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The April issue of Spaceports & Spidersilk is now avaialble
The new issue of Spaceports & Spidersilk is now available. You can find it at: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/421791.
Spaceports & Spidersilk specializes in science fiction and fantasy for children of all ages. Entertain your inner child, or your real child by picking up a copy today.
Tags fantasy, kids fiction, magazine, new release, science fiction, spaceports & spidersilk
The Ephemeris Encyclopedia Galactica: Colonized Space in paperback
The Ephemeris Encyclopedia Galactica: Colonized Space is now available in paperback. This supplement lets you explore the sectors of space that are “controlled” by each of the six species.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/127376/The-Ephemeris-Encyclopedia-Galactica-Colonized-Space
The Ephemeris Encyclopedia Galactica: Colonized Space is a combination of the first six volumes of the Ephemeris Encyclopedia Galactica. It looks at each sector of space that is controlled by one of the six species. An invaluable supplement for anyone playing the Ephemeris Science Fiction Role Playing Game, especially those that have been looking for campaign settings for their games.
A useful tool for both players and game masters, this supplement will help elevate your Ephemeris game to the next level.
Before ordering, please keep in mind that this supplement contains the same information that was released individually in the EEG for sectors 3, 8, 9, 10, 13, & 21.
Tags ephemeris, new release, role playing game, rpg, science fiction
The Ephemeris Omnibus 2013 in hardback
Over 600 pages of hardbound rules for the Ephemeris RPG, and we’re talking full size 8 1/2 X 11…a must have for any Ephemeris game master or player.
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/113551/The-Ephemeris-Omnibus-2013
The Ephemeris Omnibus 2013 features the Ephemeris core rulebook (with some rule changes, including mutli-classing), and all of the rule supplements that have been released as of the end of 2012. All of the species and class supplements have been blended into the core rulebook to create a massive (over 200,000 words) rulebook that will allow you to play the most extensive Ephemeris game you’d ever want to play.
New print versions of Ephemeris titles
We’ve released print versions of two more Ephemeris titles. You can get The Ephemeris Omnibus 2013 at http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/113551/The-Ephemeris-Omnibus-2013?manufacturers_id=2805 and you can get The Ephemeris Encyclopedia Galactica; Colonized Space at http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/127376/The-Ephemeris-Encyclopedia-Galactica-Colonized-Space?manufacturers_id=2805.
Tags ephemeris, new releases, rpg, science fiction
Spaceports & Spidersilk April issue available for advanced order
You can pre-order the April issue of Spaceports & Spidersilk. Go to https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/421791, and order your copy today, it will be delivered on the 31st.
Tags fantasy, kids, magazine, new release, science fiction, spaceports & spidersilk
The Ephemeris Encyclopedia Galactica: Sectors 1, 2, & 4
A new supplement in the Ephemeris Encyclopedia Galactica is now available. We’re starting to look at “Near Space.” These are systems that are close to the main systems of the six species, but actually aren’t under their control. In many places, you’ll find worlds that have been colonized by one of the six species, or you might find worlds that had been colonized by an ancient species, or you might find something even stranger.
This supplement looks at three of the sectors of Near Space.
Order from us at: http://nomadicdeliriumpress.com/blog/product/ephemeris-encyclopedia-galactica-sectors-1-2-4/
Order from DriveThruRPG at: http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/127723/The-Ephemeris-Encyclopedia-Galactica-Sectors-One-Two–Four
Tags ephemeris, new release, role playing game, science fiction
A reminder about the zine sale
Just as a reminder, now through the end of March, you can get any of our zines, including subscriptions to our zines for 20% off. All you need to do is go to http://nomadicdeliriumpress.com/blog/shop/ and use the coupon code “zines” at checkout.
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, entering that sign on February 2012.
[Neptune's first ingress into Pisces: 04-Apr-2011 @ 13:50UT; Neptune re-entered Aquarius 05-Aug-2011 @ 02:53UT during Retrograde; Neptune second ingress into Pisces: 03-Feb-2012 @ 19:02UT]. [Fomalhaut-Neptune Exact Conjunctions]
i think Neptune strongly influences Gemini New Moon & will do so for quite some time. specifically, it influences the China/Oceana conjunction. Neptune doesn't aspect the new moon, but here's where i think it's going to influence things (take this with a grain of salt though, i'm a pisces moon): if Neptune aspects your natal moon, or if it's the house of your moon &c, that's where you want to look. on the Gemini New Moon chart:
Neptune {05PI22} is 257°21'38" from New Moon {18GE01} @ EON-27 (Phase Arc 257° ~ Waning Bi-Septile) Transformation, Conscious Agent, Cosmic Empowerment, Harmonizing § KEYNOTE: The cosmos accepts and protects those dedicated to the path of transformation, empowering them to illuminate the way to a creative new day § DYNAMIC: the all-revealing Light of Wholeness.
on the mandala, Neptune's Sabian symbol: Pisces 5-6° A Parade Of Army Officers In Full Dress § KEYNOTE: The dedication of human beings to the service of their community, and the assurance that it will be emotionally sustained by the people at large § Keyword is GROUP-RESPONSIBILITY.
my Neptune is located in this chart's underworld, 3°11'1" from GNM Saturn: Neptune 02SC20℞ and 134°18'53" from Gemini New Moon @ EON-13 [Scorpio 2-3° A House-Raising Party In A Small Village Enlists The Neighbors' Cooperation].
my natal Saturn is near my descendant & 47°17'53" from GNM Saturn & 9°36'1" from GNM Vertex: Saturn 22SG49℞ and 184°47'46" from Gemini New Moon @ EON-19 [Sagittarius 22-23° A Group Of Immigrants As They Fulfill The Requirements Of Entrance Into The New Country].
various interpretations & mashups
Neptune Retrograde 2013, Lynn Koiner
Delusional hits: JUNE 7-8 (Neptune squares Mars at its Station); JULY 25-26 (Neptune opposes Venus); AUGUST 29-30 (Neptune opposes Mercury); SEPTEMBER 3-5 (Neptune opposes Ceres); OCTOBER 9-10 (Neptune square Venus); OCTOBER 18-20 (Neptune opposes Mars).
At Last: Neptune enters Pisces, Eric Francis
For one thing, Jupiter and Chiron are still in a sextile from Taurus to Pisces, respectively – and each has a strong association with the other’s current placement. Jupiter is the traditional ruler of Pisces; Chiron was discovered while it was in Taurus – right in the degree Jupiter now occupies. It adds up to a lot of strong Pisces energy all at once, but the sextile makes it accessible, and Jupiter in earthy Taurus provides some real grounding for it. Chiron provides a complimentary grounding in the form of focus and a consciously applied visioning power.
The configuration, with Neptune blending into the edges of the aspect, translates to applied creativity for a purpose. Remember: unlike some aspects that can feel like a kick in the ass and others that seem to slide right by, a sextile is an energy you can actually use. And just in case you needed an extra boost in that, Uranus is right at the midpoint between Jupiter and Chiron, urging you to reinvent yourself.
We tend to think of Pluto and Uranus as the only revolutionary players. But guess what aspect was exact when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989? Saturn conjunct Neptune in Capricorn. I mean, it was exact: When Günter Schabowski [The journalist question that fractured the Wall], the party boss in East Berlin and the spokesman for the SED Politburo, had the task of announcing new, looser regulations for private travel between East and West Germany – and mistakenly stated that the changes were effective immediately – Saturn was within one quarter of one degree of an exact conjunction with Neptune. Within four days, the conjunction was precise to the arc minute* – and the wall was being torn down, chunk by chunk, along with a couple generations’ worth of psychology.
comment :: "The point about the Berlin Wall is especially important because Saturn was also conjunct Neptune on Neptune’s discovery chart. Thank you for demonstrating the historical fact that Saturn potentiates our awareness of Neptune."
*Hans Modrow became East Germany's new prime minister on 13-Nov-1989; Saturn-Neptune exact 13-Nov-1989 @ 12:39pm local time. Sabian: Capricorn 10-11° A Large Group Of Pheasant On A Private Estate. Capricorn 10° on Gemini New Moon chart is Pluto/Qianxuesen conjunction.
note: Saturn/Neptune declination: 22°S (less than one degree; separation is 0°30'47" on the 9th, 0°29'59" on the 13th)
Gemini New Moon: China sextile Venus sextile Cybele sextile Saturn sextile Pluto sextile Neptune sextile China. that's the hexagon, hexagram and magic rectangle.
Neptune Entering Pisces - Changing Mythologies and World Stories
Robert Wilkinson
Just be alert to vague assertions, unclear thinking or motives, or those who want you to believe what they believe without it being grounded or even true. There’s already a lot of rumor and speculation in the collective consciousness that is without substance, “sound and fury signifying nothing.” If Neptune rules dreams and fogs, get your “glamor dispelling mechanism” in shape, along with your ability to do three (or preferably four) point "Mental lighting," since that is the only way to dispel shadows, you know!
…a great essay connecting Neptune's discovery chart back at the Autumnal Equinox 1846, developments since then, the Neptune discovery return chart, and how it all relates to mythology and the collective "stories" humanity believes in… Neptune and Collective Mythologies by Aquarian Dharmaruci.
Neptune and Collective Mythologies, Aquarian Dharmaruci
also check out the more recent Astrology vs England's Stately Homo* [Richard Herring's Leicester Square Theatre Podcast > Episode 18 - Stephen Fry]
Jupiter is the planet of story-telling. But I think that Neptune, the planet of the Imagination, is the ocean [China conjunct Oceana, Gemini New Moon] out of which the stories are picked. Neptune is that place where consciousness and matter merge, where it becomes obvious that you cannot separate human consciousness and the universe that consciousness is always trying to understand and describe.
The chart for Neptune’s Ingress into Pisces has six planets, including a New Moon, in Aries. This suggests to me that, while our basic mythology may not change, there will still be some big changes to the way we see the world. Neptune in Capricorn, which began in the mid-1980s, was an era in which money (Capricorn) became fashionable (Neptune). Neptune in Aquarius, which began in the late 1990s, began the Internet Age: Aquarius is computers and Neptune is the interconnectedness of the web. Neptune in Pisces. Who knows?
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Neptune rules Pisces, entering that sign on February 2012.
Tags: berlin wall, fomalhaut, fomalhaut-neptune, neptune, pisces, pluto, uranus
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The Joy of Six: weirdest trades in sports history
Gabriel Baumgaertner: If you believed the DeMarcus Cousins offer was odd, thats absolutely nothing. We recall at the 6 weirdest gamer swaps in sports history
R are are the gamers with franchise skill, an unpredictable personality and thrilling unpredictability, however recently minted New Orleans Pelican Demarcus Cousins checks each of those classifications as well as thats an insufficient start in explaining the mercurial however incredibly gifted star. Simply one week after reports that Cousins liked signing the supermax agreement (which would have amounted to around $200m) with the Sacramento Kings, the group that prepared him in 2010, the 26-year-old star was delivered to the Pelicans on late Sunday night in a trade that stunned even the casual observer.
The return novice shooting guard Buddy Hield, seasoned shooting guard Tyreke Evans, point player Langston Galloway, a 2017 first-round choice and a 2017 second-round choice left experts flummoxed. Why trade among the video games finest gamers for a collection of average and unverified products? Why the make the trade 4 days prior to the trading due date when a more engaging deal could have emerged? Typical agreement is that the Kings were fleeced a familiar refrain for among the leagues most inefficient franchises however popular opinion rarely sides with the group that deals a super star.
The most striking aspect of the trade wasnt that Cousins was dealt his name has actually been drifted as a trade chip for over a year however the strangeness of the bundle and the timing. A lot of sports fans can rattle off notoriously uneven trades (Reds trade Frank Robinson to Orioles for Milt Pappas, Cubs trade Lou Brock to Cardinals for Ernie Broglio, Nets trade Julius Erving to 76ers for $3m), however exactly what about the genuinely uncommon offers?
As these 6 trades show, deals can look into the ignominious and the ridiculous.
1) Boston Red Sox trade Babe Ruth to New York Yankees for $100,000
The trade that activated the well known Curse of the Bambino is not just the most uneven sell the history of sports, however among its strangest due to the fact that of how the cash was invested. Ruth, long called the video games biggest gamer and character, had actually currently developed himself as one of the video games fantastic pitchers and players by 1919 for among the leagues finest franchises in the Boston Red Sox. He set a major league record by pitching 29 successive scoreless innings, a record that would stand up until 1961. He won 2 video games in the 1918 World Series in spite of hurting his hand in a battle prior to Game 4 (prior to quiting pitching, he completed his profession 3-0 in World Series competitors). His prodigious skill was a considerable tourist attraction in a baseball-crazed nation. By 1920, he would sign up with the competing New York Yankees and end up being an American hero.
Unfortunately for the Red Sox, owner Harry Frazee had a hard time to fulfill loan payments after acquiring the group in 1916. Dealing with monetary default, he began offering gamers off to the Yankees (16 overall in between 1918 and 1923 along with basic supervisor Red Barrow) since of his close ties to the Yankee owners. He offered Ruth for $100,000 and a loan of $300,000 to be protected by a home mortgage on Fenway Park. Where the story gets really unusual is whether Frazee, a theater manufacturer, utilized the cash to fund the production No, No, Nanette , which stemmed as a non-musical phase play entitled My Lady Friends. The play was undoubtedly funded by the profits from the Ruth offer, however it would not premiere till more than 5 years after Ruths departure and belonged to a bigger amount that Frazee had actually obtained through his other gamer sales along with the ultimate payment he protected in the home mortgage offer for Fenway Park. Scientists have actually concluded that Frazee actively looked for the acquisition of strong gamers in exchange for Ruth, however his monetary problem coming from his failure to pay back the Fenway Park home mortgage, his stopping working theatre endeavors, and a continuous fight with American League commissioner Ban Johnson required Frazee to offer Ruth on the free market.
sizes=”605px”/
. The leading authorities of the Boston Red Sox, Ed Barrow, left, and Harry Frazee, seated center, talk with Babe Ruth, center top, and Stuffy McInnis about the upcoming baseball season in 1918. Picture: Transcendental Graphics/Getty Images
The subsequent history is understood. The Red Sox would not win another World Series up until 2004 , and the trade of Ruth was frequently pointed out as the main factor that the franchise was cursed. The trade, and Ruths tradition, are well-chronicled in Leigh Montvilles The Big Bam: The Life and Times of Babe Ruth, Dan Shaughnessys The Curse of the Bambino and Bill Brysons Summer 1927.
