taken," they wrote.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has a "fish tissue residue criterion" for methylmercury that applies to freshwater and estuarine fish and shellfish—but not to marine fish such as tuna. Even so, the authors note that the average mercury concentrations for both yellowfin and bigeye now exceed the EPA criterion and that "consumers of yellowfin tuna and bigeye tuna caught in the North Pacific are not protected from adverse effects of mercury."
The latest study confirms and expands on work Drevnick and his colleagues reported in 2015 for Pacific yellowfin tuna. That paper, also published in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, reported that mercury concentrations in yellowfin tuna caught near Hawaii increased by at least 3.8 percent per year from 1998 to 2008.
Mercury levels in Hawaiian yellowfin tuna increasing
Journal information: Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry
Provided by University of Michigan
Citation: Mercury levels in Hawaiian bigeye, yellowfin tuna rising (2017, March 7) retrieved 19 July 2019 from https://phys.org/news/2017-03-mercury-hawaiian-bigeye-yellowfin-tuna.html
Mirroring a drop in emissions, mercury in tuna also declines
Mercury levels dropping in north Atlantic tuna
Too many vessels, too little management for tuna fishing in the Eastern Pacific
Mercury is higher in some tuna species, according to DNA barcoding
Overfishing threatens Pacific tuna
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Trump’s F.B.I.
More details on the F.B.I.’s open hostility toward Apple from Apple general counsel Bruce Sewell:
The tone of the brief reads like an indictment. We’ve all heard director Comey and Attorney General Lynch thank Apple for its consistent help in working with law enforcement. Director Comey’s own statement…that there are no demons here? We certainly wouldn’t conclude it from this brief. In 30 years of practice, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a legal brief that was more intended to smear the other side with false accusations and innuendo, and less intended to focus on the real merits of the case. For the first time ever, we see an allegation that Apple has deliberately made changes to block law enforcement requests for access. This should be deeply offensive to everyone that reads it. An unsupported, unsubstantiated effort to vilify Apple rather than confront the issues in the case.
How very Trump-like of the F.B.I.
It’s Not Just The iPhone (the F.B.I. wants a backdoor to all encryption everywhere)
The iPhone Spy In Your Future
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Home Dispatches Foreign Correspondent: Senate Tumult Reflects Popular Discontent with Yemen War
Foreign Correspondent: Senate Tumult Reflects Popular Discontent with Yemen War
75 percent of Americans oppose the Yemen War and 57 percent oppose all arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
by Reese Erlich
Felton Davis
Vigil against U.S. support for the war in Yemen, February 2018.
I’m writing from Boston on a low-budget book tour, sleeping in spare bedrooms and munching granola in the kitchens of progressives all along the East Coast. Many had felt beaten down and pessimistic from two years of Trumpism. But I now sense some optimism and a renewed fighting spirit.
Just look at the surprising battle in the Senate over U.S. participation in the Yemen War. On November 28, Senators Bernie Sanders, Democrat of Vermont, and Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, co-sponsored a War Powers Resolution calling for an end to U.S. participation in the conflict. Trump tried to quash the effort, but sixty-three Democratic and Republican Senators defied the administration and voted to discharge the bill from committee so it can be voted on as early as the first week of December.
A resolution calling for an end to U.S. participation in Yemen War will be voted on as early as the first week of December.
Senators were reacting to Trump’s failure to take decisive action against the Saudi leaders responsible for the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul.
But the Senate tumult also reflects the overwhelming American sentiment against the Yemen War, according to Cole Harrison, executive director of Massachusetts Peace Action and a friend.
“Saudi Arabia has one of the most hated regimes in the Middle East,” he told me. “It’s a repressive dictatorship. The murder of Khashoggi was just the spark that lit a fire.”
In March of 2015, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates began bombing Houthi rebels in Yemen. They claim the Houthis are controlled by Iran and part of an Iranian plan to dominate the region. In fact, the Houthis are an indigenous political Islamist movement allied with, but not controlled by Iran. The Saudi military promised a quick victory, but the war has dragged on for over three and a half years.
In June of this year, Saudi Arabia and the UAE launched an offensive to seize the important port city of Hudaydah, declaring it would be a “turning point” in the war. Instead the offensive bogged down in a war of attrition, with no victory in sight.
International relief organizations now consider the Yemen War the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The country faces a devastating cholera epidemic. An estimated 14 million Yemenis are on the brink of starvation and 85,000 children have already died of hunger. The Royal Saudi Air Force intentionally targets civilians according to the United Nations and human rights groups.
“The human rights community has played a key role in exposing Saudi atrocities,” peace activist Harrison said.
Grassroots groups are also building opposition to the Yemen War. Four activist organizations took out full page ads in local daily newspapers urging support for the War Powers Act resolutions.
Eric Eikenberry, director of policy and advocacy at the Yemen Peace Project, one of the groups sponsoring the ad, said, “Many in the administration . . . inanely think that other countries will bear the brunt of both blame and accountability. With a potential famine impacting millions, we can only hope that Congress acts with more foresight, and more humanity.”
A few Republican Senators have also come out against the war, including resolution co-sponsor Mike Lee.
“This is a war of bipartisan creation,” he noted. “A Democratic president has gotten us involved in a civil war in Yemen. We now have a Republican president, and that war has continued.”
Potential presidential candidates Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Senator Bernie Sanders, Independent of Vermont, tof Vermont, have spoken out against the war. Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, introduced a War Powers Act resolution in the House, but Republicans used parliamentary maneuvers to block its consideration. Democratic Party leaders have promised to allow debate on the anti-Yemen War resolution when they take control of the House in January.
But passage of the War Powers Act resolutions are far from certain. While Democrats won the majority in the House, conservative, mainstream Democrats will head key committees such as foreign affairs, intelligence, and armed services.
“Some good new Democrats were elected from whom we can expect a more progressive stand on foreign policy, but plenty of absolutely terrible Democrats were elected too,” said Howie Klein, founder of the Down with Tyranny blogspot, which specializes in analyzing the House of Representatives. (Disclosure: Klein’s website carries “Foreign Correspondent.”)
So, while the House and Senate debates are significant, don’t hold your breath waiting for Congress to stop the war. Because the House can’t vote on the resolution during the lame duck session, anything passed by the Senate would have to be re-introduced next year. Trump could veto the measure, thus requiring a two-thirds vote in both houses to override.
That’s why building a grassroots movement is so important. Peace activist Harrison admits that the anti-war movement is quite small these days. But he has seen increased activism on the issue of Israel and Palestine, and expects to see more interest in opposing Trump's other Middle East policies as well.
A recent opinion poll shows 75 percent of Americans oppose the Yemen War and 57 percent oppose all arms sales to Saudi Arabia. Increasing numbers of people are seeing the connection between Trump’s disastrous domestic and foreign policies, according to Harrison.
“The United States wastes trillions on war when we could use those funds for vital domestic programs,” he said.
As I continue my book tour talking about The Iran Agenda Today, I’ll keep readers posted on the growing anti-war sentiment and prospects for building a wider movement.
War And Peace Saudi Arabia Dispatches Politics
Reese Erlich
Reese Erlich’s syndicated column, “Foreign Correspondent,” appears regularly in The Progressive.
Read more by Reese Erlich
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Amy Vanderbilt, PhD, Senior Fellow
Amy K.C.S. Vanderbilt, PhD, is a Senior Fellow of the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. Dr. Vanderbilt is the Founder and Chief Strategist at consulting and marketing firm TrendPOV.com in the Washington, D.C. area, and is the creator of the award-winning Early Math Series books, which are designed to introduce young children to mathematical concepts. She is an advocate for early technical education and STEM education initiatives.
Commenting on her appointment, Dr. Vanderbilt said, "The Potomac Institute is widely regarded as THE think tank for technology and policy in the United States. Given the immense accomplishments of the other Senior Fellows, I am humbled and thrilled to be considered their peer.”
Prior to starting her own business, Dr. Vanderbilt was a Program Manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, where she led seventeen funded projects ranging from SBIRs, to Programs and Seedlings in multiple technical areas. She has co-authored two books on proposal development known as the Lean Proposal Series. She has a long history of appointment within the NATO RTO to technical working groups on network analysis and information visualization, and has served in previous positions ranging from CTO for Wave Technologies, to Program Manager and Technical Advisor for quick reaction prototyping, to INSCOM's Technical Operations Support Activity, Research Scientist at SAIC, and Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Xavier University.
She holds a PhD in Mathematics focused on Nonmonotonic Reasoning, from the University of Florida.
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Potts Point Bookshop
Author(s): Christian White
A little girl went missing years ago. That child is you. A dark and gripping debut psychological thriller that won the 2017 Victorian Premier's Literary Award, previously won by THE DRY and THE ROSIE PROJECT. 'Read page one, and you won't stop. Guaranteed' Jeffery DeaverA child was stolen twenty years agoLittle Sammy Went vanishes from her home in Manson, Kentucky - an event that devastates her family and tears apart the town's deeply religious community.And somehow that missing girl is youKim Leamy, an Australian photographer, is approached by a stranger who turns her world upside down - he claims she is the kidnapped Sammy and that everything she knows about herself is based on a lie.How far will you go to uncover the truth?In search of answers, Kim returns to the remote town of Sammy's childhood to face up to the ghosts of her early life. But the deeper she digs into her family background the more secrets she uncovers... And the closer she gets to confronting the trauma of her dark and twisted past.
$33.00(AUD) RRP $32.99(AUD)
Christian White is an Australian author and screenwriter. His debut novel, The Nowhere Child (previously Decay Theory) won the 2017 Wheeler Centre Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Best Unpublished Manuscript. He co-created the television series Carnivores, currently in development with Matchbox Pictures and Heyday TV, and co-wrote Relic, a psychological horror feature film to be produced by Carver Films (The Snowtown Murders, Partisan), supported through Screen Australia and Film Victoria.
Born and raised on the Mornington Peninsula, Christian had an eclectic range of ‘day jobs’ before he was able to write full time, including food-cart driver on a golf course and video editor for an adult film company. He now spends his days writing from home in Melbourne, where he lives with his wife, filmmaker Summer DeRoche, and their adopted greyhound, Issy. He has a passion for true crime podcasts, Stephen King and anything to do with Bigfoot. The Nowhere Child is his first book. He’s working on his second.
Publication date : December 2017
© Potts Point Bookshop | ABN 71 610 517 318 | shop@pottspointbookshop.com.au | 14 Macleay Street, Potts Point +61 2 93316642
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05/13/17 13:58 Filed in: Kids | Schools | Education
Highlands School has just been rated one of the BEST schools in the state of North Carolina and in the Top 1000 schools in the nation!
The school is a K - 12 school with a total enrollment of only 351 students for the 2016-17 school year. It has a 12:1 student - teacher ratio. Highlands School is ranked #29 in the State of North Carolina and #1 in Macon County where it is located. It is ranked #998 Nationally
Recent graduates have gone on to attend: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Wake Forest University, Georgetown University, Columbia, Elon University, Clemson University and other distinguished institutions.
When you think about relocation with your children, Highlands School is certainly something to consider.
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Wright Motorsports Prepares to Hit the Streets of Belle Isle
Posted by allporsche ⋅ May 31, 2018 ⋅ Leave a comment
Filed Under 2018, BELLE ISLE PARK, Christina Nielsen, detroit, IMSA WEATHERTECH SPORTSCAR CHAMPIONSHIP, Mike Schein, Patrick Long, planet porsche, Porsche 911 GT3 R, porsche motorsport news, preview, sportscar racing news, Wolf Henzler, wright motorsports
This week, Wright Motorsports will hit the streets of Belle Isle for Round 4 of the IMSA WeatherTech Championship at the Detroit Grand Prix. Returning to the temporary street course for the first time since 2015, the Ohio-based group is set to bring their twin Porsche 911 GT3 Rs for the full-season pairing of Patrick Long and Christina Nielsen, as well as Mike Schein and Wolf Henzler.
The Detroit Grand Prix marks not only the lone street course, but also the shortest event on the GTD class’ 11-race calendar. The 100-minute shootout will feature the Prototype and GTD classes, with the GTLM class sitting this round out. Taking all of this into account, strategy and quick pitstops will be an important factor as the John Wright-led team takes on the 2.35 mile, 14-turn temporary street course.
The only way left to go is up for the No. 58 pairing of Long and Nielsen, who each hold a handful of second and third place finishes on Belle Isle. With no intention of breaking her streak, Nielsen has sprayed champagne after each of the last three GTD-class events in Detroit. While he hasn’t competed there since 2008, Long also has his share of success at the street course with podium finishes in 2007 and 2008.
Immediately following the checkered flag on Saturday, the duo will travel to France where they’ll meet their respective teams to prepare for the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Entering their second round in the GTD class, Schein and Henzler look to build off of the strong foundation they built at Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course. Like Long, the last time Henzler competed in Detroit was in 2008, when he won in the ALMS GT2 class. Though new to Detroit, Schein holds previous success on street courses and already proved his knack for quick learning during his GTD debut. With that, the No. 16 duo will be ones to watch during Saturday’s street race.
Driver Quotes:
Patrick Long // Driver, No. 58 Porsche Consulting/Porsche Digital Porsche 911 GT3 R– “Detroit’s a tough street course with a little bit of everything from surface changes to bumps. The Porsches have been strong there the last couple of years so that’s definitely a confidence builder for us. We don’t have any data or recent experience, but I’m very confident in the Wright Motorsports team’s ability. We’ll go there with our heads down and hit our marks. We’ll try to have another smooth race like we did at Mid-Ohio with great strategy, fast pitstops and mistake free driving. The rest of it is out of our hands. I’m looking forward to the weekend.”
Christina Nielsen // Driver, No. 58 Porsche Consulting/Porsche Digital Porsche 911 GT3 R – “Detroit has been very good to me in the past. I’ve gotten three podiums in the last three years, but I’m still looking for a victory. It’s definitely a track I enjoy. It’s gotten a little bit bumpier over the years, but that’s a part of the challenge of street courses; dealing with surfaces that aren’t meant to raced on year-round. Qualifying, quick pitstops and getting a good start will all be important because it’s hard to pass on street circuits.
I’m also excited to show around some girls that I met at the all girls’ school in Detroit when I was there for a media day with IMSA and Penske. It’s great that Comerica Bank has helped them to come out and see what we do. I’m very much looking forward to the weekend.”
Mike Schein // Driver, No. 16 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R – “I’m really looking forward to racing on the streets of Detroit at Belle Isle. It’s a new track for me so I’m hoping to get up to speed quickly. I really enjoyed my first IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship race with Wright Motorsports in our Porsche 911 GT3 R at Mid Ohio. Wolf has been a great teammate and mentor and we will look to finish further up the leaderboard at Detroit. Traffic should be a bit easier to manage with only two classes racing and some longer straights for the prototypes to pass. I was able to run some laps while the team was testing at Watkins Glen this past week so I will be fresh come Practice 1 on Friday. I can’t wait to get things started!”
Wolf Henzler // Driver, No. 16 Wright Motorsports Porsche 911 GT3 R – “I’m really looking forward to heading back to Detroit with Wright Motorsports and Mike Schein. Mid-Ohio was all about getting to know each other and looking after other things like getting in a good driver change. Now that we have a routine and the team knows what we need, I’m confident that we’ll be very strong at Detroit. I love driving at street courses and Detroit is one of my favorite ones. The fact that the race will be shorter than Mid-Ohio will make everything much different strategy-wise. There will only be one pitstop so it’s going to be important get in a quick stop in order to keep the car in a good track position.”
Source. Wright Motorsports
« Porsche Carrera Cup GB title rivals Zamparelli and Ellinas re-engage at championship homecoming
Wood brothers set for Top End Porsche Carrera Cup Australia tussle »
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Planet Stereo
All music, all the time. Planet Stereo LIVE.
1001 Songs Challenge
Jordan’s Take
Motivational Mondays
1001 Songs Challenge: Day Seventy
Man, where did the weekend go? I feel like it should still be Saturday! But, it’s time to put my headphones on and get ready to listen to the Day Seventy playlist. I can’t believe it’s Day Seventy already. Only thirty days to go on the challenge! As much as I’m going to miss doing this challenge, I am also excited to start a new one…and to possibly go to bed early.
1. Where Is My Mind? – Pixies
So noisy and strange, and, haunting, that you cannot ignore this incredible track. The Pixie’s are a timeless band, with their influence spanning nearly three decades. The guitar on this track is spectacular and seems to have something to say all on its own, and the melodic vocals are entrancing. In many ways, I can almost hear which bands were influenced by both the Pixies and this song directly.
2. Waiting Room – Fugazi
Bringing punk back onto the main stage and giving outcasts a voice once more, Fugazi’s punk anthem, “Waiting Room” is incredible. I may be biased, because I love group vocals, but this is truly a great track. This would be something I would expect to hear at the Warped Tour, really encouraging interaction between the band and the crowd.
3. Touch Me I’m Sick – Mudhoney
Loud, boisterous, and grunge. The Seattle music scene has graced the world with many amazing bands, but here is one that time should never forget. The further along into this playlist I get, the more I am hearing the phasing in to the early nineties, where grunge dominated. I’m also hearing Mark Arm’s shrieking that is oddly fascinating…
4. Feed Me With Your Kiss – My Bloody Valentine
I like My Bloody Valentine, but this, for me, is a bit much. The music overpowers the vocals, and it just doesn’t sit well with me, even if it is a decent track.
5. Buffalo Stance – Neneh Cherry
This is actually a pretty empowering song. Neneh Cherry celebrates the women who stand alone and survive, and applauds those who maintain who they are, as well as calling out the fake women and the men who treat women badly. This mixture of pop and hip-hop kind of emphasize the slow transition from the 80s to the 90s, where hip-hop stood on its own two feet on the top 40s.
6. Fast Car – Tracy Chapman
Such a classic. It truly is a timeless track. Tracy Champan’s songwriting abilities, as well as her musical talents, are flawless. This is one of those songs you could play again and again and again and never tire of it, or at least, I wouldn’t. I have always adored it for its simplicity, and probably always will.
7. Straight Outta Compton – N.W.A.
Classic hip-hop. It’s a decent listen, and like listening to someone’s tales of living in a precarious situation, and seeing it through their eyes. I think there may be an excessive amount of both ego and bad language, but, then again, this is one of the songs that solidified what hip hop could be.
8. Opel – Syd Barrett
A simplistic singer-songwriter tune. Lyrically, it’s poetic, and I think that may be it’s main appeal, as the guitar playing isn’t exactly awe-inspiring. However, there is a level of enjoyment.
9. Everyday Is Like Sunday – Morrissey
With his solo career, Morrissey seemed to experiment with a bit of a different sound than The Smiths. However, that’s not a bad thing, as “Everyday Is Like a Sunday” demonstrates perfectly. Lyrically perfect, I find myself entranced by this track. It has an upbeat style, but a melancholy tone in many senses, which may add to the beauty of the song.
10. Orinoco Flow – Enya
Something about this reminds me of a film I watched as a kid; I don’t know if it’s just because it’s a somewhat theatrical song, or what, but it’s hard to escape that feeling. I know I’ve heard this song many times before, but the more I hear it, the more I picture it in a film. The vocals on this track are impeccable, especially when you add in all the stunning harmonies.
Back to the wind and grind tomorrow, not that it ever truly stops. I loved the balanced mixture present on this playlist, and the fact that it finished off with Enya. Pretty much good luck on my part.
I’m hoping this week starts off a lot better than last week ended!
Tagged 1001SongsPS, 80s, challenge, classic, Enya, Fast Car, Fugazi, Morrissey, Mudhoney, My Bloody Valentine, Neneh Cherry, new, New Releases, NWA, old, Pixies, planet stereo, Playlist, Straight Outta Compton, Sunday, Syd Barrett, Tracy Chapman
VIDEO: “Somethin’ Bad” – Miranda Lambert ft. Carrie Underwood
Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood just premiered the video for the song “Somethin’ Bad,” which the duo performed at the 2014 Billboard Music Awards. The track has since become a hit, gracing radio stations left and right. Check out the video below!
Tagged Billboard Music Awards, Blake Shelton, Carrie Underwood, country, Miranda Lambert, new, New Releases, news, planet stereo, singer, Somethin' Bad, stream, video, watch, Youtube
REVIEW: Mark Weber ‘Crashing: In Color’
New artists are a dime a dozen. Original artists are a bit more rare, unfortunately. Whenever the ‘play’ button is hit on an EP, I hold my breath until the music starts, just for fear that my ears will bleed. This is usually even worse when I listen to a sophomore EP, as I plead silently that the band doesn’t experience the legendary ‘sophomore slump.’ However, I was pleased to listen to Mark Weber’s follow-up EP, Crashing: In Color. Not only did it have an intriguing title, but it had me all-ears from start to finish.
The simple introduction to “Crashing In Color” is minimalist enough that it is entrancing. In fact, the whole first minute consist of a simple guitar and vocals that bring a rawness to the song. Then, the guitars kick in, bringing the song to life in a new way. With the contrasting styles featured on the track, Mark Weber showcases his incredible ability to be versatile, while remaining consistent with his overall tone. The single version, which closes out Crashing: In Color, is still immensely impressive, just carrying a more electrifying, summer-festival style power to it.
Although “Pages Turning” seems to have been approached with a similar formula, there is more of a punk/pop-punk edge that hits like the bass pounding from an amplifier at Warped Tour. The lyrics are harsh, but there is a conflicting emotion of “I detest you” to “I love you.” I suppose Weber has captured a tumultuous relationship well by putting the spotlight on the shifting emotions. Continuing with the more “punk” sound, “Novelist” has a vibe that reminds me a bit of late 90s, early 2000s. One of the longer tracks on Crashing: In Color, the song lives up to its name, telling a tale of woe and survival, accompanied by an electrifying instrumental.
“A Long Way To Go” begins with the simplicity of the first track, but has a poetry to it that makes it stand out in a noteworthy fashion, as well as coming across as a bit more theatrical. Like a shorter cousin, “Circles” has a similar impact, and, following its predecessor, will take listeners back to the early 2000s, reminiscent of the days as a child where music was the escape and “punk” was more than a word or a genre: it was a feeling.
Crashing: In Color is set to be released on July 15th, 2014.
For more on Mark Weber, please check out the following:
https://twitter.com/theemarkweber
http://facebook.com/theemarkweber
https://www.youtube.com/user/musicmarkweber
http://theemarkweber.bandcamp.com/
Tagged album, alternative, Crashing: In Color, EP, instrumental, Lyrics, Mark Weber, new, New Releases, news, planet stereo, pop-punk, punk, Review, Rock, single
1001 Songs Challenge: Day Sixty-Nine
Got love waking up on a Saturday and being ready for the day…which I totally wasn’t. If I’m entirely honest, I was pretty much out of it with exhaustion for the first hour or so. So here’s hoping this playlist hits me quickly and wakes me up.
1. Just Like Heaven – The Cure
So catchy and so fun. This may be one of the most upbeat The Cure songs ever, and easily one of my favorites. Lyrically, this is a summer song, reminding me of every story of fast-paced summer love I’ve ever seen in films, read about, or even listened to friends gab on about forever.
2. The One I Love – R.E.M.
This is a pretty dark song, and the irony is, tons of people are like, “Oh, it’s so romantic.” Not really. I really love this song, just because it is so subtle in its brutality. There is a savage hatred towards love, but it’s not done in the same aggressive style many songwriters approach it with.
3. Fairytale of New York – The Pogues
I adore this song. I featured it on the Planet Stereo St. Patrick’s Day playlist because a) it’s by an Irish group, and b) it’s amazing. I love the banter between Shane MacGowan and Kirsty MacColl. I also find it brilliant that this is a Christmas song!
4. Paradise City – Guns N’ Roses
This song plays at the gym all the time, so I do have a bit of a soft spot for it. It’s unfairly catchy, meaning that even if you wanted to despise it, you couldn’t. I have no shame in admitting that I sing this at the top of my lungs quite happily. The screeching vocals on this track are amazing.
5. Never Let Me Down Again – Depeche Mode
A bit darker in comparison to Depeche Mode’s earlier works. In all truth, I find it more enjoyable, and most likely for that reason.
6. Faith – George Michael
Another one of my favorite songs of all time. In all truth, if this doesn’t make you want to sing and dance with a huge grin on your face, you are officially crazy. It starts off with a fast-paced acoustic guitar and only goes from there. It is perfection.
7. Need You Tonight – INXS
Now this is one of those tracks you are convinced you’ll hate, but always enjoy. It always makes me smile, because I think of that scene from Coyote Ugly. There is a desperation to it, but it’s approached so casually that it’s striking and somewhat brilliant.
8. With or Without You – U2
I love this song. Seriously, adore it. It’s a classic. From the heartfelt, conflicting lyrics to the fabulous instrumental, what’s not to love? It’s the torment of the narrator, whether it’s Bono, Rachel and/or Ross on Friends, or even an artist giving the song ago, the emotion of this song is easily conveyed. For me, this will always be special to me, because it is the first official music video I ever assisted on. I spent the day with an incredible group of people to make the video below happen, and I’m very proud to say I was a part (albeit small) of it.
9. Freak Scene – Dinosaur Jr.
I was more surprised that I actually knew this song than I was anything else. It’s noisy and has an early grunge/alternative-rock feel to it, with a melodic edge. I like the almost tangible frustration that is evident throughout the track. And can we also take a moment to appreciate one hell of a guitar solo?
10. Follow The Leader – Eric B. & Rakim
Lots of James Brown samples, which is probably not a bad thing. Ever. I actually enjoy this song. It’s definitely got a “get off your ass and get what you want” vibe to it, which I’ll always favor in songs. It helps that the spitfire rhymes on this track are quick-witted enough to hold my interest.
Overall, a pretty good playlist today. I was happy for the more rock and roll focus, as well as how some of my favorites just happened to be slipped in. It definitely geared me up for the day ahead.
After listening to the playlist, I went to do a photoshoot for my friend, and country singer/songwriter, Jesse Winslow, and I think it worked out pretty well. Here’s two of the final shots:
Tagged 1001SongsPS, Bono, challenge, Coyote Ugly, Depeche Mode, Dinosaur Jr, Eric B. and Rakim, Fairytale of New York, Faith, Friends, George Michael, Guns N' Roses, INXS, Just Like Heaven, Need You Tonight, new, New Releases, old, Paradise City, planet stereo, Playlist, PS I Love You, Rachel, REM, Ross, Sarieha, stream, The Cure, The One I Love, The Pogues, U2, Wham!, With Or Without You, Youtube
1001 Songs Challenge: Day Sixty-Eight
Once again, my friends, TGIF! So glad that the weekend is here! Today seemed to tick by pretty slowly, which drove me nuts. Another thing that’s driving me crazy? Constant hunger! I mean, I did burn 500 calories + today from exercise, but I wish there was an off-button for hunger some days.
Oh well. Other than that, the day was decent…and I’m hoping this playlist will be as well!
1. Camaron – Pata Negra
With a wailing electric guitar reminiscent of the blues of the 50s and a rhythm matching a flamenco, this song is a blend of traditional and classic. It’s not just the instrumental that will have people smiling listening to this song, it’s the overall tone; something about this song has a happiness to it that is undeniable. The more I hear it, the more I want to sway and tap my feet.
2. Amandari – Ali Farka Toure
This is truly one of the most impressive songs I have heard throughout this playlist. The bluesy style is overwhelmingly brilliant, and it brings an attitude to the spotlight all its own. It’s simple, but so powerful.
3. Push It – Salt-N-Pepa
One of the random rap songs that I really enjoy, especially because it is so melodic and fun. It’s a very catchy song, and Salt-N-Pepa were original in their sound, which made them even more likable. I’ll admit, it’s a bit silly, but that’s why it’s so good! Every time I hear this, I want to dance around my room and act like I don’t care about anything.
4. Bring The Noise – Public Enemy
This actually isn’t that bad, funny enough. I am almost surprised I don’t mind listening to this, as I have never been huge on hip-hop. However, I like the old school sound, and how much fun this song is to listen to.
5. True Faith – New Order
At first, I wasn’t sure about this. I was hesitant to give it a chance, and I can’t even explain why. But when I pressed play, I found myself really enjoying this track. Not only does it have a great little narrative with poetic lyrics, but the dance beat with the almost alternative tone of the vocals blend perfectly.
6. It’s a Sin – Pet Shop Boys
Honestly, there is a gospel feel to this that reminds me of Madonna’s “Like a Prayer,” although I’m pretty sure that came after this song. The dance track is surprisingly theatrical, but also consists of a striking narrative. Definitely worth the listen!
7. Pump Up The Volume – M|A|R|R|S
I’m going to be extra judgmental for a second and say: What a shite band name. For an electronic song, it isn’t awful…but it is awfully repetitive. I just wasn’t overly impressed.
8. Birthday – The Sugarcubes
Despite having a title associated with something a bit happier, “Birthday” is a bit eerie, although I will totally own up and say that Bjork’s vocals are pretty impressive on this track.
9. Beds Are Burning – Midnight Oil
I am not sure how I feel about this. The lyrics are great; Midnight Oil are a great political band. However, I wasn’t overly impressed by the vocals, initially. When the group comes together to deliver the vocals, I find myself in awe. Very confusing territory…
10. Ye Ke Ye Ke – Mory Kante`
This was an unusual one for me, although I loved the back and forth between female and male vocals, like a call-and-response. Something about the rhythm of this song is incredibly catchy, but it is definitely strange to me. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything like it, and I am glad. I loved listening to how unusual this was, and taking it in without any judgement.
So, with Friday night coming to a close, I prep for Saturday. Tonight’s playlist definitely had me intrigued, as it was very versatile. That may be what I’m enjoying most about the 80s pages–the diversity.
Tagged 1001SongsPS, Ali Farka Toure, challenge, dancing, Friday, Ginnifer Goodwin, It's a Sin, Kate Hudson, Midnight Oil, Mory Kante`, M|A|R|R|S, new, New Order, New Releases, old, Pata Negra, Pet Shop Boys, Playlist, Public Enemy, Push It, Salt-N-Pepa, Something Borrowed, songs, The Sugarcubes, weekend
1001 Songs Challenge: Day Sixty-Seven
Music is one of my favorite things in the world, obviously. Happy, sad, or whatever, I always go to music. Today, after a day of up and downs, including pure anger, I was more than happy to turn to this playlist tonight. In fact, it was exactly what I needed.
1. Move Your Body – Marshall Jefferson
As a personal trainer, I had high expectations from the title alone (yes, I know you shouldn’t make snap judgements on a track based on title). Despite its house/dance genre, there is a jazzy piano introduction that is brilliant to listen to. This is a decent dance track, and something you’d definitely have expected to hear at a personal training studio about ten years ago.
2. Rise – Public Image Ltd.
This is an 80s staple. I guarantee, if you sing, “I could be wrong, I could be right!” someone else will sing, “I could be black, I could be white!” Drawing from the accounts of victims of the South African apartheid, the lyrics are powerful, especially when added with the rock-edge of the instrumental, as well as the versatility of the sound it possesses.
3. Love Can’t Turn Around – Farley “Jackmaster” Funk
Deemed a house classic, it is a bit much for me; it seems to try a little too hard. However, it is memorable, which is perhaps why it was included in the list. It’s definitely the sort of track I can imagine being extremely popular in 1986, when it came out. I am most fond of the piano part of the song, as it possesses the most character to me.
4. Dear God – XTC
As someone who is not religious, I wasn’t sure what to expect. When I listened and realized it was a letter to God explaining why he couldn’t believe, I was intrigued. In all truth, I wondered if I would hear the reasons that have been rattling in my own brain for all these years. I wondered if someone else didn’t believe they had the patience for it either. Overall, it was a good song, especially when the introduction kicks off with a child singing, before moving into both a more adult voice and phrasing.
5. Don’t Want To Know If You Are Lonely – Husker Du
The contrast between the conflicting emotions present in both the lyrics and the tone and the more aggressive music is what makes this both a great breakup anthem, as well as early pop-punk, in my opinion. I actually surprised myself with the fact that I liked it. It was extremely catchy and a great listen.
6. Kiss – Prince & The Revolution
An iconic song in its own right. However, I am often torn, unsure of whether or not I actually like it. Between his falsetto and the lack of bass, there is something that draws you in, I won’t even pretend to not notice that. However, all I can think about when I hear this is the scene from Pretty Woman.
7. Attencion Na SIDA – Franco
From the opening notes, this song had me completely entranced. It is stunning. With such a happy tune to it, you’d never know it was written as an awareness piece for the aids pandemic. The title of the track translates to “Beware of AIDS.” Franco, both an AIDS patient and extremely outspoken, has a booming vocal that really does have a hold over listeners.
8. Under The Milky Way – The Church
Hauntingly poetic and sharp, this song is a masterpiece. There is something anthemic about it, as well as cinematic. I find myself playing this one again and again. It’s got an ethereal quality to it that makes it an automatic classic.
9. Bamboleo – Gipsy Kings
I love this song and the pure skill that you can hear as each note gets played. The vocals are strong and only add to the energetic quality of the track. This is like being back in Spain and watching the flamenco dancers. I can almost picture their stunning, colorful dresses as the incredible house band plays with a proficiency that leaves audiences baffled. This song can transport you there.
10. This Corrosion – The Sisters of Mercy
With a somewhat eerie choral beginning fazing into an electronic pop-rock anthem, I wasn’t really sure what to do with this track. All I know is that I actually liked it. The vocals reminded me somewhat of David Bowie and the overall sound has a power to it that is undeniable.
…and so ends a mixed bag of a day, with a great playlist to cap it off. I liked the versatility of this playlist. It was a bit unpredictable, which, I suppose imitated my day.
Tagged 1001SongsPS, challenge, classic, Farley Funk, Franco, Gary Marshall, Gipsy Kings, Husker Du, Julia Roberts, kiss, Marshall Jefferson, new, New Releases, old, planet stereo, Playlist, Pretty Woman, Prince, Public Image Ltd, The Church, The Revolution, The Sisters of Mercy, XTC
Jimmy Eat World ‘Futures’ Tour Pre-sale
Ten years seems to fly by in an instant. Even when it feels like it’s dragging; in hindsight, it flies. Ten years ago (in October), Jimmy Eat World released the amazing album, Futures. To celebrate, the band has launched a pre-sale of the tour, which kicked off today. Click for your date to purchase tickets!
Stoked to announce a USA tour to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of Futures! Pre-sales start Thur, June 26 @ 10a local. Password is FUTURES.
10/2 Ventura, CA – Ventura Theater – http://ticketf.ly/1nA2bTx
10/3 Sacramento, CA – Ace of Spades – http://bit.ly/1llJnL8
10/4 Oakland, CA – Oakland Metro Opera – http://tktwb.tw/T4pw7D
10/7 Denver, CO – Ogden Theater – http://bit.ly/1nA2rSC
10/10 Des Moines, IA – Wooly’s – http://ticketf.ly/1mh0gqg
10/11 Bloomington, IL – Castle Theater – http://ticketf.ly/1jaqPsx
10/12 Cincinnati, OH – Bogart’s – http://bit.ly/T4pJHR
10/13 Columbus, OH – Newport Music Hall – http://bit.ly/1sAL9wI
10/15 Washington, DC – 9:30 Club – http://ticketf.ly/1iADgD2
10/16 Stroudsburg, PA – Sherman Theater – http://bit.ly/T4pTig
10/17 Port Chester, NY – Capitol Theater – http://bit.ly/1sALuiS
10/18 Providence, RI – Lupo’s Heartbreak Hotel – http://bit.ly/1pwzbyw
10/20 Westbury, NY – Space at Westbury Hall – http://bit.ly/1nZfJeu
10/21 Norfolk, VA – The Norva – http://bit.ly/UDn1KV
10/22 Raleigh, NC – The Ritz – http://bit.ly/TqraRh
Tagged 10th anniversary, buy, dates, Futures, Jimmy Eat World, links, new, New Releases, old, planet stereo, presale, tickets, Tour
Lakes Announce New Album: ‘Fire Ahead’
Lakes, the indie-rock band from San Luis Obispo, CA is thrilled to announce their upcoming new album, Fire Ahead, which is due to be released on July 22nd via Armacost Records.
Fire Ahead has been described as the band’s most definitive album yet. “The album is a raw look into our world, our story, and the pieces that have made this band a family,” the band says.
You can watch a teaser video for the album here:
<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/95992258″>Lakes – Fire Ahead</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/lakesband”>Lakes</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>
Fire Ahead Track Listing:
1. Fire Ahead A.
4. Hide Away
5. My Misery
6. Santa Ana Winds
7. Yellie
9. Armacost Avenue
10. Diamond Eyes
11. Goodbye Santa Monica
12. Fire Ahead B.
The band has also announced a string of upcoming shows in promotion of Fire Ahead. All dates can be found below. Lakes will be holding a special record release show in their hometown of San Luis Obispo on July 19th at SLO Brew with support from Fialta and Good Brother! Tickets for the record release show are on sale now here: http://ticketf.ly/1qwG2cQ
Upcoming Tour Dates
June 27 – Atascadero, CA – Roberts
July 2 – Paso Robles, CA – Artist Fahrm
July 12 – Bakersfield, CA – Sandrinis
July 19 – San Luis Obispo, CA – SLO Brew, Record Release Show
July 22 – San Luis Obispo, CA – TBD
July 24 – Redding, CA – Vintage
July 25 – Chico, CA – TBD
July 26 – Portland, OR – TBD
July 27 – Bend, OR – Volcanic Theater
July 28 – Seattle, WA – TBD
August 6 – Fresno, CA – Audies Olympic
Lakes is comprised of Matt Covington, Jeremy Wells, Jacob Wick, and Seth Roberts. The band has had previous features in SPIN and has performed alongside the likes of Cold War Kids, Sheryl Crow, Anberlin, Copeland, and more.
Tagged album, Anberlin, Armacost Records, Cold War Kids, Copeland, Fialta, Fire Ahead, Good Brother, Jacob Wick, Jeremy Wells, Lakes, Matt Covington, new, New Releases, news, planet stereo, Seth Roberts, Sheryl Crow, Spin, teaser, tour dates, track listing, video, watch
Izzy Malik Self-Titled Debut Out NOW
Nineteen year-old pop artist Izzy Malik has just released her self-titled EP, which combines pop with the narrative style of modern country. The EP can be purchased on iTunes here: http://bit.ly/1nxepO6. For more information on Izzy, you can visit: http://theizzymalik.tumblr.com/
Izzy is a young artist who moved to America from the Taliban-dominated Pakistan when she was three years old. At nineteen years old, after years of determination and hard work, she has released her self-titled debut, announcing her presence in pop’s global scene.
Having experienced unjust conditions in Pakistan as a child, Izzy was driven to make a statement about today’s Pakistani conflicts by penning her first single, “Malala.” The song, and accompanying video, is a poignant tribute to Malala Yousufzai, the young woman who was shot by the Taliban for wanting an education and survived. “That story really spoke to me. Malala was two years younger than me,” Izzy says. Not only does the song honor Malala’s boldness, it also inspires listeners to make the most of the opportunities available to them. Watch Izzy’s video for “Malala” here:
Izzy Malik’s new EP is now available on iTunes: http://bit.ly/1nxepO6.
Just Another Boy
Last First Kiss
Smart Is Beautiful
Malala (Bonus Track)
Tagged debut, EP, iTunes, Izzy Malik, Malala Yousufzai, new, New Releases, Pakistan, planet stereo, stream, track listing, video
EVENT: Glamour Kills Announces 1st Round Of Bands For 3rd Annual Dodgeball Invitational
Glamour Kills Clothing will be hosting their 3rd Annual Dodgeball Invitational on July 14thfrom 2-6pm at the Riverfront Sports Complex in Scranton, PA. The first round of participating bands has been announced to include We Are The In Crowd, The Word Alive, Neck Deep, and State Champs. This event is free to attend!
Stay tuned for more bands to be announced soon!
Visit www.glamourkills.com for more information & details.
The Dodgeball Invitational is located at: 814 Providence Road, Scranton, PA 18508
The brand recently launched a UK web store. Customers will receive 10% site wide with the coupon code GKUK14 for the entire month. Offer ends June 27th. To visit the UK web store, head to: www.glamourkills.co.uk
WHAT: Glamour Kills 3rd Annual Dodgeball Invitational
WHERE: Riverfront Sports Complex, 814 Providence Road, Scranton, PA 18508
WHEN: Monday, July 14th – 2PM-6PM
PARTICIPATING TEAMS: We Are The In Crowd, The Word Alive, Neck Deep, State Champs, & more!
Tagged clothing, dodgeball, event, FREE, fun, Glamour Kills, invitational, Neck Deep, New Releases, planet stereo, Riverfront Sports Complex, sports, State Champs, The Word Alive, UK, We Are The In Crowd, webstore
Birgit on Paul McDonald Releases “…
URL on Paul McDonald Releases “…
livlostinstereo on PREMIERE: The Dirty Heat…
the dirty heat on PREMIERE: The Dirty Heat…
Casey Hamel Hinton on PREMIERE: The Dirty Heat…
15 of '15
Jordan's Take
Martian Mashup
Warped Tour Interviews
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Anna Beer
College Profile Page
Faculty Profile Page
Great Writers Inspire
Anna Beer was University Lecturer in Literature at the Department for Continuing Education between 2003 and 2010. Involved in many aspects of adult learning, she was one of the Directors of the Foundation Certificate in English Language and Literature (a part-time course equivalent to the first year of Oxford’s undergraduate English degree). Alongside her teaching for Continuing Education, Anna Beer was closely engaged with the M.St. in Women’s Studies, as graduate supervisor and tutor, and as Chair (2007-09).
Dr Beer is an early-modern specialist, working at the intersections between literature and history. Her publications include a study of the 1614 parliament, which reflects her interest in historiography (“Sir Walter Ralegh’s Dialogue between a Counsellor of State and a Justice of Peace”, in The Crisis of 1614 and the Addled Parliament: Literary and Historical Perspectives, eds Stephen Clucas and Rosalind Davies, Ashgate, 2003), whilst her interest in gender issues is visible in her “Ralegh’s History of her World“, Women’s Writing, 12 (February 2005), pp.29-42. Her prime area of expertise is the life and work of Sir Walter Ralegh, and her current research is focused on Ralegh’s poetry (to be published in Literary Ralegh, 2011). She was appointed a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar (2009-2010), and took up a fellowship at the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies in January 2010.
As a Fellow of Kellogg College, Anna Beer is committed to public scholarship. She is the author of two biographies, written for a readership beyond academia, but drawing on the latest research in her field. Bess: The Life of Lady Ralegh, Wife to Sir Walter, the first biography of this important early-modern figure, was published early in 2004 by Constable. In 2008 John Milton: Poet, Pamphleteer and Patriot (Bloomsbury) appeared. Anna Beer regularly gives public lectures and interviews about Bess Throckmorton and John Milton, as well as other subjects.
Series featuring Anna Beer
Kellogg College
Humanities at the Department for Continuing Education
Rewley House Research Seminars
Study Programmes at Continuing Education
1 Creative Commons Right Place, Right Time Women composers and their creative communities. Anna Beer 30 Jun 2016
2 Danger Speakers for our seminar on the theme of Danger have Medical and Humanities backgrounds, and will consider the following: experimentation to diminish danger; the risks of ignoring danger, danger to the self and the ideal. Marion Kibuka, Yasmin Khan, Anna Beer 12 Aug 2014
3 Creative Commons John Milton Dr Anna Beer shares a few short extracts of Milton's poem Lycidas and discusses what they show about Milton's very special qualities as a writer. Anna Beer 15 Mar 2012
5 John Milton: poet, pamphleteer and patriot Dr Anna Beer gives an overview of the life and works of the poet John Milton. Anna Beer 11 Sep 2008
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The Urban Astronomer Podcastactive
Astronomy,
Natural Sciences,
The Urban Astronomer podcast is the audio version of the popular Urban Astronomer website, which has been sharing news and information about space science and astronomy since the year 2009. The website has undergone several facelifts, and changes in editorial style and focus over the years, but it's always stayed true to its principles of honest science presented simply, without oversimplifying.
While Urban Astronomer is not the largest or most popular astronomy website on the internet, we've managed to retain a small, loyal following who have stuck with us through both good times (Allen won a special commendation in a science journalism award ceremony), and bad (when output slowed to about one new posting per month, thanks to increased family and work pressure).
This podcast is the next chapter in the Urban Astornomer story, and features News, Science, Interviews, and the occasional rant on the role and perception of science and astronomy in the modern world.
We at Urban Astonomer expect to become one of South Africa's leading science and astronomy podcasts within the year. If we think we deserve that position, you can help us by simply listening the the episodes, and sharing them with your friends. And if we don't meet your standard, we're definitely open to criticism.
Allen Versfeld (@uastronomer)
#ASSA2018,
#InternationalPodcastDay,
#LunarEclipse
Why are planets always round?
Welcome to the second episode of this second season of the Urban Astronomer Podcast! Two of Two, sounds like it should be special... and it kinda sort of is, because this week we're presenting the first of our unique patented Science Explainy Bits! Now to be clear, it's the name that's new, not the science explaining, because I've done explainy stuff for science concepts before on this show, back in our super-extended 42 episode long first season. I got quite a lot of feedback from listeners like yourself telling me how much you enjoyed my explanations, but I'll be honest, I'm dubious because I'm just this guy with a website and a podcast, so I'm not sure why you're trusting me to get these things right! I'm not a professional research astronomer, I don't even have a PhD! But you all seem to trust me anyway, and you have explicitly asked for more so.. yeah, sure, just promise me you're not using these segments as exam prep, and if you were planning to cite me in a paper, that's your own fault! This episode makes reference to an earlier explainy episode on the tides. That episode sounded quite a bit different than this one, because it was recorded off-the-cuff, with no script or notes at all. It was also strangely popular, so if you're interested you can play it back here.
Dr Wendy Williams
This is Episode 1 of our brand new second season! This is the 43rd episode since the podcast was first launched, back in February 2017, and I'm thrilled to be back on the air with you. The New Season We're mostly keeping things the same, but there are some important changes. From the beginning, this was always a pretty disorganized show - there was no fixed schedule or plan, so I'd release episodes as they became available. This meant that new episodes would only come out whenever it was convenient for me, and listeners like you would never know in advance when the next one would be coming out. And at the end of Each episode, I'd make a promise for the next release date, but these dates were always based more on hope and ambition than on any real plan. And while this was all very charming and artisanal, it wasn't how I wanted to present myself. So now we have seasons! Everything's planned in advance, content is written and recorded to a fixed schedule, and you get your episodes when you expect them. Which, in this case, means every fortnight, for 12 episodes. But aside from these changes to scheduling and process, everything else should be much the same: Some episodes will be interviews with interesting people connected to South African astronomy, and some will be loaded with the Science Explainy Stuff that so many of you have written to ask about. Apparently those are very popular, so you're going to get a lot more of them. The only thing that I've had to cut, sadly, is the space mission updates. Clem Unger, my friend and part-time co-host, has unfortunately had to step back for a while. He was always far more interested in the various spacecraft traveling out in the Solar System, exploring and doing science, and knew far more about the subject than me. So, until he's able to rejoin the show, we're going to be silent on that subject. Dr Wendy Williams This episode features an interview with Dr Wendy Williams, a radio astronomer from Cape Town who currently works in the Netherlands, for the university of Leiden. She works with the LOFAR array, which scans the skies at the same range frequencies as used by broadcast TV, air liners, and police radios. We spoke about her current research, she taught me how these arrays of radio antennas work together to create an image, astronomy development in Africa, and more. But before I play you that interview, a quick note on audio quality: Since we were in opposite hemispheres at the time of our conversation, I had to get creative with the recording, and audio quality isn't as good as I'd have liked. I think we're still quite audible, but you can definitely tell we weren't in the same room! Coming Up Next week's episode, which airs on the 16th of July, features the first in a new series of science explainy bits, where I answer a question you might never have thought to ask: Why are planets always round, and never some other shape? If you think you know, or would like to take a guess, go ahead and tweet your ideas to @uastronomer and I might read them out before I give the answer!
Second season coming July 2nd
Have you been wondering what happened to the Urban Astronomer Podcast? Do you know want to know why there haven't been any episodes in a while? Then you're going to want to hear this. We're launching our second season, and we've decided to change how we do things here. While the basic format will still sound like the shows you've come to love and expect, we're changing how we make them. Starting from the 2nd of June 2019, we'll be releasing a series of 12 episodes, one every two weeks. We've had quite a lot of feedback from our loyal listeners over the past few months, and we now have a solid idea of what you want more of, and what you'd like us to drop. The new episodes will alternate between interviews with astronomers working in South Africa, and basic science questions, where we take very basic questions about our universe, and dig deep to see if they are actually that simply after all! Interviews Our featured guests will be: Dr Wendy Williams Dr Ros Skelton Dr Daniel Cunnama Ms Nicole Thomas Dr Tana Jospeh Dr Jarita Holbrook Science Some of the questions we'll be looking at will seem very obvious, yet turn out to be hard to explain when you really start to think them through. We'll be starting with "Why is it that planets are always round?", moving on to "How exactly do orbits work?". And I'll even be explaining myself to a confused listener: In an earlier episode, I claimed that the old geocentric model of the universe, with it's crystal spheres and epicycles, made more sense than the Heliocentric model proposed by Copernicus. This was apparently a controversial statement, and so I'll be explaining why I was right, despite all that we now know about how the geocentric model was wrong in almost every conceivable way! Subscribe So if you want to hear every episode of this second season, as they're released, be sure to subscribe. Just find the subscribe links scattered around this website and click the one most appropriate for your platform. You'll never miss an episode again! Until July then, thanks for listening,and I look forward to speaking to you again! Clear skies!
Robert Ormerod at ScopeX 2018
Hey everyone, welcome to the 42nd Episode of the Urban Astronomer Podcast, the second episode of 2019, and the final episode of our first season! Today we listen to Robert Ormerod, speaking about his first experience photographing the Northern Lights. I should have released this episode two months ago, but after my father's sudden death, I decided I'd rather spend the time with my mother and brothers, remembering him, mourning, and healing. There's still a long way to go before we're all back to normal, but I've decided that I'd like to get back into the saddle and resume podcasting. Robert Ormerod This episode features the final public lecture in the ScopeX 2018 series, which was presented by Robert Ormerod. Robert is a documentary photographer from Scotland and featured ScopeX in an article he published recently in National Geographic. It shares his interest in amateur astronomers, telescope makers, and other people who spend their time looking beyond Earth. But in this talk, he shares his experiences visiting Iceland to photograph the Northern Lights. Future of the Podcast With recent events, I've decided to change how we structure this show. Up until now, we just released episodes as and when they were produced. I like the informal nature of this arrangement, but it does mean that sometimes entire months pass between episodes. That's not fair on loyal listeners and supporters, and it's bad for me since it chases away listeners. This last episode has been the worst for that, with a gap of almost three months. That won't do. After some discussions with professional media folk and members of the local podcasting community, I've decided to introduce seasons. This 42nd episode is now officially the final of an extended super-season. It will be followed by another pause (planned, this time!). Over the next few weeks, I'll be inviting guests and recording interviews, and once I have a solid idea of what's coming, I'll release a short preview to let you know exactly what to expect. So in closing, thank you for your patience, and I'm shaking things about so that it will all have been worth the wait. Until next episode then, thanks for listening!
Podcast #41: Angus Burns at ScopeX 2018
Welcome to the 41st episode of the Urban Astronomer Podcast, and the 1st episode of 2019! We are almost done with the ScopeX lecture series, in which we play back talks recorded at ScopeX 2018. This episode we hear Angus Burns speaking about Astrophotography in the Urban Context 3:56. Next week's episode will close off the series, with the keynote talk delivered by Robert Ormerod, talking about photographing the aurora borealis. Robert used his time at ScopeX to capture images for one of his own photographic projects, which National Geographic published here.
Podcast #40: Christmas Special with Clem Unger
Hey everybody, welcome to this December solstice edition of the Urban Astronomer Podcast starring Clem Unger and myself! It's only a few days till Christmas, so we hope you all have a wonderful festive season and a joyful new year. It's generally agreed that 2018 was a bit of a bust, but in just over a week we get to start over and see if we can have a better run of it this time around. In this episode: 8:40 Sky Guide: What's happening in the sky that's worth looking for between now and the March Equinox. 19:10 The Star of Bethlehem: Since it's Christmas time, let's have another crack at solving this old chestnut. 31:32 A very full Mission Update section, because there are so many active missions right now! 46:16 Previous guest Neville Young is offering his book at a discounted rate - place your order here!
Podcast #39: Clyde Foster at ScopeX 2018
This is the 39th episode of the Urban Astronomer Podcast. This episode is the fourth in the ScopeX 2018 Public Lecture series, featuring a talk by Clyde Foster, and a mission update by Clem Unger.
Podcast #38: Dr Pieter Kotzé at ScopeX 2018
Welcome to episode 38 of the Urban Astronomer Podcast. This episode features the last part of our physics feature on the lifecycle of a star from dust cloud to super nova, and the 3rd of the ScopeX 2018 public lectures. Physics 1:30 Over the past few episodes we've been trying to understand how a random cloud of dust and gas can turn into a supernova. In this segment, we finally get to witness our supernova, but that's just brought up more questions. What exactly makes a neutron star so weird?? Don't supernovae also make black holes, and what even is a black hole, exactly? Dr Pieter Kotzé 14:17 Pieter presented a talk on space weather titled "Living in the shadow of a variable star, The Sun". He works as a physicist for the South African National Space Agency, stationed at the Hermanus Magnetic Observatory. Links ScopeX SANSA Dr Pieter Kotzé
Podcast #37: Mission Update and Tim Cooper at ScopeX 2018
Welcome to Episode 37 of the Urban Astronomer podcast! This week features a 12:00 public lecture by Tim Cooper, and another of 1:45 Clem Unger's space mission updates. As always, if you enjoy the show and would like to see it grow, there are a few ways that you can help. You could leave a positive review and rating on your favourite podcast service (I'm partial to Podknife but anything goes!). You could send a subscribe link to a friend. You could sign up on our Patreon page and pledge a few dollars financial support. Or you can even just continue listening, and sending in your comments and requests, via email, twitter, or the comments section at the bottom of this page! Tim Cooper This is the second episode in our series of ScopeX 2018 public lectures, titled "Drizzle, showers or storms – how’s the weather tonight?". Tim talks about meteors, meteor showers, and where they come from. He has a very long history of detailed observations of meteors and comets, and has a number of prestigious awards from the Astronomical Society of South Africa over the years in recognition for his work. In fact, at the end of this talk, the president of ASSA handed him his Overbeek Award medal, which he had won at the last ASSA AGM. You can see the handover at the end of the video version of his talk, on YouTube Links "Drizzle, showers or storms – how’s the weather tonight?" on YouTube Clem Unger on Twitter Urban Astronomer on Twitter The Overbeek Medal ScopeX
Podcast #36: José da Silva at ScopeX 2018
Welcome to Episode 36 of the Urban Astronomer podcast, and the first in our ScopeX 2018 series. In this episode we feature the first of the public lectures I recorded at ScopeX. It is by José da Silva, and he speaks about exoplanets, and what we can tell about their weather. Links This talk on YouTube ScopeX José on FaceBook
Jan 23 | 00:41:59
Dec 21 | 00:51:49
Nov 28 | 00:42:31
Oct 24 | 00:35:42
Best of Natural History Radio
I Need My Space
DraftHouse Media
Skytalk
WHYY
60-Second Space
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20 Jan 2000 : Column 1235
Thursday, 20th January 2000.
The House met at three of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers--Read by the Lord Bishop of Chichester.
Prison Service: Complementary Therapies
Earl Baldwin of Bewdley asked Her Majesty's Government:
Why homoeopathy and healing are not on the approved list of complementary therapies which may be offered within prisons.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Bassam of Brighton): My Lords, the Prison Service recognises the potential value of complementary therapies. Homoeopathy and healing can take a wide variety of forms and the Prison Service has a duty to ensure that all treatments provided to prisoners meet their health heeds and are safe and effective. The list of permitted therapies are acupuncture, osteopathy, chiropractic, yoga and meditation. Treatments not on the list of normally permitted therapies may be made available on the recommendation of a prison doctor.
Earl Baldwin of Bewdley: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his reply. However, would he not agree that the reason given against homoeopathy in a Prison Service letter last year that it,
"involves the administration of a range of ill-defined substances [with] potential for abuse",
is curious, to say the least, in view of the usual criticism of homoeopathy that it deals in dilutions that are so minute that they cannot possibly have any effect at all, and in view of the opinion expressed by the Medicines Control Agency at a Select Committee hearing this Monday, that it is,
"very much at the safe end of the spectrum",
which is something that one could say with even more force about healing?
Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, homoeopathy can involve the applicational ingestion of a wide range of non-prescribed substances. I do not believe that we want to encourage too much the taking of non-prescribed substances. However, of course, we recognise the importance of homoeopathy, and requests to use homoeopathic remedies will be considered very carefully. That continues to be the case. We do not have a closed mind on homoeopathy and a number of prisoners have had access to that form of treatment within the Prison Service.