2) Pacific Suns trade Ken Krahenbuhl to Greenville Bluesmen for Player to Be Named Later, money and 10lbs of Mississippi catfish an unopened Muddy Waters record and 50lbs of pheasant for a 2nd baseman
Ken Krahenbuhl was scuffing his method through the 1998 season in the independent leagues, not connected with Major League Baseball , when he found out the Pacific Suns of Oxnard, California, had actually traded him. Thirty years of ages and one year far from his ultimate retirement, Krahenbuhl was heading from a group in the Western League simply 115 miles from his home town to the Texas-Louisiana League to sign up with the Greenville (Mississippi) Bluesmen. The return for Krahenbuhls services? A gamer to be called later on, money and 10lbs of Mississippi Catfish.
Those individuals in California do not know exactly what great fish is, Pacific basic supervisor Mike Begley, who previously operated in Greenville, stated after the offer was finished.
Krahenbuhl, like any sensible human, was irritated to find out that hed been traded for catfish a weak 10lbs at that. In a sterling example of transforming anger into revenge, Krahenbuhl pitched an ideal video game versus the Armadillo Dillos in his very first getaway for the Bluesmen. I truly wished to succeed in my very first start, Krahenbuhl stated . I wished to reveal the Suns they slipped up. I was disturbed that I was traded for simply some catfish, however Im happy Im here in Greenville now.
Krahenbuhl was mobbed by fans after the success in spite of a torrential rainstorm that began in the ninth inning. His hat was taken, however generous advocates circulated a different hat to provide him $48 as a benefit for his efficiency. He took the cash to go have a celebratory supper and betting getaway at the close-by Lighthouse Point gambling establishment. Exactly what did he purchase to celebrate the profession achievement?
Catfish.
3) Seattle Breakers trade Tom Martin to Victoria Cougars for an utilized bus
Tom Martin was an NHL journeyman who played 92 video games over 7 seasons and whose most noteworthy stat was the 249 charge minutes he accumulated throughout his minimal time at the greatest level. His profession stats look like that of the having a hard time gamer caught between the minors and NHL and whose name is otherwise forgotten beyond dirty trading cards and analytical archives.
Except Martin had a label, Bussey, that was made by the most unlikely trade that the hockey world ever seen. A fourth-round choice by the Winnipeg Jets in 1982, Martin decided to participate in the University of Denver for the 1982-83 season, however his rights were held by the Seattle Breakers of the Western Hockey League. The Breakers figured theyd never ever utilize Martin, so the front workplace planninged to deliver him for something they might utilize. Rather of another gamer, the Breakers decided to deliver Martin to the Victoria (British Columbia) Cougars for a bus. An utilized bus.
As NHL.coms Evan Weiner informs it , Victoria bought a bus from the recently-folded Spokane Flyers, however ownership chose it was too costly to register it in Canada. While the Cougars had an additional group bus stuck in Spokane, Seattles had actually just recently blown its engine on a long trip. The outcome? Martin, an unusable possibility for the Breakers since of his option to go to college, was delivered for, as Martin informed Weiner, a relatively brand-new bus. Martin never ever saw the bus, however he made the Bussey name and would ultimately make it to the NHL.
4) Fort Lauderdale Strikers trade Walter Restrepo to San Antonio Scorpions for hotel and transport lodgings
.When expert sports werent as abundant as they are now, #ppppp> Most stories of unusual trades come from eras. Gander down into independent leagues and 2nd- and third-divisions of less lucrative organizations and youll still discover some odd promotion stunts and efforts to conserve a dollar. Simply 3 years back, Walter Restrepo was among the most revered midfielders in the NASL in spite of coming off of a knee injury that ended his 2013 project. It should have come as a surprise when the Fort Lauderdale Strikers delivered the 25-year-old to the San Antonio Scorpions for exactly what was at first called a transfer cost.
Thanks to some dogged reporting by Pedro Heizer of 90minutesstrong. com , that move cost was hotel and travel lodgings for the 2014 match in between the 2 groups. In a league where incomes are infamously low and participation is normally sporadic, couple of would be amazed if a transfer charge totaled up to absolutely nothing more than a pittance to assist foot the bill. However, trading a gamer extensively acknowledged as a leading property in exchange for fundamental functions of an expert club offered an illuminating if unusual insight into life at the lower levels. The trade likewise produced a most uncommon news release. After the offer was finished, Scorpions president Howard Cornfield released the following declaration:
The Scorpions wish to thank Bill Brendel of the Crockett Hotel and Mark Thronson of Shark Limo, 2 long-lasting, terrific partners, for their amazing support. It was just through their help that we had the ability to get this offer done.
When Sports Illustrated soccer author Grant Wahl called both clubs , Cornfield acknowledged that perhaps he ought to have merely defined money factors to consider rather of thanking business sponsors, however that no promotion is bad promotion unless someone gets killed or something.
After a short stint in 2016 with the Philadelphia Union, Restrepo went back to the NASL and has actually signed to have fun with the New York Cosmos in 2017.
5) Utah Jazz trade Fred Roberts to Boston Celtics for a third-round choice and 2 preseason video games
A journeyman center with relatively minimal worth, Roberts was the not likely center of a bidding war in between the Utah Jazz and Boston Celtics in 1986. The Celtics had actually provided Roberts, a limited complimentary representative, a modest two-year deal sheet in the variety of $400,000. The backup center was of little worth to a Jazz group flush with huge males (consisting of future Hall of Famer Karl Malone), however considering that allure desired a second-round choice in exchange for Roberts, they remarkably matched the deal sheet . By guideline, Roberts was to go back to allure unless a trade was performed. When settlements took a weird turn, thats.
The Jazz desired a second-round choice as part of the exchange , however the Celtics didnt have one in the upcoming drafts, and allure wouldnt accept the Celtics last deal of a fourth-round choice prior to their choice to match. The trade ultimately decideded upon was a third-round choice (which allure utilized to pick present Oklahoma City Thunder head coach Billy Donovan) and an arrangement for the Celtics to play 2 exhibit video games in Utah. Boasting a lineup of Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Danny Ainge and Robert Parish, allure front workplace should have believed that the draw of seeing many stars would juice ticket sales and increase gate earnings. If not, it stays the most confounding bundle in NBA history. Roberts played moderately for the Celtics for 2 seasons prior to he was picked in the 1988 growth draft by the Miami Heat. (He would be traded to the Milwaukee Bucks prior to ever dressing for the Heat.)
. Fred Roberts ended up being the not likely center of a bidding war in between the Utah Jazz and Boston Celtics in 1986. Picture: Dick Raphael/NBAE/Getty Images
By his professions conclusion in 1997, Roberts logged among the most effective NBA journeyman professions in current memory. Paradoxically, the Celtics trade followed he was traded by the New Jersey Nets to the San Antonio Spurs so the Nets might employ then-Spurs coach Stan Albeck. After signing up with the Bucks in 1989, Milwaukee head coach Del Harris commented I have actually assured Fred that if we ever trade him, it will be for a human.
6) Indians trade Harry Chiti to Mets for Harry Chiti, Blue Jays trade John MacDonald to Tigers for John McDonald
Sometimes youre traded for the Player To Be Named Later. In some cases you are the Player To Be Named Later. As Harry Chiti and John McDonald caninform you, in some cases youre both.
Harry Chiti was delivered from the Cleveland Indians to the New York Mets in 1962 for future factors to consider. The 62 Mets are extensively considered as the worst big league group of all-time and were the topic of renowned New York author Jimmy Breslins Cant Anybody Here Play This Game. Inning accordance with Breslin, the 62 Mets were losers, similar to almost everyone else in life. Since he didnt maneuver himself to lunch with the employer enough, this is a group for the taxi chauffeur who gets held up and the man who loses out on a promo. Chiti was every bit as unfortunate as the remainder of the 40-win group. The backup catcher, among 7 the Mets utilized that season, ended up the year with a paltry.195 average and simply one additional base hit in 15 video games. By seasons end, the Mets delivered him back to the Indians, making him the very first gamer to be traded for himself. It was the last hed ever appear in the major leagues.
McDonald suffered a comparable fate. The Toronto Blue Jays traded the fan preferred shortstop to the Detroit Tigers for the previously mentioned gamer to be called later on. Regardless of a good proving as the Tigers backup shortstop (.260 batting average and his common strong defense ), the Tigers sent out McDonald back to Toronto together with money factors to consider. McDonald would log 16 seasons in the major leagues, completing in 2014 with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.
Honorable reference: Players to be traded for devices
Several baseball gamers have actually been traded for devices. When delivered for$ 720 in baseball devices as a small leaguer, previous Atlanta Braves reducer Kerry Ligtenberg was. Previous Seattle Mariners reducer Keith Comstock was delivered for a bag of balls and$ 100, which he needed to provide from one minors spring training school to another.
US public schools take steps to protect undocumented students
(CNN)Chicago Public Schools state they will reject federal migration representatives access to district structures and workers unless served with a...
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The Next Oil Boom Is Happening Here
Despite the shale slowdown and…
Oil Glut Overshadows Geopolitical Risk In 2020
In its latest report, the…
Irina Slav
Irina is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry.
Alberta Ready To Turn Off Oil Taps For B.C.
By Irina Slav - Mar 09, 2018, 9:30 AM CST
Alberta’s government may be considering a suspension of crude oil shipments to British Columbia in the latest episode of what is turning into a drama series starring Canada’s biggest oil producer and its neighbor who wants to stop the extension of a crude oil pipeline to its coast.
In the provincial government’s Speech from the Throne, Alberta’s Lieutenant Governor Lois Mitchell said that all options for retaliation against B.C.’s opposition to the Trans Mountain expansion are on the table. Mitchell recalled a decision by a former Alberta PM in the early 1980s to reduce oil flows to refineries in eastern Canada by 15 percent in reaction to the federal government’s National Energy Program that Alberta saw as a threat to its energy industry.
The suggestion is clear enough and it should not be unexpected. First, British Columbia’s new government last year openly stated it did not want the Trans Mountain pipeline to be expanded and would use all available legal tools to fight it. The fact that the project was approved by the federal government was ignored.
Alberta insisted the expansion is crucial because Canada’s pipeline network is already running at capacity; there is even a shortage rearing its head, and oil is having to be transported by train, which is both costlier and riskier. Related: Saudi Arabia Plans Its Own Shale Revolution
B.C. was equally insistent that it does not want more oil shipped to its coast and it does not want tankers docking at its ports, since the point of the expansion is to take Alberta crude to foreign markets.
In retaliation, Alberta announced a boycott on B.C. wine imports and on electricity imports. B.C. changed its mind about a proposal to change the rules for shipping oil through its territory that would have reduced oil flows for the duration of a study on oil leak response mechanisms. The study would have taken about a couple of years and many saw the proposal as a stalling tactic.
The federal government, meanwhile, has so far proved incapable of making the two provinces kiss and make up. At a recent meeting with the public, PM Justin Trudeau reiterated that Ottawa stood behind the Trans Mountain expansion, and that has been about it from the referee.
With such a history, it was only a matter of time for Alberta to strike back with something bigger than a wine boycott. However, Alberta PM Rachel Notley made a point of noting that the NDP government did not want to cause a crisis. “Our focus is getting people’s attention on the matter.”
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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Kr55 on March 09 2018 said:
Would probably make some real waves if AB did that. If they could spike gasoline prices in BC, lots of people would freak. Disposable income in BC now is people borrowing against their homes. All think they are brilliant millionaires now that can stick their nose up at things because of house prices spiking and are living off their home equity like there is no tomorrow.
Mark Urbanski on March 09 2018 said:
Yes, that is the Canadian resolve... Canada to shut tap off to US as well... The water Canada will use as a bargaining chip...
Steven Sipes on March 09 2018 said:
Instead of moving the oil in rail tank cars (individual) use the "tank train" style and move more at once. This should work for British Columbia and Alberta. It can handle over 1.2 million per train. And loading and unloading is faster.
Jason Kenny on March 09 2018 said:
I wish I was as brave as Rachel Notley. I could learn a lot from her
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Stegner Fellows Graham Barnhart and Yoon Choi share memory in poetry and prose
November 29, 2017 0 Comments Share
Culture Desk Editor
By: Claire Thompson | Culture Desk Editor
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
“When a poet goes to war, the resulting work, I think, is stunning,” J. Bruce Fuller mused in his introduction of Graham Barnhart. Barnhart is one of Stanford’s 2017-19 Stegner Fellows, and served as an army medic in Iraq and Afghanistan. An attentive audience had a chance to hear some of Barnhart’s indeed stunning poetry at the Nov. 15 Stegner Reading, along with an excerpt of fiction from Fellow Yoon Choi.
Stanford’s Stegner Fellowship is a two-year writing program, each round offering five poets and five fiction writers a chance to focus intensely on their craft. Fellows are given a living stipend and attend workshops, readings and other events, periodically sharing their work with audiences of creative writing students, faculty and interested community members.
“The trouble with writing war poetry, I think, is reading it,” Barnhart reflected, after his first poem: “Notice and Focus Exercise.” Much of war poetry, as Barnhart pointed out, is “heavy stuff.” It can be heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, depressing and true. He promised the audience that there would be some lighter moments as well, saying, “there’s a joke in here somewhere,” which he quickly followed up with, “not [in] this poem, though.”
Many of Barnhart’s poems struck a poignant balance between the heavy and the gentle. In “Cultivating Mass,” Barnhart begins: “Let the peaceful young men work their bis and tris. Let’s not begrudge them their beach muscle.” He seems to wonder at the attentiveness to building strength, when bodies are inescapably fragile – especially in the setting of war. He read: “Today I can deadlift 405. When I can move 410, that will not stop a bullet, or the overpressure of a bomb.” Despite this harsh truth, the end of the poem is compassionate: “Let the peaceful young men believe, for awhile longer, anything otherwise.”
The previously promised joke did arrive in Barnhart’s poem, “The War Makes Everyone Lonely,” in which he told the “mostly true story” of a correspondence with his sister while he was in Afghanistan. Evidently, her phone number somehow got listed on an escort service website, and she was receiving constant phone calls requesting the services of “Elisha.” His comrades were concerned with their survival, their duty and their loved ones at home; his sister was concerned with her predicament, and whether or not she should engage a lawyer – and Barnhart wondered, “What about Elisha? She must be home, I imagine, counting hits against the number of times the phone hasn’t rung.”
After sharing the poem, Barnhart revealed why it was only a “mostly true” story – his sister notified him, after reading the poem, that the woman’s name was Codi – not Elisha. “But,” Barnhart hedged, “Elisha has more syllables.”
Yoon Choi, the fiction reader at the Stegner Reading, is a Korean-American author hailing from Long Island, New York. She received one of her master’s degrees from Stanford, making this Stegner Fellowship “a homecoming of sorts,” as Jenn Alandy Trahan, a second year fellow, put it in her introduction. Choi’s fiction “investigates the chasms between families living on different continents” – as well as, in some cases, the chasms between families who are under the same roof, as we heard in her reading from “The Art of Losing.”
Although we only got to hear the end of the piece (a “very long short story,” Choi confessed), Choi provided some context before she began reading: A Korean-American family is grappling with assimilation, communication and memory – the grandfather, Mo-Sae, from whose perspective the story is told, is descending into the maze of Alzheimer’s. From his muddled point of view, we learn about the family dynamic, the daily struggles, and greater problems perhaps yet to come.
The section Choi read was from the end of the story. Mo-Sae has been left in charge of his young grandson, Jonathan, which is not supposed to happen. Later on, we learn that something has happened to his wife, Young-Ja, and she is in the hospital. In looking after his grandson, Mo-Sae realizes how complicated every small task becomes with the loss of his memory. He and Jonathan attempt to venture out of their apartment to buy an ice cream, but by the time they have reached the lobby Mo-Sae cannot remember the initial intent of their journey. Not wanting to appear confused, he instead leads them to the pool, and young Jonathan winds up dumping his entire coin jar into the water.
An interesting moment arises when Mo-Sae’s son-in-law arrives at the apartment. He is Indian, and at first Mo-Sae doesn’t recognize him – when he internally identifies the young man, Sanjay, as his son-in-law, we observe a brief but fascinating realization of racial awareness, as Mo-Sae questions whether his daughter, Christina, experiences any difficulty in her relationship with Sanjay.
The relationship between father-in-law and son-in-law appears strained, although this could be due in part to Young-Ja being in the hospital, and Mo-Sae being kept in the dark about the extent of her condition. As they make conversation, Sanjay identifies some plants in the apartment, sharing their scientific names and tips on watering. Mo-Sae thinks, “he seems profoundly relieved to have stumbled upon certain matters of fact.”
Both Choi’s and Barnhart’s work share elements of memory – the memories of a veteran, immortalized in poetry, and the collective memories of a family, the painful slipping of memory with age. Through their poetry and prose, both artists create moments of lives where we can see memories unfolding, dissolving or standing still.
Contact Claire Thompson at clairet ‘at’ stanford.edu.
performance art poetry prose spoken word Stegner Fellows Stegner Reading 2017-11-29
Tagged with: performance art poetry prose spoken word Stegner Fellows Stegner Reading
About Claire Thompson
Claire Thompson is a coterm M.A. student in Environmental Communication. In her undergrad, she studied Earth Systems and Creative Writing. She loves food, mopeds, and mountains especially. Reach out to Claire via email at clairet 'at' stanford.edu.
8 easy ways to keep celebrating national poetry month
Q&A: Philosophy professor Ray Briggs on politics’ role in modern poetry
Trying to understand poetry with Louise Glück, part 1
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Thinking About the Other Side? An Introduction to Content Marketing
Welcome to the Course
Meet Your Instructor (3:01)
Special Offer: Industry Talk Free Pass
What You Should Know About Native Advertising
What Is Native Advertising? (1:52)
Exercise: Sponsored or Not?
Why Native Advertising? (1:13)
What Is T Brand Studio? (2:22)
What Is a Paid Post? (1:05)
The Teams Within T Brand Studio (1:43)
Exercise (0:38)
"WTF is Native Advertising?"
Reading | Resources
Advertising Basics
How We Got Here (1:43)
The Products — Print (1:52)
The Challenge Faced by Publishers (2:15)
The Strengths of Publishers (1:39)
The Products — Online (3:24)
The Players (3:47)
What I Wish I Had Known (1:31)
Exercise: Quiz
Content Studio Structure and Process
How Native Advertising Is Handled by a Publisher (5:38)
Various Types of Native Content (7:04)
Why All the Different Formats? (1:54)
The Origination of a Native Campaign (5:28)
The Dance: Sales, Agency, Client (1:25)
Project Milestone 1 (5:44)
RFP From Client
Ideating and Pitching
Ideating (3:56)
Branded or Unbranded? (2:41)
Team Brainstorm (2:42)
How to Tell the Story (2:31)
Pitching (4:04)
Additional Tips (1:23)
After You Win the Pitch (1:14)
Client Kickoff (1:13)
Production Deliverables (6:18)
Other Production Notes (3:01)
Time Management (1:00)
Exercise: Learning to Prioritize (6:02)
Reporting and Writing
Reporting (6:55)
Interviewing (2:33)
Collect and Organize Your Notes (1:59)
Writing (4:28)
Style and Standards (2:54)
Opportunity to Do Something Different (1:45)
Editing and Production
Editing (1:19)
Editing Within Native Advertising (1:35)
What to Look For (2:00)
Audiences (1:27)
Production (0:50)
Production Within Native Advertising (2:40)
Working With Audience Development Team (1:17)
Case Study: Wells Fargo Paid Post
Documents Overview
Article Concept
Outline and Sources
Early Draft
Early Draft Changes
Later Draft
Later Draft Changes
Struggles and Conflicts
The Level of Branding (4:11)
Why Go Unbranded? (1:51)
Finding the Best Story to Tell (1:52)
The Importance of Communication (1:38)
Exercise: Potential Scenarios (4:36)
Advice for Those Thinking of a Career in Native Advertising
Different Types of Roles and Skill Sets (2:56)
Everything Is Very New (3:02)
Have a Good Sense of Humor and a Thick Skin (1:57)
Different Mindset (1:51)
Next Steps (4:13)
Finishing Your Project (0:58)
Final Project Checklist
Course Wrap Up (0:47)
How Native Advertising Is Handled by a Publisher
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OCMC News - Your Parish Can Support a Mission Priest!
Father Vladimir, another priest supported through the SAMP program.
For just $600 per year, your parish can make a huge difference in the lives of indigenous priests around the world!
Currently, around 50 parishes in the US and Canada have budgeted an annual commitment to the Support a Mission Priest (SAMP) program. Their support helps make it possible for priests to meet the needs of their communities in some of the poorest areas in the world.
One such parish is the All Saints Church in Chicago, IL. One of their parishioners, Hannah Stapleton, served on an OCMC short-term mission team to Kenya in 2016. At her urging, the parish began including the sponsorship of a SAMP priest from Kenya in their annual budget! Every year they continue to assist the same priest, Fr. Moses, greatly contributing to his ministry and making his work possible. That parish also gives a monthly donation to support Missionaries Nathan and Gabriela Hoppe in Albania – so they’re directly participating in the life of the Church worldwide!
Your parish can make a difference too! If you'd like to add a SAMP priest to your parish budget, please reach out to us by either e-mailing samp@ocmc.org or calling 1-877-463-6784 and asking for Markella Balasis, our SAMP Coordinator. If you’re interested in supporting a priest from a particular part of the world, feel free to mention that.
With each parish that supports a SAMP priest, we build another relationship with our Orthodox brothers and sisters around the world. Only by working together, can we share Christ’s love with the whole world and “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19).
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Odd Duck Press
Artist Interview with Tara Galuska
Jessica Molnar
Hello friends! I'm so thrilled to share today's artist interview with Tara Galuska. Tara creates whimsical miniature works from cut paper and, along with Jamie Smith, is one of the fearless leaders of THRIVE mastermind. Huzzah!
Where in the world are you located? What is it like being an artist there?
I live in New Westminster BC Canada and have an art studio in Vancouver. It’s a really beautiful and inspiring part of the world. I love being an artist here because of the inspiring supportive community of artists I’ve been able to connect with. There are some challenges around the high cost of living and scarcity of affordable space as an artist but it’s home for me!
I think for a lot of artists, there's a tension between feeling called to be an artist and the pull to have a "sensible" career. Have you always known that you're an artist? How has your art career evolved?
When I was five I wanted to be either a unicorn or an artist and my career goals remain more or less the same. I’ve certainly in the past felt outside pressures to follow a certain career path and live a certain type of lifestyle that some would consider “sensible.”
I studied design and illustration and worked as a graphic designer for textiles for a little while before moving to Canada where I decided I wanted to follow my own path. Like many creative people, I’ve had about a billion different jobs and I believe as an artist and a human everything is relevant to our becoming.
Can you talk a bit about your process? How has your work evolved over time? What are you working on right now? What's new or different about it?
I love paper! Most of my work is tiny cut pieces of paper but lately, I have been getting into collage which I love!
An ongoing art project I have outside of my usual paper work is The Cat Report. The Cat Report is the worlds leading source of news on my cats Daisy and Bijou. I illustrate and hand letter the reports my husband Bill gives me about what the cats are up to.
What is your studio practice like? Do you have any rituals or routines that help you get into the creative zone? Do you ever get creative blocks? How do you get unstuck?
I get into the studio for about 4 uninterrupted days a month and then fit in time between that in evenings and weekends too sometimes.
I don’t get creative blocks but a few years ago now I did. Basically, everything in my life was “blocked” and I was having a really hard time. I found that seeking out professional help and also the book “The Artists Way” by Julia Cameron really helped me!
I really love your botanicals series. Can you talk a bit about what that series means to you?
Thank you! I’m a bit of a plant lady with a tendency towards plant murder so I started to create my own unkillable plants with paper!
Do you have any side projects or creative hobbies?
My life is pretty much THRIVE and art with some time for family and friends in there but I have no room or interest in anything outside of that right now. I love the idea of a hobby but my entrepreneurial side won’t ever allow me to just switch off!
In addition to being to being a fine artist, you are also one of the leaders of the THRIVE art studio. Can you tell us a bit what you do with THRIVE and how you got involved?
I am one of the co-founders of THRIVE Art Studio with Jamie Smith. Our mission at THRIVE is to support female artists!
The main way we do this is through THRIVE Mastermind our community of visual artists who meet monthly and provide each other with support, accountability, and motivation. We also have a podcast, speaking series, and art education too.
We run the business together and try and make sure that we split tasks up based on our strengths but as we are a small business with a tiny team it means we share responsibility for everything.
When Jamie first started THRIVE I joined as one of the very first members and when she needed some help with social media she hired me as a contractor for THRIVE. From there I got more involved over time and fell in love with the business which evolved into us having a talk about partnership and now here we are!
Let's talk about work/life balance. How do you balance family life, studio time, business and time for yourself?
I don’t believe in work/life balance! Letting go of that expectation on myself was extremely freeing. Work is a part of life just the same as everything else. For me, work is a large part of my life and something I truly love.
I think all those things you mentioned are interconnected and support each other in making a rich and full life. I manage all the things I have going on by focusing on my priorities and think of things as having “seasons.”
Photo Credits: Britney Berrner and Nicole Wong
What does being an artist mean to you?
It means being creative and curious about life.
If you could give your 20-year-old self one piece of advice, what would it be?
I don’t think my 20-year-old self would listen to any advice I have for her. If I could I’d tell her “it’s going to be fine, don’t worry so much.” This is the same advice I ignore all the time now!
Thank you, Tara! For more information about Tara Galuska, please visit her website or follow her on Instagram.
Do you have any questions or comments for Tara? Add them to the comments below!
© 2020, Odd Duck Press.
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Tissue remodeling gene expression in a murine model of chronic rhinosinusitis
Nathan Sautter, Katherine L. Delaney, Frances A. Hausman, Dennis Trune
Objective/Hypothesis: The matrix metalloproteinase (MMP), fibroblast growth factor (FGF), and bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) families regulate tissue remodeling in many normal and pathophysiologic processes. We hypothesize that induction of chronic sinonasal inflammation will be associated with changes in regulation of these tissue remodeling cytokines. Methods: Balb/c mice aged 8 to 12 weeks were sensitized and treated with intranasal Aspergillus fumigatis (AF) three times per week for 1 week, 3 weeks, 2 months, and 3 months (n = 8 each time point). Sinonasal tissues were evaluated for changes in MMP, FGF, and BMP regulation using standard RT-PCR techniques. Additional snouts were processed for histology and immunohistochemistry. Untreated mouse snouts of identical age were used as controls. Results: Significant upregulation of MMP8 was observed at 2 months, and MMP1a, MMP7, MMP8, and MMP12 were all significantly upregulated at 3 months. FGF3 was significantly upregulated at 3 weeks and 3 months, and FGF5, FGF6, and FGF8 were all significantly upregulated at 3 months. BMP8b and BMP9 were significantly upregulated at 3 months. Histologic analysis revealed mucosal, stromal, and mucin gland hypertrophy, increased mucin production, and metaplasia with loss of cilia. Antibody staining was strongly positive in the AF-treated group. Conclusions: Induction of CRS is associated with time-dependent changes in tissue remodeling cytokine expression occurring in conjuction with inflammatory tissue changes. Antibody staining for upregulated cytokines suggests local production within the sinonasal mucosa. Further study is required to better understand the association between BMP, FGF, and MMP regulation and tissue remodeling changes resulting from chronic inflammation.
https://doi.org/10.1002/lary.22148
Bone Morphogenetic Proteins
Fibroblast Growth Factors
Matrix Metalloproteinases
Mucins
Aspergillus
Metaplasia
murine model
Tissue remodeling
Sautter, N., Delaney, K. L., Hausman, F. A., & Trune, D. (2012). Tissue remodeling gene expression in a murine model of chronic rhinosinusitis. Laryngoscope, 122(4), 711-717. https://doi.org/10.1002/lary.22148
Tissue remodeling gene expression in a murine model of chronic rhinosinusitis. / Sautter, Nathan; Delaney, Katherine L.; Hausman, Frances A.; Trune, Dennis.
In: Laryngoscope, Vol. 122, No. 4, 04.2012, p. 711-717.
Sautter, N, Delaney, KL, Hausman, FA & Trune, D 2012, 'Tissue remodeling gene expression in a murine model of chronic rhinosinusitis', Laryngoscope, vol. 122, no. 4, pp. 711-717. https://doi.org/10.1002/lary.22148
Sautter N, Delaney KL, Hausman FA, Trune D. Tissue remodeling gene expression in a murine model of chronic rhinosinusitis. Laryngoscope. 2012 Apr;122(4):711-717. https://doi.org/10.1002/lary.22148
Sautter, Nathan ; Delaney, Katherine L. ; Hausman, Frances A. ; Trune, Dennis. / Tissue remodeling gene expression in a murine model of chronic rhinosinusitis. In: Laryngoscope. 2012 ; Vol. 122, No. 4. pp. 711-717.