Earl Russell asked Her Majesty's Government:
What opinion they have formed about the effect of the shared residence requirement in housing benefit for those aged under 25.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Social Security (Baroness Hollis of Heigham): My Lords, we commissioned research jointly with the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions on housing benefit and on the private rented sector to gauge the effects of the rent restriction rules which were introduced in 1996. In addition, we received a number of research reports from a variety of organisations--I believe that there were 28 such reports--on the effects of the single room rent. We are studying their implications as part of our wider review of housing policy.
Earl Russell: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. Will she confirm that the finding of the research was that only in a small minority of cases did landlords reduce the rent to meet the housing benefit, as the Government had hoped when they introduced the regulations? The normal effect of those regulations is that housing benefit falls short of the rent. The tenants are meeting the shortfall either out of income support or, in 20 per cent of cases, out of borrowings. In those circumstances, what useful purpose do the Government believe is served by the single room rent?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I certainly share the noble Earl's concerns and confirm that the research findings are, indeed, as he says, that landlords in particular are reluctant to rent to young people under 25 who are receiving housing benefit and that they are not reducing the rent. Therefore, there is a shortfall between the rent determined by the rent officer and what the landlords continue to charge.
Obviously, the search for a longer-term solution will form part of our review of housing benefit, which is part of a cross-governmental review of housing policy more generally. However, in the mean time, I hope that the noble Earl will help me to publicise the fact that the Government have also set up a discretionary exceptional hardship scheme of some £20 million a year. Local authorities, however, are drawing down only some £6 million of that amount a year; that is, spending only one-third of the exceptional hardship money which they could use to meet some of the circumstances which the noble Earl has outlined. In the mean time, I hope that we can at least encourage--as, indeed, we are trying to do--local authorities to be more responsive to hardship.
Lord Higgins: My Lords, I agree with what the noble Baroness has just said. Does she also recall that when the previous government introduced the shared residence requirement, they said that it should be monitored carefully? In the light of the evidence which
she has now mentioned, it seems that it is time to review the whole matter. If that is to be done in the context of the broader reform of housing benefit, can the Minister be a little clearer about timing? At the moment, we have had to rely on press leaks, which appear to say that it will be revised either on a regional basis or integrated with the working families' tax credit, and so on. Then we read further leaks in the press stating that those ideas have been dropped. Can she give us some further indication of the Government's thinking on reform of housing benefit and, in particular, when we are likely to have a clear announcement by the Government?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Not really, my Lords. I do not believe that even the noble Lord would expect me to leak to the House something which has not yet been fully determined. We had hoped--the noble Lord is right on this matter--that the Green Paper on housing, including housing benefit proposals, would be released by the end of last year.
Of all the areas of social security, the most fiendishly complicated are housing policy and housing benefit, precisely because 99 per cent of the stock is already there and there are few levers which the Government can pull to make a difference. However, I am afraid that we face a huge inherited problem. In 1979, approximately £15 billion was spent on housing investment. That figure is now £5 billion. In 1979, £2 billion was spent on housing benefit; the sum spent now is £11 billion. The folly of the past decade's policy, which was to let rents rip and then to try to sustain them with housing benefit until that benefit collapsed under the strain, is one of the drivers of the need for housing reform.
Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer: My Lords, will the Minister accept that it is somewhat unfair to blame local authorities for their inaction in that area when some local authorities are demonstrating good practice through the establishment of landlord forums and rent deposit schemes to help young people with a deposit, which they often find difficult? It is the shortfall of accommodation which is the problem. One only has to look at supermarket notice boards to see the advertisements which say, "No young people under 25" and "No DSS". In particular, does the Minister agree that, because of the overbearing number of regulations, it is now much easier for landlords who have spare rooms to rent those rooms to tourists rather than young people?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: Yes, my Lords. One of the criticisms which the noble Earl, Lord Russell, and I made was that that policy was not based on research. We had very real doubts about the availability of that accommodation; namely, shared rooms for young people which were affordable, decent and of adequate quality. That research has been carried out on a localised basis, but 28 research reports have confirmed
our concerns. That is precisely why--and I hope that there will be party support for this--we need to review the policy.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, what is the extent of fraud these days in housing benefit and what is being done about it?
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, if we knew, we would already have uncovered it and it would no longer be fraud. Our best estimate is that it is between £2 billion and £4 billion. One problem, particularly in the private rented sector, is that in nearly three-quarters of cases, housing benefit giros are paid directly to landlords who then pocket the money, even when the tenant has moved on. Since last summer we have been trying to encourage local authorities to ensure that when they send out giros, they are not redirected by the Post Office. I am afraid that, so far, only two-thirds of local authorities have responded in that way. We are urging them to tighten up on fraud, because money going to fraudulent landlords is money denied to those people who need housing benefit.
Asylum Seekers: Accommodation
3.14 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Croy asked Her Majesty's Government:
What arrangements are being made between the Home Office and local authorities in Scotland for accommodating asylum seekers who have arrived in the south of England.
Lord Bassam of Brighton: My Lords, from 1st April, my right honourable friend the Home Secretary will have responsibility for supporting destitute asylum seekers. As part of the new arrangements, destitute asylum seekers will be accommodated in areas around the country, including Scotland. The Home Office is currently engaged in a major procurement exercise to obtain private sector accommodation for that purpose. We also hope to secure a proportion of the accommodation through regional consortia of local authorities.
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The Orthodox Christian Studies Center of Fordham University funds, facilitates, and publishes scholarly research on a wide variety of topics related to the history, thought, and culture of Orthodox Christianity. For more information about our fellowships, publications, and public events, please visit our website.
Public Orthodoxy is a “public-facing” initiative of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center and is designed as an editorial forum for scholars to comment on issues of contemporary concern in a manner more suited for a broad, non-academic audience. Since its launch in the Fall of 2015, Public Orthodoxy has published op-eds from hundreds of international scholars on a wide variety of topics to bridge the ecclesial, the academic, and the political. Although most authors hold academic appointments, Public Orthodoxy also publishes essays from bishops, parish priests, and engaged laypersons.
As an editorial forum, Public Orthodoxy is designed to prompt further reflection and conversation on a variety of issues. While we do not accept essays that challenge the dogmatic claims of Church Councils, we do adhere to the principles of academic freedom and grant our authors latitude to discern within the Orthodox tradition the appropriate response to contemporary challenges. As such, readers should know that the opinions expressed by our authors do not necessarily reflect the views of the Orthodox Christian Studies Center and they should not be confused for official statements issued by an assembly of bishops.
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Watch Unsealed: Alien Files Full Season Online | Gomovies
Unsealed: Alien Files
In 2011, a vault of government files were released to the public by the Freedom of Information Act. Among these, the Blue Planet Project, containing thousands of reports on UFO sightings and alien activity…these were the files they didn’t want you to see!
Now Alien Files: Unsealed investigates these recently-released documents and re-examines key evidence and follows developing leads of mass UFO sightings, personal abductions, government cover-ups and breaking alien news from around the world. The show also delves into the “photoshopping” of space, the value of Wikileaks, and the role social media plays in alien stories.
Finally, the newly released documents are analysed to see how alien visitations may have affected our past, and what influence they may have on our future. Exposing the biggest secret on planet Earth, Alien Files: Unsealed will have believers wanting more and skeptics questioning their long-held beliefs!
Actors : John B. Wells, John Greenewald Jr., Nick Pope
Networks :
Unsealed: Alien Files 1×1
Unsealed: Alien Files 1×10
Drop the Mic
Genre: Documentary, Short
Genre: Documentary, History, Reality-TV
Jack Whitehall: Travels With My Father
Comic Jack Whitehall invites his stodgy, unadventurous father to travel with him to odd locations and events in an attempt to strengthen their bond.
Genre: Comedy, Documentary, Reality
344 min (8 episodes)min
Discover what it takes to transport ever-growing numbers of passengers and crucial resources across Australia. With unprecedented access we go behind the scenes to meet the train drivers, locomotive servicing crews and track maintenance teams on some of the toughest and most spectacular journeys.
Survivorman
Survivorman is a Canadian-produced television program, broadcast in Canada on the Outdoor Life Network, and internationally on Discovery Channel and Science Channel. The show aired three seasons and 4 specials – 2004, 2007, 2008, and 2012.
The title refers to the host of the show, Canadian filmmaker and survival expert Les Stroud, who used survival skills and knowledge to survive for up to ten days alone videotaping his adventures in remote locales where he brought with him little or no food, water, or equipment. According to the show’s website, each location was scouted and pre-planned extensively by Stroud and his team who consulted with survival specialists and natives of each area. The fact that Stroud spent his time alone without a production crew is a major focus of the show.
Genre: Adventure, Documentary
Investigative journalist Maria Elena Salinas peels back the layers of national headline-making crimes in search of new evidence, unheard perspectives, and updates to the cases.
Traffic Cops
Cameras follow the officers of the Road Policing Units and Road Crime Teams of several UK law enforcement departments.
Inside Combat Rescue
The elite Combat Rescue members of the U.S. Air Force, Pararescuemen, or PJs, have one mission: rescue American or Allied forces in extreme danger. Whether their targets are shot down or isolated behind enemy lines, surrounded, engaged, wounded, or captured by the enemy, PJs will do whatever necessary to bring those in peril home. For the first time in their history, the PJs allow camera crews to cover their missions in Afghanistan. Inside Combat Rescue is the story of the lives of these elite airmen.
The Men Who Built America: Frontiersmen
A look at the lives of iconic pioneers such as Daniel Boone, Lewis and Clark, Tecumseh, Davy Crocket and Andrew Jackson as they traveled across America.
Follows Death Row inmates, who tell the story of how they ended up there.
In 16 and Pregnant, they were moms-to-be. Now, follow Farrah, Maci, Amber, and Catelynn as they face the challenges of motherhood. Each episode interweaves these stories revealing the wide variety of challenges young mothers can face: marriage, relationships, family support, adoption, finances, graduating high school, starting college, getting a job, and the daunting and exciting step of moving out to create their own families.
Genre: Documentary, Reality, Reality-TV
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Relevant Communications / Clients in the News / Examiner.com: Star Wars exhibit presented at ART on 5th in Texas
Examiner.com: Star Wars exhibit presented at ART on 5th in Texas
January 7, 2016 Relevant CommunicationsClients in the News, news
Reprinted from Examiner.com
A Star Wars artwork exhibition has made its way to Texas for the first time and will remain open to the public at ART on 5th in Austin until January 31, 2016. “The Art of Star Wars” features original paintings and hand-embellished giclees by four official Disney artists: James Coleman, Rob Kaz, Allison Lefcort, and Rodel Gonzalez. Portraying a star system from another dimension of space and time—like a parallel universe—the artists created cosmic artwork in their own individual style. The gallery also entails vintage posters from Belgium, Great Britain, Italy, and Japan. Posters and collectibles that once promoted the original Star Wars trio from the ’70’s and ’80’s. Partnering with Disney to bring this exhibit to Austin, every piece of art on display within “The Art of Star Wars” at ART on 5th is available for purchase.
“The Art of Star Wars” is a unique collective of mythological artwork. Reflecting stories of science fiction, magic and fantasy over a timeline that spans from the original three Star Wars films up to present day characters like Captain Phasma and BB-8. Guests may admire scenes and snippets from roaring intergalactic battles; explosions blazing from crossfire and torpedoes. Spaceships soaring in the sky and The Death Star looming like a gigantic, evil shadow. However, while the scenery and atmosphere in the artwork is booming with detail and fictional memories. The majority of this art gallery focuses on snapshots pertaining to the original characters and predominantly highlights their portraits and their stories: Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Chewbacca, R2D2, C-3PO, Boba Fett, the Emperor, the Storm Troopers, and the Ewoks.
Befittingly, the four artists from Disney also place a great deal of emphasis on The Force and perhaps that is one of many reasons why the art exhibit is so powerful: a united energy of light and dark flowing from art piece to art piece.
The art gallery is not only enthralling for long-time Star Wars enthusiasts that adore “A New Hope”, “The Empire Strikes Back” and “Return of the Jedi”. The artists and their artwork bring the nostalgia, the history and the stories to life for guests that are unfamiliar with the previous movies or the books. There may only be captions to the art and there may not be any text, but the imagery helps tie all the pieces of numerous stories together. The art takes you along the adventure. Guests see the training and challenges of a Jedi—and the monsters and dictators of the dark side. The imagery helps guests identify the characters with their names—and it tells of the journey, the war and the life lived in space, on ice, the barren desert and the forest.
Located on 3005 South Lamar, admission to the gallery at ART on 5th is free of cost. Children and adults are welcomed to attend this exhibit; alluring fans of many generations. For more information regarding ART on 5th and their hours of operation, please call 512-481-1111 or visit their website at www.arton5th.com.
Allison LefcortExaminer.comJames ColemanRob KazRodel Gonzalez.Star WarsThe Art of Star Wars
Flicks and Food: Star Wars Exhibit Opens this Week in Austin (December 7, 2015)
Austin Premier Stop for Exhibition of Star Wars Fine Art (December 6, 2015)
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NARCO-POLITIK: ‘The Real Drug Lords’, A brief history of CIA involvement in the Drug Trade – By William Blum
The Smoking Man / October 8, 2016
Source – geopolitics.co
– “…Historically, illegal drugs were being used to destroy sovereign countries, and by now the Philippines’ war on drugs is a regular headline by CIA funded journalists and media networks…In short, the Philippines’ war on drugs is a necessary measure that must be taken before the country plunges completely into another failed state”:
(How Can We Stop Drug Trafficking When It’s The CIA that’s Running the Show)
Historically, illegal drugs were being used to destroy sovereign countries, and by now the Philippines’ war on drugs is a regular headline by CIA funded journalists and media networks, and a constant object for criticism of the Soros’ Open Society Foundation funded pseudo-non-government organizations, for being brutal and violative of human rights.
Those same critics, however, failed to put their money where their mouth is, especially when it comes to helping the Duterte government rehabilitate close to a million drug surrendered. They would rather focus our attention into the 3,700 deaths, some of which are the direct result of the decisive police action, and the rest were victims of the drug syndicates who are now cleaning their own ranks from squealers, i.e. those who have surrendered and subsequently named their suppliers.
The same bleeding hearts who chose to ignore the fact that the statistics related to crime are just the same as in past administrations, only this time it is the criminals who are dying, because once a poor brat is hooked into meth, he must do whatever he can get his fix for the day, which include cell phone snatching, daylight robbery, etc.
Other sordid crimes relating to meth addiction were also brought to light including cannibalism, and in the realm of politics, it has sent a former justice secretary to the present senate, on top of congressmen and mayors who are already funded with drug money for years.
In short, the Philippines’ war on drugs is a necessary measure that must be taken before the country plunges completely into another failed state.
Still at 100th day in office, the Duterte government is able to reduce the crime rate to 50% nationwide using only the national budget crafted by his predecessor. The same budget, which does not include the establishment of rehabilitation centers necessary to help the projected 4 million drug dependents, and for whom the US, EU and UN “human rights advocates” could help more than just paying lip service to the 3,750 so called victims of extrajudicial killings.
To those who would rather criticize the sensible actions of the Philippine government that is enjoying 97% trust rating, are you really raising concerns over human rights vilolations, or just in it to protect the illegal drug industry?
The Real Drug Lords: A brief history of CIA involvement in the Drug Trade
By William Blum
This article was first published on August 31, 2008.
1947 to 1951, FRANCE
According to Alfred W. McCoy in The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, CIA arms, money, and disinformation enabled Corsican criminal syndicates in Marseille to wrestle control of labor unions from the Communist Party. The Corsicans gained political influence and control over the docks — ideal conditions for cementing a long-term partnership with mafia drug distributors, which turned Marseille into the postwar heroin capital of the Western world. Marseille’s first heroin laboratones were opened in 1951, only months after the Corsicans took over the waterfront.
EARLY 1950s, SOUTHEAST ASIA
The Nationalist Chinese army, organized by the CIA to wage war against Communist China, became the opium barons of The Golden Triangle (parts of Burma, Thailand and Laos), the world’s largest source of opium and heroin. Air America, the ClA’s principal airline proprietary, flew the drugs all over Southeast Asia. (See Christopher Robbins, Air America, Avon Books, 1985, chapter 9)
1950s to early 1970s, INDOCHINA During U.S. military involvement in Laos and other parts of Indochina, Air America flew opium and heroin throughout the area. Many Gl’s in Vietnam became addicts. A laboratory built at CIA headquarters in northern Laos was used to refine heroin. After a decade of American military intervention, Southeast Asia had become the source of 70 percent of the world’s illicit opium and the major supplier of raw materials for America’s booming heroin market.
1973-80, AUSTRALIA
The Nugan Hand Bank of Sydney was a CIA bank in all but name. Among its officers were a network of US generals, admirals and CIA men, including fommer CIA Director William Colby, who was also one of its lawyers. With branches in Saudi Arabia, Europe, Southeast Asia, South America and the U.S., Nugan Hand Bank financed drug trafficking, money laundering and international arms dealings. In 1980, amidst several mysterious deaths, the bank collapsed, $50 million in debt. (See Jonathan Kwitny, The Crimes of Patriots: A True Tale of Dope, Dirty Money and the CIA, W.W. Norton & Co., 1 987.)
1970s and 1980s, PANAMA
For more than a decade, Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega was a highly paid CIA asset and collaborator, despite knowledge by U.S. drug authorities as early as 1971 that the general was heavily involved in drug trafficking and money laundering. Noriega facilitated ”guns-for-drugs” flights for the contras, providing protection and pilots, as well as safe havens for drug cartel otficials, and discreet banking facilities. U.S. officials, including then-ClA Director William Webster and several DEA officers, sent Noriega letters of praise for efforts to thwart drug trafficking (albeit only against competitors of his Medellin Cartel patrons). The U.S. government only turned against Noriega, invading Panama in December 1989 and kidnapping the general once they discovered he was providing intelligence and services to the Cubans and Sandinistas. Ironically drug trafficking through Panama increased after the US invasion. (John Dinges, Our Man in Panama, Random House, 1991; National Security Archive Documentation Packet The Contras, Cocaine, and Covert Operations.)
1980s, CENTRAL AMERICA
The San Jose Mercury News series documents just one thread of the interwoven operations linking the CIA, the contras and the cocaine cartels. Obsessed with overthrowing the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua, Reagan administration officials tolerated drug trafficking as long as the traffickers gave support to the contras. In 1989, the Senate Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations (the Kerry committee) concluded a three-year investigation by stating:
“There was substantial evidence of drug smuggling through the war zones on the part of individual Contras, Contra suppliers, Contra pilots mercenaries who worked with the Contras, and Contra supporters throughout the region…. U.S. officials involved in Central America failed to address the drug issue for fear of jeopardizing the war efforts against Nicaragua…. In each case, one or another agency of the U.S. govemment had intormation regarding the involvement either while it was occurring, or immediately thereafter…. Senior U S policy makers were nit immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contras’ funding problems.” (Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy, a Report of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics and Intemational Operations, 1989)
In Costa Rica, which served as the “Southern Front” for the contras (Honduras being the Northern Front), there were several different ClA-contra networks involved in drug trafficking. In addition to those servicing the Meneses-Blandon operation detailed by the Mercury News, and Noriega’s operation, there was CIA operative John Hull, whose farms along Costa Rica’s border with Nicaragua were the main staging area for the contras. Hull and other ClA-connected contra supporters and pilots teamed up with George Morales, a major Miami-based Colombian drug trafficker who later admitted to giving $3 million in cash and several planes to contra leaders. In 1989, after the Costa Rica government indicted Hull for drug trafficking, a DEA-hired plane clandestinely and illegally flew the CIA operative to Miami, via Haiti. The US repeatedly thwarted Costa Rican efforts to extradite Hull back to Costa Rica to stand trial. Another Costa Rican-based drug ring involved a group of Cuban Amencans whom the CIA had hired as military trainers for the contras. Many had long been involved with the CIA and drug trafficking They used contra planes and a Costa Rican-based shnmp company, which laundered money for the CIA, to move cocaine to the U.S. Costa Rica was not the only route. Guatemala, whose military intelligence service — closely associated with the CIA — harbored many drug traffickers, according to the DEA, was another way station along the cocaine highway.
Additionally, the Medellin Cartel’s Miami accountant, Ramon Milian Rodriguez, testified that he funneled nearly $10 million to Nicaraguan contras through long-time CIA operative Felix Rodriguez, who was based at Ilopango Air Force Base in El Salvador. The contras provided both protection and infrastructure (planes, pilots, airstrips, warehouses, front companies and banks) to these ClA-linked drug networks. At least four transport companies under investigation for drug trafficking received US govemment contracts to carry non-lethal supplies to the contras. Southern Air Transport, “formerly” ClA-owned, and later under Pentagon contract, was involved in the drug running as well. Cocaine-laden planes flew to Florida, Texas, Louisiana and other locations, including several militarv bases Designated as ‘Contra Craft,” these shipments were not to be inspected. When some authority wasn’t clued in and made an arrest, powerful strings were pulled on behalf of dropping the case, acquittal, reduced sentence, or deportation.
1980s to early 1990s, AFGHANISTAN
ClA-supported Moujahedeen rebels engaged heavily in drug trafficking while fighting against the Soviet-supported govemment and its plans to reform the very backward Afghan society. The Agency’s principal client was Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, one of the leading druglords and leading heroin refiner. CIA supplied trucks and mules, which had carried arms into Afghanistan, were used to transport opium to laboratories along the Afghan Pakistan border. The output provided up to one half of the heroin used annually in the United States and three-quarters of that used in Western Europe. US officials admitted in 1990 that they had failed to investigate or take action against the drug operabon because of a desire not to offend their Pakistani and Afghan allies. In 1993, an official of the DEA called Afghanistan the new Colombia of the drug world.
MlD-1980s to early 199Os, HAITI
While working to keep key Haitian military and political leaders in power, the CIA turned a blind eye to their clients’ drug trafficking. In 1986, the Agency added some more names to its payroll by creating a new Haitian organization, the National Intelligence Service (SIN). SIN was purportedly created to fight the cocaine trade, though SIN officers themselves engaged in the trafficking, a trade aided and abetted by some of the Haitian military and political leaders.
William Blum is author of Killing Hope: U.S Military and CIA Interventions Since World War ll available from Common Courage Press, P.O. Box 702, Monroe, Maine, 04951
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-real-drug-lords-a-brief-history-of-cia-involvement-in-the-drug-trade/10013
Washington’s Hidden Agenda: Restore the Drug Trade
By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
In 2014 the Afghan opium cultivation has once again hit a record high, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s 2014 Afghan Opium Survey.
In the course of the last four years, there has been a surge in Afghan opium production. The Vienna based UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reveals that poppy cultivation in 2012 extended over an area of more than 154,000 hectares, an increase of 18% over 2011. A UNODC spokesperson confirmed in 2013 that opium production is heading towards record levels.
Source: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s 2014 Afghan Opium Survey.
According to the 2012 Afghanistan Opium Survey released in November 2012 by the Ministry of Counter Narcotics (MCN) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). potential opium production in 2012 was of the order of 3,700 tons, a decline of 18 percent in relation to 2001, according to UNODC data.
There is reason to believe that this figure of 3700 tons is grossly underestimated. Moreover, it contradicts the UNOCD’s own predictions of record harvests over an extended area of cultivation.
While bad weather and damaged crops may have played a role as suggested by the UNODC, based on historical trends, the potential production for an area of cultivation of 154,000 hectares, should be well in excess of 6000 tons. With 80,000 hectares in cultivation in 2003, production was already of the order of 3600 tons.
It is worth noting that UNODC has modified the concepts and figures on opium sales and heroin production, as outlined by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA).
A change in UN methodology in 2010 resulted in a sharp downward revision of Afghan heroin production estimates for 2004 to 2011. UNODC used to estimate that the entire global opium crop was processed into heroin, and provided global heroin production estimates on that basis. Before 2010, a global conversion rate of about 10 kg of opium to 1 kg of heroin was used to estimate world heroin production (17). For instance, the estimated 4 620 tonnes of opium harvested worldwide in 2005 was thought to make it possible to manufacture 472 tonnes of heroin (UNODC, 2009a). However, UNODC now estimates that a large proportion of the Afghan opium harvest is not processed into heroin or morphine but remains ‘available on the drug market as opium’ (UNODC, 2010a). …EU drug markets report: a strategic analysis, EMCDDA, Lisbon, January 2013 emphasis added
There is no evidence that a large percentage of opium production is no longer processed into heroin as claimed by the UN. This revised UNODC methodology has served, –through the outright manipulation of statistical concepts– to artificially reduce the size of of the global trade in heroin.
According to the UNODC, quoted in the EMCDDA report:
“an estimated 3 400 tonnes of Afghan opium was not transformed into heroin or morphine in 2011. Compared with previous years, this is an exceptionally high proportion of the total crop, representing nearly 60 % of the Afghan opium harvest and close to 50 % of the global harvest in 2011.
What the UNODC, –whose mandate is to support the prevention of organized criminal activity– has done is to obfuscate the size and criminal nature of the Afghan drug trade, intimating –without evidence– that a large part of the opium is no longer channeled towards the illegal heroin market.
In 2012 according to the UNODC, farmgate prices for opium were of the order of 196 per kg.
Each kg. of opium produces 100 grams of pure heroin. The US retail prices for heroin (with a low level of purity) is, according to UNODC of the order of $172 a gram. The price per gram of pure heroin is substantially higher.
The profits are largely reaped at the level of the international wholesale and retail markets of heroin as well as in the process of money laundering in Western banking institutions.
The revenues derived from the global trade in heroin constitute a multibillion dollar bonanza for financial institutions and organized crime.
The following article first published in May 2005 provides a background on the history of the Afghan opium trade which continues to this date to be protected by US-NATO occupation forces on behalf of powerful financial interests.
Michel Chossudovsky, January 2015
The Spoils of War: Afghanistan’s Multibillion Dollar Heroin Trade
by Michel Chossudovsky
Global Research, May 2005
Since the US led invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, the Golden Crescent opium trade has soared. According to the US media, this lucrative contraband is protected by Osama, the Taliban, not to mention, of course, the regional warlords, in defiance of the “international community”.
The heroin business is said to be “filling the coffers of the Taliban”. In the words of the US State Department:
“Opium is a source of literally billions of dollars to extremist and criminal groups… [C]utting down the opium supply is central to establishing a secure and stable democracy, as well as winning the global war on terrorism,” (Statement of Assistant Secretary of State Robert Charles. Congressional Hearing, 1 April 2004)
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), opium production in Afghanistan in 2003 is estimated at 3,600 tons, with an estimated area under cultivation of the order of 80,000 hectares. (UNODC at http://www.unodc.org/unodc/index.html ).An even larger bumper harvest is predicted for 2004.
The State Department suggests that up to 120 000 hectares were under cultivation in 2004. (Congressional Hearing, op cit):
”We could be on a path for a significant surge. Some observers indicate perhaps as much as 50 percent to 100 percent growth in the 2004 crop over the already troubling figures from last year.”(Ibid)
“Operation Containment“
In response to the post-Taliban surge in opium production, the Bush administration has boosted its counter terrorism activities, while allocating substantial amounts of public money to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s West Asia initiative, dubbed “Operation Containment.”
The various reports and official statements are, of course, blended in with the usual “balanced” self critique that “the international community is not doing enough”, and that what we need is “transparency”.
The headlines are “Drugs, warlords and insecurity overshadow Afghanistan’s path to democracy”. In chorus, the US media is accusing the defunct “hard-line Islamic regime”, without even acknowledging that the Taliban –in collaboration with the United Nations– had imposed a successful ban on poppy cultivation in 2000. Opium production declined by more than 90 per cent in 2001. In fact the surge in opium cultivation production coincided with the onslaught of the US-led military operation and the downfall of the Taliban regime. From October through December 2001, farmers started to replant poppy on an extensive basis.
The success of Afghanistan’s 2000 drug eradication program under the Taliban had been acknowledged at the October 2001 session of the UN General Assembly (which took place barely a few days after the beginning of the 2001 bombing raids). No other UNODC member country was able to implement a comparable program:
“Turning first to drug control, I had expected to concentrate my remarks on the implications of the Taliban’s ban on opium poppy cultivation in areas under their control… We now have the results of our annual ground survey of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. This year’s production [2001] is around 185 tons. This is down from the 3300 tons last year [2000], a decrease of over 94 per cent. Compared to the record harvest of 4700 tons two years ago, the decrease is well over 97 per cent.
Any decrease in illicit cultivation is welcomed, especially in cases like this when no displacement, locally or in other countries, took place to weaken the achievement” (Remarks on behalf of UNODC Executive Director at the UN General Assembly, Oct 2001, http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/speech_2001-10-12_1.html )
United Nations’ Coverup
In the wake of the US invasion, shift in rhetoric. UNODC is now acting as if the 2000 opium ban had never happened:
“the battle against narcotics cultivation has been fought and won in other countries and it [is] possible to do so here [in Afghanistan], with strong, democratic governance, international assistance and improved security and integrity.” ( Statement of the UNODC Representative in Afghanistan at the :February 2004 International Counter Narcotics Conference, http://www.unodc.org/pdf/afg/afg_intl_counter_narcotics_conf_2004.pdf , p. 5).
In fact, both Washington and the UNODC now claim that the objective of the Taliban in 2000 was not really “drug eradication” but a devious scheme to trigger “an artificial shortfall in supply”, which would drive up World prices of heroin.
Ironically, this twisted logic, which now forms part of a new “UN consensus”, is refuted by a report of the UNODC office in Pakistan, which confirmed, at the time, that there was no evidence of stockpiling by the Taliban. (Deseret News, Salt Lake City, Utah. 5 October 2003)
In the wake of the 2001 US bombing of Afghanistan, the British government of Tony Blair was entrusted by the G-8 Group of leading industrial nations to carry out a drug eradication program, which would, in theory, allow Afghan farmers to switch out of poppy cultivation into alternative crops. The British were working out of Kabul in close liaison with the US DEA’s “Operation Containment”.
The UK sponsored crop eradication program is an obvious smokescreen. Since October 2001, opium poppy cultivation has skyrocketed. The presence of occupation forces in Afghanistan did not result in the eradication of poppy cultivation. Quite the opposite.
The Taliban prohibition had indeed caused “the beginning of a heroin shortage in Europe by the end of 2001″, as acknowledged by the UNODC.
Heroin is a multibillion dollar business supported by powerful interests, which requires a steady and secure commodity flow. One of the “hidden” objectives of the war was precisely to restore the CIA sponsored drug trade to its historical levels and exert direct control over the drug routes.
Immediately following the October 2001 invasion, opium markets were restored. Opium prices spiraled. By early 2002, the opium price (in dollars/kg) was almost 10 times higher than in 2000.
In 2001, under the Taliban opiate production stood at 185 tons, increasing to 3400 tons in 2002 under the US sponsored puppet regime of President Hamid Karzai.
While highlighting Karzai’s patriotic struggle against the Taliban, the media fails to mention that Karzai collaborated with the Taliban. He had also been on the payroll of a major US oil company, UNOCAL. In fact, since the mid-1990s, Hamid Karzai had acted as a consultant and lobbyist for UNOCAL in negotiations with the Taliban. According to the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan:
“Karzai has been a Central Intelligence Agency covert operator since the 1980s. He collaborated with the CIA in funneling U.S. aid to the Taliban as of 1994 when the Americans had secretly and through the Pakistanis [specifically the ISI] supported the Taliban’s assumption of power.” (quoted in Karen Talbot, U.S. Energy Giant Unocal Appoints Interim Government in Kabul, Global Outlook, No. 1, Spring 2002. p. 70. See also BBC Monitoring Service, 15 December 2001)
History of the Golden Crescent Drug trade
It is worth recalling the history of the Golden Crescent drug trade, which is intimately related to the CIA’s covert operations in the region since the onslaught of the Soviet-Afghan war and its aftermath.
Prior to the Soviet-Afghan war (1979-1989), opium production in Afghanistan and Pakistan was directed to small regional markets. There was no local production of heroin. (Alfred McCoy, Drug Fallout: the CIA’s Forty Year Complicity in the Narcotics Trade. The Progressive, 1 August 1997).
The Afghan narcotics economy was a carefully designed project of the CIA, supported by US foreign policy.
As revealed in the Iran-Contra and Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) scandals, CIA covert operations in support of the Afghan Mujahideen had been funded through the laundering of drug money. “Dirty money” was recycled –through a number of banking institutions (in the Middle East) as well as through anonymous CIA shell companies–, into “covert money,” used to finance various insurgent groups during the Soviet-Afghan war, and its aftermath:
“Because the US wanted to supply the Mujahideen rebels in Afghanistan with stinger missiles and other military hardware it needed the full cooperation of Pakistan. By the mid-1980s, the CIA operation in Islamabad was one of the largest US intelligence stations in the World. `If BCCI is such an embarrassment to the US that forthright investigations are not being pursued it has a lot to do with the blind eye the US turned to the heroin trafficking in Pakistan’, said a US intelligence officer. (“The Dirtiest Bank of All,” Time, July 29, 1991, p. 22.)
Researcher Alfred McCoy’s study confirms that within two years of the onslaught of the CIA’s covert operation in Afghanistan in 1979,
“the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands became the world’s top heroin producer, supplying 60 per cent of U.S. demand. In Pakistan, the heroin-addict population went from near zero in 1979 to 1.2 million by 1985, a much steeper rise than in any other nation.”
“CIA assets again controlled this heroin trade. As the Mujahideen guerrillas seized territory inside Afghanistan, they ordered peasants to plant opium as a revolutionary tax. Across the border in Pakistan, Afghan leaders and local syndicates under the protection of Pakistan Intelligence operated hundreds of heroin laboratories. During this decade of wide-open drug-dealing, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency in Islamabad failed to instigate major seizures or arrests.
U.S. officials had refused to investigate charges of heroin dealing by its Afghan allies because U.S. narcotics policy in Afghanistan has been subordinated to the war against Soviet influence there. In 1995, the former CIA director of the Afghan operation, Charles Cogan, admitted the CIA had indeed sacrificed the drug war to fight the Cold War. ‘Our main mission was to do as much damage as possible to the Soviets. We didn’t really have the resources or the time to devote to an investigation of the drug trade,’ I don’t think that we need to apologize for this. Every situation has its fallout. There was fallout in terms of drugs, yes. But the main objective was accomplished. The Soviets left Afghanistan.’”(McCoy, op cit)
The role of the CIA, which is amply documented, is not mentioned in official UNODC publications, which focus on internal social and political factors. Needless to say, the historical roots of the opium trade have been grossly distorted.
(See UNODC http://www.unodc.org/pdf/publications/afg_opium_economy_www.pdf
According to the UNODC, Afghanistan’s opium production has increased, more than 15-fold since 1979. In the wake of the Soviet-Afghan war, the growth of the narcotics economy has continued unabated. The Taliban, which were supported by the US, were initially instrumental in the further growth of opiate production until the 2000 opium ban.
This recycling of drug money was used to finance the post-Cold War insurgencies in Central Asia and the Balkans including Al Qaeda. (For details, see Michel Chossudovsky, War and Globalization, The Truth behind September 11, Global Outlook, 2002, http://globalresearch.ca/globaloutlook/truth911.html )
Narcotics: Second to Oil and the Arms Trade
The revenues generated from the CIA sponsored Afghan drug trade are sizeable. The Afghan trade in opiates constitutes a large share of the worldwide annual turnover of narcotics, which was estimated by the United Nations to be of the order of $400-500 billion. (Douglas Keh, Drug Money in a Changing World, Technical document No. 4, 1998, Vienna UNDCP, p. 4. See also United Nations Drug Control Program, Report of the International Narcotics Control Board for 1999, E/INCB/1999/1 United Nations, Vienna 1999, p. 49-51, and Richard Lapper, UN Fears Growth of Heroin Trade, Financial Times, 24 February 2000). At the time these UN figures were first brought out (1994), the (estimated) global trade in drugs was of the same order of magnitude as the global trade in oil.
The IMF estimated global money laundering to be between 590 billion and 1.5 trillion dollars a year, representing 2-5 percent of global GDP. (Asian Banker, 15 August 2003). A large share of global money laundering as estimated by the IMF is linked to the trade in narcotics.
Based on recent figures (2003), drug trafficking constitutes “the third biggest global commodity in cash terms after oil and the arms trade.” (The Independent, 29 February 2004).
Moreover, the above figures including those on money laundering, confirm that the bulk of the revenues associated with the global trade in narcotics are not appropriated by terrorist groups and warlords, as suggested by the UNODC report.
There are powerful business and financial interests behind narcotics. From this standpoint, geopolitical and military control over the drug routes is as strategic as oil and oil pipelines.
However, what distinguishes narcotics from legal commodity trade is that narcotics constitutes a major source of wealth formation not only for organised crime but also for the US intelligence apparatus, which increasingly constitutes a powerful actor in the spheres of finance and banking.
In turn, the CIA, which protects the drug trade, has developed complex business and undercover links to major criminal syndicates involved in the drug trade.
In other words, intelligence agencies and powerful business syndicates allied with organized crime, are competing for the strategic control over the heroin routes. The multi-billion dollar revenues of narcotics are deposited in the Western banking system. Most of the large international banks together with their affiliates in the offshore banking havens launder large amounts of narco-dollars.
This trade can only prosper if the main actors involved in narcotics have “political friends in high places.” Legal and illegal undertakings are increasingly intertwined, the dividing line between “businesspeople” and criminals is blurred. In turn, the relationship among criminals, politicians and members of the intelligence establishment has tainted the structures of the state and the role of its institutions.
Where does the money go? Who benefits from the Afghan opium trade?
This trade is characterized by a complex web of intermediaries. There are various stages of the drug trade, several interlocked markets, from the impoverished poppy farmer in Afghanistan to the wholesale and retail heroin markets in Western countries. In other words, there is a “hierarchy of prices” for opiates.
This hierarchy of prices is acknowledged by the US administration:
“Afghan heroin sells on the international narcotics market for 100 times the price farmers get for their opium right out of the field”.(US State Department quoted by the Voice of America (VOA), 27 February 2004).
According to the UNODC, opium in Afghanistan generated in 2003 “an income of one billion US dollars for farmers and US$ 1.3 billion for traffickers, equivalent to over half of its national income.”
Consistent with these UNODC estimates, the average price for fresh opium was $350 a kg. (2002); the 2002 production was 3400 tons. (http://www.poppies.org/news/104267739031389.shtml ).
The UNDOC estimate, based on local farmgate and wholesale prices constitutes, however, a very small percentage of the total turnover of the multibillion dollar Afghan drug trade. The UNODC, estimates “the total annual turn-over of international trade” in Afghan opiates at US$ 30 billion. An examination of the wholesale and retail prices for heroin in the Western countries suggests, however, that the total revenues generated, including those at the retail level, are substantially higher.
Wholesale Prices of Heroin in Western Countries
It is estimated that one kilo of opium produces approximately 100 grams of (pure) heroin. The US DEA confirms that “SWA [South West Asia meaning Afghanistan] heroin in New York City was selling in the late 1990s for $85,000 to $190,000 per kilogram wholesale with a 75 percent purity ratio (National Drug Intelligence Center, http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs/648/ny_econ.htm ).
According to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) “the price of SEA [South East Asian] heroin ranges from $70,000 to $100,000 per unit (700 grams) and the purity of SEA heroin ranges from 85 to 90 percent” (ibid). The SEA unit of 700 gr (85-90 % purity) translates into a wholesale price per kg. for pure heroin ranging between $115,000 and $163,000.
The DEA figures quoted above, while reflecting the situation in the 1990s, are broadly consistent with recent British figures. According to a report published in the Guardian (11 August 2002), the wholesale price of (pure) heroin in London (UK) was of the order of 50,000 pounds sterling, approximately $80,000 (2002).
Whereas as there is competition between different sources of heroin supply, it should be emphasized that Afghan heroin represents a rather small percentage of the US heroin market, which is largely supplied out of Colombia.
Retail Prices
“The NYPD notes that retail heroin prices are down and purity is relatively high. Heroin previously sold for about $90 per gram but now sells for $65 to $70 per gram or less. Anecdotal information from the NYPD indicates that purity for a bag of heroin commonly ranges from 50 to 80 percent but can be as low as 30 percent. Information as of June 2000 indicates that bundles (10 bags) purchased by Dominican buyers from Dominican sellers in larger quantities (about 150 bundles) sold for as little as $40 each, or $55 each in Central Park. DEA reports that an ounce of heroin usually sells for $2,500 to $5,000, a gram for $70 to $95, a bundle for $80 to $90, and a bag for $10. The DMP reports that the average heroin purity at the street level in 1999 was about 62 percent.” (National Drug Intelligence Center, http://www.usdoj.gov/ndic/pubs/648/ny_econ.htm ).
The NYPD and DEA retail price figures seem consistent. The DEA price of $70-$95, with a purity of 62 percent translates into $112 to $153 per gram of pure heroin. The NYPD figures are roughly similar with perhaps lower estimates for purity.
It should be noted that when heroin is purchased in very small quantities, the retail price tends to be much higher. In the US, purchase is often by “the bag”; the typical bag according to Rocheleau and Boyum contains 25 milligrams of pure heroin.(http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/publications/drugfact/american_users_spend/appc.html )
A $10 dollar bag in NYC (according to the DEA figure quoted above) would convert into a price of $400 per gram, each bag containing 0.025gr. of pure heroin. (op cit). In other words, for very small purchases marketed by street pushers, the retail margin tends to be significantly higher. In the case of the $10 bag purchase, it is roughly 3 to 4 times the corresponding retail price per gram.($112-$153)
In Britain, the retail street price per gram of heroin, according to British Police sources, “has fallen from £74 in 1997 to £61 [in 2004].” [i.e. from approximately $133 to $110, based on the 2004 rate of exchange] (Independent, 3 March 2004). In some cities it was as low as £30-40 per gram with a low level of purity. (AAP News, 3 March 2004). According to Drugscope (http://www.drugscope.org.uk/ ), the average price for a gram of heroin in Britain is between £40 and £90 ($72- $162 per gram) (The report does not mention purity). The street price of heroin was £60 per gram in April 2002 according to the National Criminal Intelligence Service.
(See:http://www.drugscope.org.uk/druginfo/drugsearch/ds_results.asp?file=%5Cwip%5C11%5C1%5C1%5Cheroin_opiates.html )
The Hierarchy of Prices
We are dealing with a hierarchy of prices, from the farmgate price in the producing country, upwards, to the final retail street price. The latter is often 80-100 times the price paid to the farmer.
In other words, the opiate product transits through several markets from the producing country to the transshipment country(ies), to the consuming countries. In the latter, there are wide margins between “the landing price” at the point of entry, demanded by the drug cartels and the wholesale prices and the retail street prices, protected by Western organized crime.
The Global Proceeds of the Afghan Narcotics Trade
In Afghanistan, the reported production of 3600 tons of opium in 2003 would allow for the production of approximately 360,000 kg of pure heroin. Gross revenues accruing to Afghan farmers are roughly estimated by the UNODC to be of the order of $1 billion, with 1.3 billion accruing to local traffickers.
When sold in Western markets at a heroin wholesale price of the order of $100,000 a kg (with a 70 percent purity ratio), the global wholesale proceeds (corresponding to 3600 tons of Afghan opium) would be of the order of 51.4 billion dollars. The latter constitutes a conservative estimate based on the various figures for wholesale prices in the previous section.
The total proceeds of the Afghan narcotics trade (in terms of total value added) is estimated using the final heroin retail price. In other words, the retail value of the trade is ultimately the criterion for measuring the importance of the drug trade in terms of revenue generation and wealth formation.
A meaningful estimate of the retail value, however, is almost impossible to ascertain due to the fact that retail prices vary considerably within urban areas, from one city to another and between consuming countries, not to mention variations in purity and quality (see above).
The evidence on retail margins, namely the difference between wholesale and retail values in the consuming countries, nonetheless, suggests that a large share of the total (money) proceeds of the drug trade are generated at the retail level.
In other words, a significant portion of the proceeds of the drug trade accrues to criminal and business syndicates in Western countries involved in the local wholesale and retail narcotics markets. And the various criminal gangs involved in retail trade are invariably protected by the “corporate” crime syndicates.
90 percent of heroin consumed in the UK is from Afghanistan. Using the British retail price figure from UK police sources of $110 a gram (with an assumed 50 percent purity level), the total retail value of the Afghan narcotics trade in 2003 (3600 tons of opium) would be the order of 79.2 billion dollars. The latter should be considered as a simulation rather than an estimate.
Under this assumption (simulation), a billion dollars gross revenue to the farmers in Afghanistan (2003) would generate global narcotics earnings, –accruing at various stages and in various markets– of the order of 79.2 billion dollars. These global proceeds accrue to business syndicates, intelligence agencies, organized crime, financial institutions, wholesalers, retailers, etc. involved directly or indirectly in the drug trade.
In turn, the proceeds of this lucrative trade are deposited in Western banks, which constitute an essential mechanism in the laundering of dirty money.
A very small percentage accrues to farmers and traders in the producing country. Bear in mind that the net income accruing to Afghan farmers is but a fraction of the estimated 1 billion dollar amount. The latter does not include payments of farm inputs, interest on loans to money lenders, political protection, etc. (See also UNODC, The Opium Economy in Afghanistan, http://www.unodc.org/pdf/publications/afg_opium_economy_www.pdf , Vienna, 2003, p. 7-8)
The Share of the Afghan Heroin in the Global Drug Market
Afghanistan produces over 70 percent of the global supply of heroin and heroin represents a sizeable fraction of the global narcotics market, estimated by the UN to be of the order of $400-500 billion.
There are no reliable estimates on the distribution of the global narcotics trade between the main categories: Cocaine, Opium/Heroin, Cannabis, Amphetamine Type Stimulants (ATS), Other Drugs.
The Laundering of Drug Money
The proceeds of the drug trade are deposited in the banking system. Drug money is laundered in the numerous offshore banking havens in Switzerland, Luxembourg, the British Channel Islands, the Cayman Islands and some 50 other locations around the globe. It is here that the criminal syndicates involved in the drug trade and the representatives of the world’s largest commercial banks interact. Dirty money is deposited in these offshore havens, which are controlled by the major Western commercial banks. The latter have a vested interest in maintaining and sustaining the drug trade. (For further details, see Michel Chossudovsky, The Crimes of Business and the Business of Crimes, Covert Action Quarterly, Fall 1996)
Once the money has been laundered, it can be recycled into bona fide investments not only in real estate, hotels, etc, but also in other areas such as the services economy and manufacturing. Dirty and covert money is also funneled into various financial instruments including the trade in derivatives, primary commodities, stocks, and government bonds.
Concluding Remarks: Criminalization of US Foreign Policy
US foreign policy supports the workings of a thriving criminal economy in which the demarcation between organized capital and organized crime has become increasingly blurred.
The heroin business is not “filling the coffers of the Taliban” as claimed by US government and the international community: quite the opposite! The proceeds of this illegal trade are the source of wealth formation, largely reaped by powerful business/criminal interests within the Western countries. These interests are sustained by US foreign policy.
Decision-making in the US State Department, the CIA and the Pentagon is instrumental in supporting this highly profitable multibillion dollar trade, third in commodity value after oil and the arms trade.
The Afghan drug economy is “protected”.
The heroin trade was part of the war agenda. What this war has achieved is to restore a compliant narco-State, headed by a US appointed puppet.
The powerful financial interests behind narcotics are supported by the militarisation of the world’s major drug triangles (and transshipment routes), including the Golden Crescent and the Andean region of South America (under the so-called Andean Initiative).
Opium Poppy Cultivation in Afghanistan
Year Cultivation in hectares Production (tons)
1994 71,470 3,400
2001 7,606 185
Source: UNDCP, Afghanistan, Opium Poppy Survey, 2001, UNOCD, Opium Poppy Survey, 2002. http://www.unodc.org/pdf/afg/afg_opium_survey_2002.pdf
See also Press Release: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/press_release_2004-03-31_1.html , and 2003 Survey: http://www.unodc.org/pdf/afg/afghanistan_opium_survey_2003.pdf
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-spoils-of-war-afghanistan-s-multibillion-dollar-heroin-trade/91
Aside from the fiat monetary scam and bloodsoaked petrodollar, another significant source of funds for the Nazionist Khazarian Mafia is the “healthcare” industry which registered a whopping $3.09 trillion in 2014, and is projected to soar to $3.57 trillion in 2017, in the US alone. We believe that this is just a conservative figure.
We can avoid using drugs, defeat any viral attack and scaremongering, like the Zika virus, easily by knowing how to build our own comprehensive antiviral system. Find more about how we can kill three birds with one stone, right here.
How Can We Stop Drug Trafficking When It’s The CIA that’s Running the Show
October 8, 2016 in NARCO-POLITICS: Black Budgets & Black Ops.
NARCO-POLITIK: As Rothschilds Did to China, the CIA is Drug Running in the Philippines (Archive)
NARCO-POLITIK: ‘The Spoils of War’, Afghanistan’s Multibillion Dollar Heroin Trade – By Prof Michel Chossudovsky
NARCO-POLITIK: A Few Brave Mexican Journalists Have Been Reporting the Convergence Between Drug Cartels, Leading Industrialists, & their Giant US/UK “Too Big to Fail” Banking Partners
← HYPNOTIC STATES: ‘War in Heaven’, Is Your God a Devil? – By Richard Smoley
MEDICINE WHEEL: The Island Where People Forget to Die – By Charles Hugh Smith →
3 thoughts on “NARCO-POLITIK: ‘The Real Drug Lords’, A brief history of CIA involvement in the Drug Trade – By William Blum”
Pingback: NARCO-POLITIK: ‘The Real Drug Lords’, A brief history of CIA involvement in the Drug Trade – By William Blum — RIELPOLITIK | gramirezblog
joekano76 says:
Reblogged this on TheFlippinTruth.
jdseanjd says:
Terrific article. Thank you.
Ruin youth through drugs & sex was one of the 25 point strategy for world domination Rothschild had completed by May 1st 1776.
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A Frank Lloyd Wright Classic is Back (and Better Than Ever)
Italian brand Cassina reissues the Taliesin I chair, among other coveted editions.
By Angela M.H. Schuster on November 10, 2018
Photo: Courtesy of Cassina, Milan, and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation
The origami-inspired Taliesin 1 armchair, constructed from a single piece of folded plywood, is among most desirable furniture pieces by famed American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. He designed it in 1949 for the living room of Taliesin West, his Sonoran Desert home and studio in Scottsdale, Arizona. Wright developed the property—a sprawling manse nestled in the foothills of the McDowell Mountains—between 1937 and 1959, to serve not only as a winter residence but also as a workshop, design laboratory, and school for emerging talents in the field of architecture. The residence—listed as a National Historic Landmark—now serves as the headquarters of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.
Reissued by legendary Milan-based Cassina, in partnership with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, the Taliesin 1 is being re-released in a limited edition of 450 lacquered beech plywood pieces—150 each in burgundy, petrol green, and blue—upholstered in matching short hair leather. It is Cassina’s second reissue of the iconic chair—following a version put into production between 1986 and 1990.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s original Taliesin 1 chair (1949). Photo: Courtesy of Cassina, Milan, and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation
“In the early part of his career, Wright created furniture pieces that stand out because of their classic forms and balanced proportions,” says Barbara Barbara Lehmann, head of Cassina’s historical archives. “In the years that followed, he began to explore more sophisticated solutions, experimenting with far more complex designs.” The Taliesin 1, with its angled components, she says, clearly illustrates this evolution in design philosophy—the armchair being a complex geometrical structure that ensures its stability. The reissue itself evinces an advance in manufacturing, having been folded and pressed using the latest in wood-processing technologies. The armchair retails for $5,500.
With the desire for design reeditions continuing to surge, Cassina has also released Gerrit T. Rietveld’s sinuously curved Beugel chair, which was designed by the architect in 1927 and distributed by the Dutch department store Metz&Co. For this particular iteration, says Lehmann, the Beugel chair boasts a slightly more ergonomic form. It retails for $1,200.
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In a record-shattering career, Tim McGraw has sold over 40 million albums, dominated the charts with 30 Number One singles and received three Grammys, among other countless awards. The 2009 release of his tenth studio album, Southern Voice, represents a new level of depth and intensity for the seasoned country artist, showcased on this episode of Soundstage. With a commanding stage presence, McGraw croons out his reflective and haunting new songs “If I Died Today” and “I’m Only Jesus.” Other show highlights include “Live Like You Were Dying,” “Good Girls” and “Still.”
Tim McGraw Available In:
Country, Pop
Country, Pop, Documentary, Folk, Singer Songwriter, Rock
If I Died Today
Where The Green Grass Grows
Real Good Man
You Had To Be There
For A Little While
I'm Only Jesus
Live Like You Were Dying
Southern Voice
Live - It's All About Tonight
Blake Shelton is country music's hottest male vocalist. In this 90-minute television special, Blake Shelton Live: It's All About Tonight, the country star delivers an up-close-and-personal view of his amped-up concerts, complete with behind-the-scenes footage that showcases his rollicking sense of humor. The DVD features rowdy performances from his previous seven albums including various No. 1 hits, as well as a special guest appearance by Miranda Lambert.
Also includes the "Honey Bee" and "God Gave Me You" music videos.
The Blown Away Tour: Live
The Blown Away Tour: Live features nearly 100 minutes of performance footage, including a dozen of Carrie's #1 singles, with such favorites as 'Before He Cheats,' 'Jesus, Take the Wheel,' 'Two Black Cadillacs,' and the album title track that inspired her tour name, 'Blown Away.'
There’s a reason Kenny Chesney received four consecutive ACM Entertainer of the Year awards. Backed by a flawless band and horn section, Chesney presents contemporary country at its finest on this episode of Soundstage. Encouraging the audience to leave their problems at the door, Kenny proceeds to blow the roof off with party anthem opener “Beer in Mexico.”
Chesney’s musical stylings are diverse during this set, ranging from beachy, tropical homages like “Summertime” to reflective, soft crooners like “Better As A Memory” and “Back Where I Come From.” Bounding back and forth across the stage, his unabashed energy translates perfectly into friendly heartland ballads and sincere, feel-good sing alongs like “No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems,” and “Young.” Truly a spectacular night, Chesney also performs “How Forever Feels” in this intimate studio setting, putting you in a good mood for days.
An Evening with the Dixie Chicks
Although the Dixie Chicks have technically been making music since 1989, it wasn't until 1995, with the addition of singer Natalie Maines, that the band truly took off. Maines joined Martie Seidel and Emily Erwin Robison to complete a hyper-talented, multi-dimensional trio that seamlessly blends blues, bluegrass, country, pop, and a bit of Irish jig. Their double-Grammy-winning debut, Wide Open Spaces, is the bestselling album in country music history, and their follow-up, Fly, took home two Grammys of its own. An Evening with the Dixie Chicks is a live concert performance from L.A.'s Kodak Theater that aired on NBC in December 2002, featuring tunes from Wide Open Spaces, Fly, and the band's latest release, Home. For both diehard Dixie Chicks fans and the uninitiated, this one is a can't-miss.
Live And Kickin'
This performance filmed live at the historic Tivoli Theater in downtown Chattanooga in 2002 features many of Travis' all-time greatest hits including 8 Top 10 singles, plus powerful acoustic performances of several of his biggest hits.
Dierks Bentley: Riser
The film documents the ups and downs following the death of his father through the birth of his first son – the story that inspired his No. one selling seventh studio album Riser that spawned mass critical acclaim. Most recently, Billboard noted “From the birth of his son to the death of his father, Dierks Bentley has been through a lot lately, and his introspective new LP is proof. He sounds gritty and time-tested…questions life’s meaning with some of the strongest lyrics he’s ever recorded.”
All Access & Uncovered: The Making Of Changed And Beyond
All Access and Uncovered: The Making of Changed and Beyond gives a look behind-the-scenes with the award winning, chart-topping Country band Rascal Flatts. Featuring live performances, intimate interviews and home video footage, The Making of Changed and Beyond takes Rascal Flatts fans on a journey as the guys work to complete their acclaimed album Changed. All Access and Uncovered: The Making of Changed and Beyond gives rare insight into the creative process of one of Country music's biggest bands, and is a must-see for Rascal Flatts fans and music fans alike.
Keepin It Country
Join Alan Jackson at a capacity crowd at the famed Red Rocks Amphitheater in Denver, CO for his 25th Anniversary KEEPIN’ IT COUNTRY TOUR. This concert film will be a memorable celebration for his longtime fans, as well as legions of new fans, who are discovering his music through the many songs that have withstood the test of time and influenced many new artists of today.
Live at The Orange Peel and Tennessee Theatre
Old Crow Medicine Show
Directed by Lee Tucker (who also directed the band's videos for "Wagon Wheel" and "Tell It To Me"), Live at the Orange Peel and Tennessee Theatre was recorded over two nights in December 2008 and features performances of 20 songs-15 of which are from the band's three studio albums (OCMS, Big Iron World, Tennessee Pusher) - including "Tell It To Me," "Down Home Girl," "Alabama High-Test," and "Wagon Wheel." The video also includes five tracks from their live repertoire not found on their three studio albums: "Wheeling Breakdown," "Raise A Ruckus," "Reuben's Train," "Sally Anne" and "Shack #9."