@article{0bb7bb7c3b2d44c7832b5beb62e6aeca,
title = "Tissue remodeling gene expression in a murine model of chronic rhinosinusitis",
abstract = "Objective/Hypothesis: The matrix metalloproteinase (MMP), fibroblast growth factor (FGF), and bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) families regulate tissue remodeling in many normal and pathophysiologic processes. We hypothesize that induction of chronic sinonasal inflammation will be associated with changes in regulation of these tissue remodeling cytokines. Methods: Balb/c mice aged 8 to 12 weeks were sensitized and treated with intranasal Aspergillus fumigatis (AF) three times per week for 1 week, 3 weeks, 2 months, and 3 months (n = 8 each time point). Sinonasal tissues were evaluated for changes in MMP, FGF, and BMP regulation using standard RT-PCR techniques. Additional snouts were processed for histology and immunohistochemistry. Untreated mouse snouts of identical age were used as controls. Results: Significant upregulation of MMP8 was observed at 2 months, and MMP1a, MMP7, MMP8, and MMP12 were all significantly upregulated at 3 months. FGF3 was significantly upregulated at 3 weeks and 3 months, and FGF5, FGF6, and FGF8 were all significantly upregulated at 3 months. BMP8b and BMP9 were significantly upregulated at 3 months. Histologic analysis revealed mucosal, stromal, and mucin gland hypertrophy, increased mucin production, and metaplasia with loss of cilia. Antibody staining was strongly positive in the AF-treated group. Conclusions: Induction of CRS is associated with time-dependent changes in tissue remodeling cytokine expression occurring in conjuction with inflammatory tissue changes. Antibody staining for upregulated cytokines suggests local production within the sinonasal mucosa. Further study is required to better understand the association between BMP, FGF, and MMP regulation and tissue remodeling changes resulting from chronic inflammation.",
keywords = "BMP, chronic rhinosinusitis, FGF, MMP, murine model, Tissue remodeling",
author = "Nathan Sautter and Delaney, {Katherine L.} and Hausman, {Frances A.} and Dennis Trune",
doi = "10.1002/lary.22148",
journal = "Laryngoscope",
T1 - Tissue remodeling gene expression in a murine model of chronic rhinosinusitis
AU - Sautter, Nathan
AU - Delaney, Katherine L.
AU - Hausman, Frances A.
AU - Trune, Dennis
N2 - Objective/Hypothesis: The matrix metalloproteinase (MMP), fibroblast growth factor (FGF), and bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) families regulate tissue remodeling in many normal and pathophysiologic processes. We hypothesize that induction of chronic sinonasal inflammation will be associated with changes in regulation of these tissue remodeling cytokines. Methods: Balb/c mice aged 8 to 12 weeks were sensitized and treated with intranasal Aspergillus fumigatis (AF) three times per week for 1 week, 3 weeks, 2 months, and 3 months (n = 8 each time point). Sinonasal tissues were evaluated for changes in MMP, FGF, and BMP regulation using standard RT-PCR techniques. Additional snouts were processed for histology and immunohistochemistry. Untreated mouse snouts of identical age were used as controls. Results: Significant upregulation of MMP8 was observed at 2 months, and MMP1a, MMP7, MMP8, and MMP12 were all significantly upregulated at 3 months. FGF3 was significantly upregulated at 3 weeks and 3 months, and FGF5, FGF6, and FGF8 were all significantly upregulated at 3 months. BMP8b and BMP9 were significantly upregulated at 3 months. Histologic analysis revealed mucosal, stromal, and mucin gland hypertrophy, increased mucin production, and metaplasia with loss of cilia. Antibody staining was strongly positive in the AF-treated group. Conclusions: Induction of CRS is associated with time-dependent changes in tissue remodeling cytokine expression occurring in conjuction with inflammatory tissue changes. Antibody staining for upregulated cytokines suggests local production within the sinonasal mucosa. Further study is required to better understand the association between BMP, FGF, and MMP regulation and tissue remodeling changes resulting from chronic inflammation.
AB - Objective/Hypothesis: The matrix metalloproteinase (MMP), fibroblast growth factor (FGF), and bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) families regulate tissue remodeling in many normal and pathophysiologic processes. We hypothesize that induction of chronic sinonasal inflammation will be associated with changes in regulation of these tissue remodeling cytokines. Methods: Balb/c mice aged 8 to 12 weeks were sensitized and treated with intranasal Aspergillus fumigatis (AF) three times per week for 1 week, 3 weeks, 2 months, and 3 months (n = 8 each time point). Sinonasal tissues were evaluated for changes in MMP, FGF, and BMP regulation using standard RT-PCR techniques. Additional snouts were processed for histology and immunohistochemistry. Untreated mouse snouts of identical age were used as controls. Results: Significant upregulation of MMP8 was observed at 2 months, and MMP1a, MMP7, MMP8, and MMP12 were all significantly upregulated at 3 months. FGF3 was significantly upregulated at 3 weeks and 3 months, and FGF5, FGF6, and FGF8 were all significantly upregulated at 3 months. BMP8b and BMP9 were significantly upregulated at 3 months. Histologic analysis revealed mucosal, stromal, and mucin gland hypertrophy, increased mucin production, and metaplasia with loss of cilia. Antibody staining was strongly positive in the AF-treated group. Conclusions: Induction of CRS is associated with time-dependent changes in tissue remodeling cytokine expression occurring in conjuction with inflammatory tissue changes. Antibody staining for upregulated cytokines suggests local production within the sinonasal mucosa. Further study is required to better understand the association between BMP, FGF, and MMP regulation and tissue remodeling changes resulting from chronic inflammation.
KW - BMP
KW - chronic rhinosinusitis
KW - FGF
KW - MMP
KW - murine model
KW - Tissue remodeling
U2 - 10.1002/lary.22148
DO - 10.1002/lary.22148
JO - Laryngoscope
JF - Laryngoscope
10.1002/lary.22148
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Brave the Sea
Jig of Death
Siren's Song
Ocean Between
In the summer of 2015, four guys from the small town of Newark, OH decided to form a Celtic Rock band covering everything from the traditional Celtic tunes to the modern renditions of bands such as Flogging Molly, Dropkick Murphys, and Alestorm.
The band, at the time, was named A Pirate's Life and took heavily to their pirate theme. But after about a year and a few member changes/additions, A Pirate's Life had written an album's worth of original material and landed a full time singer in Vito Gambill. In the summer of 2016, they decided to shift course and change their name to Brave The Sea.
All together, Brave The Sea consists of Newark, OH natives Vito Gambill and his one-of-a-kind voice, Matt Toskin on mandolin and vocals, Will John on accordion, Ryan Boggs on bass, Dennis Berendts (Vile Gash, Nukke Hammer, Black Dove) on drums, and Matt Bibler on guitar. In 2017 the band released their first album, A Pirate's Life (the name in homage to their beginnings) with the help of Logan Williams (Nothing Less). Their 2019 follow up, The Kraken, highlights even more of their unique sound and Celtic Rock riffs. Helmed by Tim Waters (Nothing Less, We Are The Movies), The Kraken is sure to be the next must-have Celtc Rock release.
Hamburg, DE320 LISTENERS
Prague, CZ257 LISTENERS
Zurich, CH250 LISTENERS
Munich, DE242 LISTENERS
A Pirate's Life
Put Me on a Boat
sea shanties for thots
Irish-Folk/Rock
Celtic Folk Rock
The Rumpled
Derina Harvey Band
40 Shillings on the Drum
Jolly Jackers
Listen to Brave the Sea now.
Listen to Brave the Sea in full in the Spotify app
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Out in SA
The QSA
Record Number of Participants to Take Part in Pride Bigger Than Texas Parade - June 28, 2019
Pride Center Presents Icon Awards to Seven Local LGBTQ Activists - June 24, 2019
Rainbow Crosswalk Inspires City to Approve Crosswalk Program for Other Neighborhoods - June 21, 2019
Biggest Celebration Ever to Commemorate Pride in San Antonio - June 20, 2019
San Antonio Family Assn. Protests Bexar County Commissioners Court’s Pride Proclamation - June 18, 2019
Humorist David Sedaris Set to Bring His Wit and Satire to Tobin Center Stage - April 5, 2018
SA Book Festival to Feature Panel on LGBTQ Young Adult Fiction - April 4, 2018
José Rubén De León Reprises His Federico García Lorca Tribute at Classic Theatre - August 17, 2017
‘You’re in the Wrong Bathroom!’ Dispels Myths Undermining Transgender Identity - June 29, 2017
Conspirare Concert to Celebrate the Journey of Women - May 10, 2017
San Antonio Opera Impressario Mark Richter has Died - May 1, 2019
Catching up with Singing Sensation and Webb Party Headliner Ada Vox - April 10, 2019
Even After Recent Death of Owner, Bonham Exchange Holds Lasting Appeal - March 27, 2019
Azul Barrientos to be Joined by Aaron Prado for First ‘Noche Azul’ Concert of the Year - January 17, 2019
Alamo City Opera’s ‘As One’ Will Dispel Every Misconception You Have About Opera - January 17, 2019
Fiesta Cornyation Returns with King Anchovy LIV Mindy Miller Hill - April 22, 2019
Fan Favorite Drag Queens Headed to San Antonio for ‘Hater’s Roast Shady Tour’ - March 22, 2019
Stars and Garters Burlesque Ready to ‘Shimmy and Shake’ in New Show - March 19, 2019
Yara Sofia to Judge San Antonio’s ‘Drag Me to Fame’ Competition - March 4, 2019
Short Film About San Antonio’s Pointless Sisters to Premier at Outfest Los Angeles - June 13, 2019
Ruby City Show Features Video Installations and Photos by Filmmaker Isaac Julien - February 26, 2019
Presa House Exhibition “Cicatrices” Focuses on Work by Gay Artist Jose Villalobos - February 22, 2019
Ruby City Fiesta Medal Features Symbols of Inclusive Transfeminism - February 14, 2019
Matthew Teter: On the Life-Saving Importance of Trans Visibility - May 17, 2019
Annual Easter Egg Hunt is a Pride Families Tradition - April 11, 2019
Lawyers Produce Catalog with List of Bexar County Judges Who Will Marry Same-Sex Couples - March 8, 2019
San Antonio Activist Invites Everyone to Her 9th Annual Birthday Party Fundraiser - February 7, 2019
Two Men, a Dog, a Van and a Baby: A San Antonio Couple’s Trans Pregnancy Journey - August 29, 2018
Knot Applicable: BDSM in Real Life - July 20, 2017
Intimacy in the Face of Fear - February 21, 2017
Eating Clean to Get Dirty - October 10, 2016
Battling the Sex-Life Hobgoblins of Negative Body Image and Performance Anxiety - June 29, 2016
One-Week Stands and U-Hauling - May 19, 2016
Ferra’s coffee comandante eyes chocolate - June 12, 2015
The Intimacy Doctor cooks with the Beekman Boys - November 3, 2014
Bianchi shops the Sporting District - October 30, 2014
The Tobin cooks with America’s Test Kitchen Live - October 15, 2014
Hot ‘Hood: Lavaca - December 17, 2015
Hot ’hood: Westfort Alliance - October 18, 2015
Midcentury Modern Family - August 5, 2015
Joe Carmack’s East Side plantings - June 8, 2015
Tracking queer couples and gentrification - March 25, 2015
SA Observances to Mark World AIDS Day 2017
November 29, 2017 | By Sam Sanchez
(Photo collage: Sam Sanchez)
San Antonians will be among the millions of people around the globe who will be observing World AIDS Day on December 1.
The observance, which was started in 1988, is billed as an opportunity for people worldwide to unite in the fight against HIV, to show support for people living with HIV, and to commemorate those who have died from an AIDS-related illness.
The U.S. government’s theme for World AIDS Day 2017 is “Increasing Impact through Transparency, Accountability, and Partnerships.”
Globally, there are an estimated 36.7 million people who have the virus. More than 35 million people have died of AIDS, making it one of the most destructive pandemics in history.
The prevalence of HIV in San Antonio is particularly pronounced. In September, the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District sent out an email explaining, “In the past five years, the HIV epidemic has expanded in San Antonio, particularly among young gay and bisexual men. San Antonio is home to the largest ‘hot spot’ of new HIV infections in the United States.”
A “hot spot” represents a transmission cluster of cases where the virus in the infected individuals is of a genetically similar strain. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports there are 16 such clusters in Texas with six of those in San Antonio, including one which includes 27 confirmed cases of HIV. Many of those infected in that cluster are young Hispanic men.
According to Metro Health, approximately 6,000 people are living with HIV in Bexar County. Nearly 10,000 have been diagnosed since the beginning of the epidemic in the early 1980s.
Other statistics provided by Metro Health offer a profile of the epidemic in the San Antonio area.
Bexar County had 360 new HIV diagnoses in 2016 – the highest number in recent years.
The majority of people living with HIV in Bexar County (52.4 percent) are age 45 or older.
85 percent of those living with the virus in Bexar County are men and 15 percent are women.
Ethnic breakdown of those living with HIV in Bexar County: 63 percent are Hispanic; 19 percent are white; 16 percent are black, and 2 percent represent a mix of other ethnicities.
Age breakdown of those living with HIV in Bexar County: 52 percent are people 45 and older; 47 percent are ages 20-44. The remaining 1 percent comprises people 19 years and younger.
World AIDS Day Observances in San Antonio
(Photo: Antonia Padilla)
Ceremony of Remembrance
The San Antonio AIDS Foundation will host a ceremony of remembrance on December 1 at 10 a.m. at it’s offices at 118 E. Grayson Street. The event, which is billed as a “ceremony which mourns those who have passed from AIDS and honors all people living with HIV/AIDS,” will include a moment of silence, the release of 200 red balloons and a 21-dove salute — the release of 21 “homing” White Rock doves.
World AIDS Day Collaborative Interfaith Gathering
The San Antonio World AIDS Day Collaborative presents an evening of events on December 1 beginning at 5:30 p.m. at Woodlawn Pointe, 702 Donaldson Ave. There will be informational booths and free HIV testing. A service of remembrance and hope begins at 6:30 p.m. with the theme, “We Remember, We Live, We Hope.” The service includes performances by the Live Oak Singers, the Pride of SA Show Band, remarks by guest speakers, and a special dramatic presentation. The evening is hosted by the Live Oak Singers, Unity of San Antonio, BEAT AIDS, Living Church at Woodlawn Pointe, Dignity San Antonio and ACTS HIV Ministry.
World AIDS Day: Free HIV Testing
Project: H.O.T. and UNIFY San Antonio will be at the Sexology Institute, 707 South St. Mary’s, from 7 to 11 p.m. to offer free, rapid HIV testing. Counselors will be available to answer any questions. The San Antonio Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence will be handing out free “pleasure supplies” as well as seeking participants for a fun, interactive art project in front of the Sexology Institute.