Gretchen Wilson
Undressed follows Gretchen as she walks you through her life on the road and proves that the music doesn’t stop once the show’s over. It’s a VIP pass to an intimate dressing room jam session with the band, crew and anyone else that wants to join in.
This episode of Soundstage features Trace Adkins, a performer with exceptional range, depth and power. This 6'6'' "macho man" of country music performs songs such as "I'm Tryin'," "Chrome," and his recent single "(This Ain't) No Thinkin' Thing."
Trisha Yearwood could be considered a Triple Threat in the country music genre. Having garnered the trifecta of three Grammys, an Oscar-nominated song, and being the first female country singer to sell a million copies of her 1991 self-titled debut, she is indeed the marker of success to which all country female singers aspire. As a Garth Brooks protge, Yearwood began her career singing backup on his 89 debut. Appearing again on Brooks follow-up, No Fences, soon she was sought out by MCA who released her self-titled debut. More than a decade later with nine blockbuster albums and a string of chart-topping singles under her talented belt Yearwood returns with her 10th album, Jasper County. The album will premiere in September 2005.
Yearwood joins the Soundstage ranks, bringing with her a few special guests. Launching the show is Billy Currington, who performs the title track to his forthcoming sophomore album, Doin Somethin Right, which will see its release in October 2005. The trio Sugarland follows him. Performing songs from 2004s Twice The Speed Of Light, the talented Jennifer Nettles, Kristen Hall, and Kristian Bush are a fine lead in to the highlight of the show. Yearwood takes the stage performing some of her finest hits, including her very first single, Shes In Love With A Boy, Xxxs And Oooos (An American Girl) from 95s Thinking About You, and the Diane Warren-penned How Do I Live.
Filmed in front of a small studio audience in Nashville, CMT Invitation Only: Blake Shelton features Blake performing some of his biggest hits along with fan favorites. The exclusive performance also features an informal question and answer session with fans.
Live From Irving Plaza in NY 2008
Sheryl Crow, performs live at The Fillmore at Irving Plaza, New York in 2008. The show features performances of “Soak Up The Sun,” “If It Makes You Happy,” “Every day Is A Winding Road” and “Can't Cry Anymore.
Live at Austin City Limits
Nashville, TN – On August 19, 2013, Jason Isbell and his band The 400 Unit, stepped out onto the stage in front of a live audience in Austin, TX to film his first appearance on the longest running original music series in the U.S., Austin City Limits.
Isbell performs songs from his critically acclaimed, award-winning album Southeastern along with songs from throughout his career, including fan favorites “Outfit” and “Decoration Day”. The set closed with a rousing rendition of the Rolling Stones’ “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking”, a live staple.
In September, Isbell won Artist of the Year, Song of the Year (“Cover Me Up”) and Album of the Year for Southeastern. In October, Isbell reached a major milestone by selling out three consecutive nights at Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium.
VH1 Storytellers
Recorded live in September 2006 at the historic Los Angeles Theater, Dixie Chicks Storytellers was the grand finale in the whirlwind that surrounded the release of the band's 5x Grammy Award winning album Taking the Long Way. Fans are treated to personal anecdotes and inspiration around some of the band's biggest hits including "Not Ready to Make Nice," "Cowboy Take Me Away" and "Wide Open Spaces." Dixie Chicks Storytellers also features three never before seen performances from the original broadcast including "Lullaby," "Easy Silence" and "So Hard."
The Dixie Chicks are witty, charming and sometimes irreverent, but above all, incredible musicians and songwriters. With over 25 million albums sold, Dixie Chicks are the biggest selling female band of all time in the U.S. Dixie Chicks are Natalie Maines, Martie Maguire and Emily Robison.
Top of the World Tour: Live
The Dixie Chicks have earned a well-deserved reputation as a live band, and a hectic tour schedule has seen them build up a sizeable worldwide following. The "Top of the World" tour of 2003 sold out within minutes of the tickets going on sale, setting new box office records at the time. This film comes from the tour, and includes the songs "Goodbye Earl," "Hello Mr. Heartache," "Cold Day in July," "Sin Wagon," and many more.
Travis Tritt has dominated the charts for a decade performing the kind of country music that men identify with and females swoon" over. In this Soundstage concert, he wows the audience performing favorites such as "Modern Day Bonnie and Clyde," "Great Day to Be Alive," and "Anymore."
Summer in 3D Concert
Kenny Chesney, the biggest ticket-seller of this century in any musical genre, has wrapped his latest concert tour, the Sun City Carnival. Kenny Chesney: Summer in 3D, will give fans the chance to live the songs and the moments that make the Kenny Chesney concert experience.
Live at the Ryman
Alabama & Friends
Join superstar band Alabama in a once in a lifetime concert event, recorded at the historic Ryman Auditorium, featuring on stage collaborations with country's biggest stars: Luke Bryan, Jason Aldean, Trisha Yearwood, Florida Georgia Line, Jamey Johnson and the Eli Young Band. Experience timeless tunes 'Tennessee River', 'Love In The First Degree', 'I'm In A Hurry (And Don't Know Why)', 'My Home's In Alabama', and more.
On This Winter's Night
In between dates on their massively successful world tour, country superstars Lady Antebellum spent their brief summer break recording Christmas songs for their festive album “On This Winter's Night”. This live concert film brings those songs to life with the help of more than 40 symphony orchestra musicians at Nashville's famed Schermerhorn Symphony Center. The program includes seasonal favourites like "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" and "Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow", alongside the self-penned title track "One This Winter's Night". The collection includes 11 live performances along with personal Christmas stories, memories, and traditions that Lady Antebellum are sharing with their fans for the first time.
Country's Family Reunion Tribute Series - Vince Gill & Blake Shelton
Runtime: 1 hr
You know, for over 17 years, Country’s Family Reunion TV show and Larry’s Country Diner have been asking Country Legends to spend time together, tell their stories and sing their biggest songs. Everyone shares the space together and it’s a wonderful experience. Well, for some of our artists, they’ve been on our shows so many times it’s hard to remember all the various stories and songs they’ve told and sung. So, we thought it high time that we celebrate some INDIVIDUAL artists with their own TRIBUTE shows.
I Told You I Was Trouble
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https://queensawards.blog.gov.uk/2013/05/22/a-judges-view-david-irwin/
A judge's view - David Irwin
Posted by: Kat Hennessey, Posted on: 22 May 2013 - Categories: Advice, Enterprise promotion, Judges
Today’s guest blog comes from David Irwin, a previous Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion (QAEP) winner and now a member of the assessment committee for this Award.
David Irwin
Did you know that Mosley Street in Newcastle was the first street in the world to have electric lighting?
I was born, and still live, in the north east of England, not an area that you might naturally associate with innovation and entrepreneurship. However, in the 19th century, it was and a hot bed of enterprise – with people like George Stephenson (building the Rocket), William Armstrong (inventing hydraulic cranes, building armaments and warships and creating the world’s first hydro-electric power plant), Joseph Swan (inventing the incandescent light bulb) and Robert Hawthorn (building, in Newcastle, the first railway locomotive to run in the United States). But during the 20th century, the north east lost that spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation and, for too long, survived on the big industries of coal, steel and shipbuilding. As those industries declined, it became essential once again to encourage people to start their own businesses.
So, in 1980, I co-founded Project North East, one of the first enterprise agencies in the UK, growing it to a turnover of around £3.5 million and employing some 95 staff. I was then appointed as founder CEO of the Small Business Service in 2000, taking responsibility for the UK government’s support for small business and a role as ‘strong voice for small business at the heart of government’. Having spent over 30 years encouraging and supporting thousands of entrepreneurs to start and grow their own businesses one of the main lessons is that a culture of enterprise needs to be nurtured and supported. While spark and drive cannot be taught, they can be facilitated, and many of the critical skills needed to grow a business successfully can be taught.
This is more important today than ever before as we face challenges even greater than in the 1980s. Entrepreneurship needs to be stimulated and encouraged, from the early days of school onwards. And that is why we continue to need people who are willing and able to support our latent entrepreneurs.
I was delighted when the QAEP was launched in 2004. The QAEP fulfils a vital role in recognising the often unsung contributions of those people who do the essential work of promoting and supporting entrepreneurship. And I was very honoured to receive it myself in 2010. I am now a member of its advisory panel looking for exceptional people each year to receive the award.
We look for evidence that nominees have made a real difference over a period – but they also look for evidence that nominees have ‘gone the extra mile’. If someone is simply doing the day job then it is unlikely that they will win an award. Rather the panel is keen to identify winners whose efforts to promote and support entrepreneurship are entirely voluntary or, if they work in the field, have contributed significantly more than might have been expected of them by their employers: people like Allan Gibb who did so much to ensure that small business became a respectable topic for academic research and Rob Batty who spent a lifetime promoting entrepreneurship in County Durham. Perhaps we will look back in a further 150 years and realise that these winners of the QAEP have had as great an impact on the development of society and the 19th century entrepreneurs did on theirs.
Claire Dove: Promoting equality through enterprise
A judge's view - CBI
Tags: Judges
Tenmat do the double!
Afternoon reception at BIS
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Archive for the ‘Iraq’ Category
Iran’s Recipe for Terror Wrapped in War on Terror Packaging
The New Arab published a piece by Iran’s foreign minister. This, my response to Zarif, was also published by the New Arab.
Iraqi Shia militiamen pray in defeated and depopulated Daraya.
Today the New Arab publishes Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif’s latest appeal for greater regional cooperation, specifically to build a collective “security net” which would establish “prosperity, peace, and security for our children.”
This certainly sounds wonderful. Most people in our region share these noble aims. But when they are expressed by an Iranian minister (or by any servant of any state), we owe it to ourselves (and indeed to our children, whose future appears thoroughly insecure) to separate misleading rhetoric from actual facts on the ground. Surely Zarif wouldn’t disagree with this. His own article emphasises the need for “a sound understanding of the current reality.”
Let’s examine the context of this Iranian overture. It doesn’t contain any concessionary policy shift, and is therefore an appeal to the Arab public rather than to state leaderships. Zarif wishes to recreate the pre-2011 atmosphere, those halcyon days when Iran enjoyed enormous soft power across the Arab world. Back then (Iranian president) Ahmadinejad, (Hizbullah chief) Nasrallah and even Bashaar al-Assad topped Arab polls for ‘most admired leader’. Iran was widely considered a proud, rapidly developing Muslim nation and a principled opponent of American and Israeli expansion. Its popularity peaked during the 2006 Israeli-Hizbullah confrontation. People appreciated its aid to the Lebanese militia fighting what they thought was a common cause. When hundreds of thousands of Lebanese Shia fled Israeli bombs for Syria, Syrian Sunnis put any sectarian prejudice aside and welcomed them in their homes. Al-Qusayr, for instance, a town near Homs, welcomed several thousand.
How things have changed. Today many Arabs fear Iran’s expansion just as much as Israel’s. Iran’s rulers, meanwhile, openly boast their imperialism. Here for example is Ali Reza Zakani, an MP close to Supreme Leader Khamenei: “Three Arab capitals have today ended up in the hands of Iran and belong to the Islamic Iranian Revolution.” He referred to Baghdad, Beirut and Damascus, and went on to add that Sanaa would soon follow.
Posted in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen
Tagged with Javad Zarif
Frankenstein in Baghdad
This review was first published at the New Statesman.
Baghdad, 2005. Occupied Iraq is hurtling into civil war. Gunmen clutch rifles “like farmers with spades” and cars explode seemingly at random. Realism may not be able to do justice to such horror, but this darkly delightful novel by Ahmed Saadawi – by combining humour and a traumatised version of magical realism – certainly begins to.
After his best friend is rent to pieces by a bomb, Hadi, a junk dealer, alcoholic and habitual liar, starts collecting body parts from explosion sites. Next he stitches them together into a composite corpse. Hadi intends to take the resulting “Whatsitsname” to the forensics department – “I made it complete,” he says, “so it wouldn’t be treated as trash” – but, following a storm and a further series of explosions, the creature stands up and runs out into the night.
At the moment of the Whatsitsname’s birth, Hasib, a hotel security guard, is separated from his body by a Sudanese suicide bomber. The elderly Elishva, meanwhile, is importuning a talking portrait of St. George to return her son Daniel, who – though he was lost at war two decades ago – she is convinced is still alive.
In what ensues, some will find their wishes fulfilled. Many will not. After all, the Whatsitsname’s very limbs and organs are crying for revenge. And as each bodily member is satisfied, it drops off, leaving the monster in need of new parts. Vengeance, moreover, is a complex business. Soon it becomes difficult to discern the victims from the criminals.
Posted in book review, Iraq
Tagged with Ahmed Saadawi
The President’s Gardens
This review was published first at the Guardian.
Since 1980, Iraq has suffered almost continuous war, as well as uprisings, repressions, sanctions, and war-related cancers. “The President’s Gardens” by Muhsin al-Ramli –published in Arabic in 2012 and now masterfully translated by Luke Leafgren – at last provides us with an epic account of this experience from an Iraqi, and deeply human, perspective.
“If every victim had a book, Iraq in its entirety would become a huge library, impossible ever to catalogue.” This book must belong to Ibrahim, nicknamed ‘the Fated’, the discovery of whose head (in a banana crate) opens and closes the novel in 2006, and whose life until that decapitation is narrated in the most detail. Yet Ibrahim’s friends since childhood, Tariq ‘the Befuddled’ and Abdullah ‘Kafka’, are essential to the story.
Tariq is a schoolteacher, a perfumed, snappy dresser, and a grinning, earthy imam. As such he is spared military service, and prospers in the village, making necessary accomodations to the ruling system.
Abdullah, the “prince of pessimists” who describes contemporary events as “ancient, lost, dead history”, is already alienated by his illegitimacy when he is called up in 1988 for the war against Iran, captured, and incarcerated as a POW for the next 19 years, with almost 100,000 others. In Iran he is paraded, tortured, starved, and lectured on Khomeinism. Prisoners are separated by religious affiliation, but those ‘penitents’ who adopt the Islamic Republic’s ideology are raised up to rule over the unconverted.
There is no sectarianism at all in the narration. The main characters, from north of Baghdad, are probably Sunnis, but the reader must bring knowledge from beyond the text to make this assumption. Their travels through the country’s beautiful landscapes and terrible warscapes convey a clear sense of Iraqi nationhood alongside a sustained disdain for exclusionary and propagandistic nationalism. “When I look at the flag of any country,” says Abdullah on his release, “I see nothing more than a scrap of cloth devoid of any colour or meaning.”
If Abdullah’s chief mode is principled nihilism, Ibrahim’s is gentle resignation. “Everything is fate and decree” is his catchphrase, and he names his daughter Qisma, ‘fate’. Made sterile by poison gas in the Iran war, lamed during the invasion of Kuwait, he finds a job in the paradisal gardens of the title, secret expanses within Baghdad studded by Saddam Hussain’s palaces, where the fountain water is mixed with perfume, camels graze between rose beds, and crocodiles swim in the pools. Naturally, horrors lurk beneath this surface.
Tagged with Muhsin al-Ramli
The ‘Hakawati’ as Artist and Activist
I interviewed my friend Hassan Blasim, a brilliant writer and a wonderful human being, for the National.
Hassan Blasim is an Iraqi-born writer and film-maker, now a Finnish citizen. He is the author of the acclaimed story collections “The Madman of Freedom Square” and “The Iraqi Christ” (the latter won the Independent Foreign Fiction prize), and editor and contributor to the science fiction collection “Iraq +100”. His play “The Digital Hat Game” was recently performed in Tampere, Finland.
Because it’s so groundbreaking, his work is hard to categorise. It deals with the traumas of repression, war and migration, weaving perspectives and genres with intelligence and a brutal wit.
Why do you write?
To be frank, I would have killed myself without writing.
If you read novels and intellectual works since your childhood, your head is filled with the big questions. Why am I here? What’s the meaning of life? You apply this questioning to the mess of the world around you – why is America bombing Iraq? why are we suffering civil wars? – and you realise the enormous contradiction between your lived reality and the ideal world of knowledge. On the one hand, peace, freedom, and our common human destiny, and on the other, borders, capitalism and wars.
Writing for me began as a hobby, or a way of dreaming. And then when I witnessed the disasters that befell Iraq, it became a personal salvation. It wouldn’t be possible to accept this world without writing.
Maybe writing is a psychological treatment, or an escapism. It’s certainly a dream. But it’s also to confront the world, and to challenge all the books that have been written before. And it’s a process of discovery. It’s all of these things.
Posted in Culture, Iraq, writing
Tagged with Hassan Blasim
‘Criminals Kill While Idiots Talk’
The Pluto blog has published an extract from our book. Here it is:
‘Burning Country’, written by Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami, explores the horrific and complicated reality of life in present-day Syria with unprecedented detail and sophistication, drawing on new first-hand testimonies from opposition fighters, exiles lost in an archipelago of refugee camps, and courageous human rights activists among many others. These stories are expertly interwoven with a trenchant analysis of the brutalisation of the conflict and the militarisation of the uprising, of the rise of the Islamists and sectarian warfare, and the role of governments in Syria and elsewhere in exacerbating those violent processes. In this extract taken from the book, Robin Yassin – Kassab and Leila Al-Shami dissect the 2014 seizure of Mosul and impact it had in Iraq and Syria and on international opinion.
In June 2014, ISIS led an offensive which took huge swathes of northern and western Iraq out of government hands. Most significantly, the city of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest, fell to ISIS on 10 June after only four days of battle. General Mahdi al-Gharawi – a proven torturer who had run secret prisons but was nevertheless appointed by Prime Minister Maliki as governor of Nineveh province – fled, and his troops, who greatly outnumbered the ISIS attackers, deserted. This meant that the US-allied Iraqi army, on which the US had spent billions of dollars, was less able to take on ISIS than Syria’s ‘farmers and dentists’. Many Syrians saw a conspiracy in the Iraqi collapse, a play by Malki to win still more weapons from America, and by Iran to increase its regional importance as a counterbalance to Sunni jihadism. It’s more likely that the fall of Mosul was an inevitable result of the Iraqi state’s sectarian dysfunction. Shia soldiers felt themselves to be in foreign territory, and weren’t prepared to die in other people’s disputes. Many Sunni soldiers defected to ISIS.
ISIS’s control of the Iraq–Syria border, and especially of Mosul, was a game changer. The organisation collected the arms left behind by the Iraqi army, much of it high-quality weaponry inherited from the American occupation. Perhaps more importantly, it cleaned out Mosul’s banks. Then it returned to Syria in force, using the new weapons to beat back the starved FSA and the new money to buy loyalties.
The FSA and Islamic Front in Deir al-Zor, besieged by both Assad and ISIS for months, begged the United States for ammunition, warning the city was about to fall. Their plea was ignored, and the revolutionary forces (plus Jabhat al-Nusra) pulled out in July, leaving the province’s oil fields, and the Iraqi border area, in ISIS’s hands. ISIS reinforced itself in Raqqa and surged back into the Aleppo countryside and the central desert. Suddenly it dominated a third of Iraq and a third of Syria. In a tragic parody of the old Arab nationalist dream, it made good propaganda of erasing the Sykes–Picot border; in a tragic parody of Islamic history, it declared itself a Caliphate at the end of June.
Posted in Iraq, Syria
Tagged with ISIS
The Prison
This article about Arab prison writing was published at the National.
From ‘Prisoner Cell Block H’ to ‘Orange is the New Black’, prison dramas fill the Anglo-Saxon screen. In the Arab world, you’re more likely to see them on the news. In recent months, for example, detainees of the Syrian regime have staged an uprising in Hama prison and been assaulted in Suwayda prison.
No surprise then that contemporary Arab writing features prisons so prominently, sometimes as setting, more often as powerful metaphor.
“About My Mother”, the latest novel by esteemed Moroccan writer Taher Ben Jelloun (who writes in French), is an affectionate but unromantic portrait of his parent trapped by incoherence. The old lady suffers dementia, mistaking times, places and people, but there is a freedom in her long monologues, the flow of memory and shifting scenes, torrents of speech which eventually infect the narration.
The novel is family memoir and social history as well as an experiment with form. Jelloun’s mother was married thrice, and widowed first at sixteen. At the first wedding, the attendants presenting the bride chorus: “See the hostage. See the hostage.”
Fettered by tradition and domestic labour, now by illness and age, she responds with superstition, fatalism and resignation. Her own confinement is echoed by memories of national oppression, first by the French, then by homegrown authorities. She learns to mistrust the police even before her son Taher’s student years are interrupted by eighteen months in army disciplinary camp, punishment for his low-level political activism. “That’s what a police state is,” the adult writes, “arbitrary punishment, cruelty and barbarity.”
Posted in book review, Iraq, Morocco, Syria
Tagged with miriam cooke, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Yassin al-Haj Saleh
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28 Facts That Make You Feel Like an Old Gamer
by radiantdreamer June 29, 2011 in Anime & Video Games 51 comments tags: 1987, 1988, 1990, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2009, 20th, 8-bit, aerith, akihabara, captain n, dead or alive, doa, dreamcast, duke nukem forever, ebay, excuse me princess, final fantast vii, final fantasy viii, final fantasy xiii, game gear, gba micro, halo 2, halo 3, halo combat evolved, halo wars, i feel old, katamari damacy, kid icarus, lara croft, line-up, link, mario64, metal gear solid 2, mortal kombat 1992, old age, old gamer, playstation, playstation 2, pokemon, resident evil, sega, shadow of the colossus, sonic, sony, starcraft, street figher ii, street fighter, super mario bros, super street fighter iv, time flies, tomb raider, video game history, video game trivia, zelda
If the first round of anime facts didn't make you feel old, then it's time for a round two KO! Ready? FIGHT!
Gameboy Micro Porn
by radiantdreamer March 17, 2010 in Anime & Video Games 57 comments tags: famicom, gameboy, gba, konata, mario, micro, nes, nintendo, special edition, zelda
Neogaf suddenly popped up with a Gameboy Micro <3 thread, so I decided to join in. I know that I said I wouldn’t be doing any review photos during my temporary gear shift, but I couldn’t help myself with this. There was so much Micro love going around on that thread; people were buying them because of the thread. Plus it’s my blog, so I can do whatever. muahaha.
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Magaluf becoming family-friendly destination
The infamous Spanish holiday hotspot of Magaluf is making good progress as a major regeneration project continues to transform the area into a more family-friendly destination.
In November 2015, Spanish hotel group Meliá Hotels International, the Palmanove-Magaluf Hotel Association and Calvia Town Hall pledged to transform the area of Magaluf through a collaborative five-year regeneration plan.
Two years on, the destination is making headway in achieving its five key objectives, with the Palmanove-Magaluf Hotel Association revealing its summer season results and a summary of how investment in the area is starting to have an impact.
Magaluf five-year regeneration plan objectives:
Extend the season to nine months (March to November)
Attract more families and adult travellers to the destination
Enhance diversification, focusing on the MICE and sports travel segments as a complement to leisure travel
Modernise and increase the quality of complementary facilities (shopping centres, restaurants, beach clubs and other leisure facilities)
Improve security, public order and the reputation of the destination
High summer occupancy and transformation in customer segmentation
The quality of hotels in Magaluf has continued to improve, with 60 per cent ranked as four or five-star properties and a total of 30,000 beds now available. Average per room, per night prices have also increased in line with the investment in hotel facilities to ensure a high-quality product.
Total overnight stays increased by 4.4 per cent to almost 5.5 million in 2017, compared to 2016. The increase in stays can also be attributed in part to the opening of Magaluf’s first five-star property, VIVA Zafiro hotel, and the renovations of Meliá Calvia Beach and Sol Beach House Mallorca.
The transformation of Magaluf is particularly apparent when looking at the shift in customer segmentation, which demonstrates a change in the area’s tourism model, affected by investment in high quality facilities and customer safety making it more attractive as a family holiday destination.
Family and adult couples have continued to dominate the customer segment, representing 70 per cent of guest numbers – an increase of 13 per cent compared to 2013. Young people, associated with Magaluf’s nightlife culture, now only represent 22 per cent of the area’s overall visitors – a decrease of 7 per cent compared to 2013 figures.
The UK has maintained its position as the primary tourist market, representing 22 per cent of all travellers to Mallorca, (48 per cent of Palmanove and Magaluf), followed closely by the Spanish and Scandinavians, with other European markets representing 33 per cent of all visitors. Total numbers of British tourists increased by one per cent compared to 2016, totalling 167,316 hotel stays, in spite of Brexit.
Extension of the season and higher employment levels
Extending Magaluf’s season to a nine-month period, March to November, is one of the key objectives in the destination’s five-year plan. End of season results shows that hotel occupancy between June and September was consistent with the previous year, peaking at 91 per cent in August, and reaching 86 per cent in June, 88 per cent in July and 87 per cent in September.
However, October saw growth of more than three per cent, with almost 60 per cent of hotels remaining open at the end of the season.
Within its portfolio in Magaluf, Meliá Hotels International has opened nearly 2,000 square metres of meeting and congress space that has supported the extension of the season, as well as attracting more affluent clientele and business people to the destination.
A safer destination
Increased security, public order and the overall reputation of the area remains a priority. In 2016, The Palmanove-Magaluf Hotel Association, Calvia Town Hall and the Balearic Islands Civil Guard introduced a zero tolerance policy towards anti-social behaviour and crime, which signalled a turning point for the resort. The regulations prohibited drinking alcohol in the streets and imposed minimum dress requirements in public spaces.
This year, the partnership between local government and the police force has continued to increase controls and the enforcement of regulations in Magaluf, with an upweight in street night patrols on Punta Ballena during the high season.
Figures for crime, drunkenness and other public order issues continue to fall. Hotels also implemented a zero tolerance policy, and the number of guests expelled from hotels for bad behaviour in 2017 was 156 – 20 per cent less than the previous year and alcohol-related incidents, such as balcony jumping, decreased by 82 per cent in 2017, compared to 2015.
Meliá plays key role
Meliá Hotels International has invested more than €200 million in the refurbishment of its properties in the area to support the wider regeneration of Magaluf.
This year Palmanova-Magaluf has continued to promote higher quality complementary facilities to attract more affluent visitors to the destination. In Summer 2018, Meliá will launch a new state-of-the-art shopping mall, offering underground car parking space in the centre of Magaluf, as well as introducing a new hotel – Sol House Calvia Beach – overlooking the beachfront, replacing the previously demolished Jamaica Hotel.
Sol House Calvia Beach
Meliá has made the largest private investment of €45 million and the launch will mark the next phase in the repositioning of the destination, offering 5,000m2 of retail, food and beverage outlets and terraces to further enhance the profitability of the Magaluf tourism industry.
Transport and sports facilities
Local authorities have continued to improve transport to the destination and sports facilities, with plans to invest €3 million in 2017-18 in urban improvements, including restructuring and improving Galeón Street, Paris Street at the crossing with Hermanos Pinzón Street, and Martin Ros Garcia Street, as well as enhancing the sports infrastructure such as the Magaluf athletics track.
Sebastin Darder
Challenges for future years
Sebastián Darder, president of Palmanove-Magaluf Hotel Association, said: “The destination aims to continue consolidating new quality product and the new customer segmentation, which has allowed us to increase occupancy, profitability, and the social and economic sustainability of Magaluf, as well as continuing to improve the reputation of the destination among adult travellers and families.
“The destination continues to improve year after year, and in 2017 we are presenting a summary similar to that of the excellent year in 2016, although with a greater number of overnight stays, longer hotel opening periods, and a larger number of jobs created. And, in spite of the relatively frequent news about events in Punta Ballena, a very specific street within the destination, we are also very satisfied to report that the figures for crime, drunkenness and other public order issues remain in clear descent.”
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A Swedish representative is compulsory for all producers outside Sweden that place electrical and electronic products on the Swedish market through long-distance sales.
‘Long-distance sales’ means, for example, Internet sales or mail order (B2C). An authorised representative can be appointed voluntarily by a producer that exports electrical and electronic products to an importer in Sweden (B2B) and that wants to fulfil the producer responsibility itself (producer responsibility otherwise falls on the importer).
Recipo offers the Authorised Representative service.
The authorised representative is the national representative for a producer outside Sweden’s borders. The representative consequently acts in the name of the producer (exporter) in all respects within the framework of the Producer Responsibility Ordinance (Swedish Code of Statutes – SFS 2014:1075) and is responsible for:
Complying with all national obligations within the producer responsibility
Attending to communication with the national register (the EEB Register in Sweden’s case)
Providing all relevant information upon request to the national register
Informing the producer (exporter) about all relevant information and obligations
Ensuring payment for all of the producer’s charges linked to the producer responsibility
Accepting prosecution and legal disputes in the name of the producer (exporter)
When an authorised representative is appointed, a power of attorney must be drawn up and signed. This should clearly state that the producer (exporter) and the representative have agreed to transfer the producer responsibility to the producer’s representative. The power of attorney must be submitted to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency.A comprehensive guide to authorised representatives is available from the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency.
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© David Belisle. All rights reserved.
R.E.M., Amy Winehouse Accidentally in Michael’s Dressing Room with Tour Manager Bob Whittaker, 2007
TAGS: Amy Winehouse, Bob Whittaker, David Belisle, Michael Stipe, R.E.M., United States
David Belisle
Seattle, Washington, United States of America
© David Belisle.
Image Source: print_negative
Date Uploaded: Dec. 11, 2015, 2:49 p.m.
PHOTO LOCATION None, United States of America
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Do the three X-mansions in the X-Men franchise count as a continuity error?
The first X-Men movie has a different mansion than the one used in X2 and The Last Stand. First Class and Days of Future Past use a building different to both used in the original trilogy. They are all obviously different.
Is this a continuity problem??
marvel x-men x-men-cinematic-universe
Paul D. Waite
It's certainly technically a continuity issue, but is it a problem? What problem would it cause? – phantom42 May 21 '15 at 19:53
I just don't understand why it's not seen as a big continuity issue. If you think about, it's worse than professor x coming back. At least there can be an explanation for that – user45978 May 21 '15 at 19:57
I'd personally be more concerned with continuity problems like the fact that Jubilee is a teenager and a student in both the 80's and the early 2000's, or that Angel and Psylocke don't age in those decades - and have completely different backstories. Those are continuity errors. – phantom42 May 21 '15 at 19:59
I'd be more concerned about the fact that Rogue completely vanished in the most recent film. And noone in-universe even mentioned it. You'd think they'd all be "where the hell is rogue?" but no. – Valorum May 21 '15 at 20:01
@PaulD.Waite after the timeline update, yes - but she's absent from the sentinel-filled future scenes. – phantom42 May 21 '15 at 21:00
Not necessarily. Within the comics - specifically the 616 continuity - the mansion located at 1407 Graymalkin Lane, Salem Center, NY has been destroyed and rebuilt numerous times.
On many occasions, the mansion that houses the X-Men's famous School for Gifted Youngsters has been entirely demolished, often at the hands of some villain or destructive event. In each case, the mansion is rebuilt. In most cases, the opportunity is taken to expand the mansion itself, thus making room for additional students and facilities.
It's important to note that both the interior and exteriors of the mansion have varied quite a bit over the years. With some rebuilds, great care was taken to replicate the previous appearance, while with other rebuilds the layout and/or style of the mansion was changed drastically. On at least three occasions, the entire mansion was rebuilt but you'd only know it once entering the lower levels - the mansion proper was identical to the previous building.
Note: At one point in continuity, the school was relocated to a different mansion in Snow Valley, Massachusetts. The information in this answer pertains to the Xavier family home, in which Professor X originally started his X-Men team.
OmegacronOmegacron
That's cool to know, thanks. Let's say it was destryoyed after the events of days of future past (70s), why is the interior of the building the same as the 70s in the future. Could that have been because of wolverine changing the past? – user45978 May 21 '15 at 20:02
It could be because they decided to decorate it the same. Wolverine doesn't have to have anything to do with it. – phantom42 May 21 '15 at 20:05
What timeline is the post-credit scene at the end of The Wolverine in?
How can Professor Xavier be alive?
If the “Sentinel” Program existed since 1973 why it was never mentioned in the original trilogy of X-Men?
How does Magneto have his powers in Days of Future Past?
Are all X-Men films in the same canon (practically)
X-Men movies discrepancies
How did Xavier return from the dead at the ending of The Wolverine (2013)
Is the outcome of X-Men Apocalypse already known thanks to the ending of X-Men: Days of Future Past?
Did X-Men Days of Future Past bring any innovation to the time travel theme?
What evidence is there that the two Moira MacTaggerts in the XCU are the same person?
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Hip-Hop Tickets
Wu-Tang Clan Tickets
Find tickets from 70 dollars to Wu-Tang Clan on Wednesday July 31 at 6:00 pm at Wave in Wichita, KS
Wave·Wichita, KS
Find tickets from 64 dollars to Wu-Tang Clan on Thursday August 1 at 8:00 pm at The Stir Cove at Harrahs in Council Bluffs, IA
The Stir Cove at Harrahs·Council Bluffs, IA
Find tickets from 114 dollars to Wu-Tang Clan on Saturday August 3 at 7:30 pm at Riverside Theatre in Milwaukee, WI
Riverside Theatre·Milwaukee, WI
Find tickets from 335 dollars to KAABOO Del Mar (3 Day Pass) with Kings of Leon, Dave Matthews Band, Mumford & Sons, and more on Friday September 13 at 12:00 pm at Del Mar Fairgrounds in Del Mar, CA
Fri · 12:00 pm
KAABOO Del Mar (3 Day Pass) with Kings of Leon, Dave Matthews Band, Mumford & Sons, and more
Del Mar Fairgrounds·Del Mar, CA
Find tickets from 43 dollars to Snoop Dogg with Wu-Tang Clan on Friday September 27 at 7:00 pm at Jiffy Lube Live in Bristow, VA
Snoop Dogg with Wu-Tang Clan
Jiffy Lube Live·Bristow, VA
Find tickets from 71 dollars to Wu-Tang Clan on Friday October 4 at 8:00 pm at The Bomb Factory in Dallas, TX
The Bomb Factory·Dallas, TX
Find tickets from 121 dollars to Wu-Tang Clan on Saturday October 5 at 8:00 pm at Majestic Theatre San Antonio in San Antonio, TX
Majestic Theatre San Antonio·San Antonio, TX
Find tickets from 73 dollars to Wu-Tang Clan on Sunday October 6 at 7:30 pm at Smart Financial Centre in Sugar Land, TX
Smart Financial Centre·Sugar Land, TX
Find tickets from 97 dollars to Wu-Tang Clan with Immortal Technique and Jedi Mind Tricks (16+) on Thursday October 31 at 6:30 pm at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, CO
Wu-Tang Clan with Immortal Technique and Jedi Mind Tricks (16+)
Find tickets from 57 dollars to Wu-Tang Clan on Saturday November 2 at 8:00 pm at Anselmo Valencia Amphitheatre in Tucson, AZ
Anselmo Valencia Amphitheatre·Tucson, AZ
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Wu-Tang Clan Details
Regarded as one of the most influential artists of all time, Wu-Tang Clan is a hip-hop group originally formed in Staten Island, New York in 1991. They have released a number of gold and platinum studio albums, including their 1993 debut, Enter the Wu-Tang Clan (36 Chambers), which is widely considered one of the greatest albums in hip hop history. Wu Tang has been called the number one greatest hip hop group of all time by many in the music industry.
Wu-Tang Clan is a collaborative effort of some of rap and hip hop’s biggest talent, including Method Man, RZA, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah, and Inspectah Deck. GZA is the oldest member of the group and began rapping in the 70s when hip hop was in its infancy in the New York music scene. In addition to Wu-Tang Clan’s members, the group has worked with several solo artists, including the likes of Busta Rhymes, Nas, and Kanye West. In fact, the Wu-Tang Clan has been so instrumental in the evolution of hip-hop and rap that many of today’s artists cite Wu-Tang as a major influence in their work.
But the Wu-Tang Clan’s influence doesn’t end with music. All nine original members of the group were featured in the video game Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style. The game was released for the PlayStation in 1999 in addition to a collector’s edition controller. Wu-Tang Clan members also appeared as themselves in all three video games in the Def Jam series Def Jam Vendetta, Def Jam Fight for NY, and Def Jan: Icon. There are also several video games with soundtracks produced by Wu-Tang Clan members, including Afro Samurai with music produced by RZA.
Wu-Tang Clan also has the distinction of being one of the first groups to move from music to clothing. The group’s executive producer, Oli "Power" Grant, opened Wu Wear stores and is said to have earned $10 million in 1998 alone. Wu-Tang Clan has also partnered with brand powerhouses like Nike to bring Wu-Tang Clan themed products to their fans.
Wu-Tang Clan Setlist
After decades making music, Wu-Tang has plenty of music to fill their setlist. Fans can look forward to hits old and new, including “Miracle,” “Never Let Go,” and “A Better Tomorrow.” The song, “C.R.E.A.M.” is a fan favorite that makes the setlist, and the always popular “Protect Ya Neck” is the perfect opportunity for fans to join in and sing along.
Wu-Tang Clan in Concert
Wu-Tang Clan is a force in concert, encouraging audience participation and interacting with fans often. With hard-hitting hip hop lyrics often comes strong language, so Wu-Tang Clan is a concert experience meant for 18+. Despite their fame and longtime music career that spans decades, the members of Wu-Tang Clan are very down to earth and have even been known to pull fans onstage to sing with them. Their concerts are high-energy and filled with beats that get audiences moving. No matter where you see Wu-Tang Clan, be prepared for anything and expect to leave the concert buzzing with excitement that lasts long after the night is over.
Wu-Tang Clan Ticket Prices
The cost of Wu-Tang Clan tickets can vary based on a host of factors. Please see below for a look at how Wu-Tang Clan ticket prices vary by city, and scroll up on this page to see Wu-Tang Clan tour dates and ticket prices for upcoming concerts in your city.
Ford Amphitheater at Coney Island Boardwalk
House of Blues - Boston
Shrine Expo Hall
Dick's Sporting Goods Park
Franklin Music Hall
Freedom Hill Amphitheatre
Wu-Tang Clan Tour Dates
See below for a list of Wu-Tang Clan tour dates and locations. For all available tickets and to find shows in your city, scroll to the listings at the top of this page.
The Stir Cove at Harrahs
Riverside Theatre
Del Mar Fairgrounds
Majestic Theatre San Antonio
Smart Financial Centre
Morrison, CO
Anselmo Valencia Amphitheatre
Wu-Tang Clan Announce Reunion Shows in Philly, NYC
Use code WUTANG20 at checkout to save $20 off your purchase of $100 or more! A Wu-Tang Clan reunion might not carry the same weight as it did a few years ago--after all, the Clan have been reuniting for festivals for quite a few years now--but the joy of jumping around to "Protect Ya Neck"…
Wave in Wichita, KS
The Stir Cove at Harrahs in Council Bluffs, IA
Riverside Theatre in Milwaukee, WI
Del Mar Fairgrounds in Del Mar, CA
Jiffy Lube Live in Bristow, VA
The Bomb Factory in Dallas, TX
Majestic Theatre San Antonio in San Antonio, TX
Smart Financial Centre in Sugar Land, TX
Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, CO
Anselmo Valencia Amphitheatre in Tucson, AZ
Wu-Tang Clan by City
Wu-Tang Clan in Washington (Jiffy Lube Live)
Wu-Tang Clan in Dallas (The Bomb Factory)
Wu-Tang Clan in Denver (Red Rocks Amphitheatre)
Wu-Tang Clan in Houston (Smart Financial Centre)
Wu-Tang Clan in Tucson (Anselmo Valencia Amphitheatre)
Wu-Tang Clan in San Antonio (Majestic Theatre San Antonio)
Wu-Tang Clan in Milwaukee (Riverside Theatre)
Boston Concerts
Los Angeles Concerts
Anselmo Valencia Amphitheatre Seating Chart
Del Mar Fairgrounds Seating Chart
Jiffy Lube Live Seating Chart
Majestic Theatre San Antonio Seating Chart
Riverside Theatre Seating Chart
Smart Financial Centre Seating Chart
The Bomb Factory Seating Chart
The Stir Cove at Harrahs Seating Chart
Wave Seating Chart
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Teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg
Tag: Arianism
The Lord The Redeemer: 4. The “Son of God” is the human manifestation in which God sent himself into the world. (Continued)
On January 1, 2018 By chungsooIn Spiritual LearningLeave a comment
In the Christian churches of today it is common to call the Lord our Savior “the Son of Mary”; it is rare for people to call him “the Son of God” unless they mean the eternally begotten Son of God. This is a result of Roman Catholics putting Mother Mary’s sainthood above the rest and setting her up as the goddess or queen of all their saints.
Yet in fact, in the process of being glorified the Lord put off everything from his mother and put on everything from his Father, as we will fully demonstrate later on in this work [Sections 102–103]. Because the phrase “the Son of Mary” has become a common expression on everyone’s lips, many horrendous things have poured into the church. This is especially true of those who have not taken into consideration things said in the Word about the Lord—for example, that the Father and he are one, that he is in the Father and the Father is in him, that all things belonging to the Father are his, that he called Jehovah his Father, and that Jehovah the Father called him his Son.
The horrendous things that have poured into the church from our calling him “the Son of Mary” instead of “the Son of God” are that we lose the idea of the Lord’s divinity and we lose everything in the Word that is said about him as the Son of God. Furthermore, this concept lets in Judaism, Arianism, Socinianism, Calvinism in its original form, and finally materialist philosophy. Materialist philosophy brings with it the extreme position that the Son of Mary was Joseph’s child, or that his soul came from his mother, and as a result he is called “the Son of God,” but truly he is not. All people, both clergy and laity, should check to see whether the idea they have spawned and nurtured of the Lord as “the Son of Mary” is any different from the idea of him as a mere human being.
Already by the third century a concept like this was becoming prevalent among Christians, as the Arians were on the rise. To salvage divinity for the Lord, the Council of Nicaea made up “the eternally begotten Son of God.” Although it was a fiction, this concept did succeed at the time in elevating the Lord’s human nature to something divine; and it still works for many even today. It does not work, however, for those who see the hypostatic union as a union of two separate entities, one of whom is superior to the other.
What other outcome could this concept have but the destruction of the entire Christian church? The church is based entirely on worshiping Jehovah in human form; it is based on the Human God. The Lord states in many places that no one can see the Father, recognize him, come to him, or believe in him except through his human manifestation.
If people do not do this, all the church’s precious seeds turn into seeds of little value. Olive seeds turn into pine seeds; seeds from an orange, a lemon, an apple, and a pear turn into seeds from a willow, an elm, a linden, and a holly; seeds from a grapevine turn into seeds from a swamp rush; and wheat and barley turn into chaff. In fact, all forms of spiritual food become like the dust that snakes eat. Our spiritual light then becomes nature’s light; and in the long run it becomes the light of our physical senses, which is in reality a faint, deceptive light. Then we become like a bird that used to fly high but then its wings were cut off and it fell to earth; now as it walks around it does not see more than what lies at its own feet. Then when we think about the church’s spiritual teachings that are necessary for our eternal life, our thoughts about them are no more than the thoughts of a jester. All this is what happens when we regard the Lord God, the Redeemer and Savior, as no more than the Son of Mary, a mere human being.
from True Christianity, Section 94
How angels Talk with Us (Continued)
How Angels Talk with Us
Divine Worship In Heaven (Continued)
chungsoo on The Lord Governs the Hells…
babymix88 on The Lord Governs the Hells…
babymix88 on Each of Us Is Inwardly a Spiri…
chungsoo on The Lord (Continued)
SPiritual Learning
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Trudeau: It’s time to end drinking water advisories in First Nations
TO: Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau
CC: Seamus O'Regan, Federal Minister of Indigenous Services
Personalize the subject (above) and add your comments below:
Dear Prime Minister Trudeau, I call on you to fulfill the promise you made in 2015 that your government would put an end to all long-term drinking water advisories in all First Nations. In 2010, the United Nations declared water a human right. But many First Nations lack access to safe, clean drinking water. In May 2018, there were 174 drinking water advisories in more than 100 First Nations. Many are recurring, and some advisories have been in place for more than 20 years. The lack of access to safe drinking water in First Nations is not only a violation of Indigenous people’s rights, it is a public health crisis. I urge the federal government to declare this public health crisis an emergency and to act immediately with provincial officials to rectify it. Any solution must recognize Indigenous peoples’ right to free, prior and informed consent and their right to self-determination. Drinking water must be publicly controlled and not delivered through a public-private partnership that will result in the privatization of water, a loss of community control and jobs, and risk further violations of the human right to water I find it morally reprehensible that the federal government would use billions of dollars of public money to pay for a pipeline, but has not provided adequate funding for safe water for First Nations. I call on the federal government to work with Indigenous peoples to invest in publicly funded and managed water and wastewater infrastructure and put an end to drinking water advisories in First Nations for good. Sincerely,
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Dam shame: China project threatens rarest orangutan
The hydroelectric dam in a Sumatran rainforest is smack-bang in the ape's only known habitat
A billion-dollar hydroelectric dam development in Indonesia that threatens the habitat of the world's rarest great ape has sparked fresh concerns about the impact of China's globe-spanning infrastructure drive.
The site of the dam in the Batang Toru rainforest on Sumatra island is the only known habitat of the Tapanuli orangutan, a newly discovered species that numbers about 800 individuals in total.
The $1.6bn project, which is expected to be operational by 2022, will cut through the heart of the critically endangered animal's habitat, which is also home to agile gibbons, siamangs and Sumatran tigers.
Indonesian firm PT North Sumatra Hydro Energy is building the power plant with backing from Sinosure, a Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE) that insures overseas investment projects, and the Bank of China, company documents show.
Chinese SOE Sinohydro, which built the mammoth Three Gorges Dam, has been awarded the design and construction contract for the project.
The development is one of dozens being pushed by the government to improve electricity supply throughout the sprawling archipelago, parts of which are regularly plagued by blackouts.
But the Chinese-backed project has sparked fierce resistance from conservationists, who say the potential environmental risk has already seen the World Bank Group shy away from involvement.
Its Chinese backers appear undeterred, however, something critics say underscores the troubling environmental impact of Beijing's trademark "Belt and Road Initiative", which seeks to link Asia, Europe and Africa with a network of ports, highways and railways.
"This issue is becoming in some ways the face of the Belt and Road initiative," Professor Bill Laurance, director of the Centre for Tropical Environmental and Sustainability Science at James Cook University in Australia, told AFP.
"I think this crystallises in a way that people can understand what a tsunami of 7,000-plus projects will mean for nature."
‘Death knell’
Until recently, scientists thought there were only two genetically distinct types of orangutan, Bornean and Sumatran.
But in 1997 biological anthropologist Erik Meijaard observed an isolated population of the great apes in Batang Toru, south of the known habitat for Sumatran orangutans, and scientists began to investigate if it was a unique species.
Researchers studied the DNA, skulls and teeth of 33 orangutans killed in human-animal conflict before concluding that they had indeed discovered a new species, giving it the scientific name Pongo tapanuliensis or Tapanuli orangutan.
The 510-megawatt dam, which will supply peak-load electricity to North Sumatra province, will flood part of the ape's habitat and include a network of roads and high-voltage transmission lines.
Critics say it will fragment the three existing populations, who are living in a tract of forest less than one-fifth the size of the greater Jakarta region, and lead to inbreeding.
Meijaard said the dam would be the "death knell" for the animal.
"Roads bring in hunters (and) settlers -- it's the start, generally, of things falling apart," he told AFP.
Weighing the risk
But the plight of the cinnamon-furred ape seems to have been given little attention in the environmental impact assessment by PT North Sumatra Hydro Energy, according to conservationists and scientists who have seen the document.
In August, the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi) filed a legal challenge against the environmental permit approved by the North Sumatra government, saying it failed to address the dam's impact on wildlife, communities living downstream, or the risk of damage from earthquakes in the seismically active region.
PT North Sumatra Hydro Energy and Indonesia's environment ministry declined to respond to AFP's requests for comment.
Bank of China said it did not comment on specific projects, but added it takes "all relevant factors into consideration when formulating policies and making decisions".
The World Bank, through its sister organisation the International Finance Corporation, declined to comment on any aspect of its initial ties to the project -- outlined in World Bank documents dated March 2017 -- or environmentalists' claims it pulled out due to habitat concerns.
The Batang Toru project is not the only development in Indonesia linked to the Belt and Road initiative, which aims to bolster Chinese influence abroad.
But it might be the most contentious.
"We really hope the financial backers of this project will see there are environmental and social problems with the project and decide not to support the project," said Yuyun Eknas of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi).
"The World Bank has pulled out. We hope the Bank of China will do the same."
Amazon puts faith in robots to pick a more efficient path
By Steven Wood
Doing time in 'hell': Life in Sierra Leone's rundown prisons
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“Changing language is part of the process of changing the world.” – Freire
SlutWalk Hong Kong was born after news about SlutWalk Toronto and SlutWalk London reached the then-research student, Angie Ng, in 2011. As someone who had experienced sexual assault and victim blaming first hand in Hong Kong, she felt that the city needed a SlutWalk to raise awareness about the issues and help change social attitudes so that victims would receive support and care, rather than blame and ridicule.
She then gathered a group of friends, acquaintances and supporters and started preparing for the first SlutWalk Hong Kong march, which was held in December 2011.
Since then, SlutWalk Hong Kong has taken place annually – with a break in 2015 – in order to keep the discussion going and continue raising awareness through social media, media outlets and word of mouth. This has only been possible thanks to the support of organisers, volunteers, speakers, student journalists, marchers and others in Hong Kong who believe in the message of SlutWalk.
We’re proud that our founder, Angie Ng PhD, was named one of the BBC’s 100 inspirational and innovative women for 2017. Born in Toronto, Canada, she is a permanent resident of Hong Kong and splits her time between Hong Kong, Toronto and Europe. Outside of Hong Kong, she travels, writes and speaks at events – she has volunteered for SlutWalk Toronto, organised SlutWalk Passau and attended SlutWalk Geneva in the past. She also continues to volunteer with various organisations, as she has done since her time as an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto.
In order to keep the discussion going throughout the year, SlutWalk Hong Kong welcomes supporters to join the bi-monthly discussion group via one or both of these private groups:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2352756901504601
https://www.meetup.com/SlutWalk-Hong-Kong/
If would like to invite us to speak at your event or volunteer for SlutWalk Hong Kong, please email slutwalkhongkong@gmail.com.
For more information about the SlutWalk movement, please continue below.
(via SlutWalk Toronto) Slutwalk
運動在加拿大多倫多開始，起源於一個警務人員的一句令人震驚的聲明：“為了不成為受害人，女性穿著應避免不羈。” 自從在2011年4月3日在多倫多成功舉行的第一個 Slutwalk後，這運動現已經蔓延在世界各地，包括布宜諾斯艾利斯，洛杉磯，倫敦，柏林和約翰內斯堡。
“SlutWalk began in Toronto in February of 2011. It began because a few people had had ENOUGH of victim-blaming, of slut-shaming and sexual profiling. We had enough of being angry, wanting better education, awareness and treatment and not seeing more about it. …Now, months later Satellite SlutWalks are happening across many different communities, different cities, different countries and with different people.” These SlutWalks are founded by people in their own cities who feel the need to publicly challenge sexual violence.
“SlutWalk is about expressing our unity, fighting to shed the stereotypes and myths of sexual assault and supporting a better understanding of why sexual violence happens, supporting victims and survivors, and putting the blame where it belongs: on those who perpetrate it.”
What’s a “slut”?
Yeah, what does “slut” mean anyway? Anybody who steps out of the rules of patriarchy is called “slut”.
Like many other walks, this walk will bring together not only feminists, but also progressive people from a variety of backgrounds, in order to protest victim blaming in general. This walk is not only for survivors of sexual assault or only for women who have been called “sluts” but also for anyone who is sick of victim blaming and wants to help make this world a more egalitarian place.
Why do labels such as (but not limited to) the undocumented migrant, the poor hotel maid, the single mom struggling to survive, the party girl, the LGBT community member, the prostitute and the slut disqualify some from being considered victims of sexual assault and other crimes? Each and every one of these labels needs to be challeneged! These stereotypes cause many victims all over the world to blame themselves and/or not report the crimes against them. Even when these crimes are reported, authorities may register the victims to be at fault. Is it fair that perpetrators can walk around in broad daylight while victims feel they need to hide in the corner and live with their pain alone… or even sit in jail? NO!
(via SlutWalk Toronto)
* SlutWalk is impassioned and angry but not about hate, and we try not use hateful language.
* Refer to sexual assault, not solely rape, as many are not included in the ideas and definitions of “rape”.
* Do not frame sexual assault as something solely done by men to women.
* SlutWalk aims to challenge the word ‘slut’ AND other degrading words around sexuality and sexual assault in their current mainstream use. We see language as an integral part of victim-blaming and slut- and sex-shaming and something that needs to be discussed. SlutWalk aims to reappropriate the word “slut” to use it in a subversive, self-defining, positive, empowering and respectful way.
* Sexual violence is a gendered crime because women and girls are most often the targets of sexual violence and hateful language around it and men are most often the perpetrators, but all genders are affected. SlutWalk recognizes all gender expressions as those that have been and can be negatively impacted. All genders are welcomed to SlutWalk and can be sluts or allies.
* Some communities/people are at a higher risk of sexual assault than others based on their race, status, work, ability, access, gender expression, identity, and a variety of other factors. We aim to recognize this and come together, in all our diversity, as people who are all affected and unite to fight against it. Not everyone’s experience of sexual violence is the same and many factors could be involved in how people experience sexual violence and how they are treated in the world, and this should be recognized. Engage in dialogue with groups and communities that will help include many diverse voices in your event.
* Use inclusive and respectful language when discussing the diversity of people affected like: men/women and all gender expressions, racialized communities, people of colour, people of different abilities, etc.
* SlutWalk is an impassioned and peaceful stance that aims to engage others in dialogue.
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Red Eléctrica baffles investors | Markets
Red Eléctrica (REE) has started the year with intensity. It reached a record high of 20.24 euros in the first days of February, then announced the purchase of 89.68% of Hispasat to Abertis for 949 million and this week it presented the results of 2018 and a new strategic plan until 2022. The reaction from the market to a purchase and a strategic plan that modifies the business profile known up to now has nevertheless created confusion among investors, accustomed to a value without frights. The stock falls 5% since the announcement of the purchase of Hispasat.
Several analysts have revised the recommendation downwards, with the majority of the sales councils, according to the Bloomberg consensus. This cloud over the company has to do with different factors. On the one hand, the purchase of Hispasat creates suspicion among investors for "lack of clarity about its strategic fit", according to Renta 4 and o the absence of "direct synergies", in Bankinter's opinion.
The electricity infrastructure manager enters with Hispasat in the management of telecommunications, in a step that reduces reliance on regulated revenues. But, in Moody's opinion, the acquisition will also cause some deterioration in REE's risk profile (it will be financed entirely with external debt) and its financial ratios. It estimates that its leverage will increase between 58% and 60% in 2019 compared to 56.2% in 2017. On the other hand, it does not rule out that some competitive pressure will arise in the medium and long term from other satellite operators.
Fitch at first was more pessimistic and threatened a possible downgrade of the rating, located in A, but has finally confirmed it along with a stable outlook. For its part, S & P has ratified its long-term rating on REE in A-, although it considers "a complex strategic adjustment". S & P highlights the financial strength of the company, supported by its regulated activities, which compensates for exposure to businesses that are not. In his opinion, "it has enough financial margin".
Bankinter also highlights that REE has financial margin to address the purchase without affecting the rating but aims to Some disappointment in the strategic plan, the other one of the factors that have weighed on the value. The annual net profit growth between 2018 and 2022, of 1% on average, is modest compared to 5% of the previous strategic plan, a difference that is explained in the cut in regulated return -the company will enter 110 million less with the framework regulatory framework that begins in 2020- and the scarce margin for improvement in the cost of debt. And the dividend per share, after rising 7% in 2019 to 1.05 euros, then remains unchanged at 1 euro.
"It's early to think what will happen. Red Eléctrica is carrying out projects that seek to increase the radius of action that implies an increase in fixed costs, something that is happening at a general level in a sector that is in the process of expansion, "explains Miguel Mommobela, an analyst at XTB. "It has an important route, but it's too early to decide," he says.
"We are positive with the value and with what he has corrected we would take advantage of to take positions"Says Susana Felpeto, deputy director of variable income at atl Capital.
In Berenberg they recommend instead to sell. The firm says that "The market does not discount enough the most challenging perspectives facing Red Eléctrica and Enagás". In REE it foresees "a radical change marked by the contraction of profits and the end of the growth of the uninterrupted dividend in the midst of regulatory uncertainty".
The analysts of the firm consider that the Government's decision to return to the National Commission of the Competition Market the power to set the prices of tolls on electricity and gas networks "will put on the table the excessive retribution of Spanish networks in relation to its comparables and market conditions. " In this sense, Morgan Stanley warns of the "hard blow that could have in the company the transfer of some powers in the setting of electric prices".