Sam Sanchez
Tags ACTS HIV Ministry, BEAT AIDS, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dignity San Antonio, HIV testing, HIV/AIDS, Live Oak Singers, Living Church at Woodlawn Pointe, San Antonio AIDS Foundation, San Antonio Metropolitan Health District, Unity of San Antonio, World AIDS Day
ACTS HIV Ministry, BEAT AIDS, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dignity San Antonio, HIV testing, HIV/AIDS, Live Oak Singers, Living Church at Woodlawn Pointe, San Antonio AIDS Foundation, San Antonio Metropolitan Health District, Unity of San Antonio, World AIDS Day
Madison Square Presbyterian Church to Host Pride Interfaith Service
San Antonio Research Facility to Collaborate on Developing HIV Vaccine
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Lesbian Attorney from Houston Declares Run for Texas Senate
Attorney and political activist Fran Watson from Houston has filed her application to be officially placed on the ballot as...
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Stephen Vincent Benét's "The Ballad of William Sycamore"
Updated on April 3, 2019
Linda Sue Grimes
Poetry became my passion, after I fell in love with Walter de la Mare's "Silver" in Mrs. Edna Pickett's sophomore English class, circa 1962.
Stephen Vincent Benét
Introduction and Text of Poem
Stephen Vincent Benét's "The Ballad of William Sycamore" features 19 rimed, stanzas of traditional ballad form. The subject is the rustic life of William Sycamore, narrated by Sycamore himself from just before his birth to after his death.
(Please note: The spelling, "rhyme," was introduced into English by Dr. Samuel Johnson through an etymological error. For my explanation for using only the original form, please see "Rime vs Rhyme: An Unfortunate Error.")
The Ballad of William Sycamore
My father, he was a mountaineer,
His fist was a knotty hammer;
He was quick on his feet as a running deer,
And he spoke with a Yankee stammer.
My mother, she was merry and brave,
And so she came to her labor,
With a tall green fir for her doctor grave
And a stream for her comforting neighbor.
And some are wrapped in the linen fine,
And some like a godling's scion;
But I was cradled on twigs of pine
In the skin of a mountain lion.
And some remember a white, starched lap
And a ewer with silver handles;
But I remember a coonskin cap
And the smell of bayberry candles.
The cabin logs, with the bark still rough,
And my mother who laughed at trifles,
And the tall, lank visitors, brown as snuff,
With their long, straight squirrel-rifles.
I can hear them dance, like a foggy song,
Through the deepest one of my slumbers,
The fiddle squeaking the boots along
And my father calling the numbers.
The quick feet shaking the puncheon-floor,
And the fiddle squealing and squealing,
Till the dried herbs rattled above the door
And the dust went up to the ceiling.
There are children lucky from dawn till dusk,
But never a child so lucky!
For I cut my teeth on "Money Musk"
In the Bloody Ground of Kentucky!
When I grew as tall as the Indian corn,
My father had little to lend me,
But he gave me his great, old powder-horn
And his woodsman's skill to befriend me.
With a leather shirt to cover my back,
And a redskin nose to unravel
Each forest sign, I carried my pack
As far as a scout could travel.
Till I lost my boyhood and found my wife,
A girl like a Salem clipper!
A woman straight as a hunting-knife
With eyes as bright as the Dipper!
We cleared our camp where the buffalo feed,
Unheard-of streams were our flagons;
And I sowed my sons like the apple-seed
On the trail of the Western wagons.
They were right, tight boys, never sulky or slow,
A fruitful, a goodly muster.
The eldest died at the Alamo.
The youngest fell with Custer.
The letter that told it burned my hand.
Yet we smiled and said, "So be it!"
But I could not live when they fenced the land,
For it broke my heart to see it.
I saddled a red, unbroken colt
And rode him into the day there;
And he threw me down like a thunderbolt
And rolled on me as I lay there.
The hunter's whistle hummed in my ear
As the city-men tried to move me,
And I died in my boots like a pioneer
With the whole wide sky above me.
Now I lie in the heart of the fat, black soil,
Like the seed of the prairie-thistle;
It has washed my bones with honey and oil
And picked them clean as a whistle.
And my youth returns, like the rains of Spring,
And my sons, like the wild-geese flying;
And I lie and hear the meadow-lark sing
And have much content in my dying.
Go play with the towns you have built of blocks,
The towns where you would have bound me!
I sleep in my earth like a tired fox,
And my buffalo have found me.
Recitation of "The Ballad of William Sycamore"
Benét's ballad offers the romantic notions of an individual close to the land, preferring the rural life to the urban. His zeal for existence continues after his death as he reports his circumstances in the astral world.
First Movement: Surviving in a Dangerous World
The speaker describes his parents as scrappy, rough survivors. His mountaineer father had fists that resembled hammers; he ran as fast as a deer, and had a Yankee accent. His mother was merry and brave and also quite a tough woman, giving birth to the narrator under a tall green fir with no one to help her but "a stream for her comforting neighbor."
While some folks can boast of clean linen fine to swaddle them, Sycamores cradle was a pile of pine twigs and he was wrapped in the skin of a mountain lion. Instead of "a starched lap / And a ewer with silver handles," he recalls "a coonskin cap / And the smell of bayberry candles."
Thus, Sycamore has set the scene of his nativity as rustic and rural, no modern conveniences to spoil him. He idealizes those attributes as he sees them making him strong and capable of surviving in a dangerous world.
Second Movement: Rattling the Herbs
Sycamore describes the cabin in which he grew up by focusing on the fun he saw the adults have when they played music and danced. Their visitors were tall, lank, "brown as snuff," and they brought their long, straight squirrel rifles with them. He focuses on the fiddle squealing and the dancing to a foggy song. The raucous partying was so intense that it rattled the herbs hanging over the door and caused a great cloud of dust to rise to the ceiling. He considers himself a lucky child to have experienced such, as well as being able to "cut [his] teeth on 'Money Musk' / In the Bloody Ground of Kentucky!"
Third Movement: Navigating the Woods
The speaker reports that he grew to the height of the Indian corn plant, and while his father had little to offer him in things, his father did give him a woodsman skill, which he found helpful. With his homespun gear, a leather shirt on his back, he was able to navigate the woodlands like a professional scout.
Fourth Movement: Siring Warriors
Reaching adulthood, Sycamore married a sturdy woman, whom he describes as "straight as a hunting-knife / With eyes as bright as the Dipper!" The couple built their home where the buffalo feed, where the streams had no names.
They raised sons who were "right, tight boys, never sulky or slow." The oldest son died at the Alamo, and the youngest died with Custer. While the letters delivering the news of their fallen sons "burned [his] hand," the grieving parents stoically said, "so be it!" and push ahead with their lives. What finally broke the speaker's heart, however, was the fencing of his land, referring the government parceling land to individual owners.
Fifth Movement: Gutsy Self-Relaance
The speaker still shows his gutsy, self-reliance in his breaking of a colt that bucked him off and rolled over him. After he recovered, however, Sycamore continues to hunt, and while the "city-men tried to move [him]," he refused to be influenced by any city ways. He died "in [his] boots like a pioneer / With the whole wide sky above [him]."
Sixth Movement: Untroubled Tranquility in the Astral World
Speaking from beyond the grave somewhat like a Spoon River resident, only with more verve and no regret, William Sycamore describes his astral environment as a heavenly place, where "[his] youth returns, like the rains of Spring, / And [his] sons, like the wild-geese flying." He hears the meadow-lark, and he avers that he is experiencing untroubled tranquility in his after-life state on the astral plane of existence. Sycamore disdained the city, as most rustics do, so he uses his final stanza to get in one last dig, telling folks who aspire to city life to go ahead and "play with town" that he deems built merely of "blocks."
The well satisfied speaker then insists that he would never be bound by a town, but instead he sleeps "in my earth like a tired fox, / And my buffalo have found me," referring to the placement of his physical encasement, and also referring to his blessed soul that has found its place among the "[his] buffalo" of spirituality. In his peaceful, afterlife existence, William Sycamore differs greatly from the typical Spoon River reporter.
Traditional Folk Dance: Money Musk
Life Sketch of Stephen Vincent Benét
The works of Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) have influenced many other writers. Cowboy poet Joel Nelson claims that "The Ballad of William Sycamore" made him fall in love with poetry. Dee Brown's title Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee comes directly from the final line of Benét's poem titled "American Names."
The book-length poem, John Brown's Body, won him his first Pulitzer Prize in 1929 and remains the poet's most famous work. Benét first published "The Ballad of William Sycamore" in the New Republic in 1922. Benét's literary talent extended to other forms, including short fiction and novels. He also excelled in writing screenplays, librettos, an even radio broadcasts.
Born July 22, 1898, in Pennsylvania, Benét graduated from Yale University in 1919 where instead of a typical thesis, he substituted his third collection of poems. His father was a military, man who appreciated literary studies. His brother William and his sister Laura both became writers as well.
Benét's first novel The Beginning of Wisdom was published in 1921, after which he relocated to France to study at the Sorbonne. He married the writer Rosemary Carr, and they returned to the USA in 1923, where his writing career blossomed.
The writer won the O. Henry Story Prize and a Roosevelt Medal, in addition to a second Pulitzer Prize, which was awarded posthumously in 1944 for Western Star. Just a week before spring of 1943, Benét succumbed to a heart attack in New York City; he was four month shy of his 45th birthday.
Where was Stephen Vincent Benét born?
Stephen Vincent Benét was born on July 22, 1898, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Why did he die happily?
William Sycamore lived a robust, hearty life that satisfied him. He expects to continue with that attitude after death. The final two stanzas address this issue directly:
How did William Sycamore die?
According to "William Sycamore," he died ". . . in [his] boots like a pioneer / With the whole wide sky above [him]."
What "sounds" does he remember from his childhood in Stephen Vincent Benét's "The Ballad of William Sycamore"?
You can go through the poem and pick out the "sounds." Here, I'll get you started: stanza 5: his mother's laugh; stanzas 6, 7, 8: music with singing and dancing. Now go find others!
What were the important events in William Sycamore's lifetime?
The significant events in William Sycamore's life according to William are being born to strong parents, growing up in an environment that allowed him to be challenged, marrying a fine, compatible wife, having strong children, and dying a happy, fulfilled man.
What two gifts did his father bestow upon him in "The Ballad of William Sycamore"?
William Sycamore's father gave him, "his great, old powder-horn / And his woodsman's skill."
In Stephen Vincent Benet's "The Ballad of William Sycamore", why does the speaker feel "content in my dying"?
Because he feels that he lived a rich, full life, and speaking from beyond the grave somewhat like a Spoon River resident, only with more verve and no regret, he describes his astral environment as a heavenly place, where "[his] youth returns, like the rains of Spring, / And [his] sons, like the wild-geese flying." He hears the meadow-lark, and he avers that he is experiencing untroubled tranquility in his after-life state on the astral plane of existence. Sycamore disdained the city, as most rustics do, so he uses his final stanza to get in one last dig, telling folks who aspire to city life to go ahead and "play with town" that he deems built merely of "blocks."
What was the most important event of Stephen Vincent Benet's life?
His after-life experience appears to be most important: Speaking from beyond the grave somewhat like a Spoon River resident, only with more verve and no regret, he describes his astral environment as a heavenly place, where "[his] youth returns, like the rains of Spring, / And [his] sons, like the wild-geese flying." He hears the meadow-lark, and he avers that he is experiencing untroubled tranquility in his after-life state on the astral plane of existence.
Where did Stephen Vincent Benet live?
What makes William "content" about his death in "The Ballad of William Sycamore"?
William answers that question in stanzas 17 and 18:
What does "I cut my teeth on 'Money Musk'" mean in "The Ballad of William Sycamore"?
It means he grew up watching and learning to participate in the traditional folk dances like "Money Musk."
What are some examples of exaggeration used in "The Ballad of William Sycamore"?
While the opening stanza offers this claims which can be considered hyperbolic, "He was quick on his feet as a running deer," a case can be made that each stanza offers examples of exaggeration or hyperbole. The speaker is a mountain man prone to seeing the world in grand terms; thus his drama comes off as one long hyperbolic narrative.
What kind of boyhood did the speaker of "The Ballad of William Sycamore" have?
A rustic, enjoyable boyhood: The speaker describes his parents as scrappy, rough survivors. His mountaineer father had fists that resembled hammers; he ran as fast as a deer and had a Yankee accent. His mother was merry and brave and also quite a tough woman, giving birth to the narrator under a tall green fir with no one to help her but "a stream for her comforting neighbor." While some folks can boast of clean linen fine to swaddle them, Sycamores cradle was a pile of pine twigs and he was wrapped in the skin of a mountain lion. Instead of "a starched lap / And an ewer with silver handles," he recalls "a coonskin cap / And the smell of bayberry candles." Thus, Sycamore has set the scene of his nativity as rustic and rural, no modern conveniences to spoil him. He idealizes those attributes as he sees them making him strong and capable of surviving in a dangerous world.
What is the rime scheme of the poem "The Ballad of William Sycamore"?
Each stanza has the rime scheme, ABAB.
(Please note: The spelling, "rhyme," was introduced into English by Dr. Samuel Johnson through an etymological error. For my explanation for using only the original form, please see "Rime vs Rhyme: An Unfortunate Error at https://owlcation.com/humanities/Rhyme-vs-Rime-An-... ."
© 2016 Linda Sue Grimes
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3 years ago from U.S.A.
Interesting bit of info, John! Guess that'a fairly common name, like John Smith . . .
Yes, Linda, I am sure I have heard John Brown's Body, but I wasn't aware of the author. p.s. my grandfather's name was actually John Brown :)
Thank you, John! I'm surprised you had not heard of the writer Stephen Vincent Benét. He has been a widely known name for many years, winning 2 Pulitzers and having penned the famous John Brown's Body. Anyway, glad I could introduce you to such a good writer! Thanks again for the comment, and have a great day!
I enjoyed reading about this writer and the Ballad of William Sycamore, neither of which I had heard.
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Is Sustained Macroevolutionary Progress Possible?
Life on Earth has advanced from prokaryotes to more highly organized forms including homo sapiens today. Thus life on Earth appears to have undergone "sustained macroevolutionary progress" ("SMP"). However, this did not occur in a bubble -- our planet is open to biological input from elsewhere. Life here may have been originally seeded by microorganisms from space. And lateral gene transfer that can be mediated by microorganisms plays a significant role in evolution. It is possible, therefore, that what appears to be SMP could actually be the development, over many generations, of pre-existing, highly evolved life from elsewhere.