Regarding the current political situation in Spain, with the announcement of elections in April, the president of Red Eléctrica, Jordi Sevilla, has stated that there is "the guarantee of continuing with the road map of the strategic plan with total independence of the result".
Keys of the company
Retribution The company will propose at the next shareholders meeting the distribution of a gross dividend of 0.9831 euros gross corresponding to the results of 2018; 7% more on what was paid in 2017. In July it will make a complementary payment of 0.7104 euros gross.
Increase. The new strategic plan includes giving back to the shareholder in 2019 with 1.05 euros, 7% more than the one fixed for 2018. Until 2022, the dividend per share will remain at least 1 euro.
performance. Red Eléctrica offers a dividend yield of 5.55%, higher than the market. Its pay out ratio exceeds 70%.
Quotation. The value accumulates a revaluation of 100% since 2013 and more than 20% from the lows of 2018. Some analysts think that this almost uninterrupted climb has contributed to precipitate sales in recent days. It has a capitalization of more than 10,100 million.
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Tags: believe, dependence, disconcert, doubt, electrical network, entry, grade, hispasat, investor, lower, purchase, regular, synergy
FAO calls on Paraguay to apply food labeling that warns of risks
Canarian investors are 13% more fearful than the rest of Spain
IICA and Argentina will promote the production of honey in the Caribbean
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$4.6 Million STEM Ed Grant to Help Expand Feeder Program
By Joshua Bolkan
The Richardson Independent School District (RISD) is expanding a successful STEM education program for more than 10,000 students with the help of a $4.6-million grant from a private partner.
The program is based on an earlier feeder pattern initiative begun at the district's Berkner High School, dubbed STEM Academy, that offered three different career strands in STEM fields, including engineering robotics, aeronautical engineering and biotechnology. With the help of the grant, the district will add two new strands, cybersecurity and STEM management, beginning next year.
The grant comes from Texas Instruments and will be disbursed over three years to Educate Texas to help develop the district's STEM for All concept, which aims to embed STEM education and experiences into learning from pre-K through graduation. To implement the STEM for All concept, grant funds will be used to:
Offer professional development for teachers, including professional education for teaching STEM through project-based learning, support from STEM education coaches and the possibility of earning master's degrees;
Improve student engagement through project-based learning, STEM clubs, competitions and community outreach and engagement related to STEM;
Adopt a contextual-based curriculum and instruction designed to focus on college and career readiness while expanding opportunities such as advanced placement and dual-credit coursework; and
Cooperate with partners in higher ed and industry to insure the relevance and sustainability of the program.
To track the efficacy of the program, the district plans to monitor the success of components in various ways, including tracking the number of teachers with advanced degrees in STEM, student passing rates in the state's standardized assessments, any change in existing achievement gaps for student demographic groups and the increase in number of AP courses offered by Berkner, among others.
"RISD is committed to changing the culture within the Berkner feeder pattern through STEM-infused curriculum that ensures academic rigor, student engagement and relevancy across the entire pre-K-12 curriculum," said Jeannie Stone, superintendent of RISD, in a prepared statement. "STEM is not something we do, it's who we are, which is why RISD strives to inspire our students from their very first day of school to explore and cultivate their interests to pursue a career pathway through a STEM culture."
The grant follows on the success of an earlier grant from TI to the Lancaster ISD for a similar project in 2012.
"When we began to work with the TI Foundation and Lancaster ISD in 2012 to create a STEM district, we expected the successes and outcomes of LISD to serve as a rigorous STEM learning and teaching model that could be scaled to other Texas school districts," said George Tang, managing director of Educate Texas, in a prepared statement. "We're thrilled that the original expectation is now being realized with Richardson ISD. This opportunity allows us to extend our impact to the lives of 10,000-plus students and ultimately inspire and prepare them for great futures."
Joshua Bolkan is contributing editor for Campus Technology, THE Journal and STEAM Universe. He can be reached at jbolkan@gmail.com.
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Alternative Sanctions and the Federal Tax Law: Symbols, Shaming, and Social Norm Management as a Substitute for Effective Tax Policy
Iowa Law Review, Vol. 89, No. 863, 2004
77 Pages Posted: 1 Jun 2004
See all articles by Michael S. Kirsch
Michael S. Kirsch
On several occasions in the past decade, when confronted with taxpayers taking advantage of the Internal Revenue Code in ways that Congress considered objectionable, Congress responded in an unusual way. Rather than merely modifying the Internal Revenue Code to alter the tax consequences of the taxpayer's actions, or imposing traditional civil or criminal penalties on the taxpayer, Congress turned to alternative sanctions. For example, in response to United States citizens who renounce citizenship to avoid taxes, Congress enacted public shaming provisions that require publication of the individuals' names in the Federal Register and modified the federal immigration laws to banish the former citizens from re-entering the United States. Similarly, in response to United States corporations that reincorporate abroad to reduce United States tax liability, Congress enacted legislation purporting to ban the corporation from entering into future government contracts. This Article, relying primarily on the public shaming and immigration-law banishment provisions applicable to individuals who renounce citizenship to avoid taxes, analyzes the alternative sanctions from three perspectives: their instrumental effects, their expressive function in altering social norms, and their role as symbolic legislation. This Article concludes that alternative sanctions, when used to deter or condemn behavior for which the tax code provides a tax benefit, produce significant instrumental, expressive, and symbolic problems. This Article suggests a narrower role for alternative sanctions, as a limited tool of tax enforcement, that might avoid these problems.
Keywords: tax, taxation, sanctions, alternative sanctions, immigration, shaming
JEL Classification: H2, H24, H25, H26
Kirsch, Michael S., Alternative Sanctions and the Federal Tax Law: Symbols, Shaming, and Social Norm Management as a Substitute for Effective Tax Policy. Iowa Law Review, Vol. 89, No. 863, 2004. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=552730
Michael S. Kirsch (Contact Author)
Notre Dame Law School ( email )
Notre Dame, IN 46556-0780
HOME PAGE: http://law.nd.edu/people/faculty-and-administration/teaching-and-research-faculty/michael-kirsch/
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Partial Success
A blog about Dungeon World, GM'ing and its pitfalls
Archive | Lessons Learned RSS for this section
in Adventure, Dungeon World, GM Stuff, Lessons Learned, Musings, One-Shots
Experiments with one-shots
I’ve begun fooling around with one-shots over hangouts again. This time around I’ve been asking for feedback on my GM’ing, and boy, people don’t hold punches, do they?
After having my selfesteem destroyed a few times over (yes, I’m overly dramatizing), I have learned a lot of things, about what mistakes I make when GM’ing.
There’s a very fine line, I’ve noticed, about how much improvisation is good improvisation. Yes, that’s right; there actually seems to be an upper limit! For me when I run one-shots at least.
The thing is, when I GM a totally improvised session, I get exhausted near the end. Like really exhausted. Not because we’ve played for around four hours straight with only two or three very short brakes, but because it is hard work to run a session with zero framework before play begins.
I’ve tried a lot of different things out the last few days, and here are some of my intermediary conclusions.
Pitch the game with a strong premise
When you sit down to play, people want to make characters and then find out how these characters fit together and “what they do” to get by. Basically why they are adventuring together.
While that isn’t wrong, it can cause some very unfocused play and characters that don’t really fit well with each other. It doesn’t necessarily force this to happen, but it easily can. You might argue that the GM has great control over this, but the more you rely on the GM to have the skill to resolve these issues, well, the more mistakes that GM will eventually make. It’s simply better to remove the need, especially for a novice GM.
If you start out with a premise, like “adventuring band for hire”, then we have established two things; the party is already a coherent group of adventurers, and they are getting paid to do what they do. It doesn’t take much effort to make the characters have some history together.
The premise can be worked out in the beginning of the session, but you can save a lot of time doing it in advance.
Have a clear objective
In a one-shot, we don’t have a lot of time for mystery. We don’t have time to start from scratch. It’s much easier to start in medias res, with some basic information and a very solid lead on how to get more.
The players literally have to have an immediate goal when play begins, otherwise they’ll just poke around doing next to nothing for around an hour of game time.
These goals can even be a part of your premise! “Band of adventurers hired to delve into the Pyramid of Sorrow to fetch the Hellslayer sword”. Now the players will be aware that it’s going to be a Dungeon Crawl, which means that they can choose options and classes that makes them better at that.
Everybody likes to have cool stuff to do, right?
Finishing thoughts
There’s a lot more to this, but I still need to gather my thoughts on the matter. I’m experimenting a lot at the moment to make these things work, and there’s a lot of do’s and don’ts.
I’m going to focus on the do’s that minimizes the need for skill on the GM part. Dungeon World already helps a lot here with the Principles, but you still need to think a lot when improvising. Mostly the rule book focuses on how to start campaigns, not one-shots, and having a “first session” as a one-shot often mean we spend a lot of time establishing facts that we don’t have time to use.
One-shots needs to be focused, because we don’t have time to deal with all the details of a full campaign, so I’m trying to set up a few guidelines on how to do that.
More to follow!
in Dungeon World, Lessons Learned
Why improv is so damn fun!
I knew improv was fun before I began playing Dungeon World, but this game has been a key factor in enabling me to actually play improv-based games, because the system feel so natural to me. It is without a doubt the easiest game I’ve ever tried to GM. Sure, it has a learning curve, but once you get the paradigm shift wrapped around your brain, this game almost plays itself.
But that’s not what this lesson learned is about; it’s about why I think improvising everything is fun, and why I think you should try it out. This lesson learned is mainly inspired by my session with Misha and James, as well as my three session with Eric and Bastien. The adventures we’ve played have been major milestones in my effort to perfect my GM’ing skills.
GM’ing is a load of work in some games, it’s tedious sometimes, and most GM’s I know would really just rather be a player for the same reasons. Ever since I moved to Aarhus, I’ve sat on the GM’s side of the table, with few exceptions.
Previously, I thought that the core premise for roleplaying games was player agency. Player agency is on every one’s lips at the moment it seems, and I’ll borrow a handy definition from Papers and Pencils:
A player with agency is one who is able to make meaningful decisions about their actions, with regards to the game world.
I no longer believe player agency to be the core premise of a satisfying roleplaying session. It’s still important, tremendously so I’d even suggest, but it’s only a core premise. The other is play to find out what happens. I think the first is what makes it fun to be a player, while the latter is what makes it fun to GM.
The thing is though, that these two premises are inseparable. You cannot play to find out what happens if the players doesn’t have any meaningful choices. You cannot have player agency if the GM has planned everything from the beginning of the game, and will apply force to make sure it happens the way he planned.
So, why is improv so damn fun? Because it forces the GM to play to find out what happens, and in turn enforces player agency. You have to build upon the foundation laid out by you players, and in turn, they will take the story in wonderful directions, ones you’d never have taken on your own!
I’m at a point where I’ve become confident that all games I’ll ever GM will be better off if I plan just about nothing. I simply love to ask questions about the PC’s and the world, until I know what both the players and myself want to play! I have GM’ed, almost consistently, for the past 5 to 6 years, but I’ve never had so much fun since I stopped planning ahead.
If you don’t believe me, then I’ll encourage you not to take my word for it; try it yourself! Pick up that game you always wanted to try, and call your friends. Tell them the deal; no prep, only improv. And then just try it out. You’ll be amazed how different the experience is, and how easy improvising actually is once you get the game rolling.
This sounds like an odd name for a lesson learned, but it is in fact very fitting. I’m unsure as to how many people this will apply to, but it sure is something I have learned.
Even though I mostly GM, it is only recently that I’ve started playing Dungeon World. When you ask questions, then never expect the players to give you answers that you want to hear. Deal with it. Not all answers sound great when you get them, but lets face it; not everything you say as a GM is awesome either.
The really strange thing is that no matter what answer you get, it always seem like an awesome answer after the session. Falafael, the Fighter from my recently ended three-shot, had to explain where he had learned to cast spells. He answered in a mildly jesting tone that he had learned it in “elf high school”.
I knew that the game was not meant to be very seriously toned, we had discussed that prior to the game. Yet somehow this answer just seemed dumb when he gave it. After the session though, I realized I was just being elitist about the game, and I actually felt bad just for thinking it. It was a pretty fun answer, and it actually spoke volumes about his past. His character had formal education.
So when you feel that a player gives you a “dumb” answer, then deal with it. The player wouldn’t give it to you if he didn’t like it himself, and it isn’t just your game anyway; it belongs to the group.
in Dungeon World, GM Stuff, Lessons Learned
Don’t hold back!
It’s a lot more fun to win despite adversity than through the sheer lack of it. That’s a very important lesson learned from playing with Eric and Bastien.
I see this question a lot of times on the net: “How much can I throw at my players in Dungeon World?” Short answer: All you’ve got!
Dungeon World really empowers the players, sometimes to a scale where the GM can feel a bit powerless. If they continue to roll well, they can more or less do whatever they want, as long as it does not contradict the fiction.
As the principles goes, we are supposed to be a fan of the characters. We are doing that by letting them be awesome. They are awesome when they win despite the odds, not because of them. Also, we should think dangerous but we shouldn’t limit it to thought.
Keeping a hand over the character only blocks their limelight. Think about your own campaigns; which moments were the most exiting? The ones where the players leveled armies without breaking a sweat? I’m guessing the answer to this question is a big resounding “no”.
In my last game I actually had a player roll Last Breath. Just telling a player to roll that made me shiver. I really wanted to make the roll meaningful, and if he had rolled a miss instead of a hit, I’d probably had let him be the one that toppled the tower over, sacrificing himself to save his reality. That would have been an epic ending, but I’m still glad both characters survived.
Without danger, adventure is meaningless. Don’t hold back, and give them all you’ve got! If you know that the characters will survive, then they are not really in danger.
You can never ask too many questions!
I was tempted to word this lesson learned as “you can never ask enough questions”, but that might be stretching it a little. Some of my biggest “regrets” as a GM is that I don’t ask enough questions, as asking questions is to ask for player input.
There’s a principle called “ask questions and use the answers”, and I should really get better at following it.
During the second session in “The Rise of Ri’leth” adventure, Eric wanted his Fighter to multiclass for wizard spell casting. I figured that I would find a way for him to loot a spell book or something, as it is required for spell casting. This was a big mistake, one that I felt required retconning in the third session.
I failed to let him find a spell book, which I’m almost embarrassed about. I wasn’t a fan of his character when I didn’t give one to him. He bought the advanced move fair and square.
This could easily have been resolved in the beginning of the second session with one simple question: “How did you find that brand new spell book under your arm?” If I had done this, then I’d been a lot more proud of that session. Don’t get me wrong, the session was great, but it would really have made that session even better.
Another reason why asking questions might be important is that you sometime have an awesome idea for a hard move, but you are unsure whether or not your player will think it as awesome as you do. In the third session of the three-shot, Falafael the Fighter wanted to trip a cultist leader to prevent his escape. He rolled a miss of course, which he always does, and I got an idea; why not let the cultist leader fall onto his own blade, atop the alter, making him the last sacrifice in the ritual?
In my head, it just sounded so funny and so obvious, but I was afraid to do it since it might seem a little “railroady”. So I just said to Eric that I was tempted to do it, looking for confirmation that he thought it would be cool. He just told me to do it.
No matter what he answered, I would have learned something about what Eric wanted in the game, which really just made it a win-win question.
Asking questions is one of those things that just make this question so damn great. In more traditional games, I wouldn’t feel it was appropriate to do it. And even if I did, I wouldn’t be able to improvise so heavily as I do in DW. I’m not that confident in my ability to improvise entire encounters in D&D, or even World of Darkness, but in Dungeon World it’s a breeze for me.
So, lesson learned: Ask more questions! About everything!
Lessons learned, chances burned.
If you have tried Dungeon World, You will know that the gaming paradigm is slightly different from more traditional games. After GMing it six times, there’s a lot of stuff that I’ve learned and I want to share that.
In the future, these “lessons learned” will be posted under the category of the same name. It will make it easier for both you and myself to browse for them in the future.
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Specific stuff Select Category Actual Play (13) Adventure (11) Apocalypse World (1) Compendium Classes (5) Custom Moves (1) Dungeon World (49) Fantastic Locations (2) Fronts (5) Gaming Resources (3) GM Stuff (22) GM’ing the World (1) Homebrew (14) Lessons Learned (6) Magic Items (2) Microscope (2) Monsters (4) Musings (16) New Athion Campaign (2) One-Shots (11) Online Campaign (1) Rants (2) Review (2) The Rise of Ri’leth (4) The Tempest Islands (2) Uncategorized (7)
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US20140368421A1 - Automatically switching between input modes for a user interface - Google Patents
Automatically switching between input modes for a user interface Download PDF
Boris Smus
2013-06-13 Application filed by Google LLC filed Critical Google LLC
2013-06-14 Assigned to GOOGLE INC. reassignment GOOGLE INC. ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS). Assignors: SMUS, BORIS
2017-10-02 Assigned to GOOGLE LLC reassignment GOOGLE LLC CHANGE OF NAME (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS). Assignors: GOOGLE INC.
G06F3/00—Input arrangements for transferring data to be processed into a form capable of being handled by the computer; Output arrangements for transferring data from processing unit to output unit, e.g. interface arrangements
G06F3/01—Input arrangements or combined input and output arrangements for interaction between user and computer
G06F3/03—Arrangements for converting the position or the displacement of a member into a coded form
G06F3/033—Pointing devices displaced or positioned by the user, e.g. mice, trackballs, pens or joysticks; Accessories therefor
G06F3/038—Control and interface arrangements therefor, e.g. drivers or device-embedded control circuitry
G06F3/041—Digitisers, e.g. for touch screens or touch pads, characterised by the transducing means
G06F3/0412—Digitisers structurally integrated in a display
G06F3/048—Interaction techniques based on graphical user interfaces [GUI]
G06F3/0481—Interaction techniques based on graphical user interfaces [GUI] based on specific properties of the displayed interaction object or a metaphor-based environment, e.g. interaction with desktop elements like windows or icons, or assisted by a cursor's changing behaviour or appearance
A system and machine-implemented method for automatically switching between input modes for a user interface. A user interface is displayed in a first input mode for a first input type. A determination is made that a predetermined event has occurred, wherein the predetermined event is of a type other than the first input type or a second input type. In response to the determination, the user interface is switched from the first input mode for the first input type to a second input mode for the second input type.
The present disclosure generally relates to user interfaces and, in particular, to automatically switching between input modes for a user interface.
Modern computing devices can be complex in their input profile. For example, smartphones can have both a touch screen and a physical keyboard. In another example, laptops can have standard keyboard/trackpad input as well as an external mouse, and in some cases even a touch screen. In addition, these devices can have cameras and microphones integrated into them for more specialized applications. Users can choose between all of these input modalities to accomplish their tasks. The users can also change the configuration of their devices, as in the case of a tablet that can be attached and detached from a keyboard, or a mouse that can be plugged into a laptop.
The disclosed subject matter relates to automatically switching between input modes for a user interface. The method comprises displaying a user interface in a first input mode for a first input type, and determining that a predetermined event has occurred, wherein the predetermined event is of a type other than the first input type or a second input type. The method further comprises switching, in response to the determination, the user interface from the first input mode for the first input type to a second input mode for the second input type.
The disclosed subject matter further relates to system for automatically changing between input modes for a user interface. The system comprises one or more processors, and a machine-readable medium comprising instructions stored therein, which when executed by the processors, cause the processors to perform operations comprising displaying a user interface in a first input mode for a first input type. The operations further comprise determining that a predetermined event has occurred, wherein the predetermined event is of a type other than the first input type or a second input type, and switching, in response to the determination, the user interface from the first input mode for the first input type to a second input mode for the second input type, wherein the first input type corresponds to one of mouse input or touch input, and wherein the second input type corresponds to the other one of the mouse input or the touch input.
The disclosed subject matter also relates to a computer-implemented method for automatically switching between input modes for a user interface. The method comprises displaying a user interface in a first input mode for a first input type, and determining that a predetermined event has occurred. The method further comprises switching, in response to the determination, the user interface from the first input mode for the first input type to a second input mode for the second input type, wherein each of the first input mode and the second input mode includes one or more graphical components, and wherein the switching comprises resizing the one or more graphical components.
It is understood that other configurations of the subject technology will become readily apparent to those skilled in the art from the following detailed description, wherein various configurations of the subject technology are shown and described by way of illustration. As will be realized, the subject technology is capable of other and different configurations and its several details are capable of modification in various other respects, all without departing from the scope of the subject technology. Accordingly, the drawings and detailed description are to be regarded as illustrative in nature and not as restrictive.
Features of the subject technology are set forth in the appended claims. However, for purpose of explanation, several embodiments of the subject technology are set forth in the following figures.
FIG. 1 illustrates an example network environment which can provide for automatically switching between input modes for a user interface.
FIG. 2 illustrates an example of a user interface displayed in a mouse mode for mouse input.
FIG. 3 illustrates an example of a user interface displayed in a touch mode for touch input.
FIG. 4 illustrates an example process which provides for automatically switching between input modes for a user interface.
FIG. 5 illustrates another example process which provides for automatically switching between input modes for a user interface.
FIG. 6 conceptually illustrates an example electronic system with which some implementations of the subject technology can be implemented.
The detailed description set forth below is intended as a description of various configurations of the subject technology and is not intended to represent the only configurations in which the subject technology may be practiced. The appended drawings are incorporated herein and constitute a part of the detailed description. The detailed description includes specific details for the purpose of providing a thorough understanding of the subject technology. However, it will be clear and apparent to those skilled in the art that the subject technology is not limited to the specific details set forth herein and may be practiced without these specific details. In some instances, well-known structures and components are shown in block diagram form in order to avoid obscuring the concepts of the subject technology.
As noted above, modern computing devices can be complex in their input profile. For example, smartphones can have both a touch screen and a physical keyboard. In another example, laptops can have standard keyboard/trackpad input as well as an external mouse, and in some cases even a touch screen. In addition, these devices can have cameras and microphones integrated into them for more specialized applications. Users can choose between all of these input modalities to accomplish their tasks. The users can also change the configuration of their devices, as in the case of a tablet that can be attached and detached from a keyboard, or a mouse that can be plugged into a laptop.
One problem with such devices is that as users go between input modes, user interfaces typically do not change, even though there are significant differences in modes. For example, going from mouse to touch, a user will generally hold the screen closer and have coarser input.
In this regard, a device can display a user interface in a touch mode or a mouse mode. In the touch mode, there is no hover state and larger interface elements (e.g., buttons or other targets) may be required. This is because touch typically requires that the user be closer to the screen. On the other hand, in the mouse mode, interface elements can be smaller (e.g., due to the finer pointer) and hover functionality can be provided. The subject technology provides for adapting a user interface to the user's current input mode.
The subject disclosure provides for automatically switching between input modes for a user interface. A user interface is displayed in a first input mode for a first input type. A determination is made that a predetermined event has occurred, wherein the predetermined event is of a type other than the first input type or a second input type. For example, the predetermined event can be, but is not limited to, user inactivity for a predetermined time period, the user (e.g., a user's hand or finger) being within a predetermined distance of a touchscreen, or the connecting of an external device. In response to the determination, the user interface is switched from the first input mode for the first input type to a second input mode for the second input type.
FIG. 1 illustrates an example network environment which can provide for automatically switching between input modes for a user interface. A network environment 100 includes a number of electronic devices 102-106 communicably connected to a server 110 by a network 108. Each of electronic devices 102-106 can include a touchscreen, which can be built into the device itself or can be electronically connected to the device (e.g., as a peripheral device). Server 110 includes a processing device 112 and a data store 114. Processing device 112 executes computer instructions stored in data store 114, for example, to provide content (e.g., a website or other display content) to any of electronic devices 102-106.
Electronic devices 102-106 can be mobile devices (e.g., smartphones, tablet computers, PDAs, and laptop computers), portable media players, desktop computers or other appropriate computing devices. In the example of FIG. 1, electronic device 102 is depicted as a smartphone, electronic device 104 is depicted as a desktop computer, and electronic device 106 is depicted as a tablet computer.
In some example aspects, any of the electronic devices 102-106 may obtain application data (e.g., web page data), and content (e.g., images, video, text, links) corresponding to the application data to be displayed on a touchscreen of the electronic device (e.g., 102-106). In some example aspects, the content can be transmitted from server 110 via the network 108 to the electronic devices 102-106. In other example aspects, the content can be stored in a storage component (e.g., hard disk, RAM, ROM, etc.) of the respective electronic devices 102-106.
Any of electronic devices 102-106 can display a user interface in a first input mode for a first input type. The electronic device (e.g., any of 102-106) determines that a predetermined event has occurred, wherein the predetermined event is of a type other than the first input type or a second input type.
In response to the determination, the electronic device switches the user interface from the first input mode for the first input type to a second input mode for the second input type. For example, an application (e.g., web browser) running on the electronic device may provide different sizes for graphical components (e.g., buttons, tabs) or may enable/disable hover content depending on the input mode. The different sizes for graphical components can correspond to different display sizes, or to different activation area sizes without changing the display size.
Alternatively, or in addition, server 110 may provide for the switching between the first input mode and the second input mode. For example, the electronic device (e.g., 102-106) may provide an indication of which input mode to operate in. In response to the received indication, server 110 (e.g., a web server) may provide different content to the electronic device. Such content can include, but is not limited to, different sizes for graphical components (e.g., different display sizes and/or activation area sizes for buttons of a website) or hover content/no hover content, depending on the input mode. In the event that the input mode switches, the application can send a new indication of the desired input mode, and server 110 can provide new content accordingly.
Server 110 may be any system or device having a processor, a memory, and communications capability for providing content to the electronic devices. In some example aspects, server 110 can be a single computing device such as a computer server. In other embodiments, server 110 can represent more than one computing device working together to perform the actions of a server computer (e.g., cloud computing).
Network 108 can include, for example, any one or more of a cellular network, a satellite network, a personal area network (PAN), a local area network (LAN), a wide area network (WAN), a broadband network (BBN), the Internet, and the like. Further, the network 108 can include, but is not limited to, any one or more of the following network topologies, including a bus network, a star network, a ring network, a mesh network, a star-bus network, tree or hierarchical network, and the like.
FIG. 2 illustrates an example of a user interface displayed in a mouse mode for mouse input. User interface 200 includes graphical components which are displayed for use with mouse input. In the example of FIG. 2, mouse pointer 206 can be used to interact with the graphical components of user interface 200.
For example, the graphical components of user interface 200 include buttons 202 a, 202 b and 202 c. Buttons 202 a, 202 b and 202 c are used for minimizing, maximizing/restoring down, and closing an application (or application window), respectively. In addition, user interface 200 includes buttons 204 a-204 g for interacting with a content portion 208. For example, if user interface 200 corresponds to a mapping application, buttons 204 a-204 g can be used for operations including but not limited to panning, zooming, marking locations, specifying locations and switching map views.
In the mouse mode (e.g., for user interface 200), the graphical components (e.g., buttons 202 a-c, buttons 204 a-g) can be smaller in size relative to the touch mode. The smaller graphical components can correspond to a smaller display size for the graphical components. Alternatively, the smaller graphical components can correspond to smaller activation areas for the graphical components, without reduced display size. In example aspects, smaller targets and/or less space between targets can be used in the mouse mode, given the finer pointer motion and accuracy of a mouse relative to touch input.
In addition to smaller graphical components, the mouse mode can also provide for hover events. For example, upon a hover event (e.g., a mouseover and/or a mouseout), a user interface (e.g., user interface 200) can display hover content such as alternative (ALT) content. Alternatively, or in addition, upon the hover event, the user interface can open a menu or a submenu with additional interface components.
FIG. 3 illustrates an example of a user interface displayed in a touch mode for touch input. User interface 300 includes graphical components which are displayed for use with touch input. In the example of FIG. 3, finger 306 (e.g., or a stylus) can be used to interact with the graphical components of user interface 300.
In the touch mode (e.g., for user interface 300), the graphical components (e.g., buttons 302 a-c, buttons 304 a-g) can be larger in size relative to the mouse mode. The larger graphical components can correspond to a larger display size for the graphical components. Alternatively, the larger graphical components can correspond to larger activation areas for the graphical components, without increased display size. In example aspects, larger targets and/or more space between targets can be used in the touch mode, given the reduced precision of touch input relative to mouse input.
In example aspects, the touch mode may display fewer interface components (e.g., tools) at a given time relative to the mouse mode. Interface components normally shown in the mouse mode may be hidden from an initial or default view in the touch mode, and made accessible through additional interface(s) (e.g., a “show additional tools” button). In general, relative to the mouse mode, the touch mode can be adapted to be more touch-friendly for a user. For example, a photo editing application may show fewer tools and generally adapt to be more touch-friendly in the touch mode, relative to the mouse mode.
In addition, the touch mode may not provide for hover content, such as menus or ALT content which appear in response to a hover event. Thus, in lieu of the hover content provided in the mouse mode, alternative interface components can be used to provide similar content in the touch mode. For example, instead of menus or submenus which appear in response to a hover event in the mouse mode, a user interface (e.g., user interface 300) in the touch mode can display additional tabs or menus. These additional tabs or menus can always be displayed by default, or can appear in response to touch input. In another example, instead of ALT content which appears in response to a hover event in the mouse mode, the user interface in the touch mode can display additional content by default or in response to touch input.
With reference to FIGS. 2 and 3, there are different ways for automatically switching between the mouse mode and the touch mode. In response to a predetermined event, a user interface for an application can switch from the mouse mode (e.g., of user interface 200) to the touch mode (e.g., user interface 300), and vice versa.
The automatic switching between modes can be in response to receipt of touch input or mouse input. In one example, an application displaying a user interface in the touch mode can immediately switch to the mouse mode in response to mouse input. The application (e.g., a finger painting application) can default to display in the touch mode. However, upon receipt of mouse input or keyboard input, the user interface in the application can immediately switch to the mouse mode, which includes smaller interface components and may include hover content. Thus, the application can include program code which listens for an event corresponding to mouse input or keyboard input, and which responds to the event using an event handler.
In another example, an application displaying a user interface in the mouse mode can immediately switch to the touch mode in response to touch input. For, the application (e.g., a web browser) can default to display in the mouse mode. However, upon receipt of touch input, the user interface in the application can immediately switch to the touch mode, which includes larger interface components and does not provide hover functionality. Thus, the application can include program code which listens for an event corresponding to touch input, and which responds to the event using an event handler.
In addition to switching modes upon receipt of touch input or mouse input, it is possible for switching to occur in response to predetermined events of a type other than touch input or mouse input. For applications which include a default input mode (e.g., the mouse mode or the touch mode), the switch from the non-default mode to the default mode can occur after period of inactivity has been detected.
As noted above, an application (e.g., a finger painting application) defaulting to the touch mode can switch to the mouse mode in response to receiving mouse or keyboard input. In addition to this switch, example aspects provide for switching from the mouse mode (e.g., the non-default mode) back to the touch mode (e.g., the default mode) after a predetermined period of time since the last keyboard or mouse input.
More particularly, the application (e.g., the finger painting application) can initiate a timer upon receipt of keyboard or mouse input, and can further determine whether a preset period of time has passed since receipt of the last keyboard or mouse input. If the preset period of time has passed, the application can switch the user interface from the mouse mode to the touch mode. Of course, such switching can also occur for an application (e.g., a web browser) which defaults to display in the mouse mode, where the user interface switches from the touch mode back to the mouse mode in response to a preset period of time passing since receipt of the last touch input.
In addition to the foregoing predetermined events, automatic switching can occur in response to proximity of a user (e.g., hand or finger) to a touchscreen displaying the user interface. For example, when an application is displaying in the mouse mode, one or more sensors (e.g., cameras) can be used to detect the proximity of a user's finger to the touchscreen. When the user (or user movement) is within a predetermined distance of the touchscreen, this can suggest the user intends to use touch input. In response to detecting the proximity of the finger, the application can automatically switch from the mouse mode to the touch mode, prior to the user actually touching the screen.
Automatic switching can also occur in response to determining that an external device has been connected to the device displaying the user interface. For example, the device running the application with the user interface can correspond to a tablet computer, and the user interface can be displayed in the touch mode for touch input. The user of the tablet computer may connect an external device, such as an external keyboard or a mouse, to the tablet computer. In example aspects, connecting to the external device can correspond to docking the tablet computer to a docking station which includes the external keyboard/mouse. In response to connecting the external device, the application can switch the user interface from the touch mode to the mouse mode. Thus, the application can include program code which listens for an event corresponding to connecting to an external device, and which responds to the event using an event handler.
It should be noted that each of the foregoing predetermined events can separately initiate switching between input modes. For example, for an application (e.g., finger paint application) which defaults to the touch mode, a mouseclick event can switch the user interface to the mouse mode, and a predetermined amount of time without mouse input can cause the application to switch back to the touch mode. Upon docking the device to an external keyboard or mouse, the user interface can once again switch to the mouse mode. Further, upon detection that the user's finger is within a predetermined distance to the touchscreen, the user interface can switch back to the touch mode. Of course, this is one example of switching between modes based on different predetermined events, and other combinations of events are possible.
It should also be noted that since switching between the mouse mode and the touch mode can change the size of interface components, it is possible for the interface components (e.g., touch targets) to move away from their initial positions. As such, the application may provide intelligent resizing of a user interface, so as not to affect the position of interface components directly under the mouseclick/touch point.
In addition, as noted above with reference to FIG. 1, the switching between modes can correspond to a content server (e.g., server 110) providing different content depending on the input mode. Thus, as an alternative or in addition to the application running on an electronic device (e.g., 102-106) causing the switch between input modes, the electronic device running the application can send an indication to a server (e.g., 110) to switch between the mouse and touch modes. In response to receiving the indication, the server can provide different content (e.g., web content) to the electronic device. This different content can include, but is not limited to, different display sizes (or activation area sizes) for graphical components, or hover/no hover content for display within the application (e.g., web browser).
Although the foregoing examples describe switching between the mouse mode and the touch mode for the user interfaces illustrated in FIGS. 2 and 3, the subject technology is not limited to these modes or to such user interfaces. Rather, the subject technology can be employed for different types of user interfaces, and the interfaces can adapt to one of multiple potential input types, such as but not limited to, mouse, trackball, pen, stylus, touch and/or trackpad input.
FIG. 4 illustrates an example process which provides for automatically switching between input modes for a user interface. Following start block 402, a user interface is displayed in a first input mode for a first input type at step 404. At step 406, a determination is made that a predetermined event has occurred, wherein the predetermined event is of a type other than the first input type or a second input type.
At step 408, in response to the determination, the user interface is switched from the first input mode for the first input type to a second input mode for the second input type. The first input type can correspond to one of mouse input or touch input, and the second input type can correspond to the other one of the mouse input or the touch input. One of the first input mode or the second input mode can correspond to a mouse mode for mouse input, and the other one of the first input mode or the second input mode can correspond to a touch mode for touch input.
Displaying the user interface in the mouse mode can provide for hover content in the user interface, and displaying the user interface in the touch mode can provide for no hover content in the user interface. Alternatively, or in addition, displaying the user interface in the mouse mode can provide for smaller pointer targets in the user interface relative to the touch mode, and displaying the user interface in the touch mode can provide for larger pointer targets in the user interface relative to the mouse mode.
Displaying the user interface in the first input mode can be in response to receipt of user input of the first input type. In example aspects, determining that the predetermined event has occurred can include initiating a timer upon receipt of the user input of the first input type, and determining, based on the initiated timer, that a preset period of time has passed since receipt of the user input of the first input type. The switching is performed in response to the determination that the preset period of time has passed.
Determining that the predetermined event has occurred can include detecting, using a sensor, a distance of a user from a screen on which the user interface is displayed (e.g., a distance of a user's finger from the screen), and determining, based on the detecting, that the user is within a predefined distance of the screen. The switching is performed in response to determining that the user is within the predefined distance.
The user interface is displayed on a device. Determining that the predetermined event has occurred can include determining that an external device has been connected to the device. The switching is performed in response to determining that the external device has been connected to the device. For example, the external device can be a keyboard or a mouse. The process then ends at end block 410.
FIG. 5 illustrates another example process which provides for automatically switching between input modes for a user interface. Following start block 502, a user interface is displayed in a first input mode for a first input type at step 504. At step 506, a determination is made a predetermined event has occurred.
At step 508, in response to the determination, the user interface is switched from the first input mode for the first input type to a second input mode for the second input type. Each of the first input mode and the second input mode includes one or more graphical components. The switching comprises resizing the one or more graphical components.
The resizing can comprise resizing the display size of the one or more graphical components. The resizing can further comprise resizing the activation area for the one or more graphical components to correspond with the resized display size. Alternatively, the resizing can comprise resizing the activation area of the graphical components without resizing the display size.
The first input type can correspond to one of mouse input or touch input, and the second input type can correspond to the other one of the mouse input or the touch input. One of the first input mode or the second input mode can correspond to a mouse mode for mouse input, and the other one of the first input mode or the second input mode can correspond to a touch mode for touch input.
The predetermined event can be of the first input type or the second input type. Alternatively, or in addition, the predetermined event can be of a type other than the first input type or a second input type.
FIG. 6 conceptually illustrates an example electronic system with which some implementations of the subject technology can be implemented. Electronic system 600 can be a computer, phone, PDA, or any other sort of electronic device. Such an electronic system includes various types of computer readable media and interfaces for various other types of computer readable media. Electronic system 600 includes a bus 608, processing unit(s) 612, a system memory 604, a read-only memory (ROM) 610, a permanent storage device 602, an input device interface 614, an output device interface 606, and a network interface 616.
Bus 608 collectively represents all system, peripheral, and chipset buses that communicatively connect the numerous internal devices of electronic system 600. For instance, bus 608 communicatively connects processing unit(s) 612 with ROM 610, system memory 604, and permanent storage device 602.
From these various memory units, processing unit(s) 612 retrieves instructions to execute and data to process in order to execute the processes of the subject disclosure. The processing unit(s) can be a single processor or a multi-core processor in different implementations.
ROM 610 stores static data and instructions that are needed by processing unit(s) 612 and other modules of the electronic system. Permanent storage device 602, on the other hand, is a read-and-write memory device. This device is a non-volatile memory unit that stores instructions and data even when electronic system 600 is off. Some implementations of the subject disclosure use a mass-storage device (for example, a magnetic or optical disk and its corresponding disk drive) as permanent storage device 602.
Other implementations use a removable storage device (for example, a floppy disk, flash drive, and its corresponding disk drive) as permanent storage device 602. Like permanent storage device 602, system memory 604 is a read-and-write memory device. However, unlike storage device 602, system memory 604 is a volatile read-and-write memory, such a random access memory. System memory 604 stores some of the instructions and data that the processor needs at runtime. In some implementations, the processes of the subject disclosure are stored in system memory 604, permanent storage device 602, or ROM 610. For example, the various memory units include instructions for changing between input modes in accordance with some implementations. From these various memory units, processing unit(s) 612 retrieves instructions to execute and data to process in order to execute the processes of some implementations.
Bus 608 also connects to input and output device interfaces 614 and 606. Input device interface 614 enables the user to communicate information and select commands to the electronic system. Input devices used with input device interface 614 include, for example, alphanumeric keyboards and pointing devices (also called “cursor control devices”). Output device interfaces 606 enables, for example, the display of images generated by the electronic system 600. Output devices used with output device interface 606 include, for example, printers and display devices, for example, cathode ray tubes (CRT) or liquid crystal displays (LCD). Some implementations include devices, for example, a touchscreen that functions as both input and output devices.
Finally, as shown in FIG. 6, bus 608 also couples electronic system 600 to a network (not shown) through a network interface 616. In this manner, the computer can be a part of a network of computers (for example, a local area network (“LAN”), a wide area network (“WAN”), or an Intranet, or a network of networks, for example, the Internet. Any or all components of electronic system 600 can be used in conjunction with the subject disclosure.
Many of the above-described features and applications are implemented as software processes that are specified as a set of instructions recorded on a computer readable storage medium (also referred to as computer readable medium). When these instructions are executed by one or more processing unit(s) (e.g., one or more processors, cores of processors, or other processing units), they cause the processing unit(s) to perform the actions indicated in the instructions. Examples of computer readable media include, but are not limited to, CD-ROMs, flash drives, RAM chips, hard drives, EPROMs, etc. The computer readable media does not include carrier waves and electronic signals passing wirelessly or over wired connections.
In this specification, the term “software” is meant to include firmware residing in read-only memory or applications stored in magnetic storage, which can be read into memory for processing by a processor. Also, in some implementations, multiple software aspects of the subject disclosure can be implemented as sub-parts of a larger program while remaining distinct software aspects of the subject disclosure. In some implementations, multiple software aspects can also be implemented as separate programs. Finally, any combination of separate programs that together implement a software aspect described here is within the scope of the subject disclosure. In some implementations, the software programs, when installed to operate on one or more electronic systems, define one or more specific machine implementations that execute and perform the operations of the software programs.
A computer program (also known as a program, software, software application, script, or code) can be written in any form of programming language, including compiled or interpreted languages, declarative or procedural languages, and it can be deployed in any form, including as a stand alone program or as a module, component, subroutine, object, or other unit suitable for use in a computing environment. A computer program may, but need not, correspond to a file in a file system. A program can be stored in a portion of a file that holds other programs or data (e.g., one or more scripts stored in a markup language document), in a single file dedicated to the program in question, or in multiple coordinated files (e.g., files that store one or more modules, sub programs, or portions of code). A computer program can be deployed to be executed on one computer or on multiple computers that are located at one site or distributed across multiple sites and interconnected by a communication network.
These functions described above can be implemented in digital electronic circuitry, in computer software, firmware or hardware. The techniques can be implemented using one or more computer program products. Programmable processors and computers can be included in or packaged as mobile devices. The processes and logic flows can be performed by one or more programmable processors and by one or more programmable logic circuitry. General and special purpose computing devices and storage devices can be interconnected through communication networks.
Some implementations include electronic components, for example, microprocessors, storage and memory that store computer program instructions in a machine-readable or computer-readable medium (alternatively referred to as computer-readable storage media, machine-readable media, or machine-readable storage media). Some examples of such computer-readable media include RAM, ROM, read-only compact discs (CD-ROM), recordable compact discs (CD-R), rewritable compact discs (CD-RW), read-only digital versatile discs (e.g., DVD-ROM, dual-layer DVD-ROM), a variety of recordable/rewritable DVDs (e.g., DVD-RAM, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, etc.), flash memory (e.g., SD cards, mini-SD cards, micro-SD cards, etc.), magnetic or solid state hard drives, read-only and recordable Blu-Ray® discs, ultra density optical discs, any other optical or magnetic media, and floppy disks. The computer-readable media can store a computer program that is executable by at least one processing unit and includes sets of instructions for performing various operations. Examples of computer programs or computer code include machine code, for example, is produced by a compiler, and files including higher-level code that are executed by a computer, an electronic component, or a microprocessor using an interpreter.
While the above discussion primarily refers to microprocessor or multi-core processors that execute software, some implementations are performed by one or more integrated circuits, for example, application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) or field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). In some implementations, such integrated circuits execute instructions that are stored on the circuit itself.
As used in this specification and any claims of this application, the terms “computer”, “server”, “processor”, and “memory” all refer to electronic or other technological devices. These terms exclude people or groups of people. For the purposes of the specification, the terms display or displaying means displaying on an electronic device. As used in this specification and any claims of this application, the terms “computer readable medium” and “computer readable media” are entirely restricted to tangible, physical objects that store information in a form that is readable by a computer. These terms exclude any wireless signals, wired download signals, and any other ephemeral signals.
To provide for interaction with a user, implementations of the subject matter described in this specification can be implemented on a computer having a display device, e.g., a CRT (cathode ray tube) or LCD (liquid crystal display) monitor, for displaying information to the user and a keyboard and a pointing device, e.g., a mouse or a trackball, by which the user can provide input to the computer. Other kinds of devices can be used to provide for interaction with a user as well; for example, feedback provided to the user can be any form of sensory feedback, e.g., visual feedback, auditory feedback, or tactile feedback; and input from the user can be received in any form, including acoustic, speech, or tactile input. In addition, a computer can interact with a user by sending documents to and receiving documents from a device that is used by the user; for example, by sending web pages to a web browser on a user's client device in response to requests received from the web browser.
Embodiments of the subject matter described in this specification can be implemented in a computing system that includes a back end component, e.g., as a data server, or that includes a middleware component, e.g., an application server, or that includes a front end component, e.g., a client computer having a graphical user interface or a Web browser through which a user can interact with an implementation of the subject matter described in this specification, or any combination of one or more such back end, middleware, or front end components. The components of the system can be interconnected by any form or medium of digital data communication, e.g., a communication network. Examples of communication networks include a local area network (“LAN”) and a wide area network (“WAN”), an inter-network (e.g., the Internet), and peer-to-peer networks (e.g., ad hoc peer-to-peer networks).
The computing system can include clients and servers. A client and server are generally remote from each other and typically interact through a communication network. The relationship of client and server arises by virtue of computer programs running on the respective computers and having a client-server relationship to each other. In some embodiments, a server transmits data (e.g., an HTML page) to a client device (e.g., for purposes of displaying data to and receiving user input from a user interacting with the client device). Data generated at the client device (e.g., a result of the user interaction) can be received from the client device at the server.
It is understood that any specific order or hierarchy of steps in the processes disclosed is an illustration of example approaches. Based upon design preferences, it is understood that the specific order or hierarchy of steps in the processes may be rearranged, or that all illustrated steps be performed. Some of the steps may be performed simultaneously. For example, in certain circumstances, multitasking and parallel processing may be advantageous. Moreover, the separation of various system components in the embodiments described above should not be understood as requiring such separation in all embodiments, and it should be understood that the described program components and systems can generally be integrated together in a single software product or packaged into multiple software products.
The previous description is provided to enable any person skilled in the art to practice the various aspects described herein. Various modifications to these aspects will be readily apparent to those skilled in the art, and the generic principles defined herein may be applied to other aspects. Thus, the claims are not intended to be limited to the aspects shown herein, but are to be accorded the full scope consistent with the language claims, wherein reference to an element in the singular is not intended to mean “one and only one” unless specifically so stated, but rather “one or more.” Unless specifically stated otherwise, the term “some” refers to one or more. Pronouns in the masculine (e.g., his) include the feminine and neuter gender (e.g., her and its) and vice versa. Headings and subheadings, if any, are used for convenience only and do not limit the subject disclosure.
A phrase such as an “aspect” does not imply that such aspect is essential to the subject technology or that such aspect applies to all configurations of the subject technology. A disclosure relating to an aspect may apply to all configurations, or one or more configurations. A phrase such as an aspect may refer to one or more aspects and vice versa. A phrase such as a “configuration” does not imply that such configuration is essential to the subject technology or that such configuration applies to all configurations of the subject technology. A disclosure relating to a configuration may apply to all configurations, or one or more configurations. A phrase such as a configuration may refer to one or more configurations and vice versa.
1. A computer-implemented method for automatically switching between input modes for a user interface, the method comprising:
displaying, on a screen, a user interface in a first input mode for a first input type;
detecting, using a sensor, a distance of a user from the screen;
determining, prior to receiving touch input on the screen, that the detected distance from the screen is within a threshold distance; and
switching, in response to the determination and prior to receiving the touch input on the screen, the user interface from the first input mode for the first input type to a second input mode for a second input type, wherein the second input mode corresponds to a touch mode for touch input.
2. The method of claim 1, wherein the displaying the user interface in the first input mode is in response to receipt of user input of the first input type.
initiating a timer upon receipt of the user input of the first input type; and
determining, based on the initiated timer, that a preset period of time has passed since receipt of the user input of the first input type,
wherein the switching is further performed in response to the determination that the preset period of time has passed.
4. (canceled)
5. The method of claim 1, wherein the user interface is displayed on the screen of a device, the method further comprising:
determining that an external device has been connected to the device, wherein the switching is further performed in response to determining that the external device has been connected to the device.
6. The method of claim 5, wherein the external device is at least one of a keyboard or a mouse.
7. The method of claim 1, wherein the first input type corresponds to mouse input.
8. The method of claim 7, wherein the first input mode corresponds to a mouse mode for mouse input.
9. The method of claim 8, wherein displaying the user interface in the mouse mode provides for hover content in the user interface, and wherein displaying the user interface in the touch mode does not provide for hover content in the user interface.
10. The method of claim 8, wherein displaying the user interface in the mouse mode provides for smaller pointer targets in the user interface relative to the touch mode, and wherein displaying the user interface in the touch mode provides for larger pointer targets in the user interface relative to the mouse mode.
11. A system for automatically changing between input modes for a user interface, the system comprising:
one or more processors; and
a machine-readable medium comprising instructions stored therein, which when executed by the processors, cause the processors to perform operations comprising:
12. The system of claim 11, wherein the displaying the user interface in the first input mode is in response to receipt of user input of the first input type.
13. A computer-implemented method for automatically switching between input modes for a user interface, the method comprising:
switching, in response to the determination and prior to receiving the touch input on the screen, the user interface from the first input mode for the first input type to a second input mode for a second input type,
wherein the second input mode corresponds to a touch mode for touch input,
wherein each of the first input mode and the second input mode includes one or more graphical components, and
wherein the switching comprises resizing the one or more graphical components.
14. The method of claim 13, wherein the resizing comprises resizing the display size of the one or more graphical components.
15. The method of claim 14, wherein the resizing further comprises resizing the activation area for the one or more graphical components to correspond with the resized display size.
16. The method of claim 13, wherein the resizing comprises resizing the activation area of the graphical components without resizing the display size.
17. The method of claim 13, wherein the first input type corresponds to mouse input.
18. The method of claim 17, wherein the first input mode corresponds to a mouse mode for mouse input.
21. The method of claim 1, wherein the sensor is a camera.
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Owner name: GOOGLE INC., CALIFORNIA
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On the Campus Student Dispatch: Life Lessons for the Class of ’17, From Four Nobel Prize Winners
By Mary Hui ’17
Published in the May 17, 2017 Issue
Offering advice to senior-class members are, from left, Duncan Haldane, Christopher Sims, Eric Wieschaus, and Angus Deaton.
Denise Applewhite/Office of Communications
McCosh 50 has hosted many a Nobel Prize winner over the years, but four at one time? That’s something special.
Four Princeton faculty members with Nobel medals — economists Angus Deaton and Christopher Sims, physicist Duncan Haldane, and biologist Eric Wieschaus — gathered last month to share their insights and advice as part of the Class of 2017 “Last Lectures” series, aimed at helping seniors “transition out of the bubble and into the real world.”
Mary Hui ’17
The professors were both serious and humbly self-deprecating, poking fun at the improbability of their own successes. Breakthrough discoveries, Haldane said, hinge on being lucky enough to chance on connections between ideas — and being observant enough to notice those links. A Nobel Prize is “something you stumble across,” he added.
Deaton, the son of a coal miner, recalled growing up in a small Scottish village where academics were not prized and that was not a good place “to think about almost anything.” The family moved around during his childhood, and he always felt like an outsider. “A Nobel Prize doesn’t cure that loneliness,” he said, but he has come to appreciate not belonging as a “productive struggle” because it helps give him different perspectives and new ways of thinking.
Wieschaus initially regretted giving up his dream of becoming an artist. But he now realizes that his artistic talent — the ability to intuitively recognize patterns and visualize how something would look — has been a cornerstone of his scientific work.
As a young boy, Sims had dreamed of being a jazz trombonist and mathematician. He didn’t end up pursuing either one professionally — he doubted his raw talent in math, and knew early on he wasn’t a top-notch musician — but he doesn’t see this as a failure.
“Just because you’re not the best doesn’t mean you can’t have a good time,” Sims said. “Be flexible and confident in yourself to change course.”
Haldane, in trying to boil his life’s work down into one takeaway idea, had this to say: “Facts matter.”
“The way the world works is just what is,” he said, and not a matter of opinion or alternative facts. “I hope the country will continue along accepting that facts really matter,” he added.
Ujjwal Dahuja ’17 found the professors’ stories of failure to be particularly memorable. “Traditionally, we tend to associate only success with people who win Nobel Prizes, but the event helped me realize that everyone undergoes failure,” he said.
Jonathan Liebman ’17 appreciated Deaton’s personal reflections: “It’s rare to see such an intellectual giant showing vulnerability to an audience, and I was touched by it.”
Rushdie Emphasizes the ‘Power of Art to Outlast Tyranny’
On Air, On the Fly
New life for an old-fashioned concept: Students create a TV variety show
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Related Article Short film explores the reality of life for undocumented young people in Ireland
MRCI survey highlights issues faced by undocumented young people in Ireland
Out of the 185 undocumented children and young people surveyed, 68% were born in Ireland
Written by Dearbhla Kiarie and posted in news
Growing up undocumented in the country you call home can leave you feeling isolated and helpless. For thousands of young people in Ireland, this is an issue that is constantly on their minds leaving them afraid to trust and afraid to tell their stories.
What does being undocumented in Ireland mean?
Undocumented youth are young people living in Ireland without citizenship, this means that they do not have the same rights under the law as Irish citizens. Many of these children and young people were born in this country, but are not considered Irish citizens, as their parents are undocumented migrants.
A survey carried out by the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland (MRCI) showed that of 185 undocumented children, 68% were born in Ireland, and 78% of those born outside of Ireland have been living here for over five years. For the majority of these young people, Ireland is the only place they can truly call home.
What challenges come with being undocumented?
Young people who are undocumented have to face countless problems on a daily basis, such as:
Undocumented migrants will often be too afraid to reach out to Garda when they have been assaulted or harmed
Even if an undocumented young person has been educated in Ireland throughout all of primary and secondary school, they will not be given the opportunity to go to college
People without citizenship are unable to apply for well-paying, stable jobs as they will have to work illegally and are often treated poorly by employers who take advantage of their situation
Children of undocumented parents often feel alone, as they are unable to experience many of the things their documented friends can
Why should these young people be allowed citizenship?
Ireland is home to these young people, and it is the only country they know and feel comfortable in
Being unable to go to college is a waste of potential and opportunity
Not being able to apply for certain jobs can affect how a person lives, leaving them with very little money or in some cases, homeless
Being undocumented can leave a child or young person constantly worrying about what might happen to them, which in turn can affect their mental health
What is currently being done to help?
At the moment, there is no way for a child of undocumented parents to get citizenship, which is the main focus of many organisations right now.
The Migrant Rights Centre Ireland (MRCI) are working with their Justice for the Undocumented (JFU) group towards a solution for the undocumented youth growing up in Ireland, alongside undocumented members themselves. They are campaigning for equal opportunities for children of undocumented migrants.
By contacting your local councillors and politicians across Ireland, you can play a role in giving undocumented young people across Ireland a voice. Staying informed on the issue at hand will give you the ability to convince the people in power to take action and to make positive changes.
You can also sign the MRCI's open letter to Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan, calling on him to support the undocumented young people in Ireland by creating a pathway to help them become documented.
Published July 8th, 2019
Migrant Rights Centre Ireland
Short film explores the reality of life for undocumented young people in Ireland
What is Direct Provision in Ireland?
How can I help end Direct Provision?
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COGSCI 2019
TRAVEL & VISAS
SPONSOR/EXHIBITOR
CONFERENCE AWARDS
RUMELHART PRIZE
GLUSHKO PRIZE
The Cognitive Science Society brings together researchers from around the world who hold a common goal: understanding the nature of the human mind. The mission of the Society is to promote Cognitive Science as a discipline, and to foster scientific interchange among researchers in various areas of study, including Artificial Intelligence, Linguistics, Anthropology, Psychology, Neuroscience, Philosophy, and Education. The Society is a non-profit professional organization and its activities include sponsoring an annual conference and publishing the journals Cognitive Science and TopiCS.
Chair Elect
Asifa Majid
Terry Regier
Anna B. Drummey
Elena Andonova
Morteza Dehghani
Susan Gelman
Dedre Gentner
Kevin Gluck
Adele Goldberg
Mutsumi Imai
Roger Levy
Anna Papafragou
Cleotilde Gonzalez
Charles Kemp
Cognitive Science Journal
Richard P. Cooper
TopiCS in Cognitive Science Journal
Wayne D. Gray
Graduate Student Representative
Rui Meng
Ex Officio Officers
Executive Officer: Anna B. Drummey, Villanova University
Cognitive Science Journal Editor: Richard P. Cooper – Birkbeck, University of London
TopiCS in Cognitive Science Journal Editor: Wayne D. Gray – Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Rumelhart Prize Committee Chair: Richard P. Cooper – Birkbeck, University of London
Glushko Prize Committee Chair: Adele Goldberg – Princeton
Code of Conduct (unofficial)
Roger Levy (Chair)
Nora Newcombe
Mike Frank (Chair)
Rick Dale
Diversity (unofficial)
Pablo Caceres
Iris van Rooij
Elena Andonova (Chair)
Rick Cooper
Terry Regier (Past Chair)
Asifa Majid (Chair Elect)
Anna Drummey
Wayne Gray
Morteza Dehghani (Chair)
Rita Astuti
Josep Call
Tanya Marie Luhrmann
Kurt vanLehn
Hason Zevin
Kevin Gluck (Chair)
Mike Frank
Mike Mozer
Glushko
Adele Goldberg (Chair)
Nicholas Chater
David Danks
Thomas Griffiths
Barbara Knowlton
John Laird
Fei Xu
Strategic Planning (unofficial)
Asifa Majid (Chair)
Society Creation
The Society was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit professional organization in Massachusetts in 1979. The organizing committee included Roger Schank, Allan Collins, Donald Norman, and a number of other scholars from psychology, linguistics, computer science, and philosophy.