Closed-System Tests Are Needed
If SMP is possible, it should be feasible to demonstrate it in the present. This has not yet been convincingly done. To ascertain whether SMP is possible, closed-system tests are needed.
Biology Is Better But Computers Are Faster
To test for SMP, closed-system biological experiments would of course be decisive. In fact, such experiments are under way. Pedigreed strains of bacteria have been bred for 25,000 generations now (PNAS 96:3807). Whereas mutation and recombination have been well observed, nothing in these experiments has given any promise of producing SMP.
Computers are analogous to biological cells in that they depend on lengthy instructions that are encoded in strings of symbols. Replication, transcription-translation (execution), mutation and recombination are operations that both systems share. If SMP could be demonstrated in a computer model that accurately mimics biology, the case for SMP in biology would be strengthened. And computers are a testing medium with one big advantage -- speed.
Several different computer models that mimic biological evolution have already been developed. Perhaps the best known is Tom Ray's Tierra. In runs of this model, smaller "organisms" tended to be the survivors. Furthermore, one organism occasionally "steals" a strand of code from another one, with a survival benefit. Parasitism such as this can contribute to evolutionary progress. However, without a supply of new instructions, parasitism alone will quickly reach an evolutionary limit. Tierra has not yet produced any wholly new instructions, nor evolved beyond its original parameters. Neither has any other model.
The challenge to design a computer model that could confirm SMP seems especially well-suited for NASA's Center for Computational Astrobiology.
A Confirming Example: Suppose . . .
Suppose a researcher has a copy of Richard Dawkins's Biomorphs program on a computer. Attached to the computer is a telephone, and the hardware -- but not the software -- for a modem. One day it happens that the Biomorphs, without prompting, have composed the software needed to operate the modem. Subsequently they escape via the telephone to other computers. Furthermore, other instances of this same phenomenon have occurred, and it has been duplicated in controlled experiments. Of course, this result would strongly confirm SMP in a computer model. One may object that the example is entirely farfetched because there are no incremental pathways by which to discover modem software from unrelated software. Granted. But does the same lack of incremental pathways prevent SMP in general?
Terms Need to Be Defined
Suppose a bacterium deploys genes it already possesses to metabolize a sugar different from the one on which it previously subsisted. Whereas adaptation has occurred, macroevolutionary progress has not. On the other hand, the first appearance of eukaryotes -- or multicellularity, cell specialization, oxygen metabolism, hard shells, feathers, bones, skin, teeth, lungs, kidneys, brains, or a long list of other organs and features -- each clearly represents macroevolutionary progress. If one such development is followed by others, the process appears to be sustained. Can these concepts be made precise enough to be verifiable on a scale observable within a human lifetime, either in biology or in a computer model?
New evolutionary features require new genetic instructions, in the same way that additional computer capabilities require new software. Could evolutionary progress be correlated with the size of the genome, or the size of the necessary genome, or the "least algorithmic complexity" of the genome needed to produce the phenotype? Such suggestions have not been well-received to date. Refining precise-enough terms to answer our question is a worthy goal in itself.
Is a Logical Proof Available?
Perhaps the question could be posed in a way that would make it susceptible to logical proof in the manner of Gödel or Turing. For example, "In any system based on encoded instructions, can the system itself, with no apparent limit, cumulatively compose and execute new instructions that are analogous to genetic instructions for macroevolutionary inventions?" Or, "can meaning come from nonmeaning?" A valid proof that SMP either is possible, or is not, would be monumentally important for biology and philosophy.
A Michelson-Morley Experiment?
In 1881, American physicist Albert Abraham Michelson (1852-1931) began a series of experiments to detect the presence of the luminiferous ether, the medium in which waves of light were supposed to be propagated. The tests were made increasingly precise and elaborate until the series culminated in 1887, when the definitive experiment was conducted with American chemist Edward William Morley (1838-1923). To widespread surprise, the ether could not be detected. This negative result helped open the way to the theory of relativity and a major scientific revolution.
Today, sustained macroevolutionary progress has not been demonstrated. Until it is, we cannot be sure that it is possible. Therefore, tests that could confirm the phenomenon are advocated. The issue is important because the first step in science is to ask the right question. The question has been, "How does life originate and evolve?" But we do not even know if it originates and evolves. Perhaps instead, life arrives and develops.
Darwinian Evolution Can Produce Adaptation
Evolution by expressing genes already in the genome:
Some adaptations require no genetic changes at all, but merely the expression of genes already in a species' genome. For example, the well-known English moth adapts its wing color to blend with soot-darkened walls and tree trunks by expressing a pigment gene already in its gene pool. Similarly, the African trypanosome has dozens of genes for different protein coats, and it deploys a new one as often as necessary.
Evolution by acquiring genes:
Other adaptations are accomplished by the acquisition of whole genes from elsewhere, called "lateral gene transfer." For example, bacteria often become resistant to drugs by acquiring "resistance plasmids" one or several genes long, directly or indirectly from other bacteria. Genes useful to bacteria are also installed by viruses in a process called transduction. Furthermore, viruses can move genes around in eukaryotes. Over 1% of the human genome is now recognized as endogenous retroviruses, and over 35% of our genome consists of transposable elements that may have been originally acquired by lateral gene transfer.
Evolution by point mutation:
During gene replication, errors occur at a low rate. In general the rate of errors per nucleotide replication is about 10-9 in prokaryotes and 10-12 in eukaryotes. But even this low rate can be useful. A single nucleotide substitutions can cause change quantitative changes such as shifting the coelacanth's visual sensitivity toward the blue end of the spectrum. Additional nucleotide substitutions can ultimately change even a majority of a gene's nucleotides without changing its function. This process has occurred in the highly conserved cytochrome-C gene, for example. The differences may serve to optimize each allele in a given species.
And a single nucleotide insertion or deletion can cause a frame-shift error that completely disables a gene. If the disabled gene is a control gene that normally promotes a cascade of other genes into action, the whole cascade will usually be disabled. If, however, the disabled gene is a suppressing control gene, the cascade would be enabled. In either case, the effect of this disabling mutation may be adaptive. In the latter case, if the newly enabled genes are activated for the first time in a species, it represents a step in macroevolutionary progress.
Gene duplication followed by mutation:
Whole genes can be duplicated, and once there are two copies, they may mutate differently. Gene duplication followed by a single point mutations in one allele appears to be the process whereby howler monkeys with dichromatic vision acquired trichromatic vision, for example.
Random changes in access codes:
Mutation and recombination in the genes for a viral protein coat may produce seemingly limitless variations that keep the virus a step ahead of the host's immune system. Here the immune system acts like a security expert (T-cell) seeking the password or access code (the antibody) to a password-protected subroutine (the virus). The virus survives by changing the access code frequently. Access codes are best when random, so random mutation and recombination can adequately produce them.
Can Darwinian Evolution Produce Sustained Macroevolutionary Progress?
For evolutionary progress new genes are required
The size of prokaryotic genomes ranges from about 800,000 to several million nucleotide pairs. As genes average about 1,000 nucleotides in length, bacteria have from, say, 800 to a few thousand genes. For example, a typical E. coli bacterium has about 4,700 genes.
At the other end of the evolutionary spectrum, the human genome has about six billion nucleotide pairs. However, eukaryotic cells are diploid, so half of these are merely "backup" copies. Furthermore, less than 5% of the human genome is in translatable gene sequences. Still, the number of genes in a human is estimated to be 100,000 or even 140,000.
Humans have organs and systems that prokaryotes do not. These features are made possible by genetic instructions that humans have and prokaryotes do not. Most human genes have no known analogs in the world of bacteria. Compared with any prokaryotic gene, they have nucleotide differences in dozens to hundreds of essential positions.
Ohno's method
Japanese-American pathologist Susumu Ohno (1928-2000) held that a new gene arises when an existing gene is duplicated and the new allele, while silent, undergoes mutations that give it a new function. But after one allows 10 or 12 point mutations at random positions, the number of possible gene sequences of average size (1,000 nucleotides) becomes larger than the total number of genes that could have been tested on Earth in 4 billion years. This process might work if almost any gene will do — a "many worlds" theory of biology. But the process has not been demonstrated in any experiment.
Eigen's method
German physicist Manfred Eigen (b. 1927) suggests that new genes may arise by point mutations in existing genes that are not duplicated nor silent. In his analysis, a beneficial gene differing from an earlier gene by five nucleotide substitutions can be fixed in a species if the population is large enough, and if none of the intermediate genes is fatal. This method would require evolution to be ultragradual, which is not confirmed by the fossil record. Furthermore, it would require that there are gradual pathways, without any fatal intermediates, such that they lead from an original set of prokaryotic genes to, ultimately, all the genes employed by all higher life forms. This method of composing new instructions has not been demonstrated, in biology or computers.
New instructions required
The demonstrated methods of Darwinian evolution do not account for new genes that have lengthy new sequences with new instructional content. The methods proposed to account for them have not been theoretically developed, nor have they been demonstrated. The best example of an entirely new gene that arises from an existing gene comes from Antarctic cod. The gene for blood antifreeze appears to have arisen from a gene for trypsinogen, a pancreatic enzyme, by a series of duplications and recombinations. But the example is too rare to confirm SMP by Darwinian evolution.
Strong Panspermia:
Strong panspermia holds that in addition to life originally, the genes necessary for sustained macroevolutionary progress come from space. In this theory, what looks like sustained macroevolutionary progress on Earth is actually the development, over many generations, of pre-existing, highly evolved cosmic life.
Strong panspermia accords well with these phenomena that have troubled Darwinism:
Life's rapid start on Earth
Punctuated equilibrium
The ubiquity of certain master control genes
The fact that many genes appear older, by sequence analysis, than they should be according to the fossil record
Strong panspermia is further supported by several lines of evidence:
Organic compounds in space
Fossils in meteorites from Mars
Fossils in meteorites not from Mars
The apparent immortality of some bacteria
The newly recognized importance of lateral gene transfer in evolution
Perceived Difficulties for Strong Panspermia
The precept underlying strong panspermia is that sustained macroevolutionary progress (SMP) is not possible. It is commonly thought that the mere fact of evolution on Earth disproves this precept. But because the biosphere is biologically open, this is a naive rebuttal. Furthermore, the evolution of human phenomena such as architecture, science, or computer technology may be thought to disprove the precept. After all, computer programs cannot come from space! Yet this argument does not address the possibility that all our activity may represent the "emergent properties" of our genetic makeup.
The origin of life would be a prime example of sustained macroevolutionary progress, because the simplest living thing, a prokaryotic cell, is already quite complex. Therefore, any demonstration that life can originate from ordinary chemicals by natural means would answer our original question with a firm yes. Conversely, if SMP is not possible, then it follows that life cannot originate by natural means. This would mean that, without a miracle, life would have to come from the infinite past. This brings up the next problem . . .
If the universe is a permanently closed system that began in a lifeless state a finite time ago, then sustained macroevolutionary progress, including the origin of life, must have subsequently happened in it. Most Darwinists adopt this premise and conclusion without question. Interestingly, creationists also endorse this premise and conclusion, but with a different motive. This unlikely coalition makes a strong lobby for this accepted version of the big bang theory.
But if sustained macroevolutionary progress is possible, science ought to be able demonstrate it in controlled, closed-system experiments. If it cannot be demonstrated, perhaps SMP is impossible. Without a miracle, this impossibility would indicate that there is a flaw in the premise. This reasoning reverses the usual roles and asks cosmology to accommodate a fundamental biological principle. In other words, if SMP is impossible, the universe can not be a permanently closed system that began in a lifeless state a finite time ago. We suspect that cosmology can make this accommodation without entirely dismantling the big bang theory.
Presented at the First Annual Astrobiology Science Conference
NASA Ames Research Center, Mountain View, California
by Brig Klyce
Acorn Enterprises LLC
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International Philosophy of Medicine Roundtable
Facilitating collaboration between philosophers of medicine worldwide
8th Philosophy of Medicine Roundtable, June 20-21, 2019 University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne
Roundtable Charter
Archive | October 2017
by jeremysimon2012
in Past Events
Phenomenology of Medicine and Bioethics at Södertörn University 13-15 June 2018
The rapid development of medical technologies forces us to continually re-evaluate our understanding of health and human nature. Reproductive technologies, genetic diagnosis, organ transplantation, stem cells, psychopharmacological drugs, and other diagnostic and therapeutic technologies, raise existential questions that, arguably, cannot be adequately understood without reference to the rich and complex ontology of human personhood. Persons are not only bodily creatures, but also social and cultural beings. Many well-known scholars of the continental tradition, which includes phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, and post-structuralism, investigate the ways in which nature and culture are intertwined in human life. Though this tradition would appear to be an ideal spring board for rich and illuminating analyses of medical-ethical dilemmas, phenomenology and continental philosophy are rather under-represented in bioethical debates and research.
This conference intends to bring together phenomenologists working with issues in medicine that are, directly or indirectly, tied to medical ethics. Phenomenology is often put in contact with bioethics via philosophy of medicine and medical humanities, and accordingly, relevant conference themes might include: the nature and essence of medical technologies, the clinical encounter, illness, pain, disability, pregnancy, giving birth and dying. Moreover, there is room for dialogue with already established approaches in bioethics, such as caring ethics, feminist ethics, biopolitics and narrative ethics. Ultimately, what is essential from the point of view of the conference is not the label of phenomenology as such, but rather to gather philosophical and ethical analyses that adopt the phenomenological imperative to return to lived experience in a reflective manner. We welcome contributions that make use of phenomenological philosophy in this broad sense as a means to engage with contemporary ethical questions and dilemmas in contemporary medicine.
Ignaas Devisch, University of Ghent
Michael Hauskeller, University of Exeter
Erik Parens, The Hastings Center, New York
Jenny Slatman, Tilburg University
Kristin Zeiler, University of Linköping
in Calls for abstracts
Phenomenology of Medicine and Bioethics
Conference: Phenomenology of Medicine and Bioethics
Arranged by the Centre for Studies in Practical Knowledge, Södertörn University, Stockholm,
13-15 of June, 2018.
Abstracts of maximum 300 words should be sent to conference secretary: patrick.seniuk@sh.se before 1 of January 2018.
Questions about the conference can also be sent to: fredrik.svenaeus@sh.se
Calls for abstracts
The epistemology of single cases: philosophical and medical issues
8th International Philosophy of Medicine Roundtable June 20-21, 2019 University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne
Issues in Medical Epistemology
Ask big questions an… on CFP: 5th Philosophy of Medicin…
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Posted in: Israel
Published on Apr 15, 2010 by Phyllis Chesler
Written for Pajamas Media
The Palestinians Already Have Two States
The Truth According to Khaled Abu Toameh
The world has gone mad—or at least, the American leadership has now formally joined the Islamist and international madness about "peace in the Middle East."