Conference creation
The first conference on cognitive science was held at LaJolla, California in August, 1979, and has occurred annually since then. The proceedings of each conference are published, and those from most years are available through Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. The annual proceedings of the Cognitive Science Conference represent a major source of information on new work and new ideas in the scientific study of thinking. In 1990, the Society, with help from an anonymous donor, established the David Marr Prize for the best student paper at each annual meeting.
Journal creation
The Journal, Cognitive Science, began publication in 1976, and is now published by Wiley-Blackwell. The Executive Editor is currently Richard P. Cooper of Birkbeck, University of London, and there are 18 Associate Editors and a 30-member editorial board. It serves as the premier outlet for research reports that intersect two or more disciplines. Copyrights for articles published in the journal are held by the Society. The Governing Board of the Cognitive Science Society voted in late 2006 to found a new journal, Topics in Cognitive Science (topiCS). The Editor in Chief is Wayne Gray, Cognitive Science Department, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The journal seeks to fill a niche not occupied by Cognitive Science Journal or other cognitive science journals. Membership in the Society includes a subscription to Cognitive Science and TopiCS. Copyrights for articles published in the journal are held by the Society.
Historical information may be found via a search in the Massachusetts registry.
Article I: Name and object
The name of the society is The Cognitive Science Society, Inc.
The object of the society is to promote the communication of scientific research in cognitive science and allied sciences.
Article II: Membership
A prospective member can apply to join the Society by submitting an application form to the Executive Officer. The application must include evidence for the applicant’s qualification in, interest in, or contribution to the field of Cognitive Science. The Society retains the right to refuse membership to an applicant it deems insufficiently qualified.
A student who provides appropriate evidence of student status may apply to become a Student Member of the society. Student members may not vote in elections held by the Society.
Article III: Governing Board
The Governing Board shall exercise general supervision over the affairs of the society, subject to the provisions of Articles IX and X.
The Governing Board shall consist of fifteen members elected for staggered terms of six years each, including the chair-elect, the chair, and the past chair, together with, ex-officio, the other Officers of the Society (as defined in Article IV). Elected members of the Governing Board may not succeed themselves. Upon request, the Officers (other than the Chair) shall serve one additional year on the Board to provide continuity with new Officers. Upon request, the chair of the Rumelhart Prize Committee will serve as an ex-officio member of the Governing Board. The Governing Board will elect a non-voting graduate student representative to the Governing Board of the Cognitive Science Society, for a 2-year term. The graduate student representative may participate fully in assigned committees and is expected to attend the annual meeting and Governing Board meeting.
The term of the Chair shall be three years, where the first year is served as “chair-elect”, the second as chair, and the third as “past chair”. The chair may not serve two consecutive terms. The chair must be a member of the Governing Board at the time he or she becomes chair-elect. The term of the chairs as members of the Governing Board shall be extended if necessary to cover the whole of their period as chair-elect, chair, and past chair.
The Governing Board shall from time to time appoint such committees as it deems necessary to conduct the affairs of the society.
The Chair shall preside at meetings of The Governing Board and at the Annual Business Meeting.
Article IV: Officers
The officers of the society shall be (a) the Chair of the Governing Board, (b) the Executive Officer, (c) the Conference Officer, (d) the executive editor of the journal Cognitive Science, and (e) the executive editor of the journal Topics in Cognitive Science.
The Executive Officer shall be elected by The Governing Board to serve a term of three years. The Executive Officer may be re-elected once, but may not serve more than six consecutive years.
The Executive Officer shall be responsible for maintaining a list of the membership of the society, for the collection of dues and other assessments and for disbursement of funds as directed by The Governing Board.
The Conference Officer shall be elected by the Governing Board to serve a term of three years. There shall be no fixed limit on the number of terms the Conference Officer may serve.
The Conference Οfficer shall be responsible for working with the Conference Chairs to handle aspects of the Society’s annual conference that are outside of the scientific program itself. This includes negotiating venues and managing the budgets for conferences. The Conference Officer reports to the Chair of the Society and to Governing Board members serving as liaisons for conferences.
Article V: Elections
Once each year, the Executive Officer shall canvass the membership for nominations of members to serve on the GB. Each member may nominate up to two members for each vacancy to be filled. Nominations must include a short (one paragraph) statement about the candidate and why he or she would be a good board member. A nominee must be a member of the society at the time of nomination, and must have been a member of the society for at least 3 years (this does not have to be 3 consecutive years.)
The nominations committee of the Governing Board will select candidates for the election by choosing among those nominated by the membership up to a total of three times the number of vacancies. The Nominations Committee will ensure that the nominees are willing to serve, with diverse representation by discipline, country and gender. Once the full Governing Board has read the report of the nominations committee and approved the process and nominees proposed, the names shall be placed on an election ballot, which shall be circulated electronically to all members.
Twenty-one days after the circulation of the election ballot, the election shall be closed, and the ballots counted. The members receiving the greatest numbers of votes shall be elected to fill the vacancies on The Governing Board. In case of ties, the Chair of the Governing Board shall cast the deciding ballot.
In the case of resignation, recall, or death of a member of The Governing Board, the resulting special vacancy shall be filled in conformity with Sections 1, 2, and 3 above, at the time of the next scheduled election. The special vacancies shall be filled last, with the nominees receiving the most votes filling the regular vacancies. People elected to fill special vacancies shall only serve the unfilled term of office of that vacancy. However, those members are then eligible for re-election. In the event of a one-year vacancy, the governing board may appoint a member to serve the unfilled term.
Each year, if there is no non-North American elected member of the governing board whose term on the board extends beyond that year, then a special seat on the governing board will be designated for which only non-North American members will be elected in conformity with Sections 1, 2, and 3 above.
Article VI: Meetings
The society shall hold Scientific Meetings at times and places and under rules determined by The Governing Board. One of the meetings shall be designated as the Annual Scientific Meeting.
An Annual Business Meeting shall be held in conjunction with the Annual Scientific Meeting. Only members of the society may vote at the Annual Business Meeting.
All motions at the Annual Business Meeting require only a simple majority for passage.
The Chair shall convene a meeting of The Governing Board at least once a year for considering any changes in the by-laws and other Society business.
Article VII: Publications
The society shall publish such programs, abstracts of scientific papers, and lists of membership, as The Governing Board shall authorize. With approval of the membership, The Governing Board may undertake the editing, or publishing, or both, of scientific journals.
Article VIII: Dues
The annual dues of membership shall be determined by The Governing Board.
A member failing to pay dues for two consecutive years shall be considered to have resigned, but may be reinstated any time in the three years following, upon payment of all back dues.
A member failing to pay dues for five years may be reinstated only by satisfying the requirements for the election of new members prescribed in Article II.
Article IX: Recall
Upon petition of 10% of the membership, an election by mail ballot will be held on proposals with respect to the recall of members of The Governing Board, or of the Executive Officer or the Conference Officer. Such recall will be effective upon a majority vote of all members of the society with a twenty-one day limit as specified in Article V. The recalled Board shall be replaced in accordance with the election procedure prescribed in Article V.
Article X: Amendments
Amendments to these by-laws may be proposed by majority action of The Governing Board at a regular or special meeting called by the Chair, or by the affirmative vote of the majority voting at an Annual Business Meeting on a resolution for amendment of the by-laws introduced from the floor. In the latter case, the proposed amendment of the By-laws must then be considered by The Governing Board at its next meeting.
Every proposed amendment shall be submitted to the membership with recommendations of the majority of The Governing Board, together with a statement of the basis of the recommendations, and in the case of a tie with the arguments pro and con. These By-laws may then be amended either by affirmative vote of two-thirds of the membership present and voting on the proposed amendment or, if either 10% of those members at the meeting or a majority of The Governing Board wish, by vote of the membership. Two-thirds affirmative vote of those voting shall be required for adoption of the proposed amendment.
Article XI: Corporate Seal
The corporate seal of the corporation shall consist of the words -The Cognitive Science Society, Inc. Corporate Seal- and may be affixed to any document by writing, typewriting, impression, or other means.
(The policy was last updated May 2018.)
society secretariat
Podium Conference & Association Specialists
#124-4730 University Way NE 104
email: info@cognitivesciencesociety.org
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Tenure Track Assistant Professor Position
The Department of Statistical Science at Duke University invites applications for a tenure-track position at the Assistant Professor level to begin in July/August 2018. Applicants from all areas of statistical science are encouraged to apply.
Applicants should submit a letter, curriculum vitae, research and teaching statements, letters from three references, and one reprint/preprint via https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/9716. Enquiries can be emailed to stat-tt-search@duke.edu. Initial screening of the applicant pool will begin on November 15, 2017 and will continue until the position is filled.
The Department of Statistical Science is an internationally recognized center of excellence for research and education in contemporary statistical methodology. We currently have 23 regular rank faculty, 18 visiting, adjunct, and postdoctoral faculty, and over 100 graduate students. Beyond core research in theory and methodology of statistical and computational sciences, collaborative interactions exist with a range of Duke departments, institutes and centers. The PhD program is complemented by our MS and BA/BS degrees in Statistical Science. See http://stat.duke.edu.
Duke University, located in Durham NC, is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer committed to providing employment opportunity without regard to an individual’s age, color, disability, genetic information, gender, gender identity, national origin, race, religion, sexual orientation, or veteran status. Applications from women and minorities are strongly encouraged. Individuals in dual career couples are encouraged to visit http://provost.duke.edu/faculty/partner/, the website on Duke’s Advantages for Faculty, for information on opportunities for dual career couples in the area and how the university can help.
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Tag Archives: kitchen
432. British TV: Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares (Part 1) [Video]
Talking about restaurant culture in the UK, an introduction to one of the UK’s most famous chefs and a chance to learn some authentic English from a popular British TV show featuring Gordon Ramsay. Video available. Includes swearing.
Hello, and welcome back to this podcast for learners of English. Here is a new episode for you to listen to and indeed watch, because I’m videoing this one. You’ll be able to find the video on the page for this episode on my website, or by visiting the YouTube channel for Luke’s English Podcast.
A lot of what I am saying here – particularly in this introduction is written on the page for this episode. So you can read it with me, or check it for certain words you hear me using. The best way to get access to these pages is to subscribe to the mailing list.
In the last episode of this podcast you heard me talking to Amber about restaurants and hotels and some crazy TripAdvisor reviews.
At one point in the episode we talked briefly about Gordon Ramsay – one of the UK’s most famous chefs, and his TV show “Kitchen Nightmares” which was a really popular show in the UK a few years ago, and I thought it could be interesting to do a whole episode about that.
So in this one I’m going to talk a little bit about Gordon Ramsay and then we’re going to listen to some YouTube clips from one of his TV shows and I will help you understand all the language that you’ll hear. No doubt there will be some new vocabulary in the process – probably on the subject of food, cooking, restaurants and kitchens but lots of other natural language that just comes up, including plenty of swearing, because Gordon Ramsay is known for his frequent use of swear words.
Yes, there will be quite a lot of swearing in this episode, and you know my position on this. I’m choosing to show you the language as it is really used and that includes the rude words, but don’t be tempted to start throwing swear words into your everyday English. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that swear words are a short cut to sounding exactly like a native speaker. Often it just gives people a bad impression of you. We’ll go into it more later, because there are quite a lot of unwritten social rules around swearing that you need to be aware of – the main one being, that with swearing it is much much easier to sound rude and inappropriate than it is to sound cool. Think of swearing as a motorbike – you might think it’s cool but unless you really know what you’re doing you’re likely to seriously injure yourself. Similarly, swearing can be cool when it’s done in movies or even by someone like Gordon Ramsay, but if you try and do it in your normal life there’s a good chance you’ll just offend people.
So anyway, we’ll listen to some of the English in these YouTube clips and analyse the things they’re saying so that in the end you can understand it all just like I do, which should help you learn some real English in the process. You’ll also learn a thing or two about restaurant culture in the UK and about Gordon Ramsay who is one of the most well-known people in Britain.
Who is Gordon Ramsay and what’s the TV show?
Gordon James Ramsay, is a British celebrity chef, restaurateur, and television personality.
*Difference between a chef and a cook? Basically, a chef is someone who’s had professional training – at least a culinary degree, but a cook is just someone who cooks food. Both might work in a kitchen, but mainly being a chef is about having the status of culinary qualifications and experience.
Ramsay is one of the most famous chefs in the UK and probably in the world too. He has a reputation for being an excellent restaurateur and chef, and also for his extremely strict and direct style. He’s often very rude, saying exactly what he thinks about the people he’s working with in the strongest most colourful language. Imagine an army captain shouting at a platoon of soldiers during military training, but with really good food.
Ramsay was born in Scotland, but he grew up in Stratford-upon-Avon, which is in fact not far from where I grew up in England). So, he is Scottish but doesn’t speak with a Scottish accent.
Ramsay now has restaurants all over the place – in London, in Paris and in New York. During his career he has trained at the highest level with French chefs in the UK and in Paris. He specialises in Italian, French and British recipes, and his cooking is known for being simple, unpretentious, high quality and delicious.
His restaurants have been awarded 16 Michelin stars in total. The term “Michelin Star” is a hallmark of fine dining quality. Michelin stars are very difficult to win and restaurants around the world proudly promote their Michelin Star status if they have one. His signature restaurant, Restaurant Gordon Ramsay in Chelsea, London, has held 3 Michelin stars since 2001, which is a mark of extremely high quality in restaurant dining.
As well as being a top chef, Ramsay is also a TV presenter. He first appeared on TV in the UK in the late 1990s, and by 2004 Ramsay had become one of the best known celebrity chefs in British popular culture, and, along with other chefs like Jamie Oliver, Nigella Lawson, and Delia Smith, he has influenced viewers to become more culinarily adventurous.
As a reality TV personality, Ramsay is known for his fiery temper, strict demeanour, and use of expletives. He often makes blunt and controversial comments, including insults and wisecracks about contestants and their cooking abilities.
Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares used to be on British TV a few years ago – probably around 10-15 years ago now. These days you can find most of the episodes on YouTube.
Local restaurants vs manufacturing companies and processed food
Ramsay is actually very passionate about local restaurants in the UK.
In the UK our eating out culture is vibrant and successful but it is being undermined by a number of factors. One is the industrialisation of food culture. THis means that big businesses are involved in preparing food at an industrial level and then selling it to restaurants as part of a large corporate chain.
These chains might be restaurants which are all owned by one company, or food manufacturers who dominate the wholesale market, driving down their prices and pushing out competition such as local producers who sell fresh products.
In these industrial food manufacturing companies, the food is prepared in high quantities and then sold off to other companies and restaurants as part of a corporate supply chain for food.
There’s a big infrastructure for food purchasing in the UK which is dominated by these big food manufacturers. As a result, many smaller restaurants are forced to buy industrialised and mass-produced food because it is cheaper and more convenient than fresh food which you can buy direct from farms or markets.
If you were a struggling restaurant owner in a town in the UK, what would you do? Buy your food fresh from a local producer and then make sure you sell it in a short-term period, or buy similar products from a mass producer but at a lower price, and it’s food which you can store for longer because it has been processed to stay fresh.
In the end, people choose to eat at home, especially during an economic crisis.
So, economic factors are having a negative effect on the restaurant culture in the UK to an extent. Family owned restaurants should be where you get proper traditional and delicious local food, but these restaurants are being squeezed economically and forced to go along with the industrialised food manufacturing process.
Also, there are many chain restaurants which you find on high streets in the UK. These are not locally run, but are owned by big companies who have a single business model which they apply to all their restaurants. The fact that these places are part of a big corporate chain means that they can drive down their prices, making it very hard for local restaurants to be competitive. As a result, these smaller places suffer, struggle and often close down.
Gordon Ramsay believes that these local restaurants are the backbone of our restaurant culture in the UK, and he strongly believes that they need to be supported so they can compete with the corporate chains, and given training so they can serve the best food possible. Essentially that’s the concept behind Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, but also it’s just entertaining watching him shouting at incompetent chefs. You sort of let him get away with the way he bullies people because you believe that really he’s just trying to help them to learn the discipline you need to run a really good restaurant.
But he does seem really passionate about proper restaurant culture in the UK and I like that about him. Even though he’s making this reality show and he’s making money from doing it, I think he really does care about improving restaurant culture in the UK.
On the other hand, he is very good at TV. He knows how to make entertaining TV, and he’s got a good formula for it. Basically, this means that he takes the harsh discipline and the no-nonsense brutally honest approach that he applies to his kitchen management, and uses it when giving feedback to the restaurants which he visits.
Let’s listen to a few scenes and I’m going to make sure you understand everything that’s going on and everything that’s being said.
Let’s learn English with Gordon Ramsay
The TV Show
Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares used to be on UK TV about 10-15 years ago.
The format is this – Gordon Ramsay visits a failing restaurant somewhere in the UK. So, restaurants that are failing – e.g. losing money, getting terrible reviews etc. He goes into the restaurant and spends a week there, observing the way the owners run the kitchen, how the business works and what’s going on at all levels. Usually he starts by sitting down to eat the chef’s speciality dish, and it’s nearly always disgusting, and Ramsay comments on how it tastes, how it looks, and also the decor of the restaurant and the service from the staff.
Then Ramsay gives his feedback to the owner and the chef, and it’s always a massive reality check, and it usually involves very strong words and lots of swearing. This is what happens when a top-level chef enters the world of a crappy low-level restaurant.
Then over the course of the week, Gordon helps the managers turn the restaurant around. It’s almost always a huge challenge and often the most difficult part is dealing with the psychological aspects – the stubborn chefs, the relationship issues in the kitchen, the fact that these people have personal issues which are causing the business to go horribly wrong.
It is car-crash TV. We see arguments, meltdowns, unhappy customers and so on.
In almost every episode Gordon seems to go hopping mad as he can’t believe the incompetence or shockingly low standards of service shown by the people in the restaurant. He then tries to help them change everything and turn the business around. It all makes really great telly.
And by the end of the episode, with Gordon’s help they have usually turned the restaurant into a successful business again.
There’s a UK version and a US version.
If you search for Kitchen Nightmares on YouTube you will probably find the US version first, but I think the UK version is better!
But really, it is better because the US version is horrible. It’s full of really fast editing and there’s loads of music which is added in order to tell you how you should be feeling about what’s happening. It’s distracting and patronising.
Example of the US version (just listen to all the distracting sound effects and music)
The UK version just has some rock music in the background at the start, but then during the show it’s more simple and you can just focus on what’s happening without constant sweeping sounds and tense music.
Let’s listen to some scenes from one of the episodes.
These scenes actually come from an episode called “Gordon Ramsay’s Great British Nightmares” which was shown on TV between series 5 and 6 of Kitchen Nightmares. It’s basically the same as any other episode of the series.
Gordon Ramsay’s Great British Nightmare – Dovecote Bistro
Gordon goes to visit a restaurant in Devon called Dovecote Bistro, which is run by a guy called Mick.
Mick is a former truck driver and burger van operator who has opened this bistro with his wife and adopted daughter, Michelle. Ramsay is firstly appalled by the psychedelic wallpaper decorating the restaurant, and then his attention turns to the food and the way it is cooked. While Ramsay is impressed with the simple menu, he is furious to find that Mick has very little cooking ability, using orange squash to make a sauce and using vacuum-sealed pre-cooked lamb shanks in a microwave bag. Not only does he show little responsibility in the kitchen, he is also secretive with his spending and is hugely in debt. Mick is adamant that the problems in the kitchen are not his fault, and his stubbornness causes a rift with his wife and daughter. Ramsay solves the crisis by taking the business matters out of Mick’s hands and kicks him out of the kitchen. His daughter, Michelle, is placed in charge of the kitchen despite having no cooking experience. She rises to the challenge, and while Mick is not convinced over replacing his microwave food, the reopening is a success.
Months later, Ramsay returns to find that the restaurant is making profit. He sent Michelle for further culinary training, and she impresses Ramsay with freshly cooked food.
The restaurant was renamed Martins’ Bistro during production.
Video 1 – Flourescent duck cooked in orange squash
Let’s see what this ex-trucker can do
Fuck me! (surprise / shock)
Your blouse matches the wallpaper
I feel like I’m tripping out!
I’ve never touched the stuff but I feel like I just swallowed an E.
The hideous wallpaper
On paper it looks delicious
Orange squash
A spoonful of gravy
Fuck me do I need sunglasses!
That’s worse than fucking Benylin
They’re actually vacuum packed
They can last for about a year
They’re bought in, they’re vacuum packed
They’ve got a shelf life of about a year
Well, fuck me!
That might be the worst food I’ve ever come across
He might be beyond my help
It doesn’t need refrigerating
How in the fuck could you charge 11 pounds for that?
E numbers, like Tartrazine
Do you feel like having a shit?
Thank fuck I didn’t eat it.
I’m surprised you haven’t killed off half the population of Okehampton
End of part 1 – part 2 available very soon!
This entry was posted in Culture, Entertainment, Food, Humour, language, Learning, Native Speaker, Phrasal Verbs, Prepositions, Pronunciation, Slang, Social English, Video, Vocabulary and tagged cooking, culture, english, food, gordon ramsay, kitchen, listening, nightmares, restaurants, swearing, TV, uk, vocabulary on March 14, 2017 by Luke Thompson.
328. Cooking with Luke – Verbs and Expressions in the Kitchen
I’ve been quite busy marking exams recently and haven’t had a chance to upload any episodes for a few weeks, but today I managed to record this episode while preparing dinner. So in this one you’ll hear me in the kitchen, multitasking – cooking a chicken dinner (recipe below) while describing everything that I’m doing. In this episode you can learn some verbs for preparing food, words for different kitchen utensils and other language related to food and eating. Also, I ramble on about a few other things, as usual! Expect more podcasts to arrive in the near-ish future when I have a bit more time. Thanks for listening!
Here are some verb phrases you will hear me use in this episode.
to clean up the kitchen
to squeeze as much stuff into the dishwasher (as you can)
to do something by hand
to give something (a bit of a) wash
to turn on the tap
to batter fish (noun = batter)
to deep-fry something
to fry something
to chop some potatoes
to chop up some potatoes
to peel some garlic / peel some potatoes
to drizzle olive oil on something
to slosh some white wine over everything
to season food (with salt and pepper)
to do the washing up / to do the dishes
to fill the dishwasher / to empty the dishwasher
to tidy up
to rinse the vegetables under the tap
to pre-heat the oven
to slide the dish into the oven
to brown the chicken in oven
to set the timer
If you’d like to try cooking the dish yourself, here’s my Mum’s simple and easy-to-follow recipe. Enjoy!
This entry was posted in Family, Food, Hello, Native Speaker, Personal, Ramble, Vocabulary and tagged cooking, english, kitchen, verbs, vocabulary on February 3, 2016 by Luke Thompson.
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A key figure in exposing Rhythm and Blues music to a wider audience, Jerry Wexler was highly influential during his days as executive and producer for Atlantic Records, helping to shepherd the label's growth from small R&B imprint to massive industry force.
The Bronx native began his career as an editor and reporter for the music-industry trade journal Billboard, and it was he who coined the term "Rhythm and Blues" as a classification for what had previously been known in the industry as "race music" – a term Wexler found demeaning. He became a partner in Atlantic in 1953, invited by label co-founder Ahmet Ertegun after his partner Herb Abramson went into the army. With Ahmet and his brother Nesuhi Ertegun, Wexler played a key role in turning the independent imprint into America's most successful R&B label, working early on with acts including Ray Charles, the Drifters and Big Joe Turner.
Wexler was a major force in the development of Soul music in the '60s, producing records by the likes of Wilson Pickett, Dusty Springfield, and Aretha Franklin, and discovering and developing such outposts as Stax in Memphis, Fame in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, and Criteria in Miami as out-of-town recording hubs. Wexler was also influential in growing Atlantic's profile as a rock label beginning in the late 60s, signing such acts as Led Zeppelin and the Allman Brothers Band.
Wexler left Atlantic in 1975 and moved to Warner Bros., where he was instrumental in bringing such new acts as Dire Straits, the Gang of Four and the B-52's to the label. He subsequently became a freelance producer, recording with such artists as Bob Dylan, Etta James, Santana and Willie Nelson. He retired from the music business in the late 1990s, living out the rest of his days at his home in Sarasota, Florida. He died in his sleep at the age of 93.
Soul Music and the New Femininity
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“Mother”: Bong Joon-ho’s Quietest yet Most Devastating Movie
May 2, 2019 May 1, 2019 Shane Jung 0 Comment Bong Joon-ho, film, film review, foreign film, movie, movie review, murder mystery, murder mystery film, newsletter
Bong Joon-ho is one of Korea’s most prolific and accomplished filmmakers. He is most well known for his big-budget English-language films, e.g., “Snowpiercer” (2013) and “Okja” (2017), but his Korean-language movies are what I consider to be his most interesting and grounded work. In all of his movies, Bong likes to take classic genres like horror and science fiction and infuse them with social commentary, family drama, and a hefty dose of comedy. 2009’s “Mother” is no different. In this film, he tackles the murder mystery genre with a story about an elderly mother (Kim Hye-ja) and her lovably naive son who is accused of murdering a teenage girl. Her 27-year-old son, Do-joon (Won Bin), has intellectual disabilities and is unjustly coerced into a confession by the town’s abusive and incompetent investigators, a political trope that returns from Bong’s other murder mystery “Memories of Murder.” Only this time, it’s not a pair of bungling detectives but a desperate mother who sets out to solve the crime and prove her son innocent. The result is another tragic and thoroughly engrossing masterpiece.
“Mother” opens with an off-kilter yet beautiful shot of Mother (she is never named) dancing in a field of yellow grass with an eerily empty look on her face, setting the tone for the rest of the film. Much like this opening scene, the entire first act of the movie feels lackadaisical and slice of life. Bong takes his time to introduce the audience to his characters and the sweet relationship between Mother and her childlike son. For instance, Do-joon and his jaded friend Jin-tae chase down a car after being involved in a hit and run, which triggers a hilariously chaotic fight, much to his overprotective mother’s concern. That same night, Do-joon goes out to a bar to meet Jin-tae who never shows up and later leaves the bar inebriated. He then drunkenly follows and catcalls a teenage girl who runs and hides in a black alley. After a heavy rock is hurled at his feet from the alleyway, Do-joon gives up and decides to go home. The next morning, the girl’s body is inexplicably found draped over the railing on the roof of a building, and the defenseless Do-joon is sentenced to jail as an easy target for a much more complicated case. The series of events leading up to the discovery of her dead body may seem completely irrelevant, but like in any murder mystery, every detail matters.
As Mother sets out to discover the truth, these earlier scenes are recontextualized as new information is revealed. Bong masterfully guides the audience through his labyrinthine plot, steadily introducing new characters and clues that take the story to places one would not expect. Throughout these big plot moments, Bong shoots his characters and the action in profile and with a telephoto lens which compresses space and makes the audience feel like they are far away from the characters. By only picturing half of his actors’ face, Bong hides the characters’ expressions and distances them from the audience, creating an uncanny effect. The audience is placed into a position of passivity and can do nothing but witness the mystery slowly unfold before their eyes. Therefore, one constantly feels that there is something they don’t know or being hidden from them; Bong is always more than a step ahead. However, as the audience is allowed to catch up, they not only get closer to the true identity of the killer but also learn more about Mother and her backstory regarding her son. Getting more and more desperate for answers, Mother’s actions become increasingly outrageous as she takes matters into her own hands when no one else wants to help. Inevitably, like in many of Bong’s films, Mother must face her own ineptitude along with her past before she can reach the end of the long and winding road. Perhaps this elderly woman should never have made the first step on this unpredictable and emotionally devastating journey.
One of Bong’s most distinguishing qualities as a storyteller is his obsession with grotesquely incompetent characters, whom he affectionately likes to call “lovable losers,” and putting them in impossible situations. These exaggerated premises are what fuel the powerful drama in his typically dark and tragic films, but what is more interesting is how they make his films so funny. Bong is heralded as a master of tone, not in its consistency but rather in its wild variance. However, unlike the frustrating results of the joke-a-minute formula that all larger-than-life Hollywood franchises seem to follow these days, the laughs in Bong’s movies and especially “Mother” never feel like cheap comic relief that undermine the tone of the film but instead feel authentic and integral to the emotional payoff that the story demands. A part of Bong wants you to laugh at these characters and their ridiculous antics, but another wants you to regret you ever did. And it is this very irony that makes “Mother” so heartbreaking in the end.
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Shane Jung
Shane Jung '22 is planning on majoring in film studies and minoring in math or philosophy. He writes biweekly movie reviews in the Arts section.
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Acer nikoense Maxim.
Synonyms: A. maximowiczianum Miq.
A deciduous tree up to 40 or 50 ft high in a wild state, with a trunk 12 to 18 in. in diameter and a round-topped habit; branchlets hairy. Leaves composed of three leaflets on a stout, very hairy main-stalk; terminal leaflet short-stalked, oval, 3 to 5 in. long, 11⁄2 to 21⁄2 in. wide; the side ones obliquely ovate, stalkless, and somewhat smaller; all are either entire at the margins or shallowly and sparsely toothed, and more or less hairy beneath. Flowers yellow, 1⁄2 in. diameter, produced usually three together on drooping hairy stalks 3⁄4 in. long. Fruit with thick, brown-felted nutlets; keys 11⁄2 to 2 in. long; wings 3⁄4 in. broad, rounded, nearly parallel to each other, or diverging to 60° (in cultivation often not so large). Bot. Mag., n.s., t. 387.
Native of Japan, where, according to Sargent, it is widely distributed, but not common; also of Central China. Introduced by Messrs Veitch in 1881, in whose nursery at Coombe Wood, Kingston-on-Thames, was one of the first trees raised from Maries’ seeds, ultimately 30 ft high. Compared with many maples this is not a quick grower, which in small gardens may be counted an advantage, especially as the tree has a most interesting and distinct appearance at all times, and is very beautiful in autumn when the leaves turn rich red or yellow. The winter buds are long and pyramid-shaped, with overlapping scales. In wild specimens collected by Henry in Central China the leaflets are 7 in. long and 3 in. wide.
In cultivation, A. nikoense makes a small bushy tree or vase-shaped shrub. There are a number of examples at Westonbirt, of which the largest are: Mitchell Drive, 43 × 23⁄4 ft; Victory Glade, 42 × 31⁄4 and 40 × 3 ft (1966-7). Others recorded recently are: Hergest Croft, Heref., 35 × 5 ft at 2 ft (1960); East Bergholt Place, Suffolk, 30 × 21⁄4 ft (1966); Sheffield Park, Sussex, 30 × 21⁄2 ft (1960).
The above synonym is important, since it seems inescapable that it must supplant the established name A. nikoense Maxim. There has never been the slightest doubt about the identity of the maple described by Maximowicz, in considerable detail. Unfortunately, he cited as a synonym ?Negundo nikoense Miq., and the plant so named by Miquel is in fact either Acer cissifolium or possibly not a maple at all but a species of Parthenocissus (de Jong, Sex Expression in Acer, p. 147). Despite this, the herbarium specimen named Negundo nikoense by Miquel has to be regarded as the type of the name A. nikoense Maxim. Subsequently Miquel himself remarked that his Negundo nikoense was not the species described by Maximowicz and proposed for the latter the name A. maximowiczianum, which means that the genus will have one species under this name and another called A. maximowiczii. The International Code of Botanical Nomenclature permits this.
specimens: Nymans, Sussex, 40 × 41⁄4 ft at 1 ft (1983); Sheffield Park, Sussex, 40 × 33⁄4 ft and 50 × 41⁄4 ft (1979); Exbury, Hants, 52 × 31⁄4 ft (1978); Westonbirt, Glos., Mitchell Drive, 48 × 33⁄4 ft (1980), Victory Glade, 46 × 33⁄4 ft (1975), Main Avenue, 46 × 33⁄4 ft (1974); Hergest Croft, Heref., 40 × 51⁄4 ft at 2 ft (1971); East Bergholt Place, Suffolk, 46 × 41⁄2 ft (1973); Killerton, Devon, 42 × 4 ft (1985); Caerhays, Cornwall, 46 × 31⁄2 ft and 46 × 31⁄4 ft (1984); Trewithen, Cornwall, 44 × 41⁄4 ft (1985).
'Acer nikoense' from the website Trees and Shrubs Online (treesandshrubsonline.org/articles/acer/acer-nikoense/). Accessed 2019-07-19.
A. maximowiczianum Miq.
With an unbroken margin.
Leaf-like segment of a compound leaf.
(syn.) (botanical) An alternative or former name for a taxon usually considered to be invalid (often given in brackets). Synonyms arise when a taxon has been described more than once (the prior name usually being the one accepted as correct) or if an article of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature has been contravened requiring the publishing of a new name. Developments in taxonomic thought may be reflected in an increasing list of synonyms as generic or specific concepts change over time.
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World leaders literally laugh at Trump when he claims he has 'accomplished more than almost any administration'
President Trump addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on Tuesday, speaking directly to the gathered world leaders for the second time in his presidency. "One year ago, I stood before you for the first time," Trump said to begin his speech, explaining that he planned to update U.N. leaders on the "extraordinary progress we've made."
Rote introduction dispensed with, Trump's solemn tone forecasted a serious, on-message speech. That is, until his very next sentence. "In less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country," he said — prompting laughter from his audience. Trump interrupted himself to say his declaration was "so true," which only evoked heartier laughter from the crowd.
After an awkward beat, Trump relented: "Didn't expect that reaction, but that's okay," he said with a half-smile. Again, the crowd laughed, this time with applause. Watch the stunning moment below. Kimberly Alters
WOW! The UN audience laughs at Trump after he claims, "my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country." pic.twitter.com/tXg50ejQqy
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 25, 2018
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By Mike Hembury
I’ve always been a big science fiction fan, ever since I was a kid.
I love all that stuff.
I’d spend all day reading Asimov or Heinlein—or even watching clunky first series Star Trek—and go out at night and look up at the stars and think of what was possible.
What was going to be possible.
What people now could only imagine, but what one day, might become reality.
It’s a taste that has stayed with me throughout my life, mutating into many forms, forking off into cyberpunk with the rise of the internet (namechecking the great Pat Cadigan here), or into sci-fi horror with kick-ass Sigourney Weaver in the first Alien films, or into dystopian fiction like Margaret Atwood’s unsurpassed Year of the Flood.
To tell you the truth, I never really liked standard Hollywood fare. Star Wars sucks, big time, for example. Too many gender and ethnic stereotypes, pandering to a white, western, male audience. And fighting the evil empire in favour of a monarchy? Really?
But nowadays I find myself shying away from dystopian fiction.
I have enough trouble dealing with the dystopian nightmare our world is turning into.
I write this a couple of days after sixty thousand assorted nationalists and Nazis demonstrated in the streets of Warsaw on Poland’s Independence Day. Banners called for an end to immigration, for a “White Europe”. For an “Islamic Holocaust”.
Poland’s interior minister, Mariusz Blaszczak, called the demonstration “a beautiful sight”.
A few hundred kilometres further west, in Bonn, Germany, the COP23 climate change conference are trying to come up with a way to stop us from sending the planet permanently down the shit chute.
Meanwhile, just being alive and breathing in New Delhi is equivalent to smoking 50 cigarettes a day.
So, with race war and planetary destruction firmly back on the agenda, that’s more than enough dystopia for me.
Having said that, I couldn’t resist going to see Blade Runner 2049 recently.
There has been a lot of hype about it being such a cool film, beautifully shot, cutting edge, yadda yadda.
In short: I had to go.
I’ll spare you the plot details. You can check them out here, if you’re interested.
But allow me to give you my summary.
It sucked.
It cost $140 million and it really got my goat.
The film spends about 3 hours worrying about whether the main character is a human, or a replicant (synthetic human), or has any free will, or is secretly the miraculous love-child of a replicant and original replicant hunter Harrison Ford. There’s even talk of revolution and joining the resistance.
Stirring stuff, you might think.
Deep, even. Meaningful.
But there are two things in the film that don’t get talked about.
One is the weather. The planet is trashed. The environment devastated. Post-apocalyptic stuff. So it basically posits the climate apocalypse as more or less now.
Sure, I’ll go along with that.
But the other elephant in the room is the total enslavement and objectification of women.
In Blade Runner 2049, women are represented as:
A holographic computerized-but-sexy domestic servant program, with an overwhelming desire for a “real” relationship with her owner
A psychopathic killer replicant
A cop
Various prostitutes
The original replicant/blade runner love child locked away in a room somewhere.
Everywhere in the film, women are either servants, or for sale.
Ok, you could say, this is the point. It’s a dystopia. It’s like the environment. It’s just backdrop. It’s a warning.
Yeah? Well I don’t buy it.
Why just show it? Why not reflect on it? Why not have a character—a female character, goddamit—comment on it, discuss it, resist it?
There’s one gratuitously misogynistic scene where a newly born replicant—a naked, adult woman, her body glistening with synthetic amniotic fluid—is disembowelled with a scalpel by her “maker” for the “crime” of being sterile.
It’s gross, and difficult to watch.
And like the whole film, it left me feeling, above all, angry.
Images of women are everywhere in this film. Huge naked holograms. Giant statues in sexualized poses. And yet, in terms of consciousness, and subjective input, they are nowhere. I think it is this that gives the film its sense of pervasive misogyny.
The huge representations of naked women seem somehow to literally belittle and even threaten the main character. A whole part of his quest has to do with discovering that his memories—a core part of his personality—actually belong to a woman who is locked away in a sealed room for her own safety.
This is so classically Freudian it would make me want to laugh out loud if it wasn’t so unfunny.
I was really troubled by all these representations of women until I started seeing them as a metaphor for male insecurity, emotional infantilism and the repression of the female element in male heterosexual identity.
Having said that, the positive take-away for guys in this film is that the hero saves his daddy, kills the bad psycho woman, and dies a happy death re-uniting daddy with daughter (and himself with his hidden alter ego?). In fact, if I remember correctly, the main character also dies from stab wounds to the stomach, so symbolically also receives his own womb-envy punishment for being unable to bear children.
And for women, the positive take-away in this film is…
Ah no, scratch that. There is no positive take-away for women in this film.
But hey, nothing new there. I guess if you are a woman you’re used to that.
After all, it’s a Hollywood product of the Hollywood system.
What else should we expect in the age of Weinstein, #MeToo and presidential pussy-grabber in chief Trump?
I don’t know what we can expect, but I know what I, personally, want, and feel it’s reasonable to demand.
I want visions of future life that don’t just depict oppression of more than half of humanity as the natural state of things.
I’ve had it with male angst, self-hatred and fear and hatred of women being passed off as entertainment. All that is just backward-looking reactionary bullshit.
I want a way forwards.
Hope in the face of dystopia.
Entertainment, sure. But encouragement. Inspiration.
Just some basic human dignity for women would be a start.
In another, parallel universe—the one we happen to be living in—evidence is piling up which made the connection between mass shootings in the USA, whiteness, and domestic violence. It seems that a history of domestic violence can be the canary in the coalmine when it comes to a propensity for killing lots of people. Seems that a lot of straight white guys are not getting what they feel is due to them, so they take it out on their womenfolk first, then on society. And looking at the Weinsteins of this world, it seems that a lot of men in positions of power can’t resist using that power to perform sexualized acts of aggression and violence against vulnerable women, and, in some cases, men.
It’s not just the predatory men that are the problem. It’s the positions of power themselves.
In other words, we need not only to take the men out of the power equation, but to abolish all positions of uncontrolled power, wherever they occur.
In the workplace, that means organizing against sexism in all forms. This ought to be basic trade unionism 101. It’s a power issue, and a self-defence issue, and a safety issue.
In a domestic setting, protection and safety are of course much more difficult to ensure. We need to ramp up social services, women’s shelters, education, self-defence courses. And in the US: Remove all guns from domestic offenders.
And like in the workplace, organizing—breaking out of isolation, and breaking down structures of male power and privilege—are key.
I think if the outrage that has emerged from the #MeToo revelations results in a strengthening and further radicalisation of the international women’s movement in the face of seemingly all-pervasive male violence, then this will be a good thing. But does anyone seriously believe that liberation is possible under the terms set out by a patriarchal capitalism so imbued with toxic masculinity?
Police killings of black people didn’t stop under Obama. There’s no reason to expect that simply having a female head of state, or a female member of the board, is going to make much difference to systemic violence against women either.
I think society needs to be organized differently.
I think we need to be organized differently. Organized, coordinated, networked, differently.
If you’re a man, start with yourself. Be ruthless. Implement a zero-tolerance policy for woman-hating violence and sexist bullshit. In your own life. In your own heart. In your own behaviour. Among your friends, with your colleagues.
If you’re a woman, go ahead, get angry, get militant. Get organized.
Save the future life of the planet.
Because here’s the positive take-away for women.
You are the revolution.
Mike Hembury is an Anglo-Berliner originally from Portland, England. He’s a writer, translator, musician, coder, sailor, environmentalist and guitar nerd in no particular order. You can follow Mike on Twitter here: twitter.com/schnappz
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Maria on November 22, 2017 at 9:23 pm
Nice piece, Mike. Viva la revolution!
Jean Fogel Zee on December 29, 2017 at 3:09 am
Patriarchy is the unspoken word. I am glad to see the word patriarchy noted in your piece here. We need to start calling all of this what it is: patriarchy. Blow that word up, fill it with the meaning that it is, dominance. If we can define it, we can overcome it. Me too is out there. Let’s get patriarchy out there.
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The Texas Freedom Network supports the constitutional guarantee of the separation of church and state, which protects the right of all Americans to practice the faith of their choice, or none at all, free of government interference.
Unfortunately, efforts to knock down that wall are a constant in Texas. Politicians and activists have attempted to impose their views on others on issues like abortion and access to contraception. And in a distortion of the principle of religious freedom, far-right groups have supported legislative efforts to allow individuals to use religion as an excuse to ignore laws they might not like and even as a weapon to discriminate against others.
2017 Religious Refusal Bills
Texans Equal Under Law
Prayer in Public Schools: A Primer (2001 report)
The Texas Faith-Based Initiative (2002 report)
How the Religious Right Hijacked the National Day of Prayer (2005 report)
A Report on The National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (2005 report)
Reading, Writing & Religion: Teaching the Bible in Texas Public Schools (2006 report)
Reading, Writing & Religion II (2013 report)
Can This Class Be Saved? The ‘Hobby Lobby’ Public School Bible Curriculum (2014 report)
The Latest on Church & State
Can This Class Be Saved? Bible Course Compares Book of Exodus to Infamously Racist ‘Birth of a Nation’ Film
June 5, 2014 by Dan Quinn
Blog, Education, Religious Freedom, Religious Right Watch
Hobby Lobby President Steve Green and the nonprofit he created, Museum of the Bible, insist that respected scholars helped create their new Bible curriculum. But Mark Chancey, a biblical scholar at SMU in Dallas, questions how that could be true. Chancey found numerous errors and bizarre passages in his review of the curriculum for the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund.
Here is just one example Chancey notes in his review of The Book: The Bible’s History, Narrative and Impact:… Read More
Can This Class Be Saved? 'This Nation Is in Danger,' Steve Green Says
June 4, 2014 by Jose Medina
Blog, Education, Religious Freedom, Religious Right Watch, Reproductive Rights
Yesterday the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund released our latest report, Can This Class Be Saved? Authored by Southern Methodist University religious studies professor Mark Chancey, the report looks at a new public school Bible curriculum created with backing from Hobby Lobby President Steve Green.
Green, as you’ll recall, has been in the news a lot lately because of his company’s Supreme Court challenge, on religious liberty grounds, to the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that employers include coverage for birth control in employee health insurance plans.
The Bible curriculum, which Green hopes will be used all over the country, will get its first test run in public schools in Mustang, Oklahoma, this coming school year. Green maintains his aim is to develop a Bible curriculum that’s constitutionally permissible in public schools. For that to be true, as we have explained in our previous reports on public school Bible courses, Green’s course would have to be taught in an academic, non-devotional manner that refrains from promoting or disparaging religion or promoting one particular faith perspective over all others.
So is that the case with the Green-sponsored Bible curriculum? Chancey’s report raises some serious concerns, and Green’s own comments suggest the… Read More
TFNEF Report: Bible Curriculum Backed by Hobby Lobby President Would Lead to Preaching, Not Teaching, in Public Schools
Hobby Lobby’s president Steve Green has sponsored the development of a new Bible curriculum, The Book: The Bible’s History, Narrative and Impact, that he reportedly hopes thousands of public schools will adopt. The curriculum will be published by Museum of the Bible, a nonprofit organization created by Green to guide the development of a museum that will house his extensive personal collection of Bible-related manuscripts and artifacts. In mid-April the school board of Mustang, located six miles from Hobby Lobby’s Oklahoma City corporate headquarters, announced that it would teach a pilot version of the course beginning in the fall of 2014.
Today, a new TFN Education Fund report authored by Mark Chancey, a professor of religious studies at Southern Methodist University, finds that the curriculum’s combination of a religious purpose, pervading sectarian bias and frequent factual errors demonstrates that this curriculum has a long way to go before being appropriate for a public school classroom.
We just sent the following press release.
The first independent review by a biblical scholar raises serious concerns about a new curriculum that promoters – particularly Hobby Lobby President Steve Green – hope will combat what they see as ignorance about… Read More
The Day My Son Was Taught 'Bible' in a Public School
March 24, 2014 by TFN
Blog, Religious Freedom, Religious Right Watch
What happens when public schools cross the line by promoting personal religious views in their classrooms? One Texas parent -- a religious studies scholar -- explains what happened to her family in this cross-post (with permission) from Scribalishess. Susan M. Pigott is a professor of Old Testament and Hebrew at a small, liberal arts university in west Texas. She's married and has two amazing kids. Her family also includes five cats and two dogs, and her favorite hobbies are writing, photography, and geeky tech gadgets. The views expressed in this post are her own. *** I remember driving to Chili’s with my hands clenched on the steering wheel, knuckles turning white. It wasn’t the Abilene traffic (though I could write a blog post about Abilene drivers . . .) No. It was the story that was slowly, painfully unfolding as my son spoke. I was gently (I think) nudging him to reveal more and more about his day in fifth grade at a public elementary school. I was so angry by the time we reached Chili’s that it’s a wonder we didn’t get kicked out of the restaurant. We were heading to Chili’s to meet my husband for dinner. My son’s story began with a shrug and a quiet sentence, “Mr. X said that vegetarianism is wrong.” “What?” I asked–a bit too stridently. My boy at first hesitated to say more. “No, tell me. What did he say?” I asked, a little more gently. “Well,” my son said, “We were reading this book for class. And in the book, this boy has to live in the wilderness for a long time just eating what he could find. And at some point the boy says he really misses hamburgers.” “Okay,” I said. “Well, then Mr. X got out his Bible and told us that the Bible says vegetarianism is wrong. He started quoting a bunch of verses about meat and how you shouldn’t feel guilty about eating it and how vegetarians are less healthy than other people.” “What?” I sort of shrieked. This was when my knuckles turned white. You see, my kids and I are vegetarians. We have been for years. And here was a teacher, a person my son looked up to, telling the class that vegetarianism is wrong. That it’s against the Bible. That it’s unhealthy. I was beyond furious. I explained to my son that Mr. X was using the Bible incorrectly. That those verses he was quoting weren’t about vegetarianism at all, but about meat sacrificed to idols. But I could tell he was deeply hurt by what his teacher had said. By that time we were at Chili’s (yes, you can get vegetarian meals at Chili’s, in case you’re worried about hypocrisy). I was boiling. We sat at our booth, and I asked my son to tell Daddy what he had told me, because I was so livid I couldn’t see straight. My son told his story. Then he added, “Oh. And he also told us we didn’t come from monkeys and he quoted Genesis 1.” That was it. I was ready to hunt down Mr. X and teach him a thing or two about the Bible. You don’t mess with a Bible professor’s kid, teaching him crap theology in a public school classroom. Mr. X had no business saying what he said. I could barely stay in the booth. Read More
Texas Ed Board Candidates Want Religious Beliefs Promoted in Public Schools
February 20, 2014 by Dan Quinn
Blog, Religious Freedom, Textbook Censorship
We told you Monday that a religious-right group’s voter guide reveals that several Republican candidates in Texas State Board of Education elections this year think government shouldn’t be responsible for making sure all children get an education. The same candidates also support shifting tax dollars from public to private schools. So it might not be surprising to hear that their hostility to public education is matched by their disdain for science and separation of church and state.
According to answers in the voter guide, District 7 incumbent David Bradley, R-Beaumont Buna, and Fort Worth challengers Eric Mahroum and Lady Theresa Thombs in the District 11 Republican primary all support teaching “intelligent design”/creationism in public schools. They also want biology textbooks to teach creationist arguments about so-called “weaknesses” of evolution. District 11 incumbent Pat Hardy, R-Fort Worth, indicated that she opposes teaching both “intelligent design” and those discredited “weaknesses” arguments.
All of those candidates, including Hardy, say the Ten Commandments should be displayed in public school buildings, that marriage is a union of one man and one woman and that “no government has the authority to alter this definition.”) They also “strongly agree” that “the more people live by… Read More
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The C Is for Crank Interviews: Pamela Banks
October 7, 2015 October 1, 2015 / ericacbarnett
Now that the primary-election field of 47 has been narrowed to a comparatively manageable 18, I’m sitting down with all the council candidates to talk about what they’ve learned so far, their campaign plans going forward, and their views on the issues that will shape the election, including density, “neighborhood character,” crime, parking, police accountability, and diversity. I’ll be rolling out all 17 of my interviews (Kshama Sawant was the only candidate who declined to sit down with me) over the next few weeks.
If you want to help me continue to do interviews like this one, plus on-the-ground reporting, deep dives on issues like affordability and transportation, breaking news, and incisive analysis, please consider becoming a sustaining supporter by pledging a few bucks at Patreon. This work costs money and (lots of) time, so I really appreciate every bit of support I receive from my readers.
Today’s interview: District 3 candidate Pamela Banks, the president of the Seattle Urban League. Banks is running against council incumbent Kshama Sawant, who refused to speak with me despite repeated requests, including an offer to provide questions in advance. Sawant did not provide any reason for refusing an interview.
Banks and I sat down at the Grean House Cafe in the Central District.
The C Is for Crank [ECB]: You’re obviously the underdog in this race against an opponent with both high name recognition and a huge constituency among young people in this district [which includes Capitol Hill]. What was your takeaway from the primary results, and what’s your strategy to win?
Pamela Banks [PB]: For me, it was where I wanted to be. I wanted her to be below 55 percent and I wanted us over 35 and we were. [Sawant won with 52.03 percent to Banks’ 34.1 percent.]
Her name recognition meant a lot in this race. As many people as I talked to in this race, a lot of people didn’t know we were going to districts, and they voted on name recognition. We had the highest turnout, though. We went from second lowest, right above Southeast Seattle, to the first. So we just have to do more education, get more people engaged in this process If African American people didn’t vote, if women didn’t vote, then we wouldn’t have Barack Obama as president. The votes are there. We just have to get them.
People feel like certain issues she has latched onto sound good in sound bites, like “tax the rich” and rent control. But a lot of the voters in this district are elderly African Americans, and they’re worried about property taxes and all these levies. No one’s talking about that. The mayor is talking about utility assistance and expanding access to that program, which is great, but we need to be talking about people who are homeowners and are worried about their property taxes.
[Sawant] is a person of color, but her campaign staff and her city staff don’t reflect much diversity. For me, it’s more about being able to connect with all the people of the district and not alienate people where they live around issues of race. Gun violence is up 32 percent in our neighborhood for African American males. There is a crisis of gun violence if you’re black. With Black Lives Matter, she’s only talked about the police needing to be investigated for how they’re treating the protesters. I don’t know that she understands the history of slavery, the Jim Crow laws, and the impacts that has had on our community. If you’re not from here and you don’t understand the history of this country…
If we’re going to talk about housing affordability, we’re going to have to talk to developers. We need to look at things that provide tenant protections, giving them more time to find a new place when an owner comes and buys a building to flip it. There should be six months notice and relocation assistance.
But I’m telling people that rent control doesn’t work. If rent control worked, San Francisco wouldn’t have the highest income inequality in the nation. We need affordable units and we need them now. Even if the city council passed a resolution saying we want the state to lift the ban on rent control, with the Republican-controlled House and Senate, that couldn’t pass quickly. It would be years. Rent control advantages people who are in those affordable units and also leads to disinvestment. Most economists say it doesn’t work. I just educate people that it doesn’t work.
ECB: If not rent control, then what’s the solution to preserve housing affordability in District 3? Do you support the HALA recommendations?
PB: In five or ten years with HALA, I don’t know that you’re going to get in all the units that we need. I’d like to see more affordable housing at Yesler Terrace. We’ve made a commitment to replace 500 units that are extremely low-income there. I would like to see what happened in the past when we’ve done this. We should look at what happened in New Holly, in High Point, in Rainier Vista, to see if we can truly get diversity into Yesler Terrace and not just extremely low-income people.
I’d like to see an analysis of what they were supposed to do. It was going to include low-income market rate rentals and homeownership. We should look at that and see how we can make Yesler Terrace more diverse. I walk a lot to meetings downtown, and when I walked through Yesler Terrace recently I was thinking, we’re going to get 591 units back [from the original Yesler Terrace, which is being torn down]. What’s going to help middle-income people get into a place like that? Are they going to build any [homes for] ownership or is it all going to be rentals? I’d like to see some of the suggestions in HALA address that.
ECB: Do you support mandatory inclusionary zoning, requiring developers to build affordable housing in exchange for upzones?
PB: I think we should go higher. I totally support doing that in the single-family zones that are on the edges of urban village, that 6 percent [that HALA proposes to convert from single-family to low-rise multifamily]—do it. If it’s going to work, we have to do that. When you go to other cities, it works. But make it scale down as you go toward single-family, so it’s not like a little mini-downtown.
ECB: Can you give an example of a mini-downtown?
PB: I look at the [Angeline] project in Columbia City and it looks little out of scale. I worked there when it was a swap meet, when that was a trade well. It was businesses in those small business districts that were willing to take that risk coming into that neighborhood.
I do believe we have to build up. As I’ve doorbelled, I’ve seen some really cool [detached accessory dwelling units] and some small duplexes and triplexes that blend in to neighborhood. It’s not what they’re doing in the CD, taking down one single-family house and replacing it with an eight-unit block of townhouses. I support that if it’s affordable, but those townhouses are $650,000 to start. I didn’t believe it when I heard it, even with $1,800 studios in Columbia City.
ECB: Crime is still a big issue in this district, and violent crime, not the property crimes people talk about in the North End. What is your strategy for reducing crime in District 3?
PB: There are too many guns in people’s hands. As of june 30, SPD had confiscated more guns than in than in the entire last year and we’re probably going to surpass 2013 and 2014 soon. The ATF is here and we don’t know why. [Last month, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms confirmed it had placed surveillance cameras all around the Central District]. What disturbed me about the cameras was that there was no public process. That’s what disturbed me, and that we don’t know what they’re looking for. We’ve got to do something different. Cameras solve crimes. They don’t prevent crimes, but they solve them. I supported cameras with a sunset date in some of the hot spots, because we are trying to address this issue in the same way over and over again and expecting a different result.
We are not going to solve crimes until we have trust. Building the community-police relationship at a granular level is huge. In the ’90s, we had captains that stayed at a precinct longer than a year or six months. Captain Pierre [Davis] at the East Precinct would be able to see where the violent crime has been but he’s no longer there. We have to have some stability at the precinct level. I haven’t seen the mobile precinct—that’s the van that goes from spot to spot—in a long time. When it’s parked, you don’t get all this craziness.
Nothing is more frustrating me than when I’m told as a citizen and a taxpayer that it’s a resource issue. We need to get more people patrolling in the community rather than [SPD] telling us the mobile van is broken, or the guy that drives it is on vacation. You don’t want to hear, “We have a resources issue.” When that van was parked in the Red Apple parking lot, at Judkins, at Powell Barnett Park, you didn’t see that kind of problem. Hot spot policing works, but only if it’s done consistently.
ECB: I’ve heard a lot of complaints about the ongoing Metro construction along 23rd Ave. How would you rate the job SDOT and Metro are doing?
PB: I personally believe the city did the worst job ever with outreach. I went to all of the community hearings that I could, and they did that to the community, not for the community. They didn’t ask us. They said, “it’s going to slow traffic, no one wants to get hit by a car,” and people in the neighborhood are like, “no one can get to us.”
Parking on the street is a privilege. The challenge is that we’re trying to build a world-class transit system in an already built environment. If people had bus service that ran every 10 or even 15 minutes, people would get out of their cars and ride the bus.
What I’d like to do is a parking survey. When you go downtown at night, there’s a lot of loading zones now from 8 at night until 8 in the morning. People aren’t going to catch transit to go to the theater and dinner—they just aren’t! We need to do a survey of loading zones. For example, around Fifth Avenue Theatre, which is where I like to go, there are loading zones right in front and all around it. It would help just do a survey. As I’ve traveled around the district and had to park, I do like that they have meters that cost more at peak. I think that encourages turnover. You can actually find parking on the street, and that’s a win for me.
Shannon Braddock, District 1
Lisa Herbold, District 1
Bruce Harrell, District 2
Tammy Morales, District 2
Michael Maddux, District 4
Rob Johnson, District 4
Mike O’Brien, District 6
Catherine Weatbrook, District 6
Deborah Zech-Artis, District 7
Sally Bagshaw, District 7
Tim Burgess, Position 8
Jon Grant, Position 8
Lorena Gonzalez, Position 9
Bill Bradburd, Position 9
City Council, Elections
election 2015, Pamela Banks
← The C Is for Crank Interviews: Debora Juarez
Programming Note →
18 thoughts on “The C Is for Crank Interviews: Pamela Banks”
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DavidT
Nothing wrong with calling someone out on their record of community engagement. Sawants district has had a continuous record of the highest youth on youth murder rates… Is it wrong to say engagement by city hall of this area needs work? The entire district cried out with warning signs last week…. Do you think there might be a slight disconnect between city hall and those living in the district?
You’re connecting Sawant’s Council seat with youth murder rates? Ye gods, what a ridiculous straw man argument.
stredarts
The third district sure is depressing if you would like to vote for an urbanist. Banks seems to be generally pro development in the same way Tim Burgess is: when it is concentrated in areas that have already shown a willingness to accept it. The urban village grand bargain between Seattle’s suburban and downtown elites.
Her statement regarding property tax is hugely disconcerting. What other vaguely progressive tax do we have to fund the infrastructure changes, including fast frequent bus access to the CD, that the city needs? I doubt homeowners are going to like a land tax any better and Sawant already owns the rhetoric on income tax, head tax (arguably regressive), and commercial parking tax.
Sawant doesn’t seem to have any relevant policy proposals other than rent control rhetoric. And if you notice SA always includes a line like “rent controll along with easing zoning regulations” in their literature. But they don’t have any particular proposals as far as I’m aware to ease development regulation. If they were offering a concrete vision of Seattle with widespread and abundant social housing together with market rate housing wherever our infrastructure would naturally support it I would be willing to listen. Even if it included some kind of likely meaningless effort to implement cpi chained rent control.
What can even be said in regard to either candidates views on public transportation? In this interview, Banks sounds borderline car oriented with the NIMBY bone tossed in regards to the 23rd road diet and downtown parking servey. Sawant doesn’t seem interested in these subjects at all past vague staments of support.
I’m ready to support a write in urbanist candidate. I wish someone would raise their hand.
It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it, unless you simply want a meaningless protest vote.
Sawant has demonstrated that being an activist and actually governing are really not the same thing. Being effective with a bullhorn doesn’t translate to being effective at building coalitions and actually getting things done.
She has definitely rallied the constituency of people who don’t work, have time to crowd and disrupt public meetings, and generally demand lists of handouts they haven’t paid for. We’ll see what the constituency of people with jobs and who pay taxes have to say about that.
bain!
I have a job, pay taxes, and despite your insulting and deeply ignorant little outburst, am still voting for Sawant.
Sammo
Banks supporters show their true colors. You sound just like Mitt Romney and his 47% comment. If you are low income it is easy to see what to expect if you vote Banks.
Pamela Banks = Mitt Romney, nothing else needs to be said!
I’m voting Sawant. The level of hostility against her, and the amount of money that is being poured into defeating her, has made me realize how fanatical those who don’t like her really are. She’s a Socialist?!? I don’t care. I like her positions and think she should stay, whether she’s “from here” or not (nice anti-immigrant chops there, Banks. Stay classy.)
Dave0
“People aren’t going to catch transit to go to the theater and dinner—they just aren’t!”
This is the sentence that makes me really think that Pamela Banks doesn’t understand my point of view. I catch transit every time I go downtown for the nightlife. Driving into downtown and dealing with parking is not worth the hassle. It’s a freeing feeling to be able to wander anywhere around downtown Seattle without having to worry about where to put your car.
Zach L
I agree. My parents back east take the Long Island Rail Road and New York Subway to have a night out quite often. They never drive to dinner and a show.
RDPence
Yes, there are individuals like you Dave who use transit for nightlife activities, but most people don’t, even regular transit riders. Any transit trip requiring a transfer becomes a challenge at night when buses come less frequently and security is an issue. Dinner in one neighborhood, a show in an other, and a nightcap on the way home? Those trips don’t get done on transit. Those are the real-world people that Pamela Banks is talking about; she “gets it.”
David T
Thank you Pamela Banks for standing up for those without political connects, special interests backing, or deep pockets. You are the voice of those struggling, suffering, and trying to make it in today’s America. You’ve dedicated your life to working in the community. Thank you for your willingness to walk the streets that other public officials are afraid to walk; and to talk with the youth that our public officials are afraid to talk to. Your opponent says she’s “for the people”… yet would she ever walk the hotspots of the central district or rainier valley after dark? Has she taken the time to meet, engage, or save our most vulnerable from the streets? You are a warrior, a protector, and a friend to everyone you meet. You build bridges, you bring people together, and you solve problems. Thank you Pamela Banks for running!
charlie k
“I don’t know that she understands the history of slavery, the Jim Crow laws, and the impacts that has had on our community. If you’re not from here and you don’t understand the history of this country…”
I would have bolded the second sentence.
Yes, bolded and underlined. The nativist vote is huge in the 3rd. Better yet, Banks should just admit she is a member of the minutemen, is against immigration of any kind, and is prepared to exercise her 2nd amendment rights. She’d win big.
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The Art of Fernando Botero: Colombia’s ‘Most Colombian’ Artist
La muerte de Pablo Escobar, Museo de Antioquía, Medellín © Fernando Botero,
Helen Armitage
Fernando Botero, self-dubbed ‘the most Colombian of Colombian artists’, is a name synonymous with Latin American art. The prolific artist and his signature style, known as Boterismo, evoke images of voluptuous, voluminous people and objects, and his success as an artist is incontestable. However, Botero’s work can also be controversial, incurring charges of triviality. We explore what makes this ‘most Colombian’ of artists tick.
© Roel Wijnants/Wikicommons
Revered in both his native country and internationally, Fernando Botero has been bestowed with accolades including the First Prize in Painting at the prestigious Salon Nacional de Artistas in 1958 aged just 24. More recently in 2012, he was presented with a Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture award by the International Sculpture Center in the USA, which recognizes significant contributions to the medium. In 2001, Botero’s bronze sculpture Dancers sold for more than $1.7 million US dollars at a Christie’s auction in New York, a new record for Colombian sculpture.
But despite Botero’s evident critical and commercial success, there are some within the contemporary art world who are dismissive of his work, suggesting his preference for aesthetic art is trivial and unpolitical, or that his respect for the Old Masters of painting and his incorporation of their techniques is decidedly un-contemporary. However, this may be far too simplistic a reading of Botero’s work.
Fernando Botero, Donna Sdraiata, Bronze, 60 x 23.5 x 25 cm, Rosenbaum Contemporary, 2007
Courtesy Gallery and Artist
Born in 1932 in the city of Medellin, Colombia, Fernando Botero is a figurative artist in the fullest sense, renowned for his paintings and sculptures of curvaceous, full-figured subjects. He was born as the second of three sons, and his father, a travelling salesman, died when Botero was just four years old. His mother then had to work as a seamstress to support the family. After a stint at a matador school, Botero decided art was his true calling and in 1948, aged 16, he had his first exhibition. Three years later, after moving to Colombia’s capital Bogota, he hosted his first solo exhibition.
In the early 1950s Botero travelled through Europe studying art at Madrid’s Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, followed by a spell in Paris spent absorbing the works of the Old Masters at the Louvre. He continued to Florence, where he studied the frescoes of the Italian Renaissance. It was during and after this time that Botero began to develop his own distinctive style. Influenced by the naturalist portraiture of Spanish baroque master Diego Veláquez, Francisco de Goya’s romanticism and the Mexican mural artist and painter Diego Rivera’s vivid, large scale paintings, Botero’s art combines the vibrancy, boldness and folk themes common to Latin American art while paying a respectful homage to sensuousness of form in the work of the Old Masters. In doing so, Botero has developed a style that is both part of an artistic tradition yet also entirely his own. As Reed Johnson writing for the Los Angeles Times said, ‘his Rubenesque humans, rotund landscapes and voluptuous vases, musical instruments and other inanimate objects are so identifiable as to be practically a trademark.’
Fernando Botero, Still Life with Fruits, Oil on canvas, 78.1 x 99.1 cm, Rosenbaum Contemporary, 2003
Not all critics are fans of Botero’s however, with many lambasting his work as lacking depth and critique, or like Charmaine Picard for Arts in America said, Botero’s works of art are ‘blasted by detractors as simplistic caricatures of fleshy forms in sunny familial scenes.’ However, these critics in the contemporary art world have never posed too much of a problem or threat to Botero. He is in fact accepting of this rejection, perhaps even embracing of it, stating in an interview with ARTnews that ‘some people love my work, some people hate it. You can’t be liked by everybody. There has been opposition in some places. I represent the opposite of what is happening in art today.’
It may be this very discord between Botero and his critics that explains his importance in contemporary art. He goes against the grain of most artists working today by using traditional techniques, and has established his own clear, distinct and unwavering style, creating art with a sense of permanence, substance and meaning – something Botero feels a great deal of contemporary art is lacking in. As his daughter Lina Botero said, ‘he thinks contemporary art is a contest of extravagances about who can invent the best gimmick, but as he says, it’s like when you are told a joke – the first time, you laugh, the second time, you might laugh again, but the third joke is gone because you already know it. Nothing of real substance or masterful technique is being done today and yet contemporary art is able to sustain itself and persist over the years.’
It might be Botero’s view of art’s function that sets him apart from many other contemporary artists. Rather than creating works of art purely made to shock and provoke a certain reaction, Botero seeks to provide a sense of tranquility and joy through much of his art – as the artist said himself, ‘art should be an oasis, a place of refuge from the hardness of life.’ This view does not however detract from Botero’s ability to apply his distinct style to a more serious subject matter as he did when depicting the drug-fuelled violence in his native Colombia and with his Abu Ghraib (2005). This series of paintings and drawings was inspired by reports of abuse and torture in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison by US forces and sparked a considerable outrage, particularly in the US.
Fernando Botero, Leda e il Cigno, Bronze, 66.1 x 128.3 x 54.6 cm, Gary Nader Fine Art, 2007
© Courtesy Gallery and Artist
Indeed, it is when creating works of art that address atrocities like this that Botero feels art performs a vital function, and a function that other media cannot emulate. As Botero said of his Abu Ghraib series: ‘art is important in time. It brings some kind of reflection to the matter. We have analyzed this thing from editorial pages and books, but somehow this vision by an artist completes what happened. He can make visible what’s invisible, what cannot be photographed. In a photo, you just do a click, but in art you have to put in so much energy. This concentration of energy and attention says something that other media cannot say.’
Botero may have received criticism, but there is no denying his appeal. His art, with its vibrant colors and voluptuous subjects, has a certain magnetism and ‘everyman’ appeal that isn’t elitist or restrictive. His son, Juan Carlos Botero, has said of his father’s work, ‘one of Botero’s most important convictions is that art should be direct in its meaning: anyone should be able to understand it. This is one of his strongest principles as an artist. People ‘get’ his paintings, drawings and sculptures because his art is straightforward. There’s no need for a complementary explanation by a third party to help decipher, admire, appreciate or simply enjoy the work, as so often happens in contemporary art.’
Fernando Botero, Bodegon con sopa de arvejas, Oil on canvas, 183.2 x 193.7 cm, Gary Nader Fine Art, 1970
© Gallery & Artist
Painter and sculptor of voluptuous forms, admirer of the Old Masters and an ‘everyman’ artist, Botero is now in his 80s and is as prolific as ever. An avid creator, he has produced thousands of paintings and hundreds of sculptures and will continue to captivate with his trademark full-figured people and objects. As Botero himself says, ‘an artist is never complete.’
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Tag Archives: Blue
Dick Figures: The Movie (2013)
Animation, Ben Tuller, Birthday present, Blue, Burrito Island, Car chase, Ed Skudder, Eiffel Tower, Eric Bauza, Explosions, Lord Tourettes, Pink, Raccoon, Red, Review, Shea Logsdon, Sword of Destiny, Zack Keller
D: Ed Skudder, Zack Keller / 73m
Cast: Ed Skudder, Zack Keller, Eric Bauza, Ben Tuller, Shea Logsdon, Mike Nassar, Chad Quandt, Lauren K. Sokolov
If you’ve not seen any of the Dick Figures webisodes – all available to view on YouTube – then don’t worry about watching the movie first. Although there are some references that only fans will get e.g. the poster in Blue’s room for Flame War 4, some of the titles on his bookshelf, and Stacey’s sister, Dick Figures: The Movie works just as well as a stand-alone movie.
Providing Red (Skudder) and Blue (Keller) with an origin story, Dick Figures: The Movie sees our heroes twenty-five years on from their first meeting, and with no change in their circumstances: Red is still a self-absorbed, party hound who’ll try and have sex with almost any female he sees. Blue is still enamoured of Pink (Logsdon), and with her birthday fast approaching, Blue wants to get her the most amazing present ever. He and Red go to local store Ancient Secrets ‘n’ Things where owner Raccoon (Skudder) tells them about the fabled Sword of Destiny, its part in Raccoon’s family history, and how it has been divided into three parts and the parts hidden around the world. Giving them a map to help find the various parts, Red and Blue agree to find and unite the pieces, and provide Pink with the best birthday present ever.
Their journey take them to Japan where they find the hilt of the sword and run into Lord Takagami (Bauza). Takagami also seeks the Sword of Destiny, and after a narrow escape from his ninja-demons, Red and Blue find themselves on a deserted island. Miraculously rescued by blind pilot Captain Crookygrin (Skudder), the pair end up in Paris. There they meet their friend Lord Tourettes (Tuller) who helps them find the second piece of the Sword, the blade, located at the top of the Eiffel Tower. The trail then leads them back to their own hometown and a nearby mountain they’ve never seen before. They find the remaining piece, a jewel, but are ambushed by Lord Takagami and his ninja-demons. Will Red and Blue defeat the evil Lord and his minions? Will Pink get her most amazing birthday present ever? And will Red let Blue plunge to his death into the maw of Ochomuerte?
Fleshing out the two to five minute webisodes into a feature-length movie may have seemed like a risky move but creator Ed Skudder along with co-director and writer Zack Keller have done a great job. Although Red has a minimal character and story arc, Blue is given more of an “upgrade” and he has an emotional arc that suits the storyline. As the two friends set out to retrieve the missing Sword, Red’s selfish behaviour threatens to derail their adventure at (almost) every turn. It’s a mark of Skudder and Keller’s astute writing that even when Red is being the biggest asshole possible, he’s still likeable and fun to watch. Blue’s exasperation with his friend’s behaviour is understandable but there’s still an element of envy that Red can be so “carefree” when Blue feels so much responsibility, and for pretty much everything. Their bromance is entirely credible and anchors the movie when everything else is so gloriously anarchic.
And make no mistake, Dick Figures: The Movie is not your average Disney animation; far from it. Red and Blue’s debut movie is surreal, bizarre, scabrous, scatological, puerile (in places), exciting, captivating, deranged, absurd, outlandish, crazy, disgusting, violent, and so over the top it makes South Park look boring. With this much warped imagination on display, the movie barely stops for breath at any time during its (sadly) brief running time. There is a car chase through the streets of Paris that is as adrenalin-fuelled as anything in a Fast and Furious movie, and a parkour-style chase through a Japanese harbour that is as giddily inventive as anything in recent US animation. It’s obvious that Skudder and Keller know their action movies, and with a finale involving a giant demon, their cult Asian movies as well. And it’s just so damned funny.
Having a bigger budget – as well as allowing the inclusion of the aforementioned action sequences – has also given Skudder et al the room to provide more detailed backgrounds than in the webisodes, play around with different styles of animation, and to include a better level of visual effects (their explosions are so much more, well, explosive). Each character is clearly delineated from the rest, either by colour or physical appearance, and while Skudder contributes most of the vocalisations (thirteen in all), the work of Keller, Bauza and Tuller, all webisode regulars, adds to the richness of the performances.
Standing apart from the crowd, both in terms of content and its look, Dick Figures: The Movie will obviously appeal to fans first, but there’s so much here to entertain even a casual observer, that it would be a major disappointment if the movie didn’t find a wider audience. A second outing for Red and Blue would be something to look forward to indeed.
Rating: 8/10 – an unqualified delight and a must-see for fans of low-budget but distinctive animated story-telling; and despite the often crude humour, a movie with a lot of heart and soul as well.
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America and its allies won D-Day. Could they do it again?
InternationalPolitics & current affairsRealTime Research
Linley Sanders
Most Americans are confident that the world order would hold steadfast if there was a global conflict that demanded international cooperation—but that doesn’t mean people are convinced such collaboration won’t be necessary in the near future.
As America approaches the 75th anniversary of D-Day — when Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy and changed the trajectory of World War II — a majority (59%) believe another world war is likely to take place in the next 40 years, which is slightly fewer than agreed (64%) with the same statement in 2018.
By comparison, 40% of US adults say America and its counterparts could effectively collaborate in order to make D-Day possible today. More than a third (36%) say that same collaboration would not be possible.
Most Americans (66%) regard the nation’s intervention in World War II as “completely justified” or “somewhat justified.” It’s the most well-supported major military engagement since the country’s original break from England (61%), which sparked the American Revolution.
But, the general public isn’t convinced that America’s military involvement is always warranted. The Vietnam War is regarded by a majority of US adults as “not very” or “not at all” justified (55%), though that sentiment increases based on generation. Baby Boomers are the most likely (64%) to consider the Vietnam War unjustified, compared to 52% of Gen Xers and 43% of Millennials.
America’s longest ongoing military action, the War in Afghanistan, is regarded as reasonable by 35% of adults, but 42% say it’s unjustified. There is a clean political split regarding the current military engagement in Afghanistan: a majority of Republicans (56%) consider it justified compared to a majority of Democrats (55%) who say it is not.
See full poll results here. Learn more about YouGov RealTime and share your own opinion by signing up to be a panelist here.
Methodology: Total unweighted sample size was 1,214 US adults ages 18+. The responding sample is weighted to the profile of the sample definition to provide a representative reporting sample. Interviews were conducted online between May 21 - 22, 2019.
RealTime Research
The YouGov Omnibus is the perfect vehicle to quickly and cost-effectively find out people’s opinions, attitudes and behaviours. Omnibus is a shared cost, multi-client approach to survey research.
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Read Next: Listen: The Special Sauce in Broadway's 'Moulin Rouge!'
August 19, 2001 3:32PM PT
Stagebill spree
Publisher bags Avenue, Performing Arts mags
By Jonathan Bing
Jonathan Bing
Subliminal ads with a twist of lymon
Farrell keeps tabs on marketing empire
Talk’s not cheap to word-of-mouth marketers
Stagebill, America’s largest custom publisher for performing arts venues, has acquired Performing Arts Magazine and Avenue Magazine.
The two-pronged acquisition comes as Stagebill has concluded a new round of financing. And it’s likely to be a prologue to further acquisitions in months to come as Stagebill, whose circulation now stands at more than 1.2 million, continues to expand its reach in the custom publishing and luxury media markets.
Performing Arts is California’s leading publisher of programs for the performing arts. Founded in 1965 by Gilman Kraft, at the time the owner of Playbill, it’s average monthly circulation is now 600,000.
Together, Stagebill and Performing Arts will serve more than 120 venues in 22 cities, including the Hollywood Bowl and the Geffen Playhouse in L.A., and Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall and the Public Theater in Gotham, the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., and the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago.
Avenue, which chronicles Gotham society, fashion and luxury lifestyles, is a controlled circulation mag distributed to 80,000 upscale customers. Avenue also publishes special editions in England, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Monte Carlo.
The deals were inked a little over a year after former Daily Variety publisher Gerry Byrne became a partner and CEO at Stagebill, with a mandate to grow the brand and expand into new markets.
“We’ve dramatically driven up the scale of the business,” Byrne told Daily Variety. The Performing Arts acquisition, he said, “clearly places Stagebill as the leading custom publisher for the performing arts.”
Avenue, Byrne added, “is a fabulous brand, targeting a highly sought after community of affluence. We intend to build on the Avenue brand, to expand its range of products, while creating sales and sponsorship combinations that instantly enhance our reach and strength.”
The combination of businesses is expected to create a wealth of targeted marketing programs and crossover sales opportunities for Stagebill.
As Stagebill publisher Wayne Roche put it, “These acquisitions will greatly increase the circulation and coverage of upscale consumers that we can offer to marketers of luxury goods and services with the publications sold as a seamless package.”
Stagebill is privately controlled by a group of financing partners, including Ken Lipper, Frank Biondi, Mort Zuckerman and Byrne.
In the fall of 2001, Stagebill will launch two new initiatives: Stagebill Family and Stagebill.com, created in partnership with Hollywood Media’s Broadway.com, a company partially owned by Viacom.
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Since the 1990s, scores of women in Juarez, Mexico have been mutilated, raped, and murdered at such a rate that some have called it an epidemic of femicide—killing women and girls solely because they are women. Isaac Gomez’s play “the way she spoke,” produced Off Broadway by Audible and starring Kate del Castillo, confronts the [...]
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Paul McCartney Has Been Secretly Writing an 'It's a Wonderful Life' Musical
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If Tennessee Williams is the poet laureate of lost souls, none of his characters as are off-grid as the restless travelers trying to make it through his little-seen 1961 play, “The Night of the Iguana.” Holed up in a remote Mexican homestay, its ragtag itinerants live hand-to-mouth, day by day, as they seek refuge from [...]
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There are songs in the new Broadway version of “Moulin Rouge!” that weren’t in Baz Luhrmann’s hit movie — but you probably know them anyway. They’re popular tunes by superstars like Beyoncé, Adele and Rihanna, released after the 2001 movie came out, and they’ll probably unleash a flood of memories and associations in every audience [...]
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Read Next: New 'Walking Dead' Series Adds Annet Mahendru, Aliyah Royale
Composer adds color to 'Pollock'
By Jon Burlingame
Jon Burlingame
@jonburlingame FOLLOW
Jon's Most Recent Stories
Composer Earle Hagen at 100: ‘Andy Griffith’ and ‘Dick Van Dyke’ Theme Writer’s Legacy Endures
Sid Ramin, Oscar-Winning Composer-Arranger, Dies at 100
Given writer-director Ed Harris’ subdued, yet emotionally raw approach to the subject of abstract expressionist icon Jackson Pollock in last year’s award-winning biopic “Pollock,” the film was arguably one of the most difficult challenge any composer faced last year.
So when Jeff Beal rose to the task with a hypnotic combination of minimalist rhythmic drive, Americana ambiance, and introspective writing for strings, percussion and piano, Hollywood observers alternated between high praise and curiosity about this 38-year-old Northern Californian.
A graduate of the prestigious Eastman School of Music, Beal’s early ’90s career as an award-winning jazz trumpeter quickly shifted to composer of chamber and symphonic works (a bass concerto for John Patittuci, a piece for the Turtle Island String Quartet and orchestra) and a move to L.A. to pursue film work.
After the rigors of “Pollock,” he has completed the music for the Gary Sinise golf movie “A Gentleman’s Game” and TNT’s “Door to Door” (with William H. Macy as an Oregon door-to-door salesman who has cerebral palsy) and is about to score the cable film “Joe and Max,” about boxers Joe Louis and Max Schmeling.
After struggling on low-budget projects, Beal says, “Working on ‘Pollock’ really recharged my batteries and restored my faith in filmmaking as an artistic pursuit. It’s like playing in a band: You’re only as good as the musicians you play with. If I have a goal, it’s to get a chance to collaborate with people who make me better at what I do.”
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FIELD DIVISION - DARK MATTER DREAMS VINYL (LTD. ED. SILVER GATEFOLD)
LIMITED EDITION SILVER VINYL GATEFOLD
Release Date: 22nd June 2018
The duo of Evelyn Taylor and Nicholas Frampton, aka Field Division, return with their second album and first for Bella Union. Dark Matter Dreams is a folk-rock fuelled festival of the 'good old days' of 70's folk-rock and harks back to the likes of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and especially Fleetwood Mac with Taylor and Frampton coming off like the contemporary answer to Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. But there are enough original and modern sounds to make sure the record nods to the past as opposed to simply being stuck there.
For Fans Of: Fleetwood Mac, Sunflower Bean, Jonathan Wilson, First Aid Kit
"Field Division is Evelyn Taylor and Nicholas Frampton. Four years on from the sumptuous dream-folk of their debut EP, 2014’s Reverie State, the Des Moines duo flex all their lung-power on their debut album, Dark Matter Dreams. Written on the road, where the duo has been living even when not touring, it’s a sweeping album with rock vigour and the spark of deeply held convictions, nurtured in the face of widespread modern disillusionment. Vintage influences include Buckingham Nicks, Led Zeppelin, All Things Must Pass, The Beatles, and the 1960s / 1970s Laurel Canyon scene, but make no mistake: this is an album that lives and breathes for today."
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Airtcle 46
You are here » Home » Media » News » News Archive - Pre-2011 » April 2007 » Article 40
Historic clean sweep for Birmingham at the NIA
Young athletes from all corners of the UK, gathered in Birmingham on Sunday 22 April, for the Norwich Union sports:hall UK Final, with individual medals and team trophies up for grabs.
For the first time in the 24-year history of the UK Sportshall final, Birmingham completed a clean sweep, taking the four team titles for Under 13 girls, Under 13 boys, Under 15 girls and Under 15 boys.
Cheered on by the former All Rounder Champion in 1999, Jonathan Moore, who was looking out for athletes that might get close to breaking his UK Standing triple jump record of 9.44m, the athletes had all earned their place after qualifying in their regional or national final.
The Under 15 Boys All Rounder title was shared by Olu Oyewobi (Middlesex) and the first Welsh athlete to ever make the podium, Meilir Jones (North West Wales), they finished the day tied with 265 points. Birmingham’s Joe Scott took third place, just three points behind.
Oyewobi was competing at his first UK final and was cheered on by his PE teacher Mr Rosen, who encouraged him to take up athletics at St. Thomas More Sports College in Woodgreen, London. He said:
“I didn’t know what to expect as it was my first experience of making the UK final. I joined
Enfield & Haringey last year, but I haven’t done much competitive athletics. I think this experience will give me the incentive to carry on with athletics now and see what I can do.”
Katharine Merry with the All Rounder Champions
Meilir Jones, a member of Menai Track & Field, was hoping for an individual medal after finishing fifth last year in the same age group, but it didn’t all go to plan. He said: “I thought I could get into the medals, but my chances seemed to be getting slim as I was throwing up after the first event, the four lap race!”
“I really wanted to be the first athlete from Wales to win the All Rounder title, that was my aim after last year.”
Shelley Hazlewood (Warwickshire) took the honours in the Under 15 Girls All Rounder competition. She finished the day with a solid set of performances; nine points clear of Emma Spragg (Birmingham) and Kitan Elajae (Essex).
Shelley said afterwards: “I’ve done Sportshall since I was 11 years old, so it has always been important to me. Hopefully winning this title will be a stepping-stone for me. I would love to compete at the Olympics one day.”
Full results are available on the Sportshall Athletics website.
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Artcile 37
You are here » Home » Media » News » News Archive - Pre-2011 » August 2007 » Article 23
UK Athletics performance director Dave Collins wishes the GB & NI team well
The IAAF World Athletics Championship is one of the biggest and best sporting events of the year and the Norwich Union Great Britain and Northern Ireland team is proud to be part of it.
There is no doubt that competition in Osaka will be tough, but I think we have picked the strongest team possible to compete at the highest level.
As part of our drive forward at the top level of our sport, we have made a number of refinements.
We have put in place a harder selection policy, which coupled with an extremely focused support system should ensure a team which is ready to give its best in competition.
As a result, our team for this year’s World Championship is made up of highly competitive athletes with much promise for future success.
Each individual in Osaka will have a clear focus and a set of targets for their long term development – both for this World Championship in its own right and as a stepping stone for the future.
I would like to take this opportunity to wish every athlete in the team the very best luck for the World Championships and the future.
Dave Collins, UK Athletics Performance Director.
More News articles and photos from the IAAF World Championships....
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Excerpt: Living the Revolution, by Jennifer Guglielmo
Posted by Erich on 26 March 2012, 10:05 am
Italians were the largest group of immigrants to the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, and hundreds of thousands led and participated in some of the period’s most volatile labor strikes. Yet until now, Italian women’s political activism and cultures of resistance have been largely invisible. In Living the Revolution: Italian Women’s Resistance and Radicalism in New York City, 1880-1945, Jennifer Guglielmo brings to life the Italian working-class women who participated in these labor actions and helped to shape the vibrant radical culture that expanded into the emerging industrial union movement. Living the Revolution is now available in a new paperback edition. In the following excerpt from the book, we meet one of the remarkable women that helped shape the dynamic, active culture among Italian immigrant women in early-twentieth-century New York.
From Living the Revolution: Italian Women’s Resistance and radicalism in New York City, 1880-1945 (pp. 110-111, 112-113):
In no way did Natalia Garavente fit the image of the poor working girl. She was instead “not a lady to be trifled with.”[1] She went by Dolly in the solidly blue collar waterfront town of Hoboken, New Jersey, where she grew up, just across the Hudson River from Lower Manhattan. She immigrated as a child in 1897, with her family of educated and skilled lithographers from a northern Italian village near Genoa. At the time, Hoboken was home mostly to unskilled laborers from southern Italy, with sizable Irish and German immigrant communities, and smaller numbers of other working-class groups. Against her parents’ wishes, Dolly fell in love with a young Sicilian immigrant from the neighborhood, a prizefighter with tattooed arms named Anthony who boxed under the name Marty O’Brien. To attend his matches, she went in drag, with her brothers, wearing their clothes, her hair stuffed under a cap, and a cigar dangling from the corner of her mouth.[2]
Soon after they met, Dolly and Marty eloped and moved into a tenement in Hoboken’s poorest section. The birth of their first child a year later in 1915 almost killed both mother and son. Dolly was small, weighing only ninety-two pounds at the time, while the baby was over thirteen pounds. Dolly’s mother Rosa was the midwife but called in a doctor for help when the birth became life threatening. He “tugged away with forceps, ripping the baby’s ear, cheek and neck.” But it was even worse: “The newborn did not breathe. Thinking him dead, the doctor turned instead to treat the mother.” Rosa turned to the baby. Scooping him up, she held him under cold running water to get his blood moving. To everyone’s amazement he began to cry.[3]
Like most working-class families, Dolly and Marty held several jobs to get by. Marty was a shy, quiet man who worked at different times as a shoemaker, a boilermaker in the shipyards, a part-time bootlegger, and a firefighter. Dolly was a chocolate dipper in a local candy factory and studied midwifery on the side. She would follow in her mother’s footsteps to become one of the neighborhood’s most trusted midwives. Hundreds of babies came into the world through her hands, and she was well known for her ability to perform safe abortions. At the height of Prohibition, she and Marty also opened a saloon together in Hoboken, on the corner of Fourth Street and Jefferson, calling it Marty O’Brien’s.
In many ways, Dolly was Marty’s opposite: outgoing, social, and ambitious. Between the saloon and her work as a midwife, Dolly came to know most everyone in Hoboken. Perhaps most revealing of her popularity is that she was named godmother to eighty-seven children, many of whom she delivered herself. She parlayed her social networks into local political power by the 1920s, when she reputedly ran half of Hudson County as the leader of the Democratic Party for Hoboken’s Third Ward. As ward boss she was respected for her no-nonsense manner and ability to help Hoboken’s Italians in their dealings with the city’s largely Irish public officials. In exchange for political favors, she was rumored to deliver six hundred votes at election time to the city’s Democratic Party. Dolly also threw her energies behind her son, who had his own dreams of escaping the poverty of Hoboken to become a successful artist. Her son was Frank Sinatra.[4] [ . . . ]
While few Italian immigrant women would become ward bosses or raise legendary performers, the material realities they encountered through their own migration led many to connect with the life of their communities. In doing so, many defied popularized notions of the cloistered, downtrodden, all-nurturing mamma. Dolly’s story is one of many that take us into the complex humanity of Italian immigrant women. She was anything but a victim. Throughout her life she embodied a full range of possibility. While her actions were at times controversial, she was decisive, savvy, and acted on her own behalf and in service of those in her community. It seems she learned this from her own mother Rosa, whose combined wisdom and ability to act was what saved her grandson’s life.
Dolly and Rosa’s stories reveal how Italian immigrant women confronted the challenges and traumas of modern urban industrial life by literally taking matters into their own hands. They also point to three common methods that women employed to survive the shock of arrival:[5] building and sustaining everyday networks of reciprocity and mutual aid; engaging in patterns of subterfuge, waged in the most intimate relationships; and pursuing spiritual work, including healing practices, religious devotion, and the transmission of sacred knowledge to the next generation. These strategies were each firmly rooted in female traditions of resistance in Italy, crafted and recrafted again during the violence of state formation, severe economic hardship, and mass emigration at the turn of the century. As women migrated, they carried these practices across the globe, adapting them to new contexts and challenges. Networks of support and mutuality came to include new neighbors and co-workers, as well as formerly distant kin and friends, all of whom helped women to find jobs, housing, childcare, friendship, and romance, as well as spiritual, emotional, and intellectual sustenance. Daily life remained firmly rooted in relationships with paesani, family, and friends from the village or region of origin. But women’s lives unfolded in urban, multiethnic, working class communities and through a variety of relationships that increasingly transcended the boundaries of region, language, religion, race, and nation.
From Living the Revolution: Italian Women’s Resistance and Radicalism in New York City, 1880-1945, by Jennifer Guglielmo. Copyright © 2010 by Jennifer Guglielmo.
Jennifer Guglielmo is associate professor of history at Smith College. She is author of Living the Revolution: Italian Women’s Resistance and Radicalism in New York City, 1880-1945 and coeditor of Are Italians White?: How Race Is Made in America.
[1]Sinatra, Nancy. Frank Sinatra, My Father. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985. 40.↩
[2]This composite of Dolly Sinatra (1896-1977) comes from the following sources: Sinatra, Frank Sinatra; Gennari, “Mammissimo”; Meyer, “Frank Sinatra”; Pignone, The Sinatra Treasures; Lahr, Sinatra, Fagiani, “The Italian Identity of Frank Sinatra”; Petkov and Mustazza, The Frank Sinatra Reader; Hamill, Why Sinatra Matters; Pugliese, Frank Sinatra; Rolling Stone, 25 June 1998, 57; Lowenfels, “Frankie’s Fight”; and the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930, Hoboken, Hudson, New Jersey, roll 1349, 9B, 290, image 819.0; Social Security Death Index 151-32-9978 (1958-59).↩
[3]Sinatra, Frank Sinatra, 36; Pignone, The Sinatra Treasures, 14. Frank Sinatra was born on 12 December 1915.↩
[4]Lowenfels, “Frankie’s Fight,” 3.↩
[5]Phrasing inspired in part from Meena Alexander, The Shock of the Arrival↩
Filed under American History, Excerpts, Labor Studies, Political Science, Women's Studies | Tagged immigrants, Jennifer Guglielmo, Living the Revolution | Permalink
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Tag Archives: Southeast Asia
Water and public policy research in Vietnam
October 6, 2012 By Daniel Little in CAT_policy Tags: Southeast Asia Leave a comment
We don’t get a lot of exposure to social science and policy research from Vietnam, so it was very interesting for me recently to run across two recent books by Vietnamese researchers: Pham Cong Huu’s Floods and Farmers: Politics, Economics and Environmental Impacts of Dyke Construction in the Mekong Delta / Vietnam and Ly Thim’s Planning the Lower Mekong Basin: Social Intervention on the Se San River. (The research was done at the Center for Development Research (ZEF) at the University of Bonn.) Rural development and agricultural change are topics of interest to me, so I was very interested to read both these books.
Water control is the central focus of both books. Floods in the Mekong Delta are among the most destructive in Asia. Pham Cong Huu quotes data that demonstrate that Vietnam has more deaths by flooding than any other state in southeast Asia. The river is also crucial to the intensive agriculture of the Mekong Delta, which produces 18 to 21 million tons of rice annually (Huu, 4). So the challenge of creating and maintaining systems for controlling flood waters and directing water into agricultural land is an enormously important one — both economically and in terms of human welfare.
Key among the measures the Vietnamese government has taken is a large system of dikes designed to control flooding. This system has generally had a positive impact on reducing the hazard of massive flooding and improving the stability of cultivation. But Huu observes that it also has major unintended negative consequences as well: “erosion, plant diseases, soil fertility decline and natural degradation in the protected flooding areas” (5).
Huu’s central interest is the decision-making processes that governed the creation and maintenance of this system of water control. He finds that it is dominated by government agencies with little input from farmers and non-governmental organizations.
It is therefore the purpose of this study not only to understand and discuss the “planning and implementation of the dyke system in the Mekong Delta”, but also to investigate the reactions of the farmers and of affected farming communities, with the ultimate aim and goal to include their experiences and visions into the broader social and economic context of the project area. (6)
Huu’s overall assessment of this decision-making process is favorable to the government but highlights crucial deficiencies:
The governmental approach is a correct and wise decision. The dyke system is seen by the government as a relevant flood control measure that needs to be implemented in the floodplains of the MD. This assumption, however, and its perception and consequences are — from a bottom-up perspective — partly adverse to the necessities and practical experiences of the local population. Therefore, farmer communities and local organizations rejected this dyke system in their practical flooding situation. (9)
Here is how Huu summarizes his analysis of the decision-making process for dike construction in Can Tho city:
In summary, the reconstruction of the planning process and the results of own research substantiate our hypothesis that the whole planning and implementation process of the dyke system has been a top-down activity by the central government and its bodies. Professional knowledge, experience and voice of organizations and residents, especially that of planners at local level, were not asked but rather ignored in the dyke system planning process. (75)
Huu’s book is particularly valuable for the in-depth glimpses it permits of how land-use and water-control decisions are made in Vietnam. He also lays the ground for the idea that a substantially more multi-level process of decision-making would have served the people of the Mekong Delta better — one which took more account of the experience and knowledge of local people and their organizations. Here is how Huu puts this point:
Thus, one may argue that a considerable constraint of the city is the lack of democracy in the whole process of dyke system planning. The participation of civil society in planning issues towards the decentralization and devolution of many areas of natural resource policy and state responsibility are an international trend. Democratic decentralization is obviously more efficient and equitable than state-dcentered control, especially when local issues and problems are at stake. (91)
Now consider Ly Thim’s research. Thim is primarily interested in hydroelectric projects and the dams that they depend upon. He focuses on the Se San river basin. There are several important differences between the problems that Huu and Thim consider. Most important is the fact that Huu’s focus is on sub-national planning (regional flood control), while Thim’s work involves river basins that span more than one country. In the case of the Se San river, policy choices were mediated through the Mekong River Commission including Cambodia and Vietnam. A second important difference between the two cases is the role that NGOs played. NGOs are more or less invisible in Huu’s account, whereas they play a key role in Thim’s account of the development of policies and implementations for hydroelectric power systems on the Se San river.
Here is how Thim formulates his purposes in the research:
This book focuses on how various social actors influence the planning process for Se San River Basin’s management in response to the effect of Vietnamese Yali-Falls dam on Cambodian local communities’ livelihoods…. The objectives of this book are as follows: — To develop an understanding of historical process of hydropower development in Se San River Basin; — to identify the major actors, their roles, interests, power relations and strategies in influencing decision-making process in hydropower development sector in Se San River Basin; — to provide a concluding remark on the impact resulting from responses as a means for Se San River Basin management (1).
Thim finds that non-state actors had significant influence on the policies he considers. NGOs were able to express their policy recommendations, and local communities were also able to find voice in the processes.
Various important actors who had a direct engagement with dam issues can be identified, such as the affected riverbank communities, the NGOs, the Cambodian government officials, and the Vietnamese government officials. The view of affected riverbank communities is mainly based on their local knowledge, their observation of changing river condition, and their experiences. The view of NGOs such as NTFP and Oxfam America clearly represents the protection of social welfare of affected communities as well as the protection of water resources environment and ecology. In this regard, the actions taken by NGOs … could bring the voice of local communities to provincial, national and international agencies for resolution. By this way, affected communities are empowered through NGOs. (93)
Both these studies are focused on policy decision-making processes governing water in Vietnam, but their methods of approach and their central findings are rather different. The differences in findings probably reflect differences in the issue areas themselves — local and regional dike systems, versus massive international dam projects. But it also seems noteworthy that Thim’s approach give substantially more importance to the voices of local communities and community-based organizations; whereas Huu finds that the political culture of Vietnam continues to be a top-down bureaucratic system of decision-making.
I am glad these two books made their way to my office in Michigan. This is another strong argument for the importance of digital distribution of books and research reports: these physical books probably won’t show up in your local library. But since they are available in digital editions on Google Books, anyone can download them for more careful study for a fraction of the paperback price. Here is Ly Thim’s Planning the Lower Mekong Basin, and here you can find Pham Cong Huu’s Floods and Farmers. (They aren’t available as Kindle editions, unfortunately.)
Zomia reconsidered
October 18, 2010 By Daniel Little in CAT_history Tags: Burma, Southeast Asia 1 Comment
An earlier post described James Scott’s recent book on the segment of Southeast Asia that he refers to as Zomia (The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia ). As noted there, Scott turns in his usual creative, imaginative, and innovative treatment of the subject matter; the book is an absolutely captivating argument about the push and pull between states and fugitive peoples. As such, it suggests the possibility of bringing some of the central ideas and analyses to bear on other geographies as well. But how accurate is Scott’s reading of the primary historical experience of these parts of Southeast Asia — Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, China, Cambodia, and Bangladesh?
This is the question posed by the current issue of the Journal of Global History (link), with essays by C. Patterson Giersch, Magnus Fiskesjo, Sarah Turner, Sara Shneiderman, Bernard Formoso, and Victor Lieberman. All the essays are fascinating, including the editorial introduction by Jean Michaud. But particularly important is Lieberman’s essay. Lieberman is one of the leading contemporary historians of Southeast Asia, and he is a very fertile and imaginative thinker himself. So his responses to Scott’s arguments are worth looking at closely. (His most recent volumes, Strange Parallels: Volume 1, Integration on the Mainland: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c.800-1830 (v. 1) and Strange Parallels: Volume 2, Mainland Mirrors: Europe, Japan, China, South Asia, and the Islands: Southeast Asia in Global Context, c.800-1830 , are directly relevant to Scott’s analysis.)
Lieberman begins by establishing the territory on which he agrees with Scott. First, he accepts the fact of a growing separation between lowland and highland peoples in Southeast Asia during early modern times, and he agrees about the importance of analyzing this pan-Southeast Asian phenomenon.
Another point of agreement is the fact of highlander agency. Lieberman agrees with Scott’s insistence that highland peoples throughout Southeast Asia crafted their own social worlds in response to the political and natural environments that faced them. He writes:
Scott’s basic thesis is that highland societies, far from living in isolation, have been profoundly and continuously moulded by their relation to plains-based kingdoms. (333)
He notes that Scott’s approach turns the narrative of state-building on its head; highland peoples were defined in terms of state-avoidance. The lowland states had an interest in gathering manpower and taxes, and the highland peoples had a persistent interest in evading both. Lieberman writes:
Scott claims that these processes transformed Southeast Asia’s mountainous interior into a vast “shatter zone,” an area of flight, a sphere of asylum and marronnage for runaways from state-making projects in the plains. (334)
Scott’s central achievement, then, is to bring hill peoples into the mainstream of regional history by uncovering their relation to lowland states and societies. (336)
So Lieberman acknowledges the importance and boldness of Scott’s effort at providing a comprehensive historical study of Zomia. But Lieberman offers a series of important criticisms of Scott’s historical case.
First, he finds Scott’s documentation to be weak, in that it makes little use of Burmese-language sources. This has led, in Lieberman’s opinion, to a number of errors of fact, some more significant than others. He cites estimates of literacy, for example; Scott says less than 1 percent of people were literate in Southeast Asia, and Lieberman documents 50 percent for Burma in 1800.
More significantly, Lieberman believes Scott over-estimates the importance of manpower as a determinant of military success in the region. The degree of maritime commerce was equally important, he argues. And this is critical to Scott’s argument, since competition for manpower is one of the primary reasons Scott cites for the efforts of lowland states to attempt to dominate the highlands.
Finally, and most important, Lieberman argues that there is little documentary evidence for significant population flight from lowland to highland (339). This is key to Scott’s interpretation, and Lieberman argues the evidence isn’t there to support the claim. After reviewing Scott’s own evidence and some additional data of his own, he writes:
All in all, outside central Vietnam perhaps, this remains a rather limited record of displacement and flight. (341)
Moreover, Lieberman argues that Scott’s interpretation of the highlands becomes so dependent on one causal factor, state oppression, that it neglects the processes of development that were internal to the highland societies themselves. “Ecological and cultural conditions that were intrinsic to the hills and that were substantially or completely divorced from the valleys receive little or no attention” (343).
This point is more important when we consider an example not included in Scott’s analysis — the highland peoples of Borneo/Kalimantan. Lieberman argues that these tribes had virtually all the characteristics of culture and agriculture displayed by Zomians, including swidden cultivation and a proliferation of local languages, and Scott interprets these traits as deeply defensive. Yet these features of highland life emerged in Borneo without the pressure if a surrounding predatory lowland state (345). And this casts serious doubt on Scott’s anarchist, anti-statist interpretation of Zomia.
Lieberman’s point isn’t that Scott’s interpretation of Zomia is unsupportable. Rather, his point is that it is a bold and substantive interpretation of a complex historical domain, and it requires serious, fact-based consideration. And this is exactly what the essays in this special volume of Global History promise to do.
This debate is interesting and important, in part, because it sheds light on the practical empirical research challenges that arise when we consider bold new interpretations of social data. A bold hypothesis is advanced, purporting to pull together the processes of development observed in a variety of places; and then there is the practical question of evaluating whether the hypothesis is born out when we do the detailed, local historical research needed to test its basic assertions. In this case, Lieberman is suggesting that several of the components of the theory are found wanting when applied to highland Burma.
(The image above is a satellite-based survey of fires across Southeast Asia (link), relevant to the practices of swidden farming.)
Red shirts as a social movement
May 19, 2010 By Daniel Little in CAT_collective action Tags: social movements, Southeast Asia, unrest 3 Comments
The redshirts in Thailand have moved onto the world stage in the past several months. Massive protests in Bangkok have stymied the Thai government and have held the army and police forces at bay for months. Demands from redshirt leaders and posters include removal of the military-backed government of Prime Minister Abhisit and a commitment to prompt elections. In the background seems to be a demand for a shift in the playing field in Thailand, with meaningful attention to social inequalities. And exiled former prime minister Thaksin plays a continuing role in the background, offering video messages at protest meetings and veiled instructions to redshirt demonstrators. Efforts at clearing the protest encampment led to dozens of deaths in April, and a major crackdown this week seems to have succeeded in breaking the protest in Bangkok with another handful of deaths and a great deal of arson in the center of the city. But there are indications that protests and violence may spread to other parts of Thailand.
What all of this implies is the presence of a major social movement in Thailand, supported by many thousands of rural and urban Thai people, mostly from the lower end of the socioeconomic order. This much is clear through the journalism that has developed around the current turmoil. What we haven’t yet seen, though, is a careful analysis of the dynamics and processes of this movement. How is it organized? How are followers recruited? What resources are leaders able to call upon? What are the grievances that motivate potential followers? The time is ripe for a careful, analytical study of the movement. And intellectual resources exist for such a study, in the form of the extensive literature on social movements and contention that exists in the current social science literature. However, that literature largely focuses on social movements in the democratic West, and scholars in this tradition generally lack deep knowledge of the politics of Asian countries. So we need to find ways of crossing boundaries if we are to make use of social movement theory in the context of the Redshirt movement.
One of the most important voices in the current literature on social contention is Doug McAdam. His study of the black insurgency in the United States is a sophisticated and extensive analysis of the dynamics of the US civil rights movement in the South (Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970 ), and perhaps there are some parallels between the two movements. McAdam’s work is entirely focused on examples of protests and mobilization in the United States. But in the introduction to the second edition of this work he provides a clear and powerful statement of the state of the field, and his synthesis of the best current thinking about how to analyze social movements is of general interest. So perhaps this is one place to begin the search for an empirically and theoretically informed study of the Redshirt movement.
Here are a few of McAdam’s central points.
Increasingly, one finds scholars from various countries and nominally different theoretical traditions emphasizing the importance of the same three broad sets of factors in analyzing the origins of collective action. These three factors are: 1) the political opportunities and constraints confronting a given challenger; 2) the forms of organization (informal as well as formal) available to insurgents as sites for initial mobilization; and 3) the collective processes of interpretation, attribution and social construction that mediate between opportunity and action. (viii)
Or in short: political opportunities, mobilizing structures, and framing processes (viii-ix). Here are brief descriptions of each of these axes of analysis.
Expanding political opportunities. Under ordinary circumstances, excluded groups or challengers face enormous obstacles in their efforts to advance group interests…. But the particular set of power relations that define the political environment at any point in time hardly constitutes an immutable structure of political life. Instead, the opportunities for a challenger to engage in successful collective action are expected to vary over time. It is these variations that are held to help shape the ebb and flow of movement activity. (ix)
Extant mobilizing structures. … By mobilizing structures I mean those collective vehicles, informal as well as formal, through which people mobilize and engage in collective action. This focus on the meso-level groups, organizations, and informal networks that comprise the collective building blocks of social movements constitutes the second conceptual element in this synthesis. (ix)
Framing or other interpretive processes. … Mediating between opportunity, organization and action are the shared meanings, and cultural understandings — including a shared collective identity — that people bring to an instance of incipient contention. At a minimum people need to feel both aggrieved about some aspect of their lives and optimistic that, acting collectively, they can redress the problem. (ix-x)
So how can these basic sets of questions help in forming a careful analysis of the Redshirt movement? McAdam’s general point is that these angles of analysis have emerged as key within dozens of studies of collective action and social movements. They represent an empirically informed set of theoretical perspectives on collective action. We shouldn’t look at these three sets of factors as setting a blueprint for collective action; but it is a good bet that new instances of social movements will involve each of these factors in some way.
Putting the point another way: we can read McAdam’s synthesis as posing a research framework in terms of which to investigate a new example of a social movement — whether the Falun Gong in China, the monks’ movement in Burma, the Maoist insurgency in India, or the Redshirt movement in Thailand. It is certainly possible that a given case won’t fit very well into this set of questions; but McAdam’s hunch is that this is unlikely.
So it would be very interesting to initiate a careful study of the Redshirt movement along these lines. Such a study would need to review the shifting circumstances of political power over the past ten years or so in Thailand, both at the national level and at the state level. Certainly the military overthrow of the Thaksin government created “ebbs and flows” of the sort to which McAdam refers. And the Yellowshirt demonstrations of 2008 also shifted the fields of power in Thailand. What openings did these various events create for Redshirt mobilization? Second, we would need to know a great deal more about the local and regional organizations through which Redshirt mobilization occurs. What are those organizations? What resources do they control? How do they manage to succeed in mobilizing and transporting many tens of thousands of rural supporters to the center of Bangkok? And how do they manage to continue to supply and motivate these supporters through several months of siege? Finally, and most importantly, we need to know much more about the mentality and social identities of the Redshirts. What do they care about? What are their local grievances? What are their most basic loyalties and motivations? McAdam points out that most studies of successful social movements have found that activists and supporters usually possess dense social networks and deep connections to their communities; will this turn out to be true for the Redshirt movement?
There is a cynical reading of the movement that would almost certainly not stand up to this kind of careful analysis: the idea that the Redshirts are simply the pawns of Thaksin, and that Thaksin’s financial support to individual followers is sufficient to explain their behavior. This doesn’t seem credible on its face; it makes the movement out to be an automaton controlled by a distant leader. Surely Thaksin plays a role; but equally certainly, leaders and followers have their own issues, agendas, and passions.
The kind of study suggested here does not yet exist, so far as I can tell. It would be necessary to pull together a great deal of local knowledge about the social constituencies and local organizations that are involved in the movement — information that isn’t presented in any detail in the journalism that has been offered to date about events in Thailand. But once a researcher has pulled together preliminary answers to questions in each of these areas, he/she will be much better positioned to answer pressing questions of the day: will the movement survive the repression in Bangkok this week? Will it spread to other locations in Thailand? Will the government succeed in preserving the status quo? And schematic answers to these questions would provide a much more substantial basis for understanding the movement and its location within Thai society.
Here is one small contribution to the effort. McAdam emphasizes the importance of “identity shift” in the evolution of a social movement. He thinks that a very substantial part of a movement’s strength and staying power derives from the new forms of collective identity that it creates. There is evidence of shifting identities along these lines within the Redshirt movement. Consider this interesting analysis of language from Thailand’s Troubles:
ไพร่, which sounds like prai, was a dusty word which rarely saw the light of day. Now on every other t-shirt worn by people of the Red movement printed large and proud is prai.
Prai has perhaps a dozen meanings including cad, citizen, plebian and proletariat. In the context of the Red movement protest, which includes an element of class conflict and rebellion over inequality, prai frequently means commoner and peasant.
This sounds quite a bit like a shift of identity, from disregarded poor person to proud member of a movement.
(Several earlier posts have focused on events in Thailand. Here is a post from about a year ago on civil unrest in Thailand. See also the social movements thread in UnderstandingSociety.)
Zomia — James Scott on highland peoples
March 25, 2010 By Daniel Little in CAT_history Tags: Burma, Southeast Asia 2 Comments
James Scott opens his most recent book with quotations from frustrated pre-modern administrators and missionaries whose territories included the peoples of inaccessible highland regions — Guizhou, highland Burma, and Appalachia. Scott finds that the geographical circumstances of highland peoples mark them apart from the political organizations of the valleys; states could control agriculture, surplus, and labor in the lowlands, but were almost entirely incapable of exerting sustained rule in the highlands. And he finds that highland cultures and systems are more or less deliberately shaped to elude the grasp of the state; linguistic variety, swidden agriculture, and ethnic opacity all work to make the art of rational administration all but impossible. The book is The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, and it is a significant contribution to the social and political analysis of very large swatches of the world. (Here are the table of contents and introduction to Edmund Leach’s classic book, Political Systems of Highland Burma: A Study of Kachin Social Structure.)
Scott makes use of the concept of “Zomia” to capture the highland peoples of Southeast Asia.
One of the largest remaining nonstate space in the world … is the vast expanse of uplands, variously termed the Southeast Asian ma s-si f and more recently, Zomia. This great mountain realm on the marches of mainland Southeast Asia, China, India, and Bangladesh sprawls across roughly 2.5 million square kilometers — an area roughly the size of Europe. As one of the first scholars to identify the massif and its peoples as a single object of study, Jean Michaud has traced its extent: “From north to south, it includes southern and western Sichuan, all of Guizhou and Yunnan, western and northern Guangxi, western Guangdong, most of northern Burma with an adjacent segment of extreme [north]eastern India, the north and west of Thailand, practically all of Laos above the Mekong Valley, northern and central Vietnam along the Annam Cordillera, and the north and eastern fringes of Cambodia.” (chapter 1)
(The Michaud citation refers to Historical Dictionary of the Peoples of the Southeast Asian Massif .)
Scott estimates the population of the minority peoples of Zomia at 80-100 million. Here is a map posted by Martin Lewis on GeoCurrents.Info.
What is intriguing about this definition of space and social reality is that it is not defined by nation-state boundaries and jurisdiction, by linguistic groupings, or by ethnic and national identities. Scott emphasizes the enormous linguistic and ethnic variation that occurs across this expanse of space. “In the space of a hundred kilometers in the hills one can find more cultural variation–in language, dress, settlement pattern, ethnic identification, economic activity, and religious practices–than one would ever find in the lowland river valleys” (chapter 1; Kindle location 343).
Two central arguments take up much of Scott’s attention in the book. One is an argument about the logistics of state power in a pre-modern agrarian society. Essentially he argues that pre-modern agrarian societies were only able to impose their rule over a tight radius of perhaps 300 kilometers, when it came to collecting taxes, grain, and manpower. Moreover, this radius of power reduced significantly when population was distributed over mountainous country. So as a practical matter, the pre-modern states of Burma, Thailand, and Cambodia were river-valley states, and the peoples of the highlands were rarely subject to central rule. This argument resonates with Michael Mann’s analysis of pre-modern state power in The Sources of Social Power: Volume 1, A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760 . On this scale, the Kingdom of Chicago would barely be able to exert its will over the peasants of Peoria or Milwaukee; and Indianapolis would be a distant and irrelevant place.