President Obama has just claimed that American "vital national security" is linked to finding—or even imposing—peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians. South Africa's revered Archbishop Emeritus, Desmond Tutu, has just praised the recent Berkeley student vote (which the university's president later vetoed) to divest university money from companies that "profit from the injustice of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land in violation of Palestinian human rights." Tutu writes that what he witnessed in occupied Palestinian territory reminds him of the conditions he "experienced in South Africa under the racist system of apartheid."
Tutu—this is really too much! Who exactly gave you a tour of the territories? The usual diabolically skilled propagandists? Did you, perchance, bother to visit Israel? If not, why not?
I strongly recommend that both President Obama and Archbishop Tutu consult with Khaled Abu Toameh, an Israeli Arab Muslim/Palestinian journalist whom I was privileged to hear speak the other night in Manhattan. Abu Toameh lives in Jerusalem and he really "gets it." He is a charming, urbane man, who speaks English perfectly; I assume he speaks Arabic and Hebrew just as well.
Khaled Abu Toameh
Abu Toameh used to work for the PLO newspaper as a translator and fledgling journalist, then attended Hebrew University, and decided that he wanted to be a real journalist, not a mere propagandist. That meant working for an Israeli newspaper where "freedom of the press" is respected. Abu Toameh confirmed that journalists and distinguished visitors to the "territories" cannot just go anywhere on their own; they risk being barred from future visits or even death if they report something that the various Palestinian militias do not want the world to know. "All the news is controlled in Gaza and on the West Bank."
Archbishop, President, are you listening?
Abu Toameh began working for the Jerusalem Post in 1988. He is not seen as a "traitor" for working for the free Israeli press in Jerusalem—but he has been attacked for doing so on campuses in California! He understands how fundamentalist and dangerous Hamas really is, and yet he reads that Hamas is becoming moderate—where? In Toronto's Globe and Mail!
I urge—nay, I implore, I demand, that all those who keep talking about a "peace process" listen to what Abu Toameh has to say. I feel so strongly about this that I am presenting what he said, almost verbatim.
He spoke on the Upper West Side, at Aish HaTorah. Yes, an Orthodox Jewish religious center graciously gave Abu Toameh his platform and were very grateful to have him.
First, Abu Toameh confirms that the worst possible thing for the Palestinian people were the various peace processes which were highly misguided, insincere, and unworkable. "Before the Oslo Accords, Palestinians had high hopes that we would have a democratic Parliament just as the Israelis do and a free media. Since Oslo, things have gone in the wrong direction."
In Abu Toameh's view, "Oslo was based on the assumption that Arafat and Fatah were reliable peace partners." That was far from the case. Once Arafat was returned in triumph—"the show began, a one man show. Thirteen to fifteen militias roamed the streets. Most of the money given to Arafat for Palestine went down the drain, into secret Swiss bank accounts, and to his wife, Suha, in France. He built a casino—right across from a refugee camp."
According to Abu Toameh, all those who were giving money to Arafat "simply refused to believe that he was corrupt." Because Abu Toameh reported this, he was repeatedly asked if he was "on the payroll of the Jewish Lobby." But, he said, it became more and more difficult to file stories abroad because "newspaper editors all wanted stories against the Occupation. They did not want to confuse their readers with facts."
In his view, everyone was afraid to report the truth because Arafat and his goon squads would kill the truth tellers. Thus, Arafat and the mythic peace process embittered and "radicalized" the Palestinian people and they turned to Hamas, an Islamist organization funded by Iran. "People lost faith in the peace process." Abu Toameh also confirmed that Arafat kept saying one thing in English about peace and in Arabic, kept inciting people against Israel.
Israeli President Shimon Peres defended Arafat. Peres refused to factor in what Arafat was saying in Arabic. Abu Toameh thought to himself: "How stupid can this man be? Doesn't he know that Arafat is describing the Jews as the descendants of pigs and monkeys. Why make peace with the Jews if they are this terrible?"
And so, in 2006, Hamas won a democratic election—an election which was held under American supervision and which was strongly supported by both President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice. Rice did not expect Hamas to win. Abu Toameh knew they would win; the people were angry at their hopeless situation at the hands of their own leaders. According to Abu Toameh, "Israel also facilitated the election of Hamas by allowing Arabs in Jerusalem to vote in that election. Israel did not know what every Palestinian child knew: That Hamas would win."
And so now, Fatah has lost, Mahmoud Abbas cannot deliver peace nor can he make peace with Hamas. In turn, Hamas is not stepping down. Thus far, "this civil war among the Palestinians has so far claimed 2000 lives."
Ironically, those who once clamored for a free and open election are now trying to bring down the duly elected with guns and bombs. Hamas kicked Fatah out of Gaza. Abu Toameh reports that he personally "saw Palestinians running away from Hamas towards Egypt, saw Egypt close the border to those in flight. Only Israel helped Muslims who were about to be slaughtered by Muslims."
And so, wryly, ironically, Abu Toameh concludes: "We got our two-state solution. The Palestinians got two states. Hamas is funded by the Muslim Brotherhood, Syria, and Iran and I would not want to live there. The West Bank is being run by Arafat's former cronies. But Mahmoud Abbas is afraid of his own people. I have not once seen him in a village. He has no credibility. He cannot deliver peace.
"If Israel withdraws from the West Bank, Hamas will take over. The IDF is keeping Abbas from being hung. Israel is also keeping Fatah and Hamas from killing each other. They hate each other more than they hate Israel."
In his view, "we cannot move forward with a peace process. There is no Palestinian partner…Did you know? Mahmoud Abbas's office expired in 2009 but Secretary of State Rice told him to simply stay on. Look: Abbas has lost control of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. Abbas is also seen as corrupt and ineffective. To whom will Abbas sell his peace agreement? Hamas will hang him at the entrance to Gaza, they will not wait."
What does Abu Toameh suggest is the way forward?
"Dismantle all the Palestinian militias, start building Palestinian infra-structures, solve the Palestinian-Palestinian problems—and only then, sit down with the Jews. Obama thinks the ball is in the Israeli court. That is not true."
Abu Toameh pauses, then says: "If I were Netanyahu, I would offer Palestinians ten states. Bring Obama over, ask him: To whom do I give the Palestinian states? To Hamas? Abbas? Islamic Jihad? He cautions Israel to be "careful about unilateral measures. Any land you give back, any land you give to Abbas, will end up in Iran's hand. See how Gaza ended up. The same thing will repeat itself. The majority of Jews support the Palestinian state not because they love Palestinians but because they want to get rid of them."
And then he issued a warning—to Israel which had nothing to do with two state solutions or with a peace process. "Israeli Arabs have been loyal to Israel. They are still discriminated against. No, Israel is not an apartheid state, but discrimination exists against 1.4 million of its own citizens. If Israel does not implement an emergency plan to solve this then the radicalization of the Arab and Muslim world will explode. The next Intifada will be in Haifa, Umm al-Fahm, Nazareth, Rahat, Yaffo."
President Obama: Please do not keep making the same mistakes that both your Republican and Democratic predecessors have made.
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Rosetta Stone Unveils New Mac App with macOS Catalina
New macOS app joins Rosetta Stone apps for iPad and iPhone
Arlington, VA, Oct. 07, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Rosetta Stone Inc. (NYSE:RST), a world leader in technology-based learning solutions, today unveiled its new Mac app with macOS Catalina, the latest version of the world’s most advanced desktop operating system. Rosetta Stone’s new Mac app has all of the functionality of the award-winning Rosetta Stone apps for iPad and iPhone, optimized for the Mac desktop experience, including:
TruAccentTM – Rosetta Stone’s patented speech recognition engine. TruAccentTM works seamlessly with the Mac’s built-in microphone so language learners can gain confidence speaking right from the start, and perfect their pronunciation.
No internet? No problem! Rosetta Stone lessons can be downloaded for offline use on a Mac.
Subscriptions – Learners have the convenience of subscribing to Rosetta Stone on the Mac, just like they can today with Rosetta Stone’s iPhone and iPad apps, and users with existing subscriptions can simply log into their account on the Mac app.
“Our new Rosetta Stone Mac app furthers our quest to provide our immersive language learning to our customers wherever, whenever, with the same fluid user experience they’re used to on our award-winning iPad and iPhone apps,“ said Matt Hulett, President, Language at Rosetta Stone. “Apple’s tools made it so easy to convert our iPad app to a native Mac app that we can keep innovating for customers at the same pace we are now in our iPad app, with virtually no additional effort.”
The new Rosetta Stone app for Mac is now available on the Mac App Store with macOS Catalina.
About Rosetta Stone
Rosetta Stone Inc. (NYSE: RST) is dedicated to changing people’s lives through the power of language and literacy education. The company’s innovative digital solutions drive positive learning outcomes for the inspired learner at home or in schools and workplaces around the world.
Founded in 1992, Rosetta Stone’s language division uses cloud-based solutions to help all types of learners read, write and speak more than 30 languages. Lexia Learning, Rosetta Stone’s literacy education division, was founded more than 30 years ago and is a leader in the literacy education space. Today, Lexia helps students build fundamental reading skills through its rigorously researched, independently evaluated, and widely respected instruction and assessment programs. For more information, visit www.rosettastone.com.
“Rosetta Stone” is a registered trademark or trademark of Rosetta Stone Ltd. in the United States and other countries.
macOS App
CONTACT: Andrea Riggs
Rosetta Stone Communications
ariggs@rosettastone.com
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Transfers to sticky distant retrograde orbits
Christopher J. Scott, David Bradley Spencer
A study was conducted to explore transfers to sticky distant retrograde orbits in the sun-Earth system, extending the methodologies. Sticky regions retained orbits characterized by a dynamical lifetime longer than predicted by the Lyapunov time. A differential-correction algorithm was developed that modified the terminal radial velocity for transfers following sets of collision that existed across energy surfaces piercing the sun-Earth line. A small impulsive stabilizing maneuver was performed to insert into a stable quasi-periodic distant retrograde orbit (QPDRO) after a coasting phase. The transfer resulted result in significant fuel savings compared to direct insertion into the SPDRO.
Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics
https://doi.org/10.2514/1.47792
retrograde orbits
Earth (planet)
Radial velocity
maneuvers
Interfacial energy
Lyapunov
Scott, C. J., & Spencer, D. B. (2010). Transfers to sticky distant retrograde orbits. Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, 33(6), 1940-1946. https://doi.org/10.2514/1.47792
Scott, Christopher J. ; Spencer, David Bradley. / Transfers to sticky distant retrograde orbits. In: Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics. 2010 ; Vol. 33, No. 6. pp. 1940-1946.
@article{aac8fac7e8ea4c4caecb502cedd6fa51,
title = "Transfers to sticky distant retrograde orbits",
abstract = "A study was conducted to explore transfers to sticky distant retrograde orbits in the sun-Earth system, extending the methodologies. Sticky regions retained orbits characterized by a dynamical lifetime longer than predicted by the Lyapunov time. A differential-correction algorithm was developed that modified the terminal radial velocity for transfers following sets of collision that existed across energy surfaces piercing the sun-Earth line. A small impulsive stabilizing maneuver was performed to insert into a stable quasi-periodic distant retrograde orbit (QPDRO) after a coasting phase. The transfer resulted result in significant fuel savings compared to direct insertion into the SPDRO.",
author = "Scott, {Christopher J.} and Spencer, {David Bradley}",
doi = "10.2514/1.47792",
journal = "Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics",
publisher = "American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Inc. (AIAA)",
Scott, CJ & Spencer, DB 2010, 'Transfers to sticky distant retrograde orbits', Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, vol. 33, no. 6, pp. 1940-1946. https://doi.org/10.2514/1.47792
Transfers to sticky distant retrograde orbits. / Scott, Christopher J.; Spencer, David Bradley.
In: Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, Vol. 33, No. 6, 01.11.2010, p. 1940-1946.
T1 - Transfers to sticky distant retrograde orbits
AU - Scott, Christopher J.
AU - Spencer, David Bradley
N2 - A study was conducted to explore transfers to sticky distant retrograde orbits in the sun-Earth system, extending the methodologies. Sticky regions retained orbits characterized by a dynamical lifetime longer than predicted by the Lyapunov time. A differential-correction algorithm was developed that modified the terminal radial velocity for transfers following sets of collision that existed across energy surfaces piercing the sun-Earth line. A small impulsive stabilizing maneuver was performed to insert into a stable quasi-periodic distant retrograde orbit (QPDRO) after a coasting phase. The transfer resulted result in significant fuel savings compared to direct insertion into the SPDRO.
AB - A study was conducted to explore transfers to sticky distant retrograde orbits in the sun-Earth system, extending the methodologies. Sticky regions retained orbits characterized by a dynamical lifetime longer than predicted by the Lyapunov time. A differential-correction algorithm was developed that modified the terminal radial velocity for transfers following sets of collision that existed across energy surfaces piercing the sun-Earth line. A small impulsive stabilizing maneuver was performed to insert into a stable quasi-periodic distant retrograde orbit (QPDRO) after a coasting phase. The transfer resulted result in significant fuel savings compared to direct insertion into the SPDRO.
U2 - 10.2514/1.47792
DO - 10.2514/1.47792
JO - Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics
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Scott CJ, Spencer DB. Transfers to sticky distant retrograde orbits. Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics. 2010 Nov 1;33(6):1940-1946. https://doi.org/10.2514/1.47792
10.2514/1.47792
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Penn State’s Approach to Scandal Recovery
A couple of news announcements about Penn State caught my eye this week. Both are attempts to get past significant scandals by taking policy or programmatic action.
As I wrote in an earlier blog post on recovering from a PR crisis, there is a basic formula used by most people and groups who successfully move past a major scandal. It includes:
Admit the mistake or wrongdoing
Apologize without excuses
Explain why it happened, or what you will do to find out
Take steps to fix the damage and prevent a similar occurrence in the future
Penn State has already undergone years of negative news coverage and criticism in the wake of the Sandusky child abuse scandal, and they continue to be hit with bad news—most recently when former President Graham Spanier was sentenced to two months in jail for his role in allowing the abuse to go unreported. But in an interesting update, Penn State announced in April the creation of a research center aimed at understanding, preventing and treating child abuse. This week’s update notes that the center will open in September. The latest announcement received wide news coverage and now pops up in search for “Penn State” and “child abuse.” This kind of positive programmatic response is consistent with Step #4 in the recovery playbook.