The precolonial state, when it came to extracting grain and labor from subject populations, could project its power only within a fairly small radius of the court, say, three hundred kilometers, and that undependably and only during the dry season. (Kindle loc 610)
And, he argues, the peoples of the highlands deliberately organized their activities in ways that made the power of the state least effective.
Virtually everything about these people’s livelihoods, social organization, ideologies, and (more controverially) even their largely oral cultures, can be read as strategic positionings designed to keep the state at arm’s length. (Kindle loc 26)
The very diversity, fluidity, and mobility of their livelihoods meant that for an agrarian state adapted to sedentary agriculture, this ungoverned landscape and its people were fiscally sterile. (Kindle loc 217)
The other central theoretical argument that Scott offers concerns the question of ethnicity and identity. Like Ben Anderson (Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism ), Scott believes that the identities of Burman, Mon, Khmer, Tai, or Shan are constructed identities, not essential or ancient.
Identity at the core was a political project designed to weld together the diverse peoples assembled there. Bondsmen of allied strongmen, slaves captured in warfare or raids, cultivators and merchants enticed by agricultural and commercial possibilities: they were in every case a polyglot population. (Kindle loc 1166)
The central plain of what would become Siam was, in the thirteenth century, a complex mix of Mon, Khmer, and Tai populations who were an “ethnicity-in-the-process-of-becoming” Siamese. (Kindle loc 1172)
The book takes up the argument that Scott began in Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed : that a central task of the state it to render its territory and population “legible”. The state needs to be able to regiment and identify its subjects, if it is to collect taxes and raise armies; so sedentary, mobile, peripheral peoples are antithetical to the needs of the state. This argument begins in Seeing Like a State; and it gains substantial elaboration here. And it is a fundamental call for a different approach to conceptualizing and studying the cultures and populations of Southeast Asia: not by ethnic group, not by national boundaries, but rather by the common circumstances of material and political life in high, rugged terrain.
As I’ve suggested in treating Scott’s other contributions to “peasant studies”, Scott’s work almost always takes the form of an imaginative re-framing of problems that we thought we had understood. But once looking at the facts from Scott’s point of view, we find that the social phenomena are both more complex and perhaps more obscure than they initially appear to be.
High modernism and expert knowledge
January 16, 2010 By Daniel Little in CAT_globalization Tags: agriculture, authoritarianism, epistemology, peasant, Southeast Asia 5 Comments
James Scott is one of the really exceptional social scientists of his generation. His contributions to peasant studies have been transformative — his ideas of the “moral economy of the peasant” and “weapons of the weak” are now part of the tool set that we all use in trying to make sense of agrarian societies (The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia , Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance , Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts ). And his historical and ethnographic accounts of peasant life and struggle have given us a strong basis for understanding these movements that were so important during the anti-colonial struggles of the mid-twentieth century. (I’ve treated several of these contributions in earlier posts here, here, here, and here.)
What is particularly striking about Scott’s work is the range of his sociological imagination. He is a genuinely creative thinker when it comes to making sense of some of some very complex human phenomena — peasant mobilization, agricultural modernization, and large-scale efforts to transform the world. Each of his books introduces something new (for example, his treatment of Gramsci and hegemony in Weapons of the Weak, or his use of “hidden transcripts” in Domination and the Arts of Resistance). He is a master at coming up with a concept, theory, or metaphor that can help to explain complex forms of social behavior, from the points of view of the actors. And he does a great job of overcoming the dichotomy between “material circumstances” and “culture”; the peasant communities and movements that he treats are both materially situated and culturally specific.
A more recent book that makes a number of important new contributions is Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (1998). Here Scott shifts focus in two ways. His analysis here differs from his earlier books in that it is both more macro — he examines the ways that states think; and more micro — he also examines the nature of individually situated expert local knowledge. Both parts of the analysis are interesting and novel.
The book explores what Scott calls “high modernism” — essentially, the effort to use science and theory to order and regularize the social world, and to use theories of the future to remake the present. Scott defines high modernism in these terms:
It is best conceived as a strong, one might even say muscle-bound, version of the beliefs in scientific and technical progress that were associated with industrialization in Western Europe and in North America from roughly 1830 until World War I. At its core was a supreme self-confidence about continued linear progress, the development of scientific and technical knowledge, the expansion of production, the rational design of social order, the growing satisfaction of human needs, and, not least, an increasing control over nature. (89)
Initially he puts the point in terms of the modern state’s agenda of “sedentarianization” — reducing the mobility and anonymity of nomadic peoples and organizing them into “legible” formations.
The more I examined these efforts at sedentarization, the more I came to see them as a state’s attempt to make a society legible, to arrange the population in ways that simplified the classic state functions of taxation, conscription, and prevention of rebellion. (2)
Much of early modern European statecraft seemed similarly devoted to rationalizing and standardizing what was a social hieroglyph into a legible and administratively more convenient format. The social simplifications thus introduced not only permitted a more finely tuned system of taxation and conscription but also greatly enhanced state capacity. (Introduction)
The core thesis of the book is the damage that states have done when they have attempted to implement antecedent theories of social change:
I believe that many of the most tragic episodes of state development in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries originate in a particularly pernicious combination of three elements. The first is the aspiration to the administrative ordering of nature and society, an aspiration that we have already seen at work in scientific forestry, but one raised to a far more comprehensive and ambitious level…. The second element is the unrestrained use of the power of the modern state as an instrument for achieving these designs. The third element is a weakened or prostrate civil society that lacks the capacity to resist these plans. (88-89)
High modernism was evident in agriculture; but it was also visible in urban planning.
Le Corbusier had no patience for the physical environment that centuries of urban living had created. He heaped scorn on the tangle, darkness, and disorder, the crowded and pestilential conditions, of Paris and other European cities at the turn of the century … He was visually offended by disarray and confusion. (106)
The French-inspired urban design of colonial-era Saigon is pictured above.
Scott’s view is that the central development disasters of the twentieth century derived from this toxic combination of epistemic arrogance and authoritarian power, including especially an excessive confidence in the ability of principles of “scientific management” to order and organize human activity. He provides case studies of the creation of Brasilia as a completely planned city; Soviet collectivization of agriculture in 1929-30; villagization in Tanzania; and the effort to regularize and systematize modern agriculture (266). And we could add China’s Great Leap Forward famine to the list. In each case, the high-modernist ideology led to a catastrophic failure of social development.
In sum, the legibility of a society provides the capacity for largescale social engineering, high-modernist ideology provides the desire, the authoritarian state provides the determination to act on that desire, and an incapacitated civil society provides the leveled social terrain on which to build. (5)
A constant contrast in the book is between the objectifying knowledge of modernist science — social and natural — and the particular knowledge systems of practitioners and locals about the nature of their local environment — what he calls “metis”. “Throughout this book I make the case for the indispensable role of practical knowledge, informal processes, and improvisation in the face of unpredictability” (6). A particularly clear instance of these two perspectives comes in through Scott’s discussion of scientific forestry and the local knowledge of forest ecology possessed by villagers. Beekeeping, traditional farming, and the cultivation of the mango tree (333) are other good examples. Two forests are pictured below; the first is an old-growth forest, and the second is the result of scientific forestry. And Scott documents the ecological destruction that resulted when these principles of scientific forestry were exported from Germany to Southeast Asia.
Scott’s perspective here is not anti-scientific or anti-modern. Instead, it is fundamentally anti-authoritarian: the high-modernist impulse coupled with the power of the modern state has led to massive human disasters. And confidence in comprehensive, abstract theories — whether of forests, bees, or cities — has been an important element of these destructive endeavors. So the conclusion is a moderate one: pay attention to local knowledge, be suspicious of totalizing experiments in transforming society or nature, and trust the people who are affected by policies to contribute to their design.
Scott’s arguments in Seeing Like a State provide some resonance with two other insightful writers discussed in earlier postings: Michael Polanyi (on the importance of tacit knowledge) and Karl Popper (on the hazards associated with comprehensive social engineering).
(Scott’s most recent book is The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia . Here is a very interesting working paper by Grant Evans reviewing Scott’s contributions; From moral economy to remembered village: The sociology of James C. Scott (Working paper / Centre of Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University) .)
Alleviating rural poverty
December 7, 2009 By Daniel Little in CAT_globalization Tags: agriculture, economic development, peasant, poverty, Southeast Asia 1 Comment
What theories and values ought to underlie our best thinking about global economic development? Along with Amartya Sen (Development as Freedom ), I believe that the best answer to the ethical question involves giving top priority to the goal of increasing the realization of human capabilities across the whole of society (The Paradox of Wealth and Poverty: Mapping the Ethical Dilemmas of Global Development ). We need to put the poor first. However, I also believe that our ability to achieve this goal is highly sensitive to the distributive structures and property systems that exist in poor countries. The property institutions of developing countries have enormous impact on the full human development of the poor. As a result, ethically desirable human development goals are difficult to attain within any social system in which the antecedent property relations are highly stratified and in which political power is largely in the hands of the existing elites.
The fundamental question of poverty is this: how do people earn their livings? The economic institutions of the given society (property relations and market institutions, for example) determine the answer to this question. An economy represents a set of social positions for the men and women who make it up. These persons have a set of human needs—nutrition, education, health care, housing, clothing, etc. And they need access to the opportunities that exist in society—opportunities for employment and education, for example. The various positions that exist within the economy in turn define the entitlements that persons have—wages, profits, access to food subsidies, rights of participation, etc. The material well-being of a person—the “standard of living”—is chiefly determined by the degree to which his or her “entitlements” through these various sources of income provide the basis for acquiring more than enough goods in all the crucial categories to permit the individual to flourish (Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation ). If wages are low, then the consumption bundle that this income will afford is very limited. If crop prices are low, then peasants will have low incomes. If business taxes are low, then business owners may retain more business income in the form of profits, which will support larger consumption bundles and larger savings. There is thus a degree of conflict of interest among the agents within the economic system; the institutions of distribution may favor workers, lenders, farmers, business owners, or the state, depending on their design. And it is very possible for economic development to proceed in a way that gives the greatest benefit to the upper levels of society without leading to much change at the bottom.
Here I want to review an important empirical example of economic development without commensurate gain for the poor of the region: the effects of the Green Revolution in the rice-growing regions of Malaysia. James Scott provides a careful survey of the development process in Malaysia in Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (1985). The chief innovations were these: a government-financed irrigation project making double-cropping possible; the advent of modern-variety rice strains; and the introduction of machine harvesting, replacing hired labor. Scott considers as relevant factors the distribution of landholdings, the forms of land tenure in use, the availability of credit, the political parties on the scene, and the state’s interests in development.
Scott’s chief finding is that double cropping and irrigation substantially increased revenues in the Muda region, and that these increases were very unequally distributed. Much of the increase flowed to the small circle of managerial farmers, credit institutions, and outside capitalists who provided equipment, fertilizers, and transport. Finally, Scott finds that the lowest stratum—perhaps 40%—has been substantially marginalized in the village economy. Landlessness has increased sharply, as managerial farms absorb peasant plots; a substantial part of the rural population is now altogether cut off from access to land. And mechanized harvesting substantially decreases the demand for wage labor. This group is dependent on wage labor, either on the managerial farms or through migration to the cities. The income flowing to this group is more unstable than the subsistence generated by peasant farming; and with fluctuating consumption goods prices, it may or may not suffice to purchase the levels of food and other necessities this group produced for itself before development. And these circumstances have immediate consequences for the ability of poor households to achieve the development of their human capabilities. Their nutritional status, their health, their literacy, and their mobility are all directly impaired by the fact of low and unstable household income. Finally, the state and the urban sector benefits substantially: the increased revenues created by high-yield rice cultivation generate profits and tax revenues that can be directed towards urban development.
Scott draws this conclusion:
The gulf separating the large, capitalist farmers who market most of the region’s rice and the mass of small peasants is now nearly an abyss, with the added (and related) humiliation that the former need seldom even hire the latter to help grow their crops. Taking 1966 as a point of comparison, it is still the case that a majority of Muda’s households are more prosperous than before. It is also the case that the distribution of income has worsened appreciably and that a substantial minority—perhaps 35‑40 percent—have been left behind with very low incomes which, if they are not worse than a decade ago, are not appreciably better. Given the limited absorptive capacity of the wider economy, given the loss of wages to machines, and given the small plots cultivated by the poor strata, there is little likelihood that anything short of land reform could reverse their fortunes. (Scott 1985:81)
This example well illustrates the problems of distribution and equity that are unavoidable in the process of rural development. The process described here is one route to “modernization of agriculture,” in that it involves substitution of new seed varieties for old, new technologies for traditional technologies, integration into the global economy, and leads to a sharp increase in the productivity of agriculture. Malaysia was in effect one of the great successes of the Green Revolution. At the same time it created a sharp division between winners and losers: peasants and the rural poor largely lose income, security, and autonomy; while rural elites, urban elites, and the state gained through the increased revenues generated by the modern farming sector.
Gillian Hart, Andrew Turton, and Benjamin White’s Agrarian Transformations: Local Processes and the State in Southeast Asia (1989) provides detailed case studies of these sorts of processes of property and power in development in Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
What is the Burmese junta doing?
September 9, 2009 By Daniel Little in CAT_globalization Tags: authoritarianism, Burma, Southeast Asia Leave a comment
Burma has been a cauldron of surprising news in the past two years or so. The generals have taken a series of actions in a number of areas: brutal repression of the monks’ demonstrations in 2007, prosecution and conviction of Aung Sun Suu Kyi (ASSK) in a bizarre show trial, a major rainy season assault on the Karen militias and villages, increasing pressure on the Kachin Independence Organization, brutal assault on the Kokang cease-fire group on the Chinese border. And don’t forget the mystery tunnel construction (link) and the phantom North Korean ship (link) a few months ago. (Here is a list of recent news items concerning events in Burma and the rest of southeast Asia, and here is a map displaying some of those items. Follow the UnderstandingSociety twitter feed for updates.) Is there an underlying logic to these actions? What is the junta’s strategy? What are they trying to accomplish, and how do these actions fit into any sort of rational plan? (See an earlier post on the Burmese dictatorship.)
Here’s a sketchy analysis about the junta’s goals: to maintain the decisive military and political power of the Burmese army; to gain full control of national territory, including particularly the states with independence movements and armed militias; to retain the ability to crush any possible opposition movement; to keep the wealth-production machine going for the benefit of the generals and the military system; and to preserve diplomatic support from China. And one important date is looming: the junta’s promise to conduct elections in 2010. The elections are plainly designed to leave decisive control in the hands of the army and to present a thin semblance of “democracy”. And the junta is determined to manage this process so as to lead to an outcome that leaves their power unchallenged.
So what do they need in order to accomplish these goals? They need arms; they need trading partners; they need on-the-ground control of the population; and they need to retain control of Burma’s resources and economy. How do recent actions conform to these goals? Is the junta merely reactive, or is it following a longterm strategy?
The trial of Aung San Suu Kyi fits into this set of goals fairly obviously. ASSK is the most charismatic leader that Burmese society possesses. She leads the National League for Democracy (NLD), the most persistent opposition group in Burma today and the overwhelming winner of the elections of 1990 (link). And her name is one of the most celebrated in Burma’s post-colonial history. Her father Aung San was the hero of Burmese independence and his assassination in 1947 was a turning point in Burma’s modern history. ASSK has the potential to mobilize a powerful pro-democracy movement, and the generals fear her. Moreover, there seems to be a streak of emotion in the generals’ attitudes toward her; there seems to be a powerful hatred of ASSK that goes beyond rational fear. But the evident determination of the junta to keep ASSK under house arrest and out of politics through the 2010 elections makes a cruel kind of sense.
The recent military campaigns against the Karen and Kokang groups and the increasing pressure on Kachin and Shan movements also fit fairly clearly into the goals mentioned here. The generals appear to have come to the conclusion that they have a realistic opportunity to change the balance of forces between the army and the ethnic organizations. They appear to have undertaken a determined effort to do so, beginning with the Karen. This seems to be motivated by both the long-standing effort to control the non-Burmese populations and the goal of managing the 2010 elections.
The international trade strategies of the junta also appear to be directly linked to the commercial interests of the regime. Gas contracts, timber and jade sales, and exploitation of Burma’s other economic assets show an aggressive but strategic effort at increasing Burma’s foreign exchange revenues. The relationship with North Korea appears to represent a source of military technology not otherwise available to Burma (the mystery ship?). And western economic sanctions don’t seem to dampen Burma’s trade opportunities significantly. In other words, the junta appears to have created an alternative world trading system that leaves it fairly immune to western criticism and sanctions.
Burma’s foreign relations also seem fairly successful in the realpolitik sense. Burma has managed to avoid much pressure from ASEAN nations; it has preserved the diplomatic support of China in the United Nations; and it maintains acceptable relations with India and Bangladesh. Its assault on the Karen areas has ruffled relations with Thailand because of the influx of refugees across the Thai border their military campaign created. And the assault on the Kokang group had strained relations with China because of the large number of refugees into Yunnan province and the mistreatment of Han people in Shan State. But so far the Chinese haven’t offered much pressure to the Burmese junta either.
So it seems that there is actually a fairly coherent underlying set of goals and strategies that appear to be driving the junta’s actions. The common view in the western media of the junta as mysterious, secretive, reactive, paranoid, and ineffective doesn’t seem to be accurate. The junta seems to be a more dangerous enemy to the people of Burma than this description would suggest. The generals have developed bureaucracies and plans that allow them to pursue their aims fairly effectively. And this is bad news for a democratic Burma. The junta has entrenched a brutal, violent, and exploitative regime that is fundamentally unconcerned about the welfare of the people of Burma; and their military government seems pretty effective in preserving its power and pursuing its political goals.
It is interesting to note how many areas of the social sciences need to be consulted in order to deal with this question: political science (how can we explain the regime’s behavior?), organizational behavior (how do the bureaucratic agencies of the Burmese state function?), military sociology (how is the army recruited and managed?), and social movements theory (how do the various oppositional groups in Burma seek to mobilize?). So Burma represents something of a laboratory for social science research and theory formation.
What is a diasporic community?
August 14, 2009 By Daniel Little in CAT_globalization Tags: community, identity, Southeast Asia Leave a comment
There are many diaspora populations in the world: the African diaspora, with populations in the Caribbean, North and South America, and Europe; the Chinese diaspora, from Indonesia and Malaysia to Cuba and the United States and Canada; the Jewish diaspora, from eastern Europe and Spain across all of Europe, to South Africa and North America with historical enclaves in India and China; and so on for numerous national and cultural groups. In some instances these groups maintain a strong sense of collective identity in spite of the physical and social distances that separate various sub-populations, and in some instances the strands of identity have attenuated significantly.
The fact of diaspora is a deeply interesting one, in that it provides a kind of “natural experiment” on the subject of the persistence and plasticity of culture. It is possible to observe the variations and modifications of culture as they occur over time and geography in diasporic populations.
The question I’d like to raise here is whether a diasporic population, an archipelago of separated groups of common national or cultural origin, can be said to constitute a community. Or does a population require a greater intimacy, a deeper social reality of face-to-face contact, in order to constitute a community? And is it possible that the unavoidable distancing and separation created by diaspora inevitably leads to the fragmentation of community?
I’m led to this question by a current reading of Tai Lands and Thailand: Community and the State in Southeast Asia , a major new contribution to southeast Asian studies edited by Andrew Walker. The authors and contributors are working with an innovative concept of “modern community”, deliberately challenging the idea of traditional communities organized around stable peasant villages. And they consider a specific version of this question: do the groups scattered across nations in Southeast Asia that are bound together by a Tai language and a set of overlapping practices and values, constitute a modern community? The book warrants a careful reading, and I will return to it more specifically in a later post. But here let’s look at the broader question: can a physically separated set of populations constitute a genuine community?
It won’t do to attempt to reduce this question to pure semantics — “it depends on what we mean by community”. Instead, we need to understand the question in a way that makes substantive sense of the ways in which human groups are constituted over time and space. But to make it a substantive and theoretically interesting question we have to specify a few characteristics that we think communities must possess. And this requires some conceptual work that goes beyond ordinary language analysis and stretches into the realm of theory construction. So consider these features of social groups that might be considered crucial for community: a degree of shared collective identity; a degree of shared values, histories, and meanings; an orientation by members towards others as belonging to a valued social group; a degree of communication and interaction among members of the group; and a preparedness to engage in some degree of collective action in support of the group’s interests. We can think of examples of social groups that possess some of these characteristics but not others, and in some cases we’re inclined to deny that these groups are “communities.” So what about diasporic populations?
It is clear that a separated population may certainly possess some of the qualities that paradigm cases of communities exhibit. Separated populations may maintain traditions, beliefs, and practices that extend backward in time to their origin. They may possess memories and myths that serve as a foundation for identifying them as a specific group. They may retain a strong sense of cultural identity with the group, both in the home location and throughout the world.
Moreover, in the context of modern forms of communication and the internet, it is possible for separated populations to maintain significant interaction with members of other sub-populations throughout the world. Indian sub-populations in Michigan, Germany, and Argentina can have significant real-time contact with each other through web pages, Facebook, or Twitter, and these mechanisms can create real interpersonal relationships across space. This is a significant difference in the situation of diaspora in the twenty-first century relative to the nineteenth century: we might hypothesize that there is the possibility of greater cultural unity across a diasporic group today than was the case a century ago.
It is also possible that a diasporic population will display “creolization” — the incorporation of new cultural elements into the mix of its practices, values, and meanings. This is suggested in the photo above; one imagines that Caribo-Chinese culture is a mix that would seem foreign in Canton. And this raises the possibility of a significant degree of cultural “drift” — with the result that isolated sub-populations no longer speak the same cultural language. This would seem to cut against the idea of community.
Finally, we can ask whether the motivational ideas mentioned above can persist in a diasporic community. Will members of the Chinese communities in Cuba or Canada retain a high degree of solidarity with their counterparts in China? Will they be willing to support the struggles that are presented to various of the Chinese groups across the world — repression of Buddhism in China during certain periods, racism against Chinese workers in other countries, ethnic violence against Chinese businessmen in yet other settings? Accepting the point that there are substantial elements of Chinese culture and history that persist in the various Chinese communities around the world — is this a sufficient basis to generate the willingness to mobilize that core communities possess? To what extent do diasporic populations support the kinds of integrative mechanisms that are needed in order to sustain solidarity across a dispersed group? And what can we say about those mechanisms of solidarity in the circumstances of diaspora?
These questions require careful theoretical and ethnographic work. But I’m inclined to agree with the perspective that Andrew Walker, Nicholas Farrelly, and other contributers to Tai Lands and Thailand put forward: the intertwining mechanisms of popular culture, personal mobility, communications technology, and a reservoir of values and histories that many modern identity groups retain, give a positive basis for thinking that diasporic community is possible in the globalizing world of the twenty-first century.
Running a dictatorship
July 19, 2009 By Daniel Little in Uncategorized Tags: Burma, democracy, power, Southeast Asia 2 Comments
What is involved in running a military dictatorship in a large country like Burma? Simply having a lot of military force is obviously not enough. It is necessary to organize and manage a number of complex processes in order to manage the basic “metabolism” of the government and society. Even a dictatorship requires a political administration that is capable of solving problems and implementing policies on a broad basis. And this means decision-makers, a bureaucracy, rules and procedures, agents at the local level, etc. There are several tasks that simply must be attended to; if not, the state would collapse:
maintaining the nuts and bolts of a military organization — command, discipline, recruitment, training;
monitoring, co-opting, and repressing internal opposition groups;
monitoring telecommunications and internet activity;
controlling borders and potential military threats across borders;
negotiating with and controlling internal armed groups;
collecting revenues for use by the government and its officials;
maintaining a minimum level of civil amenities (routine policing, sanitation, provision of electricity, water, and fuel).
Not essential but certainly in the interest of long-term stability are functions such as these: a plan for national and regional economic development, a plan for development of stable institutions for civil society, and a plan for transition to civilian rule. If it is possible to demonstrate that ordinary life is improving for the mass of ordinary people, the state is more likely to gain a degree of acceptance.
Almost none of the positive functions of government seem to be available in Burma today. Corruption is rampant. Brutality and mistreatment of civilians by soldiers appear to be rampant as well, especially in peripheral states. (Examples of brutality by soldiers drawn from the twitter feed include beatings, rapes, forced marriages, and forced labor.) And economic prospects for typical citizens are not improving; the country’s wealth is being exploited for the benefit of military and political elites almost exclusively.
Burma’s generals have done everything possible to keep their regime inside a black box. It turns out, however, that we know a little bit about how the Burmese military goes about a number of these tasks. Mary Callahan’s 2005 book Making Enemies: War and State Building in Burma provides quite a bit of detailed information and analysis of the organization and goals of the Burmese military. The Epilogue provides an extensive description of the strategies and actions of the military in the past decade. She notes the apparent stability of the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) regime, indicating that it was necessary to rebuild the military state substantially after the elections and riots of 1988. Stability and order were the highest priority, and the military went about building the institutions and organizations that it needed in order to suppress threats against its survival. Callahan highlights a number of important steps that have occurred since then — all of which fall under the general heading of “military dictatorship state-building” (211 ff.):
Ministry of Defense reorganized
Substantial rearmament
New army garrisons in towns and villages throughout the country
Expansion of military industrial base
Expansion of system of education, health, and welfare facilities for members of the military
Office of Strategic Studies takes charge of policy — ethnic areas, drug trade, economy, foreign relations
State-building and civil administration delegated to (corrupt) regional commanders
Funding derived from taxes and fees; profits of drug trade; control of natural resources (gems, forestry, tourism) controlled by Myanmar Economic Corporation
Development of severe discipline problems in the ranks and corruption problems in the officer corps
So what does this suggest about Burma and its current subjection? Several things. First, the Burmese military state appears to have a very secure grasp on power; the opposition has little real leverage to force change. The ethnic armies have either come to cease-fire agreements with the regime, have been crushed (Karen National Union), or have settled into an acceptable status quo. Even the more active Kachin Independence Army poses no realistic threat to military rule. The National League for Democracy (NLD) may have widespread support in Rangoon and London; but it is hard to see how it can lead a movement that would seriously challenge the military and police system. Even mass demonstrations appear to be ineffectual in forcing change on the SLORC — this was one of the lessons of 2007. The regime has adequate access to revenue, through its control of Burma’s natural wealth. The junta’s willingness to use overwhelming brutal force against civilians is entirely credible — witness the past forty years. And internationally, only China appears to have real economic leverage with the Burmese junta — and the Chinese are doing a great deal of investment in Burma. Western sanctions have not had economic effect on the junta or the military, and it appears that ASEAN censure is harmless as well.
So it’s hard to see how this is going to turn out well for the forces of democracy in the medium term. A democracy movement needs a certain amount of space in order to act effectively on a mass scale; and the junta seems to be all too capable of ensuring that this doesn’t happen.
Opaque Burma
July 11, 2009 By Daniel Little in CAT_globalization Tags: Burma, Southeast Asia 4 Comments
It is striking how ignorant we are about the most basic facts about Burma. I don’t mean simply that the western public is poorly informed; I mean that a lot of the basic facts about contemporary Burma are simply unknown, to scholars, journalists, and other expert observers. The experts don’t know what is going on in Burma, in quite a few important areas of life.
Take the junta itself. How does it work as a government? how does information get collected, how do goals get set, how are policies arrived at, and how are policies implemented over the expanse of control that the Burmese army exercises? It seems that there is very little factual knowledge about these very basic questions. The general impression that the media present of the Burmese military is that it is reclusive, corrupt, and irrational. The first two features are probably true; but “irrational” is a bit hard to reconcile with the fact that the army has successfully preserved its rule for decades. And there appear to be relatively clear strategies in place for controlling the armed ethnic populations and for securing economic development relationships with China and other non-western states. (This is where the corruption comes in; the army appears to use its control of Burma’s natural resources for its own benefit and the benefit of its allies in the ethnic organizations.) We hear a lot about the junta’s war with Aung San Suu Kyi, but very little about other aspects of its organization and behavior.
Or take everyday life in villages and towns in peripheral states. What is ordinary life like in the countryside? How visible is the central government and the Burmese army? What state or municipal entities provide services and collect taxes? How do people earn their livings? What is the state of public health in rural areas? What organizations and community-based groups are active?
Or consider the realities of the ethnic armies; how do the Kachin or the Karen armies preserve their organization and mobilization over time? What is the infrastructure that provides supplies, weapons, and money? How are young people recruited into these movements? What are the strategies and motives that guide decisions — whether to continue the cease-fire or return to active armed conflict?
Or consider, finally, the circumstances of the monks’ rebellion of 2007. Where are the detailed studies of this uprising in terms of motivations of participants, organization, mobilization strategies, and repression?
I suppose the explanation for this level of ignorance is fairly obvious: Burma is essentially closed to outside scholars and journalists, so it is difficult to impossible to do social-science fieldwork in Burma today. The observers who are able to gain a snapshot of insight are mainly occasional travelers and writers who manage to make their way to remote and often dangerous places. And organized social-science research is difficult or impossible to carry out under these circumstances. And there is very little by way of independent journalism within Burma — we are dependent on emigree services that do their best to provide some of the news from the periphery. (It would appear that the situation of research in Burma is orders of magnitude more limited than in Thailand or Malaysia.)
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Roxette - Travelling The World
The concert film shows the group during its sensational comeback tour 2011-2012 played before 1.5 million ecstatic people in 46 countries.
In fact, Roxette hasn't released a concert film since the group's first heydays, when they recorded the Crash!Boom!Bang! concert in Johannesburg before an audience of 52,000 people January 14, 1995. Infinitely more drama and darkness lies between this distant golden age and the unbacked resurgence in 2011-2012. Everything is captured here.
In addition to the concert film is also the poignant and insightful documentary "It All Begins Where It Ends," recorded on the road while Roxette for eighteen months did their unique return to the world stage.
Also included is a live CD with 16 tracks, recorded at the Teatro Caupolicán in the Chilean capital Santiago May 12, 2012 and the band members themselves classified as one of the tour's absolute highlights. It also contains lots of exciting extras in the form of Per Gessle's backstage films during the tour, the recording of the album Travelling and insights into life on stage just off the headlights.
Travelling The World (album)
Argentina CD+DVD Parlophone / 5310-51805-2 2013
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The Turin Horse
Bela Tarr Retrospective: Introduction
Posted on May 7, 2013 by bernardovillela
In my recent Short Film Saturday post I talked of a perfect introduction to Bela Tarr. As I will discuss in these and other pieces that form the retrospective on his works, in light of my bestowing upon him the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award, such assimilation can prove to be rather difficult. My baptism in his works was one by fire. Therefore, it’s always hard to try and think outside of your frame of reference to try and ease someone else in.
I at first toyed with the notion of going through his works, which are not as numerous as last year’s winner (Spielberg), chronologically. However, if I were to start at the very beginning, and I likely will head there at some point, we would discuss films that pre-date the metamorphosis of his aesthetic.
Bela Tarr is fascinating for myriad reasons, but one of the most apparent is that rarely has a filmography featured so strong a departure in style. Tarr’s early works in the 1970s were in the zeitgeist, which was stark documentarianism. Cinéma vérité was the vogue amidst a wave of talented Hungarian filmmakers. Starting in 1982 he became increasingly more stylized.
Tarr was my doorway into the world of Hungarian cinema. It’s a culture I do like to explore periodically and have learned more about since being introduced to it through his eyes. What the chronological approach would seemingly negate is the veritable reason he won this award. It’s not that his earlier works aren’t good, there is in the scripting his essence. In fact, a title like Family Nest translated his insistence that all his films are comedy better than any others. However, his early films featured his voice speaking a seemingly foreign tongue. His real cinematic voice was not truly heard, did not differentiate itself, or make itself unique until his style broke off from its initial sensibility.
Some have referred to his hour-and-change rendition of MacBeth for Hungarian television, that was shot in two takes, and Almanac of the Fall as more transitional titles than ones that show the true power of his later style. However, if one watches The Prefab People and then MacBeth back-to-back it’s fairly staggering. You may not even realize it’s the same director. Whereas if you sample the Prologue from Visions of Europe you very soon know Tarr and if you see a famous tracking shot from Satantango, The Turin Horse or Werckmeister Harmonies you know it’s the same person.
So next week when I do return and write about a specific film, I will begin after the break and then if I feel so compelled I will backtrack to the beginning and deal with his earlier works before he revolutionized his own style.
While in each post I will focus on the specific film at hand when you have a writer/director who insists on challenging an audience, on letting us “use our eyes,” a man who also is disinterested in stories in the traditional sense, you will have running themes. Throughout his career, especially after he broke the mold, his films were creating thematic dialogues. The culmination of which was his masterful dissertation in The Turin Horse. When you have running themes there will be parallels between films to be drawn. I will try to keep those to a minimum and focus on the title at hand.
While Tarr got me into chasing down Hungarian cinema, I knew pretty quickly he had a unique voice. However, I soon also found out that his voice could have only been developed in the Hungary’s film culture, on the arthouse end of the spectrum, of course.
Like any filmmaker, Tarr’s work as auteurist as it is, is a collaboration. As he worked towards his reportedly last film the pieces started to come into place to solidify his style. The editing of Agnes Hranitzky since The Outsider in 1981; Fred Kelemen as DP for some of his later projects starting with Journey on the Plain; novelist Laszlo Krasznahorkai had writing or co-writing credit on all of Tarr’s features starting with Damnation in 1988; composer Mihaly Vig has been on board since Almanac of the Fall in 1984. Together these people shared a commonality that helped to accentuate Tarr’s vision and bring it to the world such that it could not only be admired, but challenge the way it was intended to.
In the end, I got in my first revisit just in time to start this series on time. However, so as not to under-serve the challenge I’ve set for myself I decided on a true introduction piece to be followed by film-specific pieces. Tarr’s cinema is not one that is suited for “hit-me entertainment,” it insists you prod back and in deference to that fact, and out of respect, I will ruminate on Werckmeister Harmonies‘ mesmerizing and brilliant brutality a bit more.
To get a bit more of a glimpse into this creative mind, to see where he’s coming from. Here’s an excerpt from a piece he wrote called Why I Make Films, which he wrote during preproduction of Damnation:
Because I despise stories, as they mislead people into believing that something has happened. In fact, nothing really happens as we flee from one condition to another. Because today there are only states of being – all stories have become obsolete and clichéd, and have resolved themselves. All that remains is time. This is probably the only thing that is still genuine – time itself: the years, days, hours, minutes and seconds. And film time has also ceased to exist, since the film itself has ceased to exist. Luckily there is no authentic form or current fashion. Some kind of massive introversion, a searching of our own souls can help ease the situation.
Or kill us.
We could die of not being able to make films, or we could die from making films.
But there’s no escape.
Because films are our only means of authenticating our lives. Eventually nothing remains of us except our films – strips of celluloid on which our shadows wander in search of truth and humanity until the end of time.
I really don’t know why I make films.
Perhaps to survive, because I’d still like to live, at least just a little longer…
My Ballot: LIONs for LAMBs and The OMIEs
Posted on January 28, 2013 by bernardovillela
As I indicated earlier, when there are public or open to membership voting that I qualify for, I will write a post here to discuss my picks and to publicize the poll. I have included two polls here.
They are both run by the LAMB, the Large Association of Movie Blogs, of which I am a part, or a member thereof. The first is Lions for the Lambs, which seeks ranked submissions in various categories. Since that closely reflects my BAM Award selections, I also included my Omie choices where I more closely considered “Oscar-viability” in my decision-making process.
LIONS for the LAMBs
1. Django Unchained
2. The Turin Horse
3. Anna Karenina
4. The Dark Knight Rises
5. North Sea Texas
6. The Cabin in the Woods
7. Les Misérables
8. The Dynamiter
9. The Perks of Being a Wallflower
10. Kauwboy
1. Bela Tarr The Turin Horse
2. Quentin Tarantino Django Unchained
3. Bavo Derfune North Sea Texas
4. Joe Wright Anna Karenina
5. Christopher Nolan The Dark Knight Rises
Leading Male Performances
1. Daniel Day-Lewis Lincoln
2. Hugh Jackman Les Miserables
3. Denis Lavant Holy Motors
4. Matthew McConaughey Killer Joe
5. Logan Lerman The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Leading Female Performances
1. Keira Knightley Anna Karenina
2. Tilda Swinton We Need to Talk About Kevin
3. Magaly Solier Amador
4. Noomi Rapace The Monitor
5. Erika Bók The Turin Horse
Supporting Male Performances
1. Leonardo DiCaprio Django Unchained
2. Samuel L. Jackson Django Unchained
3. Eddie Redmayne Les Misérables
4. Mikkel Boe Foesgaard A Royal Affair
5. Matthew McConaughey Bernie
Supporting Female Performances
1. Anne Hathaway Les Misérables
2. Samantha Barks Les Misérables
3. Gina Gershon Killer Joe
4. Sally Field Lincoln
5. Anna Gunn Sassy Pants
Best Screenplays
1. Patrick Wang In the Family
2. Bavo Defurne and Andre Sollie North Sea Texas
4. Laszlo Krasznahorki and Bela Tarr The Turin Horse
5. Tom Stoppard Leo Tolstoy Anna Karenina
3. Kauwboy
4. Holy Motors
5. The Raid: Redemption
As for the Ormies, as intimated above, it’s more of a snubbed award so here are my choices based on Oscar expectations. A few are admittedly wished-for surprises. These are open to anyone. Submit your choices here via email.
Tom Hooper Les Misérables
Keira Knightley Anna Karenina
Matthew McConaughey Killer Joe
Leonardo DiCaprio Django Unchained
Samantha Barks Les Misérables
Foreign Language Film
Kauwboy
“The Big Machine” Safety Not Guaranteed
Top 25 Films of 2012: 10-1
I try to keep my mind as open as possible during the year, and as you start assembling a list like this you see there could be perceived slights. The fact of the matter is making this list was brutal. More than once I had to consider if I can stick to a previously made proclamation, more than once I jotted down additional titles to see if they could slide into the top 25.
Few films can go for lyrical simplicity and capture it so well. Equally difficult is capturing the unspeakable wonders of childhood creativity and a young protagonist alone. This film succeeds in all those areas and more. It truly deserves a worldwide audience.
This film is one of the best heartfelt teen movies in quite some time. Yes, there was Easy A a few years ago, but that was primarily satirical comedy. There’s humor here but it’s mostly a drama, and has three characters you end up knowing and caring about a great deal.
I could’ve mentioned this for quite a few entries, but aside from all these films being quality pieces, this was really a year of tear-jerkers crowding this list. Making someone cry is one thing, but doing so and being all around great is something else. This film works so subtly and softly I never felt it coming, but when it hit, it hit so hard.
The rip-your-heart-out-bawl-your-eyes-out emotions of the show are here cinematic, raw, in your face here and I for one love it. Some songs are redefined, others reinvented; the cast breathes new life into this classic tale.
If there’s one genre that needs a jolt of energy every so often, it’s horror. The proliferation of horror films will continue, so originality and reflexivity need to be injected to keep it vibrant. This is one of the best films in the genre in years.
Here you see the benefits of festival-going, for had I not made a point of attending QFest in Philadelphia I wouldn’t have seen it. The limited release of this film never really came anywhere close to me.
Thus, I haven’t been fortunate enough to re-view the film, but I firmly believe what I said prior: this will stand the test of time as an important work.
I love Batman. I do. Had I not gotten bogged down, and behind schedule, I would’ve written a Hero Whipped about it. Nolan’s trilogy is brilliant, but mostly due to the way this one closes it. Enjoyable as the first two were, I always felt I didn’t like them as much as everyone else. This one I love a lot and was very emotionally involving.
This and the title that follows on the list are the ones that really grew upon thought. I never expected this to be such an emotionally involving experience and I was very glad it turned out to be one.
This film is about as perfect a swan song as you could want.
I wrote a bit about this in the BAM Award Winners post. To summarize here: this is a film about slavery that’s as funny as it is smart, and as brash as it is enjoyable.
2012 Ingmar Bergman Lifetime Achievement Award
In my 2005 BAM Awards wrap-up, I wrote how I was considering creating a Lifetime Achievement Award and giving it to Ingmar Bergman. The idea was to award him upon completion of his swan song that proved unnecessary when I saw Saraband and it was one of my favorite films of that year and he won Best Director.
It seems this prize has now come full circle as another great director has made what he claims (and right now I believe him) is his last film and it is a great one. This year’s recipient is Bela Tarr.
Tarr is a director I’ve come to know well. However, when I first learned of him and what many consider to be his masterpiece (Satantango) I knew nothing save for the plot of the movie, that it was very long and I had to see it. I went in fairly cold and there was a sort of kinship there. I connected and I got it. That connection extended through much of Hungarian cinema, but it started with Tarr and it started instinctually.
I’ve since come to learn about him, read writings on his work – perhaps what is most fascinating about him is he went from stark cinéma vérité to an aesthetic all his own of long takes, moving cameras, black-and-white minimalist existentialism that is unique in all the world.
I’ve tackled Satantango a number of times, I agree it’s a film that could be viewed annually but I haven’t in a few years and its time to change that. I’ve, of course, seen as many of his films as possible.
It’s one I want to watch all over again. For one thing that is certain is that he proves that auteurism is indeed a live and well. He’s a rare breed, and is also giving back to the cinema fostering artists and striving for aesthetic excellence first and foremost.
The one thing that in my experience I’ve found Tarr has in common with Bergman is this brilliant final bow, his being The Turin Horse.
Tarr’s cinema is one that has evolved and is as exacting as Bergman’s, though not as prolific.
A great filmography is one where many films stand out and apart; Tarr has that:
Hotel Magnezit
Family Nest
Prefab People
Almanac of Fall
Journey on the Plain
Werckmeister Harmonies
The Man From London
I’ve come to know Hungarian cinema in part because of Bela Tarr and admire it. I admire this man, his work and his vision. This admiration grows leaps and bounds when you add the fact that he’s trying to help ensure the future of the artform in his home country, and around the world.
A great filmmaker’s films will last forever, even greater is the man whose trying to ensure cinema itself lasts forever.
BAM Award Winners: Best Director
So both here and in Best Cast there was some revisionism over the years, however, rather than try and readjust things I’ll just let things stand where they are at current.
The Best Director category is an interesting one because it is usually, in the mind of many, inextricably tied to the Best Picture winner. There is a certain logic to that, however, they are two rather different awards when you boil it down. In Best Picture you pick the story and the production. In Best Director you are picking a visionary and the architect of a production. There are times when the direction of a film will outshine its narrative or overall impact or a story that is wonderful but handled with a rather invisible hand that allows splits to occur.
I have three such splits in 1997, 1998, 2005 and 2012 none of which I was hesitant at all about.
2018 Bo Burnham Eighth Grade
2017 Andy Muschietti It
2016 Gareth Edwards Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
2015 George Miller Mad Max: Fury Road
2014 Daniel Ribeiro The Way He Looks
2013 Gavin Hood Ender’s Game
2012 Bela Tarr The Turin Horse
2011 Martin Scorsese Hugo
2010 Christopher Nolan Inception
2009 Spike Jonze Where the Wild Things Are
2008 Tomas Alfredson Let the Right One In
2007 Timur Bekmambetov Day Watch (Dnevoy bazar)
2006 Richard E. Grant Wah-Wah
2005 Ingmar Bergman Saraband
Ingmar Bergman on the set of Saraband (Sony Pictures Classics)
2004 Jacob Aaron Estes Mean Creek
Jacob Aaron Estes
2003 PJ Hogan Peter Pan
2002 George Lucas Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones
2001 Steven Spielberg Artificial Intelligence: A.I.
2000 Julie Taymor Titus
1999 M. Night Shyamalan The Sixth Sense
M. Night Shyamalan on the set of The Sixth Sense (Hollywood Pictures)
1998 Steven Spielberg Saving Private Ryan
1997 Neil Mandt Hijacking Hollywood
1996 Lee Tamahori Mulholland Falls
The Problems of Limiting Foreign Film Submissions (Part 1 of 2)
Posted on November 21, 2012 by bernardovillela
In my previous post, I wrote about how I would propose to alter the Foreign Language Film submission process. I am working backwards as now, in this post, I will address, with a little more support to back up my own hypotheses the issues that would be addressed if you were to allow select countries multiple submissions.
Essentially, the goal is as follows:
If you are a nation like France or Italy with a long and rich cinematic tradition, the selection process can prove volatile and complex. France, for example, submitted Of Gods and Men a few years ago. Its being snubbed, while an Algerian film with a similar subject, Outside the Law, making the shortlist caused quite a furor. Now, this is not to say that France being given more submissions would’ve gotten it to the shortlist, but being limited to one film invariably creates questions and doubts. Both nations made films about the colonial era, one was chosen and one wasn’t. Aside from the complaints about which nation a production really pertains to, it’s messy. Just search debates about selections and you will find trades reporting on them annually.
Now, I will grant that a multiple submission policy is altruism, and being realistic these things would likely still have happened but if France were afforded a handful of submissions, these incidents would likely have been lessened.
Erika Bók in The Turin Horse (Cinema Guild)
Taking any political extremism out of the equation, multiple nominees for some countries would also make some nations more inclined to take a chance. When Hungary submitted The Turin Horse last year, it was speculated in trades to have a slim chance due to the composition of the viewership and the nature of the film, and sure enough it wasn’t shortlisted. Not that Hungary has been especially prolific lately, and their last nomination was in 1988, but it’s a good example of a country that could’ve used an extra spot to pick what it thought was the best artistic choice and then gamble on a popular pick and/or one likely to find favor with American viewers.
Greece’s selection of Dogtooth a few years ago was seen as some as being silly, almost frivolous. Just it being described as gutsy made me want to see it. They were lucky in actually earning a nomination. I enjoyed it, but was equally surprised by its selection once I saw it.
With just one film allotted per country, as fair as that may seem, too many ulterior factors come into play besides is this really the best film, and some of the factors I suspected were echoed by others I asked. Other factors I hadn’t considered, that can be found mirrored in American films jockeying for Oscar nominations, also came to the fore.
The questions I typically asked were as follows:
At times, does the reputation, or lack thereof, of a director influence the selection?
At times, does politics, whether real or film, play a part?
At times, do films more likely to impress Oscar voters get selected over more artistic films?
Did you see (Title of film submitted by your country)?
If you saw it, did you like it?
Why do you think (Name of country) selected (Title of Film) Deserved it? Oscar-Friendliness? Both? Neither?
Here are some of the findings from Brazilians I asked, more nations will follow in the next part.
With regards to Brazil, this is the nation where I will have the widest range of opinions. Aside from being a dual citizen, a majority of my family lives in Brazil so I was able to receive the highest number of responses here also.
When The Hollywood Reporter wrote-up the announcement they correctly cited O Palhaço (The Clown) as a domestic box-office success. Over 1.4 million tickets sold. That’s accurate, as ticket sales are the measure (especially for domestic films) and in Brazil that’s a fairly high total. I take no issue at face value with sending the domestic box office champion as your nominee. There are stories like wins for domestic films in Spain and Norway that are most definitely positives. Hollywood proliferates globally and for indigenous cinemas to be successful at home is very important.
The complications of selecting the box-office champion of the year arise when you have mixed reactions to the film in general. First, I will recuse myself from weighing in on the film itself (O Palhaço) as I have yet to see it. However, I admit I was a bit surprised by this choice as I had yet to hear of it. I saw one Brazilian title this year, which I thought was great, and heard of another one. Both made a decent splash either on the festival circuit or in the international market. With regards to the plot when I read of it, it seemed like a less actually political selection, but did entertainment politics factor? What besides the box office could’ve influenced this selection?
So what did my family and friends say in response to my inquiries regarding O Palhaço? They start off about as negative as a film receiving such an honor can get: “My husband saw it and thought it was horrible! According to him the movie must’ve been picked for a lack of options!” The lack of options isn’t something that’s necessarily supportable by empirical evidence. In 2012 two films either solely produced or co-produced by Brazil appeared in Berlin, 5 films either solely produced or co-produced appeared in the Cannes programs and 2 either solely or co-produced appeared at Sundance, so there were other Brazilian films with festival pedigree. Not to mention the fact, that having eligible films doesn’t always lead to a submission, as was evidenced by Luxembourg passing.
As I got more and more comments, the initial reaction that people were “Sharply divided” proved true. However, in Brazil’s case one of my suppositions seems to have played out, and that’s the reputation of the director. With O Palhaço the director is lead actor Selton Melo. It’s a passion project, those with negative views of the film argue it’s a “commercial for him.” So box office appeal and the fact that a respected actor took on a project does buoy the Oscar hopes of this film, and even those who like Melo fell on the side of those less than enthused by the film, and some even underwhelmed by this particular turn. However, Melo’s status only seems to be growing in Brazil, as he is also taking on a Brazilian-produced HBO series.
The clout, or lack thereof, of some distributors within Brazil was also reported to me as a factor that could keep more deserving films from being considered. This seems not too foreign when anyone who pays attention to Oscar races here knows how much money is involved in campaigning, and how certain directors, producers, and studio heads become favorites. It was also indicated to me that candidacy for the Brazilian submission may not be a cheap thing to make yourself eligible for, which wouldn’t surprise me either, but that is an issue that filters down to the national level and is beyond the purview of the Academy or any foreign body. However, the fact remains that many would attribute most submissions as being decisions that disregard aesthetics and if the film also happens to be good it’s a bonus, but it’s a powerplay. One response pronounced all that quite explicitly and even concluded in English stating “It’s all about business!”
Perhaps the most intriguing response I got was the one that indicated it’d be impossible to remove politics entirely since you’re asking countries to submit films, and I will grant that. It’s practically impossible to expunge when other productions and/or world events will cause protests. The nation submitting likely consciously or unconsciously affects voters, even if its just that a certain viewer has more of an affinity with one national cinema or another. What the ultimate goal of this plan, that I admit will likely never, ever occur, is to encourage more risk from national film governing bodies. Perhaps that encouragement would lead to more aesthetically forward choices that will get rewarded by the votership, or better yet bring the film to new audiences.
Now, according to my idealistic designs, Brazil as a prior multiple-nominee would receive three submissions. If that were the case, perhaps they’d be so inspired to take a chance on one of the remaining selections on something a little more free of influence. To paraphrase John Lennon, I may be dreaming but I know I’m not alone in hoping something like that would occur.
A Reading and Review of The Turin Horse
Posted on February 14, 2012 by bernardovillela
NOTE: A film like this warrants discussion beyond a typical review. While some relevant plot details are discussed they are not what I’d deem spoilers.
Béla Tarr. Perhaps one of the most daunting things to contend with when writing about him or his films is trying to encapsulate him and/or his work for the uninitiated. For to write this review solely as the fan and devotee that I am would not do for all who may come across this article. The read of the film that rang true to me became apparent very quickly. However, the prior question nagged me. So how do I go about it? Carefully and with explication but not what I’d classify as a spoiler. Recently, upon viewing Fata Morgana I tweeted that I was glad it wasn’t my introduction to Herzog and that it likely should’ve been the last film of his I saw. With Tarr there really only is baptism by fire I feel and I’ll attempt, aside from reacting, to give a bit of a primer for his work. My baptism by fire occurred by acquiring and watching his seven-hour epic Satantango while in college and I’ve been hooked ever since.
This is as good a place as any to discuss the pace and a few other trademarks of Tarr’s work. Tarr has shot only black and white for the past 30 years. He moves the camera beautifully and intricately at times while using very long takes. I counted shots in this film and came up with a similar number to reports I read: 30. The running time is approximately 146 minutes meaning the average length of a take of about five minutes when Hollywood has us conditioned to expect cuts every five seconds, depending on genre. All the cuts are good, some are wonderful and the pace works for the tale but is worth noting for those who are unfamiliar with his work. Gird your attention span!
With regards to this film, as I started to watch it what struck me is that it seemed like his own version of Jeanne Dielman. This allusion to Chantal Akerman is not completely my own Scott Foundas in a Facets symposium on Tarr made the comparison that made me want to see Jeanne Dielman in the first place. However, while he’s talking stylistically in terms of camera movement, mise-en-scene and blocking; here the narrative in many ways resembles in that in Jeanne Dielman in as much as the film most reveals its characters and their story in the slow but steady deterioration of daily routines.
The setup is fascinating in two ways: First, the name of the film refers to the incident wherein Nietzsche supposedly lost his mind, he so felt for a horse being beaten by his owner that he broke down in tears, intervened and embraced the horse and was never the same. The story then is really about the owner of said horse and his daughter, however, I’d caution you not to forget about the horse and the title and watch him and his arc and the relationship the family has with him. Second, in a structural consideration the inciting incident occurs in a voice over wherein a detached, unidentified narrator tells us what happened and that propelled an unseen Nietzsche into madness and affected the horse and the family in the long run.
The film is above all indirect, even when seemingly being direct, which is part of its brilliance. The film is about the inevitability of death but it’s not spoken about in certain terms. The bare minimum these people need to do to survive starts to deteriorate as does their ability and willingness to live, mostly due to said uncommented upon inevitability.
Perhaps what works best is that it really creeps up on you. These routines play out repeatedly, shot and cut a little differently each time such that the slight changes at the start might not be picked up but then you start to see them.
With regards to moments that are direct there are a few ways to interpret them. Perhaps the pivotal scene where there can be some debate is one wherein their neighbor comes over because he’s run out of Palinka (Hungarian fruit brandy). It’s human nature to want to hang your hat on something when watching a story that’s not traditional, therefore when watching a father and daughter just doing what they do in a desolate countryside in the middle of an unnatural windstorm you listen to the neighbor’s wild theory. Ohlsdorfer, the father, dismisses it as bull and some reviews as a red herring, I feel the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
You don’t have to know Tarr’s cinema to start to sense that there’s a metaphysical nature being applied to a mundane setting, a sort of allegory free of dogmatic restraints. The neighbor’s theory on what’s wrong with the world and life in general may be only his mad formulation but his view, like anyone else, is all he has and everyone’s seeking an answer, we may change it, we may not have one but anyone’s guess is as valid as the next to questions like “What’s the point of all this? What’s going on? Why am I here?” The neighbor’s theory may be vague and labyrinthine but part of what tips it towards truth for me is that he made it a specific revelation to each individual and not an externalized event. I know I’ve have been aloof in the theory’s description because I think it’s open to individual interpretation. My inference that it’s closer to fact or fiction falls in line with my final interpretation, which deals directly with how the film ends, which I will not reveal.
Similarly oblique is the passage read from a book left as a gift by a band of Gypsies passing through for some water. However, in that it speaks of defiling of the Holy Land and damnation, in short inevitability, so it works. It connects to a theme rather than offering and epiphany, yet I did have one. Only as I was just walking out of the theatre after the very short closing credits did I realize the last domino that needed to fall for me and it did and it made the whole thing that much more amazing.
The film keeps its cast of characters small and the location virtually unchanging. It’s probably too claustrophobic to be called a chamber drama. That sense heightened by the sound editing and mixing which plays the persistent sound of the wind at just the right level to unnerve you and will then drop entirely to bring in Mihály Vig’s dichotomic score, half-mellifluous and half-discordant.
Another thing that bears mentioning that there’s next to no dialogue. Yes, there is the neighbor’s extended monologue which gets a few replies, curses thrown at the gypsies and occasional exchanges between father and daughter but no scene I would call a conversation scene and it’s all the better for it. The lack of the spoken word invites you to participate in the film more freely, draw your own conclusions.
The actors János Derzsi, Erika Bók and Mihály Kormos are all brilliant. The main tandem do so much physically and with their eyes they scarcely need dialogue to convey their emotions and turmoil.
The only other plot point that really bears any discussion is the attempt the Father and Daughter make to leave their house. You are not told or shown why they don’t make it to some safer locale. You are left to speculate on it. I drew my own conclusion, you may draw a different one. It’s just one of the other great touches this film has. Again it’s something that fits in my reading for the story, in a film about the inevitability of death what escape can there be, really?
It’s a bit sad to have to say that not all directors are what you can call visionaries but Tarr is definitely one. What you see on display in The Turin Horse is the mark of an artist. There is a style and language all his own, which he has cultivated through the years. I love Hungarian cinema from what I’ve been able to see but at the start of his career you wouldn’t know just by watching one of Tarr’s films it was his, now his style is unmistakable and inimitable, unique in all the world. If this is truly to be his last feature what a glorious way to go.
The Turin Horse is a flat-out masterpiece. That’s not a word I use lightly. There are films I consider masterpieces but I did not proclaim them as such upon first seeing them. However, when trying to encapsulate my reaction that’s the first word that came to mind. It truly is, it’s sheer brilliance and believe me when I say that my stating several facts in the course of this piece does not detract from the experience of the film, it’s just a guide. Watching and immersing yourself in it is a lot more valuable and harder to describe than a few instances in the story. If you have decided this is the kind of film you’d like to see (it’s certainly not for everyone) it’s worth seeking out on the big screen.
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The iPod Touch is a gateway drug
Matthew Hughes
Surprising few, Apple today discontinued the iPod Shuffle and iPod Nano. It’s an end of an era, and I think a lot of people — particularly from my generation — will be sad to see it go.
What surprised some was Apple sparing the iPod Touch from the axe. In fact, it didn’t just spare it, but it boosted its capabilities, raising the storage from 16GB and 64GB to 32GB and 128GB respectively. It also lowered the price to $199 and $299.
Steve Jobs once described the iPod Touch as like an iPhone, just without the phone. He could have saved himself some words and just called it a gateway drug to iOS.
The unique strength of the iPod Touch was that it offered the full iOS experience, despite costing a fraction of what you’d pay for a similarly-specced iPhone.
Touch owners get to play all the same games (which is huge, considering Apple initially marketed it as a gaming device). It has Safari, and a decent-enough camera. Pretty much everything works the same, except you can’t make phone calls, and you’re perennially tethered to Wi-Fi.
So, who buys the iPod Touch?
Kids, basically. In 2010, an AdMob survey showed that 65-percent of iPod Touch owners were under the age of 17. And while it’s now easy to find a pocket-money-friendly smartphone (like the Moto G5, or the utterly cheaptastic Alcatel Pixi 4), I imagine the iPod Touch owner demographics haven’t shifted that much.
I’m going to assume that Apple doesn’t sell many iPod Touch units anymore (not that we’d know, as it ceased reporting iPod figures in 2015). If I had to hazard a guess, I’d also assume that it’s okay with that, because it’s who’s buying them that matters. The few units that it does sell goes to people at the very start of their tech journey.
The iPod Touch goes into the hands of teenagers and pre-teens, who then use iOS as a point-of-reference for every mobile device they’ll use subsequently. Not only that, but they’ll build up an arsenal of apps and games. Leaving iOS will mean leaving them behind, making Android devices unattractive at any price.
And unlike other tech products aimed at that market, it doesn’t look naff. The iPod Touch has cachet. It looks premium and adult.
When I use the term ‘gateway drug’ to describe the iPod Touch, I mean it. Drug pushers often give the first hit of a drug for free. By pricing the iPod Touch at such a low price, Apple is essentially doing that, in the hope that the user will get hooked on iPhones and iPads for the rest of their lives.
Published July 27, 2017 — 19:01 UTC
July 27, 2017 — 19:01 UTC
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The Science Bridge
Connecting scientific pursuit around the world
Twin Institutes
Individual Endorsements
Institutional Endorsements
The language of science is a natural bridge for scientists with different backgrounds and experiences to communicate and understand each other. But for the bridge to be meaningful, it is also necessary to be fully committed to the endeavor. In this spirit the researchers from different cultures and nations in the ‘Twin Institutes,’ an innovative concept proposed by The Science Bridge, could make important contributions both in the sciences and in human relations.
Torsten N. Wiesel, The Rockefeller University, U.S.A. (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1981)
Scientists cannot walk alone. Our individual knowledge is inextricably bound to the knowledge in the entire scientific world.
Ryoji Noyori, President of RIKEN, Japan. (Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2001)
In these trying times, I really feel that science is one of those areas that gives humanity some hope for a better future. ‘The Science Bridge’ is needed more than ever.
Huda Akil, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, U.S.A.
During the ‘Islamic Golden Age’ (7th-14th century), the pursuit of knowledge by scientific collaboration was the driving force that united people of different faiths and cultures and led to major discoveries in all scientific fields that continue to serve humanity to this day. It later also gave birth to the ‘Age of Enlightenment’ in the West. By engaging different cultures and faiths within the ‘Twin Institutes’ concept, The Science Bridge initiative can pave the way to a new era in cross-cultural and international scientific collaboration. Once again, minds from across the world will have the opportunity to act as a united force to achieve breakthrough discoveries in the basic and applied sciences. I thus strongly support this noble initiative and am ready and willing to help to the best of my ability.
Abdulmonem Al-Hayani, King Abdul Aziz University, Saudi Arabia
The development of individual contacts and linkages between Muslim and Western researchers is an excellent idea. Congratulations on this important initiative.
Sir Colin Blakemore, University of Oxford, UK
I fully endorse your efforts with ‘The Science Bridge’ initiative. I wish you all the success in the world.
Stanley Cohen, Washington University, U.S.A. (Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1986)
I feel that in a time where religious fundamentalism is growing both in the East and in the West, and where there is a danger that alternative beliefs and non-conformist philosophies are increasingly suppressed, science can be a neutral basis for communication and understanding. I strongly support The Science Bridge initiative, it promotes such understanding which is direly needed because the non-religious nature of science and its universal benefits allow everybody to participate.
Thomas C. Südhof, Stanford University School of Medicine, U.S.A. (Noble Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2013)
Science is an international enterprise, and there is no better way to increase understanding and friendship between the Muslim world and the West then through science. The idea of two research institutes, one in a Muslim country and the other in the West, each teaming with scientists from all over the world, is splendid. I am pleased to give this initiative my most enthusiastic endorsement.
John E. Dowling, Harvard University, U.S.A.
Science and technology cooperation between cultures is a win-win activity. It reached its height during the golden age of Islamic civilization. I applaud the effort of The Science Bridge in reviving scientific collaboration.
Farouk El-Baz, Center for Remote Sensing Boston University, U.S.A.
My career studying the neurobiology of individual differences in behavior and risk for psychopathology has been advanced by forming translational scientific bridges. All of the progress in my own program of research into how and why individuals differ in their sensitivity to the environment has been born of the bridges formed between neuroscience, psychology, psychiatry, genetics and epidemiology. It is against this backdrop that I find the potential of leveraging scientific bridges to advance the relationships of our nations and cultures so promising. Through the bridges of discourse across scientific disciplines we are beginning to unravel the mysteries of human behavior and mental illness. I am optimistic that these same bridges will illuminate the richness of our deep traditions and histories, highlighting pathways of understanding and cooperation that will transcend the boundaries of science.
Ahmad R. Hariri, Duke University, U.S.A.
Fear of the ‘others’ has been a feeling common of many populations in the whole history of mankind, which still survives today. Yet, when this elementary feeling has been overcome, the interactions among different experiences and cultures have been critical for progress. This is true especially now, when these interactions are more peaceful than in the past. The role of a common science initiative could be highly important in to promote positive interactions, inducing better reciprocal knowledge and understanding, reinforcing the scientific and the international whole prestige of populations, together with the self-confidence and the impact of individual participants.
Jacopo Meldolesi, San Raffaele Institute, Italy
I strongly believe that science is the most appropriate force for reconciliation between people because of its universality, which goes beyond cultural and philosophical or religious diversity.
Jean-Pierre Changeux, Collège de France, Paris, France
As a scientist who has been always involved with international science cooperation, I see the “Science Bridge” as a particularly important initiative. This is not only for science, but for society and politics at large, as the cooperation and harmony between the Islam part of the world and Europe/Western world is one of the most important issues in our time.
Pier Luigi Luisi, Università degli Studi di Roma Tre, Italy
To improve relations between people of different cultures, religions and nations, it is essential to start listening to and understanding each other’s viewpoints. The Science Bridge is a unique initiative that enables scientists of different origins to team up on key biomedical research projects to improve human health. The Science Bridge initiative could be extended to new collaborations in other research areas including ecology, energy and climate change. Scientific cooperation is thus the best way to move forward to foster better understanding between the West and the Muslim world. I would especially like to emphasize that individuals who work with total commitment, sincerity and dedication for a cause like the Science Bridge initiative are true champions.
Anwar Nasim, Islamic World Academy of Sciences, Pakistan
Science blends humanity like no other endeavor. People engage the same rational minds to comprehend nature, and share the same excited emotions upon its discovery. Throughout history, the scientific journey has forged the deepest friendships among people as it celebrated their diversity a source of creative insights. The Science Bridge is just what is needed to continue and strengthen this process.
Shihab Shamma, University of Maryland, U.S.A.
Science is one of the fields in which humanity, as a whole, unites forces to crack Nature’s secrets. Scientific collaboration, thus, crosses cultures, religions and nations. Moreover, scientific collaboration is unconcerned with such differences, and builds upon mental and intellectual interactions alone. Thus, scientific collaboration, especially when successful, is an excellent tool for connecting people via mental relationships bridging over cultural, religion and national differences.
Ehud Ahissar, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel
It is my strong belief that collaborative scientific research provides an ideal environment where people having a common goal, such as eradication of human diseases, form inter-personal relationships which are a prerequisite to foster respect for each other. If we could scale-up such personal relationships between people from different origins in the ‘Twin Institutes’ as outlined by ‘The Science Bridge’ initiative, I am most confident that we will not only continue to do great science but also will bring people from East and West close together for trust- and peace-building.
Peter H. Seeburg, Max Planck Institute for Medical Research, Germany
I do believe that the Science Bridge will be an excellent initiative to bring people from different cultures together. Scientists should take the initiative to create the instruments that will bring people from different Nations closer. The values ruling the daily practice of scientists and researchers, like rational thinking, understating the opposite opinions, accepting differences, and many other values whenever applied to the related communities, can bring the change that we are looking for; peace and development. I am pleased to be sharing my personal belief with you all: international collaboration in science is not only an important element for the scientific success, but it is also a great joy. I will be glad to provide any needed support and efforts to help facilitate that the scientific and social missions of the Science Bridge initiative are realized.
Ahmed El-Gohary, President of El-Fayoum University and the Neuroscience Group of Egypt
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ColonialismdiscourseEthnicityEuropeHistoryinequalityInjusticeoppressionRaceslaverySocial TheoryTrade
Social Construction of Race
Source: ArtsyBee
One of the least known facts about the concept of race is that that it is a socially constructed ideology. Race and subsequent racism were created by White Europeans and Americans in order to justify the enslavement of millions of people for profit. When people feel guilty about an action they’ve committed, they will often try to find ways of justifying their actions. This is what Europeans and Americans did when they decided to explain away the actions of human bondage by declaring Africans subhuman. In doing this, they changed the interpretation of history itself. A land where complex civilizations had existed for centuries was reduced to the “Dark Continent” and its people declared savages. All in the name of profit for the status quo and converting the “natives” to Christianity. The history of Africa was rewritten to make Whites the conquerors who ‘civilized’ the natives.
Although ‘race’ as a description of the physical condition probably dates back to the dawn of the human species, most scholars agree that it was primarily through European expansion in the 16th to the 19th century that ‘race’ as a physical description emerged. It was when European colonizers, whose aim was mainly to seek out valuable primary products such as sugar, tin, rubber and human labor, came into contact with ‘native’ populations who were ‘people of color’ that racism became a dominant force in Western society. In order to maintain control of these populations, they were defined as inferior human beings primarily because of their different cultural practices as well as their not being White, the desired and ‘normal’ skin color. Pushing such people to the margins did not stop European men from sexually mixing with local women producing, wherever colonialism prospered, a so-called ‘mixed’ race of people. Thus, race as a biological factor was constructed in racism and became a major factor in racial discrimination. This ideology rapidly spread throughout Europe and other areas such as North America, spreading the doctrines of alleged racial inferiority.
This ideology of racial dictatorship and hierarchy quickly took root in American society by the signing of a famous document, “The United States Constitution.” This document clearly states, ‘We the People of the United States.’ The question proposed from this statement is, who exactly are “the People?” It certainly was not the enslaved Africans because they were considered to be three fifths of a human being. In addition to the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence also posed many questions of racism. The Declaration of Independence was written to sever ties in which people were denied their unalienable rights. However, the Constitution was still denying several people of their life, liberty, and or the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious to see that the Constitution laid the framework for which a segregated, racial society was formed in America.
Enslaved Africans were just as human as the White men whose rights were secured through the signing of the Constitution, but their rights did not matter. Because they did not have any rights, they were forced to live in a society in which the government officials did not represent them. Equality and justice was not for all, just for wealthy, land-owning White men. The practice of discriminating on the basis of skin color was born and would be legal until the sixth decade of the twentieth century. Even in the new millennium, racial inequalities still plague America and until this country can admit the wrongs done to enslaved Africans and their ancestors, no one will be free.
By Kathy Henry
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Kathy_Henry/70029
Originally published 7th of Febuary 2007
Tagsafricans as subhumanbiological factordark continentenslaved africanseuropean expansionracial dictatorshipracismsavagessocially constructed ideologythe history of africathe social construction of racethe transatlantic slave tradewestern culturewestern societywhite americanswhite europeans
Personal Experiences of Racism and Discrimination
Why I teach a course called ‘White Racism’
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The Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame
Celebrating, advancing and sharing Wisconsin's Conservation Legacy
Gallery of Inductees
Conservation History Museum
Schmeeckle Reserve
Induction Ceremony
Photos and Videos of Past Induction Ceremonies
Past Invitations
WCHF Board
Ruth Hine
Inducted 2010
“It’s only after being aware of what’s around us that we develop an understanding of what nature is like.” –Ruth Hine
Hine’s work at the DNR left an indelible mark on Wisconsin conservation history. As editor and then chief of the Research and Public Information and Publications Section of the Bureau of Research, she oversaw the technical editing and writing of research reports from 1949-84. She also crossed over to the popular press to pen articles on natural resources topics for magazines and other publications.
It was a male-dominated field when Hine first began her duties. A 1959 Milwaukee Journal article about Hine proclaimed in a headline, “Woman finds place in conservation work.” Many other women found a place, too, thanks in no small part to the excellence of Hine’s work.
Hine told interviewers that her goal was to provide reports that appealed not only to researchers and scientists, but were also valued by administrators, policymakers and the general public.
She played a key role in development of the state’s endangered species program, volunteering to lead co-workers in studying the disappearance of species and chairing the committee that developed the state’s first endangered species list. She sent out a call statewide for sightings of certain animals and set up a system for keeping records of the sightings. Her efforts led to the Legislature’s establishment of the Bureau of Endangered Resources. She then worked to establish a foundation to support the endangered species program.
With her leadership, the DNR undertook annual frog surveys. Frogs, she noted, “were essentially overlooked. We didn’t pay much attention to frogs.” The importance of these amphibians as indicators of ecological health has since become well known.
In her endeavors, Hine was driven by a simple goal: “It was the desire to get more people interested in the outdoors and accept their responsibilities,” she said in a 2009 Conservation Hall of Fame interview.
A Columbus, Ohio, native, she came to Wisconsin in the 1940s, hoping to study under Aldo Leopold at UW-Madison. She was unable to do so, instead earning a graduate degree in zoology and then a Ph.D. in zoology and wildlife management at UW-Madison in 1949. It was the first Ph.D. awarded to a woman by the university.
Cyril Kabot, former chief of research for the then-Conservation Department, gave her the opportunity in 1949 to pursue a career in what had been a man’s world when he hired her as a conservation aide. In her years with the DNR, she helped hundreds of researchers turn out reports. She felt she needed first-hand experience to do that, so she took on roles as leader of mouse and pathology projects, sought rattlesnake dens, and worked on deer counts, waterfowl and prairie chicken bag checks and numerous other activities.
Back at the desk, she gave each manuscript careful attention. “Ruth’s brilliance and modesty as an editor conceal her hard work, generosity and hour upon hour of preparation,” said the late Frances Hamerstrom, another pioneering Wisconsin woman wildlife researcher. “Great editors get little credit in this world. Their gift is drawing others out to coerce them to produce the best that is in them – resulting in a top-notch publication.”
Susi Nehls worked with Hine for 16 years as a DNR research information and publications specialist. “She must have edited over 400 reports, journal articles and bulletins,” Nehls recalled. While most publications were about specific creatures and their management, Nehls noted that Hine saw a need for broader perspective. In response, she created a publication called “Wildlife, People and the Land” in 1961, describing the state’s total natural community and its interrelationships.
As retirement neared, Hine took on a part-time job as a naturalist for Lutheran summer camps in Wisconsin. She also volunteered countless hours at Bethel Horizons environmental camp in Dodgeville, operated by Bethel Lutheran Church in Madison.
In a 1991 interview with the late writer George Vukelic, she talked about how her faith and views of nature were intertwined: “As a Christian, I look upon the world as a magnificent, living organism created by God and sustained by God. Human beings are part of that creation, part of nature, if you will.”
For more information read her Hall of Fame monograph.
WCHF Vice President Receives Award
12 Neonic Registrations Cancelled by EPA
Wisconsin and the 19th Amendment
WCHF Board Member to Participate in Symposium Panel
WCHF featured in Our Wisconsin Magazine
Conservation Heroes
Public Comment Opportunity
WCHF Members
The WCHF Foundation
The Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame Foundation was established to encourage the growth and practice of a conservation ethic as a legacy for the people of the state.
WCHF Museum
Schmeeckle Reserve Visitor Cntr.
2419 North Point Drive
About WCHF
Copyright © 2019 The Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame
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The Intercountry Adoption (Hague Convention) Act
It has been in effect since April 1, 1997.
C.C.S.M. c. A3
Table of Contents Bilingual (PDF) Regulations
(Assented to November 3, 1995)
1(1) In this Act,
"Convention" means the Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption set out in the Schedule; (« Convention »)
Other words and expressions
1(2) Words and expressions used in this Act have the same meaning as the corresponding words and expressions in the Convention.
Request for Convention
2 The minister shall request the Government of Canada to declare in accordance with Article 45 of the Convention that the Convention extends to Manitoba.
Convention is law
3(1) On, from and after the date the Convention enters into force in respect of Manitoba as determined by the Convention, the Convention is in force in Manitoba and its provisions are law in Manitoba.
Application where conflict
3(2) The law of Manitoba applies to an adoption to which the Convention applies but, where there is a conflict between the law of Manitoba and the Convention, the Convention prevails.
Central Authority
4 The Director of Child and Family Services appointed under The Child and Family Services Act is the Central Authority for Manitoba for the purposes of the Convention.
Delegation to accredited bodies
5 Where the minister so authorizes, the functions of a Central Authority under Articles 15 to 21 of the Convention may, to the extent determined by the minister, be performed by public authorities or by bodies accredited under Chapter III of the Convention.
Publication of coming into force date
6 The minister shall publish in the gazette the date the Convention comes into force in Manitoba.
7 The minister may approve forms for use under this Act.
8 The Lieutenant Governor in Council may make regulations respecting any matter that the Lieutenant Governor in Council considers necessary or advisable to carry out the intent and purpose of this Act.
9 NOTE: This section contained consequential amendments to The Child and Family Services Act which are now included in that Act.
C.C.S.M reference
10 This Act may be cited as The Intercountry Adoption (Hague Convention) Act and referred to as chapter A3 of the Continuing Consolidation of the Statutes of Manitoba.
11 This Act comes into force on a day fixed by proclamation.
NOTE: S.M. 1995, c. 22 was proclaimed in force April 1, 1997.
CONVENTION ON PROTECTION OF CHILDREN AND CO-OPERATION IN RESPECT OF INTERCOUNTRY ADOPTION
The States signatory to the present Convention,
Recognizing that the child, for the full and harmonious development of his or her personality, should grow up in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding,
Recalling that each State should take, as a matter of priority, appropriate measures to enable the child to remain in the care of his or her family of origin,
Recognizing that intercountry adoption may offer the advantage of a permanent family to a child for whom a suitable family cannot be found in his or her State of origin,
Convinced of the necessity to take measures to ensure that intercountry adoptions are made in the best interests of the child and with respect for his or her fundamental rights, and to prevent the abduction, the sale of, or traffic in children,
Desiring to establish common provisions to this effect, taking into account the principles set forth in international instruments, in particular the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, of 20 November 1989, and the United Nations Declaration on Social and Legal Principles relating to the Protection and Welfare of Children, with Special Reference to Foster Placement and Adoption Nationally and Internationally (General Assembly Resolution 41/85, of 3 December 1986),
have agreed upon the following provisions -
CHAPTER I - SCOPE OF THE CONVENTION
The objects of the present Convention are -
a to establish safeguards to ensure that intercountry adoptions take place in the best interests of the child and with respect for his or here fundamental rights as recognized in international law;
b to establish a system of co-operation amongst Contracting States to ensure that those safeguards are respected and thereby prevent the abduction, the sale of, or traffic in children;
c to secure the recognition in Contracting States of adoptions made in accordance with the Convention.
1 The Convention shall apply where a child habitually resident in one Contracting State ("the State of origin") has been, is being, or is to be moved to another Contracting State ("the receiving State") either after his or her adoption in the State of origin by spouses or a person habitually resident in the receiving State, or for the purposes of such an adoption in the receiving State or in the State of origin.
2 The Convention covers only adoptions which create a permanent parent-child relationship.
The Convention ceases to apply if the agreements mentioned in Article 17, sub-paragraph c, have not been given before the child attains the age of eighteen years.
CHAPTER II - REQUIREMENTS FOR INTERCOUNTRY ADOPTIONS
An adoption within the scope of the Convention shall take place only if the competent authorities of the State of origin -
a have established that the child is adoptable;
b have determined, after possibilities for placement of the child within the State of origin have been given due consideration, that an intercountry adoption is in the child's best interests;
c have ensured that
(1) the persons, institutions and authorities whose consent is necessary for adoption, have been counselled as may be necessary and duly informed of the effects of their consent, in particular whether or not an adoption will result in the termination of the legal relationship between the child and his or her family of origin,
(2) such persons, institutions and authorities have given their consent freely, in the required legal form, and expressed or evidenced in writing,
(3) the consents have not been induced by payment or compensation of any kind and have not been withdrawn, and
(4) the consent of the mother, where required, has been given only after the birth of the child; and d have ensured, having regard to the age and degree of maturity of the child, that
(1) he or she has been counselled and duly informed of the effects of the adoption and of his or her consent to the adoption, where such consent is required,
(2) consideration has been given to the child's wishes and opinions,
(3) the child's consent to the adoption, where such consent is required, has been given freely, in the required legal form, and expressed or evidenced in writing, and
(4) such consent has not been induced by payment or compensation of any kind.
An adoption within the scope of the Convention shall take place only if the competent authorities of the receiving State -
a have determined that the prospective adoptive parents are eligible and suited to adopt;
b have ensured that the prospective adoptive parents have been counselled as may be necessary; and c have determined that the child is or will be authorized to enter and reside permanently in that State.
CHAPTER III - CENTRAL AUTHORITIES AND ACCREDITED BODIES
1 A Contracting State shall designate a Central Authority to discharge the duties which are imposed by the Convention upon such authorities.
2 Federal States, States with more than one system of law or States having autonomous territorial units shall be free to appoint more than one Central Authority and to specify the territorial or personal extent of their functions. Where a State has appointed more than one Central Authority, it shall designate the Central Authority to which any communication may be addressed for transmission to the appropriate Central Authority within that State.
1 Central Authorities shall co-operate with each other and promote co-operation amongst the competent authorities in their States to protect children and to achieve the other objects of the Convention.
2 They shall take directly all appropriate measures to -
a provide information as to the laws of their States concerning adoption and other general information, such as statistics and standard forms;
b keep one another informed about the operation of the Convention and, as far as possible, eliminate any obstacles to its application.
Central Authorities shall take, directly or through public authorities, all appropriate measures to prevent improper financial or other gain in connection with an adoption and to deter all practices contrary to the objects of the Convention.
Central Authorities shall take, directly or through public authorities or other bodies duly accredited in their State, all appropriate measures, in particular to -
a collect, preserve and exchange information about the situation of the child and the prospective adoptive parents, so far as is necessary to complete the adoption;
b facilitate, follow and expedite proceedings with a view to obtaining the adoption;
c promote the development of adoption counselling and post-adoption services in their States;
d provide each other with general evaluation reports about experience with intercountry adoption;
e reply, in so far as is permitted by the law of their State, to justified requests from other Central Authorities or public authorities for information about a particular adoption situation.
Accreditation shall only be granted to and maintained by bodies demonstrating their competence to carry out properly the tasks with which they may be entrusted.
An accredited body shall -
a pursue only non-profit objectives according to such conditions and within such limits as may be established by the competent authorities of the State of accreditation;
b be directed and staffed by persons qualified by their ethical standards and by training or experience to work in the field of intercountry adoption; and c be subject to supervision by competent authorities of that State as to its composition, operation and financial situation.
A body accredited in one Contracting State may act in another Contracting State only if the competent authorities of both States have authorized it to do so.
The designation of the Central Authorities and, where appropriate, the extent of their functions, as well as the names and addresses of the accredited bodies shall be communicated by each Contracting State to the Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference on Private International Law.
CHAPTER IV - PROCEDURAL REQUIREMENTS IN INTERCOUNTRY ADOPTION
Persons habitually resident in a Contracting State, who wish to adopt a child habitually resident in another Contracting State, shall apply to the Central Authority in the State of their habitual residence.
1 If the Central Authority of the receiving State is satisfied that the applicants are eligible and suited to adopt, it shall prepare a report including information about their identity, eligibility and suitability to adopt, background, family and medical history, social environment, reasons for adoption, ability to undertake an intercountry adoption, as well as the characteristics of the children for whom they would be qualified to care.
2 It shall transmit the report to the Central Authority of the State of origin.
1 If the Central Authority of the State of origin is satisfied that the child is adoptable, it shall -
a prepare a report including information about his or her identity, adoptability, background, social environment, family history, medical history including that of the child's family, and any special needs of the child;
b give due consideration to the child's upbringing and to his or her ethnic, religious and cultural background;
c ensure that consents have been obtained in accordance with Article 4; and d determine, on the basis in particular of the reports relating to the child and the prospective adoptive parents, whether the envisaged placement is in the best interest of the child.
2 It shall transmit to the Central Authority of the receiving State its report on the child, proof that the necessary consents have been obtained and the reasons for its determination on the placement, taking care not to reveal the identity of the mother and the father if, in the State of origin, these identities may not be disclosed.
Any decision in the State of origin that a child should be entrusted to prospective adoptive parents may only be made if -
a the Central Authority of that State has ensured that the prospective adoptive parents agree;
b the Central Authority of the receiving State has approved such decision, where such approval is required by the law of that State or by the Central Authority of the State of origin;
c the Central Authorities of both States have agreed that the adoption may proceed; and d it has been determined, in accordance with Article 5, that the prospective adoptive parents are eligible and suited to adopt and that the child is or will be authorized to enter and reside permanently in the receiving State.
The Central Authorities of both States shall take all necessary steps to obtain permission for the child to leave the State of origin and to enter and reside permanently in the receiving State.
1 The transfer of the child to the receiving State may only be carried out if the requirements of Article 17 have been satisfied.
2 The Central Authorities of both States shall ensure that this transfer takes place in secure and appropriate circumstances and, if possible, in the company of the adoptive or prospective adoptive parents.
3 If the transfer of the child does not take place, the reports referred to in Articles 15 and 16 are to be sent back to the authorities who forwarded them.
The Central Authorities shall keep each other informed about the adoption process and the measures taken to complete it, as well as about the progress of the placement if a probationary period is required.
1 Where the adoption is to take place after the transfer of the child to the receiving State and it appears to the Central Authority of that State that the continued placement of the child with the prospective adoptive parents is not in the child's best interest, such Central Authority shall take the measures necessary to protect the child, in particular -
a to cause the child to be withdrawn from the prospective adoptive parents and to arrange temporary care;
b in consultation with the Central Authority of the State of origin, to arrange without delay a new placement of the child with a view to adoption or, if this is not appropriate, to arrange alternative long-term care; an adoption shall not take place until the Central Authority of the State of origin has been duly informed concerning the new prospective adoptive parents;
c as a last resort, to arrange the return of the child, if his or her interests so require.
2 Having regard in particular to the age and degree of maturity of the child, he or she shall be consulted and, where appropriate, his or her consent obtained in relation to measures to be taken under this Article.
1 The functions of a Central Authority under this Chapter may be performed by public authorities or by bodies accredited under Chapter III, to the extent permitted by the law of its State.
2 Any Contracting State may declare to the depositary of the Convention that the functions of the Central Authority under Articles 15 to 21 may be performed in that State, to the extent permitted by the law and subject to the supervision of the competent authorities of that State, also by bodies or persons who -
a meet the requirements of integrity, professional competence, experience and accountability of that State; and b are qualified by their ethical standards and by training or experience to work in the field of intercountry adoption.
3 A Contracting State which makes the declaration provided for in paragraph 2 shall keep the Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference on Private International Law informed of the names and addresses of these bodies and persons.
4 Any Contracting State may declare to the depositary of the Convention that adoptions of children habitually resident in its territory may only take place if the functions of the Central Authorities are performed in accordance with paragraph 1.
5 Notwithstanding any declaration made under paragraph 2, the reports provided for in Articles 15 and 16 shall, in every case, be prepared under the responsibility of the Central Authority or other authorities or bodies in accordance with paragraph 1.
CHAPTER V - RECOGNITION AND EFFECTS OF THE ADOPTION
1 An adoption certified by the competent authority of the State of the adoption as having been made in accordance with the Convention shall be recognized by operation of law in the other Contracting States. The certificate shall specify when and by whom the agreements under Article 17, sub-paragraph c, were given.
2 Each Contracting State shall, at the time of signature, ratification, acceptance, approval or accession, notify the depositary of the Convention of the identity and the functions of the authority or the authorities which, in that State, are competent to make the certification. It shall also notify the depositary of any modification in the designation of these authorities.
The recognition of an adoption may be refused in a Contracting State only if the adoption is manifestly contrary to its public policy, taking into account the best interests of the child.
Any Contracting State may declare to the depositary of the Convention that it will not be bound under this Convention to recognize adoptions made in accordance with an agreement concluded by application of Article 39, paragraph 2.
1 The recognition of an adoption includes recognition of
a the legal parent-child relationship between the child and his or her adoptive parents;
b parental responsibility of the adoptive parents for the child;
c the termination of a pre-existing legal relationship between the child and his or her mother and father, if the adoption has this effect in the Contracting State where it was made.
2 In the case of an adoption having the effect of terminating a pre-existing legal parent-child relationship, the child shall enjoy in the receiving State, and in any other Contracting State where the adoption is recognized, rights equivalent to those resulting from adoptions having this effect in each such State.
3 The preceding paragraphs shall not prejudice the application of any provision more favourable for the child, in force in the Contracting State which recognizes the adoption.
1 Where an adoption granted in the State of origin does not have the effect of terminating a pre-existing legal parent-child relationship, it may, in the receiving State which recognizes the adoption under the Convention, be converted into an adoption having such an effect -
a if the law of the receiving State so permits; and b if the consents referred to in Article 4, sub-paragraphs c and d, have been or are given for the purpose of such an adoption.
2 Article 23 applies to the decision converting the adoption.
CHAPTER VI - GENERAL PROVISIONS
The Convention does not affect any law of a State of origin which requires that the adoption of a child habitually resident within that State take place in that State or which prohibits the child's placement in, or transfer to, the receiving State prior to adoption.
There shall be no contact between the prospective adoptive parents and the child's parents or any other person who has care of the child until the requirements of Article 4, sub-paragraphs a to c, and Article 5, sub-paragraph a, have been met, unless the adoption takes place within a family or unless the contact is in compliance with the conditions established by the competent authority of the State of origin.
1 The competent authorities of a Contracting State shall ensure that information held by them concerning the child's origin, in particular information concerning the identity of his or her parents, as well as the medical history, is preserved.
2 They shall ensure that the child or his or her representative has access to such information, under appropriate guidance, in so far as is permitted by the law of that State.
Without prejudice to Article 30, personal data gathered or transmitted under the Convention, especially data referred to in Articles 15 and 16, shall be used only for the purposes for which they were gathered or transmitted.
1 No one shall derive improper financial or other gain from an activity related to an intercountry adoption.
2 Only costs and expenses, including reasonable professional fees of persons involved in the adoption, may be charged or paid.
3 The directors, administrators and employees of bodies involved in an adoption shall not receive remuneration which is unreasonably high in relation to services rendered.
A competent authority which finds that any provision of the Convention has not been respected or that there is a serious risk that it may not be respected, shall immediately inform the Central Authority of its State. This Central Authority shall be responsible for ensuring that appropriate measures are taken.
If the competent authority of the State of destination of a document so requests, a translation certified as being in conformity with the original must be furnished. Unless otherwise provided, the costs of such translation are to be borne by the prospective adoptive parents.
The competent authorities of the Contracting States shall act expeditiously in the process of adoption.
In relation to a State which has two or more systems of law with regard to adoption applicable in different territorial units -
a any reference to habitual residence in that State shall be construed as referring to habitual residence in a territorial unit of that State;
b any reference to the law of that State shall be construed as referring to the law in force in the relevant territorial unit;
c any reference to the competent authorities or to the public authorities of that State shall be construed as referring to those authorized to act in the relevant territory unit;
d any reference to the accredited bodies of that State shall be construed as referring to bodies accredited in the relevant territorial unit.
In relation to a State which with regard to adoption has two or more systems of law applicable to different categories of persons, any reference to the law of that State shall be construed as referring to the legal system specified by the law of that State.
A State within which different territorial units have their own rules of law in respect of adoption shall not be bound to apply the Convention where a State with a unified system of law would not be bound to do so.
1 The Convention does not affect any international instrument to which Contracting States are Parties and which contains provisions on matters governed by the Convention, unless a contrary declaration is made by the States Parties to such instrument.
2 Any Contracting State may enter into agreements with one or more other Contracting States, with a view to improving the application of the Convention in their mutual relations. These agreements may derogate only from the provisions of Articles 14 to 16 and 18 to 21. The States which have concluded such an agreement shall transmit a copy to the depositary of the Convention.
No reservation to the Convention shall be permitted.
The Convention shall apply in every case where an application pursuant to Article 14 has been received after the Convention has entered into force in the receiving State and the State of origin.
The Secretary General of the Hague Conference on Private International Law shall at regular intervals convene a Special Commission in order to review the practical operation of the Convention.
CHAPTER VII - FINAL CLAUSES
1 The Convention shall be open for signature by the States which were Members of the Hague Conference on Private International Law at the time of its Seventeenth Session and by the other States which participated in that Session.
2 It shall be ratified, accepted or approved and the instruments of ratification, acceptance or approval shall be deposited with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, depositary of the Convention.
1 Any other State may accede to the Convention after it has entered into force in accordance with Article 46, paragraph 1.
2 The instrument of accession shall be deposited with the depositary.
3 Such accession shall have effect only as regards the relations between the acceding State and those Contracting States which have not raised an objection to its accession in the six months after the receipt of the notification referred to in sub-paragraph b of Article 48. Such an objection may also be raised by States at the time when they ratify, accept or approve the Convention after an accession. Any such objection shall be notified to the depositary.
1 If a State has two or more territorial units in which different systems of law are applicable in relation to matters dealt with in the Convention, it may at the time of signature, ratification, acceptance, approval or accession declare that this Convention shall extend to all its territorial units or only to one or more of them and may modify this declaration by submitting another declaration at any time.
2 Any such declaration shall be notified to the depositary and shall state expressly the territorial units to which the Convention applies.
3 If a State makes no declaration under this Article, the Convention is to extend to all territorial units of that State.
1 The Convention shall enter into force on the first day of the month following the expiration of three months after the deposit of the third instrument of ratification, acceptance or approval referred to in Article 43.
2 Thereafter the Convention shall enter into force -
a for each State ratifying, accepting or approving it subsequently, or acceding to it, on the first day of the month following the expiration of three months after the deposit of its instrument of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession;
b for a territorial unit to which the Convention has been extended in conformity with Article 45, on the first day of the month following the expiration of three months after the notification referred to in that Article.
1 A State Party to the Convention may denounce it by a notification in writing addressed to the depositary.
2 The denunciation takes effect on the first day of the month following the expiration of twelve months after the notification is received by the depositary. Where a longer period for the denunciation to take effect is specified in the notification, the denunciation takes effect upon the expiration of such longer period after the notification is received by the depositary.
The depositary shall notify the States Members of the Hague Conference on Private International Law, the other States which participated in the Seventeenth Session and the States which have acceded in accordance with Article 44, of the following -
a the signatures, ratifications, acceptances and approvals referred to in Article 43;
b the accessions and objections raised to accessions referred to in Article 44;
c the date on which the Convention enters into force in accordance with Article 46;
d the declarations and designations referred to in Articles 22, 23, 25 and 45;
e the agreements referred to in Article 39;
f the denunciations referred to in Article 47.
In witness whereof the undersigned, being duly authorized thereto, have signed this Convention.
Done at The Hague, on the 29th day of May, 1993 in the English and French languages, both texts being equally authentic, in a single copy which shall be deposited in the archives of the Government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and of which a certified copy shall be sent, through diplomatic channels, to each of the States Members of the Hague Conference on Private International Law at the date of its Seventeenth Session and to each of the other States which participated in that Session.
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You are viewing an archived copy of this website captured Thu Dec 12 15:51:33 AEDT 2013
This article is about the piece of clothing. For the military term, see Frocking.
Frock has been used since Middle English as the name for an article of clothing for men and women (see also clothing terminology). It is sometimes synonymously used for skirt. In British English and in Commonwealth countries the word is used for a girl's or woman's dress. In Australia it is frequently used this way, with the phrase "to frock up" meaning to wear a formal dress or gown for a special occasion.[1]
1 History of the frock
2 Related terms
History of the frock[edit]
18th century frock, a coat with a flat collar.
Originally, a frock was a loose, long garment with wide, full sleeves, such as the habit of a monk or priest, commonly belted. (This is the origin of the modern term defrock or unfrock, meaning "to eject from the priesthood".)
The term has been continually applied to various types of clothing, generally denoting a loosely fitted garment:
From the sixteenth century to the early twentieth century, frock was applied to a woman's dress or gown, in the fashion of the day, often indicating an unfitted, comfortable garment for wear in the house, or (later) a light overdress worn with a slip or underdress.
From the seventeenth century on, a frock is a thigh- or full-length loose outer garment worn by shepherds, workmen, and farm workers in Britain, generally of heavy linen with a broad flat collar, now usually called a smock-frock. In some areas, this traditional frock buttons up the front in the manner of a coat, while in others it is a pullover style.
In the eighteenth century in Britain and America, a frock was an unfitted men's coat for hunting or other country pursuits, with a broad, flat collar, derived from the traditional working-class frock. Late in the eighteenth century it came to be made with a cutaway front without a waist seam and this may have evolved into the standard dress coat with horizontally cutaway fronts worn for daytime wear by the early nineteenth century and from which the modern tail coat for white tie is derived. The great coat may similarly be historically derived from the frock as it similarly is single breasted, with a high and broad collar, waist pockets, and also lacked a waist seam early in its history as can be seen in an example in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
The precise historical evolution of the frock after the second half of the eighteenth century is obscure, however it is likely that the frock was gradually supplanted by the frock coat in the early nineteenth century, eventually being relegated to evening dress. The frock coat in turn became cut away into the modern coat, giving us the two modern coats with tails.
Frock (especially in the phrase "short frock") is also a child's dress or light overdress.
A frock is a dense knitted overgarment worn by sailors and fishermen, as guernsey frock, jersey frock (now usually simply guernsey and jersey).
The name "oil frock" has been used for a type of sailor's oilskin.
Related terms[edit]
A frock coat is a men's coat style of the nineteenth century, characterized by full skirts reaching to the lower thigh or knee. Despite the similarity in the name, the frock coat should be regarded as being a distinct garment quite separate from the frock. In the French language the frock coat is called 'une redingote' (from English "riding coat"), and so unlike the English language implies no immediate relationship to the frock which is called 'une fraque'. Indeed the modern French word for a tail coat is "une frac" which better betrays the historical relationship between the tail coat and the frock. In construction the frock coat could scarcely be more different from the frock for unlike the latter it is usually double breasted, lacks any pockets, lacks a high collar, has V-shaped lapels, is closely fitted and is constructed with a waist seam.
A frock motor is a hub motor frequently fitted to electric bicycles. Unlike belt or chain driven motors which can pose a hazardous entanglement risk to those wearing long or loose garments, the hub motor is laced into the center of the bicycle's wheel. With no fast moving parts near the rider's legs it poses little threat to those wearing frock-like garments. Frock motors are either internally geared or direct drive and come in various sizes depending on their power output. They are the most common type of electric bicycle motor and are fitted to millions of bicycles throughout China and around the world.
^ "Macquarie Dictionary". Retrieved 6 May 2013. (subscription required)
Picken, Mary Brooks: The Fashion Dictionary, Funk and Wagnalls, 1957.
Walker, George: The Tailor's Masterpiece: All Kinds of Coats, 1838 revised edition, reprinted by R.L. Shep, 2001. ISBN 0-914046-28-4.
Waugh, Norah: The Cut of Men's Clothes 1600–1900, Routledge, 1964. ISBN 0-87830-025-2.
ApparelSearch glossary of textile and apparel terms
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Frock&oldid=578452274"
16th-century fashion
Robes and cloaks
This page was last modified on 23 October 2013 at 20:25.
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January 5, 2015 · by ask@waterfulcrum.com · Bookmark the permalink. ·
New instability and conflict is possible in Ethiopia, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe in 2015, with continuing instability in Ukraine, Iraq, and Syria, and an increased potential for an Iranian nuclear deal.
High Risk of Conflict Between Egypt and Ethiopia
In 2015, Ethiopia likely intends to begin storing water at the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile. Negotiations are ongoing, but appear unlikely to reach a satisfactory conclusion before this event without further concessions on the Ethiopian side, significantly raising the risks of conflict this year which would most likely involve one or more of Ethiopia’s neighbors, such as South Sudan, Eritrea, or Somalia. Short of further concessions by Ethiopia, there is a chance that construction delays could occur that could buy more time for negotiations.
However, we continue to assess that a win-win negotiated outcome is achievable on the Nile. The key elements of this would include some reasonable measure of guarantee on how Nile flows will be managed, and supported by transparent verification measures, such as sharing of real-time flow data and live video feeds of construction and water storage and release activities.
Growing Risk of a Coup in Venezuela
Years of economic mismanagement have made Venezuela highly vulnerable to low global oil prices and problems stemming from regional drought. Venezuela’s economy is projected to contract by 1.8 percent in 2015 according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, while most goods are in increasingly short supply. An ongoing drought places significant pressure on Venezuela’s national electric grid, which is heavily dependent on hydropower, while the municipal water supply in the capital itself relies heavily on national power supplies. All of these factors likely contributed to a recent Cuban-US rapprochement, as Cuba has relied on Venezuela as a benefactor. We assess these factors are unlikely to lead to significant violent internal conflict, but could facilitate a military coup in 2015, as Maduro is likely incapable of carrying out either needed political changes or a crack-down sufficient to stamp out national discontent.
Potential Humanitarian Crisis in Zimbabwe
The recent appointment of Emmerson Mnangagwa as Vice President in Zimbabwe points to a more hardline approach in dealing with Zimbabwe’s internal problems which include some of the highest population growth rates and corruption levels along with some of the lowest income per capita in the world. This could lead to a humanitarian crisis exported to Zimbabwe’s neighbors in the region which should be prepared for in 2015.
Hardening Sub-national Divides in Ukraine, Iraq, Syria
We see little reason to believe that instability in Ukraine, Iraq, and Syria will abate in 2015 and that the emerging sub-national divides in these states will almost certainly harden.
The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), having reached its peak last year, will continue its decline in 2015 due to coalition strikes and poor governance and resource management. However, the divides that ISIS helped solidify in 2014 will not soon go away, and will likely continue to harden for the foreseeable future. Water shortages played a significant role in the emergence of the Syrian conflict and ISIS early on, and water infrastructure played a key role as both tools and targets of the conflict in 2014. We could further argue that ISIS’s poor resource management was part of the reason it was so aggressive in taking new territory in Iraq to compensate. Having now been pushed back with few other good territorial targets within reach, ISIS may increasingly turn to support from like-minded radicals in other parts of the Middle East and North Africa. Meanwhile, we expect Bashar al-Assad to remain President in name only, having effectively become a warlord and retaining only a small part of Syria.
Economic factors as well as both Russian and Western incompetence sparked the crisis in Ukraine in 2014. The Russians continue to wrongly believe that the West seeks to undermine Russian power and influence while the West has only gradually come to understand how important it is to consider Russian perceptions of vulnerability. We do not expect to see a resolution to the crisis this year or for Russian relations with the West to improve, and the conflict in Ukraine could easily intensify. Water infrastructure served as both tools and targets of the conflict in 2014 in Crimea and Donetsk and could serve as additional flashpoints in 2015.
Iranian Nuclear Deal More Likely
A long-sought Iranian nuclear deal is more likely in 2015 based largely on economic factors. The easing of sanctions, opportunities to take Russian gas market shares, prospects of western investment, and the effects of drought, are likely weakening the position of regime hardliners making a breakthrough more likely. However, resistance to a deal both from regime hardliners and other regional powers as well as the potential for further regional unrest could still very well kick the nuclear can further down the road.
Growing Turbulence in the Sudans and Yemen
Economic trends and political events point to growing turbulence in the Sudans and Yemen. The Sudans and Yemen have been plagued by recently growing internal conflict as well as limited oil income, which will likely only grow worse in 2015. Each of these countries also stand out as having particularly extreme corruption, low income per capita, and relatively high population growth and urbanization rates that have and will continue to contribute to the overall risks in these countries.
About The Water Fulcrum
The Water Fulcrum seeks to better inform everyone who may be affected by water and other resoure related challenges and help equip them to better manage the often unavoidable conflicts around water. More than that, we seek to show how water issues can be used to leverage results. This mission is not about water, but the water aspects of security at every level–security through the water lens. Follow us on twitter @waterfulcrum or contact us at ask@waterfulcrum.com.
Tags: egypt, ethiopia, forecast, iran, iraq, nile, resources, risks, russia, south sudan, sudan, syria, ukraine, venezuela, water, yemen, zimbabwe
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Home » Publications » Special Reports
#WeWillNotBeSilent
Year 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000
Month 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Election Q&A: March 2019 Israeli Elections and Arab Parliamentarians
Adalah's guide to Israeli national elections, the parliamentary disqualification process, the Palestinian Arab minority, and the history of its political exclusion.
Israel's Jewish Nation-State Law
Israeli parliament approves by a vote of 62-55 the Jewish Nation-State Basic Law that enshrines Jewish supremacy over Palestinian citizens. The law has distinct apartheid characteristics and...
Adalah’s Discriminatory Laws Database (DLD) is an online resource comprising a list of over 65 Israeli laws that discriminate directly or indirectly against Palestinian citizens in Israel...
#WeWillNotBeSilent - Lawyer training sessions
Lawyers training sessions, part of the #WeWillNotBeSilent project, which aims to protect and promote the freedom of expression (FOE) of Arab Palestinian youth in Israel.
The #WeWillNotBeSilent project aims to protect and promote the freedom of expression (FOE) of Arab Palestinian youth in Israel.
There is a Field: Telling the Palestinian story of October 2000 in the US of 2016
In March and April 2016, Adalah worked closely with a coalition of civil society partners to bring There Is A Field, a new play by Jen Marlowe, to nearly 2,000 people in cities and universities...
The October 2000 Killings
In October 2000, Israeli police killed 13 Palestinian citizens during demonstrations in Israel. Despite the Or Commission finding no justification for the deadly force, not a single officer has...
Ending Impunity in Gaza
Adalah's legal, international and media campaign to achieve accountability and justice for violations of international law by Israel in the Gaza Strip.
#Save_UmAlHiran
A public campaign to stop Israel's plan to demolish an Arab Bedouin village in order to build a Jewish town over its ruins.
Combating Torture & Ill-treatment against Palestinians in the OPT
To this day, Israel has no legislation that establishes or prohibits torture as a crime, as defined in the UN human rights treaties to which Israel is a party.
'No Compensation Law' Revoked
Adalah successfully challenged an amendment to the Civil Wrongs (Liability of the State) Law – 1952, which attempted to exempt Israel from compensation claims for property damage and injuries...
Home Demolitions in the OPT
Adalah, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights – Gaza (PCHR) and Al-Haq filed a petition and a motion for injunction to the Supreme Court in May 2004 against IDF Major General – Central...
Blacking Out Gaza
In response to a government decision to punitively disrupt the supply of fuel and electricity to Gaza, ten Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations, in cooperation with the deputy...
Family Unification
On 31 July 2003, the Knesset enacted the Nationality and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order) - 2003. This law prohibits the granting of any residency or citizenship status to Palestinians from...
Ameer Makhoul and Dr. Omar Saeed
Ameer Makhoul, a Palestinian Arab citizen of Israel, is a political activist and human rights defender. Dr. Omar Saeed lives in the village of Kufr Kanna and has a long history of political...
Attacks on Human Rights Organizations
In February 2010, a virulent offensive was launched against human rights organizations based in Israel. The situation deteriorated to the point that the Knesset discussed the possible establishment...
Accountability for "Operation Cast Lead" in Gaza
During Israel's three-week offensive on Gaza code-named "Operation Cast Lead" from 27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009, at least 1,440 Palestinians were killed, including 431 children and 114...
Archive Collection on October 2000 Killings
In October 2000, Israeli security forces deployed live ammunition and rubber-coated bullets against Palestinian Arab citizens at demonstrations, killing 13 people. Despite the Or Commission of...
The Freedom Flotilla
On Monday 31 May 2010, Israeli naval commandoes dropped from a helicopter onto one of the Freedom Flotilla ships en route to Gaza. They used live ammunition against the unarmed civilian passengers...
The State of Israel v. MK Dr. Azmi Bishara
On 7 November 2001, the Israeli Knesset (parliament) voted to lift the immunity of Member of Knesset (MK) Dr. Azmi Bishara, head of the National Democratic Assembly party. This move came at the...
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Recommended Tsunami, 10 years on
Preparing to host the pope
Niteroi, Brazil Ricardo Moraes
Updated 20 Aug 2014 15 images Map
Young Catholics carry a wooden cross and icon of the Virgin Mary - symbols of the Church's World Youth Day - on a beach in Niteroi, near Rio de Janeiro.
The crowd gathered to watch looks sizeable, but this is just a small prelude to a much bigger event: World Youth Day itself, when Pope Francis will travel to Brazil on his first international trip as pontiff to preside over the celebrations that take place from 23-28 July.
9 May 2013 . RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil. REUTERS/Sergio Moraes
A man runs near the statue of Brazilian writer Carlos Drummond de Andrade on Copacabana beach, where a huge celebration will take place during the pope's visit.
Beachgoers walk down Copacabana beach, where young people will join a welcoming ceremony for the pope.
7 May 2013 . RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil. REUTERS/Ricardo Moraes
The modest buildings of the Manguinhos slum, where Pope Francis will spend time on the morning of July 25, stand by the water.
Youths play soccer on the field where Pope Francis will lead a mass when he visits the Manguinhos slum.
Josefa da Silva, a 76-year-old slum resident, hopes that her home will be visited by the pope during his trip.
Residents talk in front of the Chapel of Sao Sebastiao, which the pope is expected to visit during his trip to the Manguinhos slum.
Seventy-six-year-old Ana Alves de Souza walks at the altar of the Chapel of Sao Sebastiao, where the pope is expected to make an appearance.
A cross stands on the alter in the Chapel of Sao Jeronimo, which Pope Francis is expected to visit during a trip to Manguinhos slum.
A statue of Pope John Paul II, who founded World Youth Day, stands tall in front of the Rio de Janeiro Cathedral, where Pope Francis will celebrate mass.
Light shines through the cross over the altar in Rio de Janeiro's Cathedral, where the pope will lead a mass on July 27.
A man reads a newspaper at the Quinta da Boa Vista park, where Pope Francis will lead a gathering on July 26.
10 May 2013 . RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil. REUTERS/Ricardo Moraes
A nurse leads a patient next to the square of the Hospital de Sao Francisco de Assis, where the pope will spend time on the evening of July 24.
Police patrol the Casa Branca slum, where the Hospital de Sao Francisco de Assis stands visible in the background to the left. The pope will lead a mass and meet with drug addicts at the hospital during his trip.
21 May 2013 . RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil. REUTERS/Sergio Moraes
Eighty-two-year-old Amara Marine Oliveira, who hopes that Pope Francis will visit her home, smiles as she stands inside her house in Varginha slum.
"I am sure that there will be no lack of people wanting to present the Pope with a jersey from one of Rio’s four biggest soccer clubs."
Sergio Moraes, Reuters Photographer
As soon as we received the official agenda for Pope Francis’ July trip to Rio de Janeiro, we went straight out to photograph the sites that he’ll visit.
Brazil has 123 million Roman Catholics, according to the latest census – more than any other country. But many residents of Rio say that their city is the most irreverent in the world, so all Popes are received here with the slogan, “The pope is pop.” What with the large number of events that he’ll participate in here, that slogan will be on everyone’s minds.
I think the high point of the Pope’s visit will be the two days visiting Copacabana Beach, a place that every year sees two million revellers celebrating New Year.
The Rolling Stones brought 1.5 million fans to Copacabana in 2006. Since Cariocas are natural partiers, I’m sure that during the two days of the “Pop Pope” on Copacabana Beach, we’ll see millions of Catholics, non-Catholics, tourists, and many more than at any of those past events.
I can already imagine the bay full of yachts, small boats and even canoes. The sand will be occupied by pilgrims, bikini girls, beer vendors and thieves. Ironically, Cariocas will confirm that Francis is much more pop than Mick Jagger.
After the beach, the competition for the next largest event will be between the masses he will hold at a ranch in Guaratiba, in the Varginha favela, and in the Aparecida Basilica near Sao Paulo.
The day the agenda was announced and we made our rounds to photograph these places, a Varginha slum dweller immediately claimed that her home had been chosen for the Pope to visit, and the two chapels in the slum were disputing the right to host him.
But what was confirmed was that it would be a soccer field where Francis – a loyal fan of the San Lorenzo de Almagro soccer club in his native Argentina – will hold mass.
Knowing Cariocas well, I am sure that there will be no lack of people wanting to present the Pope with a jersey from one of Rio’s four biggest soccer clubs.
When Pope John Paul made his first trip to Rio in 1979, a song was composed for the occasion titled “A benção, João de Deus“ (A blessing, John of God). The song became a hit, and one day in 1980, when the immensely popular soccer club Fluminense was in a penalty shootout with Vasco da Gama, thousands of fans began to sing it. Fluminense turned the score around to win the match and the championship, and the entire stadium was convinced that it was the pope who had intervened.
During the last Vatican Conclave, people here wanted a Brazilian Pope. But when it was announced that the new Pope is from Argentina, Brazil’s greatest soccer foe, he suddenly became labelled the “first Latin American Pope” and nobody talks about or remembers the fact that he was born in the rival country.
It remains to be seen which Brazilian soccer club will be the one to win over the Pop Pope.
Ricardo Moraes
Vitaljina
Bedrooms of the remembered
Ansan
Protecting Lake Perol
House of mirrors
The lifeblood of Cairo
New country, new jobs, new lives
Rokan Hilir
On holiday in Gaza's summer camps
Gaza City
A mammoth task
A market to float your boat
Therapy on four legs
Modern life in old Lisbon
Brazil boils over
Burning for Tibet
Barma
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Ancient Aliens S12E15
Ancient Aliens is an American television series that premiered on April 20, 2010 on the History channel. Produced by Prometheus Entertainment, the program presents hypotheses of ancient astronauts and proposes that historical texts, archaeology and legends contain evidence of past human-extraterrestrial contact. The show has been criticized for presenting pseudoscience and pseudohistory. The series' de facto pilot was a TV special of the same name that aired on March 8, 2009. The second season began on October 28, 2010, and the third season began airing July 28, 2011. Season four premiered on February 17, 2012 but on H2 instead of the History channel. In June 2012, Giorgio A. Tsoukalos announced on Coast to Coast AM that the series has been renewed for a fifth season. Season 5 premiered on December 21, 2012.
Genre: Documentary, Mystery
Actor: Giorgio A. Tsoukalos, Robert Clotworthy
Duration: 120,60 min
Giorgio A. Tsoukalos
Robert Clotworthy
Evil Lives Here - Season 6
The Movies - Season 1
Shangri-La - Season 1
I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth v. Michelle Carter - Season 1
The Last Czars - Season 1
Dope - Season 3
Savage Builds - Season 1
Todd Sampson's Body Hack - Season 3
1994 - Season 1
The Killer Beside Me – Season 2
The Chef Show - Season 1
The Hotel Inspector - Season 15
What on Earth? - Season 6
Killer Ratings - Season 1
The Weekly - Season 1
Ancient Aliens - Season 14
My Last Days - Season 3
The Disappearance of Susan Cox Powell - Season 1
BTS: Burn the Stage - Season 1
Travel Man: 48 Hours in... - Season 9
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‘You’ve got all these..
‘You’ve got all these atrocities against free speech’
Free SpeechMark Latham
Is free speech across Australian universities at risk?
“You’ve got all these atrocities against free speech,” says Mark Latham.
“I think we’ve gone past the point where we can trust Australian universities to be self-governing with regards to free speech,” he tells Alan Jones.
It comes after a series of high profile and conservative speakers were left to foot the bill for police security when giving speeches at universities across the country.
The events also prompted protests from left-wing activists.
Mark says it’s left us with two options.
“The federal government should say you won’t receive public money unless you have absolute free speech and a system of academic inquiry on your campuses. No if’s or but’s. It must be free.
“And you’ll pay for the police protection which you generated.”
“And if you want to spit and bully and intimidate… you won’t. You’ll be disqualified from getting a degree,” says Alan.
Click PLAY below to hear the full interview
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