Another topic that has consumed the public dialogue more recently is the death of a 19-year-old Penn State fraternity pledge, Timothy Piazza, in a hazing incident in February. Penn State President Eric Barron responded strongly and followed the recovery playbook by taking responsibility and announcing a number of action steps. In its latest action the university this week announced the creation of a 17-member Greek life advisory group that includes faculty, students, and community members.
The student’s death at Penn State was horrible and happened in circumstances that point to ongoing challenges with fraternity hazing across the country. It truly was a “there but for the grace of God go I” moment for university leaders everywhere. But we can look to Penn State’s strong response in that situation as a potentially useful model for how to handle a terrible tragedy that should lead to leadership accountability and policy changes.
This entry was posted in Leadership and tagged crisis communication, Eric Barron, Graham Spanier, Greek life, Penn State, scandal recovery on June 29, 2017 by Julie A. Peterson.
← Guideposts for New Presidents Organizing Dynamic, Not Deadly, Retreats →
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The Jim Clark Victory Parade…at Brands
At Goodwood over the weekend we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Jim Clark’s first World Championship with probably the greatest collection of Clark cars ever seen on one patch of motor racing turf. On Saturday, September 14, 1963, there was a similar, if slightly more muted, Jim Clark parade to toast the same championship win. Jim, Colin Chapman and the Team Lotus mechanics were the impromptu toast of a relatively small crowd at Brands Hatch, where a BRSCC international meeting had the week before been billed only as the Anglo-European Trophy for Formula Juniors. Jim changed into his Dunlop overalls in order to drive the Lotus 25 around the Grand Prix circuit, waving to the crowd and carrying Colin Chapman piggy-back behind the rollover bar; and all the Team Lotus mechanics were present, sharing the fun and chatting to the crowds. Behind the 25 ran the Ron Harris Lotus 27s of Peter Arundell and Mike Spence (who were racing that day and would finish one-four in the final) plus the spare 27, an Elite, an Elan, a Seven and a Cortina. Jim would have enjoyed watching the two FJ heats early in the afternoon (won by Timmy Mayer and Denny Hulme) and would have been delighted by Sir John Whitmore’s class win with the factory Austin Cooper S. Bob Olthoff would have revived recent happy memories by winning overall with his Galaxie; and Jack Sears would also have brought a smile to Jim’s face with his class win with his Willment Cortina GT. (The Cortina-Lotus would soon be homologated but not for this weekend). That done, Jim then donned his Bell Magnum and string-backed Leston gloves to set about some serious lappery with the 25. Despite running the wrong dampers for Brands, and nursing a slight mis-fire, he completed four flying laps, smashing Bruce McLaren’s 2.5 litre record by 0.6sec. (The first Championship F1 race at Brands, the British and European GP, was scheduled for July, 1964.) That night, with the less pleasant aspects of Monza now beginning to fade, Colin Chapman hosted a huge party in his house in Hadley Wood, near Elstree aerodrome in north London. Most of Jim’s peers were present, in addition to many key motoring and motor racing figures. I asked Sally (Stokes) if she remembered much about it. “I think it was the first time I saw Jim in a kilt,” she replied. “There were lots of ‘do they/don’t they?’ jokes which Jim thought were very funny. Apart from that I don’t remember too much about it. Probably we were having too good a time!”
Captions, from top: Jim talks to the Brands crowd. Colin listens and the excellent Anthony Marsh oversees; Jim’s 25 leads the Brands victory parade; rear view of the same. Images: LAT Photographic
Posted in Jim Clark's 1963 season and tagged Brands Hatch, Colin Chapman, F1, Formula One, Jim Clark, Team Lotus
4 thoughts on “The Jim Clark Victory Parade…at Brands”
Robert B on September 15, 2013 at 21:02 said:
What a terrific and characterful range of road cars Lotus made in the sixties too, even if they were imperfect in some aspects of their durability (although at the risk of tempting fate, my Elan is proving very reliable again this year). They certainly reflect the individuality of not only ACBC, but the people that collaborated with him in these designs.
Peter Coffman on September 17, 2013 at 14:28 said:
What a gentle, tactful, turn of phrase you have: “…imperfect in some aspects of their durability…”! I hope Nigel Roebuck reds these comments; he may have something to add!
Pingback: The Jim Clark Victory Parade…at Brands | HolaQueretaro
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‘The Women Tell All’ on ABC’s ‘The Bachelor’
'Hoarders' Returns on A+E into New Series 'Toe Bro'
by Marc Berman March 5, 2019, 6:59 am 6 Comments
Follow @marcberman Follow @SonOfTheBronx
8:00 p.m. “The Bachelor” – The Women Tell All (two hours)
10:00 p.m. “The Rookie”
8:00 p.m. “NCIS”
9:00 p.m. “FBI” (R)
10:00 p.m. “FBI” (R)
8:00 p.m. “The Voice”
9:00 p.m. “This Is Us”
10:00 p.m. “New Amsterdam”
Fox:
8:00 p.m. “MasterChef: Celebrity Showdown” (R, two hours)
CW:
8:00 p.m. “The Flash”
9:00 p.m. “Roswell, New Mexico”
8:00 p.m. “Finding Your Roots with Louis Gates, Jr.”
9:00 p.m. “The Adirondacks” (R, two hours)
Of Note on Cable:
-“Hoarders” (A+E, 8 p.m. ET): season premiere
-“Log Cabin Fever” (GAC, 9 p.m. Et): season finale
-“The Story of God” (NGC, 9 p.m. ET): season premiere
-“Deadly Recall” (ID, 10 9 p.m. ET): series premiere
-“Toe Bro” (A+E, 10 p.m. ET): series premiere
Tagged with: Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, Chicago PD, Deadly Recall, FBI, Hoarders, Log Cabin Fever, NCIS, NCIS: New Orleans, New Amsterdam, New Mexico, Roswell, The Bachelor: The Women Tell All, The Flash, The Rookie, The Story of God, The Voice, This Is Us, Toe Bro
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Live+7 Weekly Ratings: ‘The Little Mermaid Live!’ Ranks in Top Ten of Adults 18-49 Raw Gainers
by Douglas Pucci November 19, 2019 1 Comment
Live+3 Weekly Ratings: MTV Non-Scripted Fare ‘Teen Mom’ and ‘The Challenge’ Each More Than Doubles its Live+Same Day Figures
by Douglas Pucci November 15, 2019 2 Comments
Marc Berman says:
Shameless on On Demand.
Batmanbrb says:
jfmjr says:
Hello Larry says:
Houston Rockets @ Toronto Raptors on TNT
You guys can have The Bachelor I’m watching the best dating show on TV right now in Temptation Island as this episode is going to be juicy.
The Rock says:
The Flash,
Siesta Key,
Temptation Island.
Leave a Reply (You may login using your social media account to comment) Cancel reply
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DE102011119388A1 - System and method for a VoIP honeypot for converged VoIP services - Google Patents
System and method for a VoIP honeypot for converged VoIP services
DE102011119388A1
DE102011119388A1 DE201110119388 DE102011119388A DE102011119388A1 DE 102011119388 A1 DE102011119388 A1 DE 102011119388A1 DE 201110119388 DE201110119388 DE 201110119388 DE 102011119388 A DE102011119388 A DE 102011119388A DE 102011119388 A1 DE102011119388 A1 DE 102011119388A1
DE102011119388B4 (en
John F. Buford
Venkatesh Krishnaswamy
Avaya Inc
2011-11-25 Application filed by Avaya Inc filed Critical Avaya Inc
2012-06-28 Publication of DE102011119388A1 publication Critical patent/DE102011119388A1/en
2017-03-09 Publication of DE102011119388B4 publication Critical patent/DE102011119388B4/en
H04M7/00—Interconnection arrangements between switching centres
H04M7/006—Networks other than PSTN/ISDN providing telephone service, e.g. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), including next generation networks with a packet-switched transport layer
H04L63/14—Network architectures or network communication protocols for network security for detecting or protecting against malicious traffic
H04L63/1441—Countermeasures against malicious traffic
H04L63/1491—Countermeasures against malicious traffic using deception as countermeasure, e.g. honeypots, honeynets, decoys or entrapment
H04L65/1013—Network architectures, gateways, control or user entities
H04L65/1053—Arrangements providing PBX functionality, e.g. IP PBX
H04L65/1076—Screening
H04L65/1079—Screening of unsolicited session attempts, e.g. SPIT
H04M3/00—Automatic or semi-automatic exchanges
H04M3/42—Systems providing special services or facilities to subscribers
H04M3/436—Arrangements for screening incoming calls, i.e. evaluating the characteristics of a call before deciding whether to answer it
H04M3/50—Centralised arrangements for answering calls; Centralised arrangements for recording messages for absent or busy subscribers ; Centralised arrangements for recording messages
H04M3/51—Centralised call answering arrangements requiring operator intervention, e.g. call or contact centers for telemarketing
H04M3/5183—Call or contact centers with computer-telephony arrangements
H04L63/1408—Network architectures or network communication protocols for network security for detecting or protecting against malicious traffic by monitoring network traffic
H04M3/53—Centralised arrangements for recording incoming messages, i.e. mailbox systems
H04M3/533—Voice mail systems
H04M3/53308—Message originator indirectly connected to the message centre, e.g. after detection of busy or absent state of a called party
There are provided herein systems, methods, and non-transitory computer-readable storage media for a VoIP honeypot to address cyber threats made possible by the convergence of data and communication services in a corporate network. Suspicious VoIP calls from the Internet to the corporate network are intercepted and routed to the VoIP honeypot, which acts as a network bait and automatically answers the suspicious incoming VoIP calls during call sessions while tracking suspicious incoming VoIP calls. Suspicious outgoing VoIP calls from the corporate network to the Internet are also intercepted and routed to the VoIP honeypot. In addition, an unsolicited VoIP call is routed to the VoIP honeypot when the unsolicited VoIP call has been received by a user agent in the corporate network and a human user of the user agent confirms that the unsolicited VoIP call was not requested ,
GENERAL PRIOR ART
1. Technical area
The present disclosure generally relates to Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone services and intrusion detection and protection (IDP) services for VoIP telephone services in a corporate network. The present disclosure specifically relates to a VoIP honeypot that addresses cyber threats made possible by the convergence of data and communication services in the enterprise network.
Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone services have become very attractive to businesses that already have corporate networks for storing and managing business documents and for Internet access. VoIP telephone service can be easily provided by connecting VoIP telephones to the corporate network or by programming workstations to function as VoIP telephones. In addition, if it is desired that the VoIP phones be configured as if they were in a private branch exchange (PBK), this can be done by properly programming a gateway server in the corporate network.
VoIP phones also have the advantage of being able to use Internet data services to complement the communications service used to establish and maintain a VoIP call session. For example, the VoIP service is divided into Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) related communication service and H.323 related data service. In addition, the multimedia data service for VoIP is under development. The H.323-related data service includes homepage service, internet yellow page and R-call service, directory inquiry service and telephone number search function. The SIP related communication service and the H.323 related data service may also be integrated with web services such as instant message (IM) service, personal data assistant (PDA) service, and mobile telephone service.
The VoIP service being transmitted over the Internet is exposed to conventional IP network cyber attacks, such as scanning, reconnaissance, intrusion, middleman, redirection and denial of service (DOS). In addition, VoIP attacks include spam over Internet spam (SPIT), call and message monitoring, voice message retrieval, and toll fraud on other users' accounts. There are VoIP-specific vulnerabilities in protocols and implementations of SIP, Session Data Protocol (SDP), media and codecs and so on. The VoIP infrastructure is distributed and difficult to secure.
A corporate network can be protected from incoming cyber attacks by Intrusion Detection and Protection (IDP) software installed in the gateway connecting the corporate network to the Internet. Such IDP software can block much of cyber attacks on the corporate network.
For large companies or companies that have enticing purposes, it is beneficial to provide a mechanism for monitoring and characterizing cyber attacks. This can be done by using a network security tool known as a "honeypot". The honeypot deliberately exposes the vulnerabilities the attackers were seeking to monitor the attacks and intrusions. The Honeypot acts as a network bait to keep attackers at bay, stop attackers, and track their activities.
There are in practice two types of honeypots, referred to as low interaction and high interaction. A honeypot with low interaction appears as a network of hosts running any kind of service. The low-interaction honeypot has a database of protocol signatures for the specified services for different operating systems (OS) and OS versions. The low interaction honeypot responds to incoming traffic using the appropriate signature. The application state of the low interaction honeypot is limited and pre-stored or dynamically generated from scripts.
A honeypot with high interaction is more realistic than a honeypot with low interaction. Honeypot with high interaction is more likely to avoid detection by an attacker, but the honeypot with high interaction requires more setup effort. A high-interaction honeypot ranges from a few real servers working together with a low-interaction honeypot to a copy of an actual production network that is properly purged. Increased realism in the honeypot's behavior generally improves the value of the honeypot Honeypots, because network attackers spend more time with meaningless education.
A VoIP honeypot is an existing variation of a honeypot that mimics VoIP infrastructure for VoIP attacks. Existing VoIP honeypots detect signaling anomalies at the SIP protocol level and redirect to a separate PBX that is configured as the bait. See for example Nassar et al., VoIP Honeypot Architecture, in Integrated Network Management, 2007, pp. 109-118, IEEE, New York, NY ,
In the example of Nassar et al. The honeypot reports its IP address with a number of Uniform Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIS) to a logon server in a PBX router or SIP proxy, a logon or redirection server providing security services, and a user servicing web Interface. The SIP URIs of the honeypot can be declared to be users of the domain to the outside world, but because they are not real users, they should theoretically never be called. To mislead the attacker, each honeypot's SIP URI is configured to accept a user agent type and send its name in the user agent header.
In the example of Nassar et al. The honeypot itself includes five major components. These components are (1) a honeypot agent responsible for accepting incoming calls and investigating possible attacks; (2) protocol profiles for SIP, SDP, and the Real-Time Transfer Protocol (RTP); ) a honeypot profile database of configuration files, (4) reconnaissance tools and (5) an inference engine capable of interpreting the results of examinations automatically using special measures and a Bayesian mode. The honeypot also has a graphical user interface to allow the system administrator to select and set up a honeypot profile, as well as to display traces, warnings, and statistics.
Additional features and advantages of the disclosure will be set forth in the description which follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the principles disclosed herein. The features and advantages of the disclosure may be realized and attained by means of the instruments and combinations particularly pointed out in the appended claims. These and other features of the disclosure will become more fully apparent from the following description and appended claims, or may be learned by the implementation of the principles set forth herein.
Systems, methods, and computer-readable storage media are provided for using a VoIP honeypot to address cyber threats made possible by the convergence of data and communication services in the enterprise network.
In one aspect, the disclosure provides a method for dealing with cyber threats enabled by the convergence of data and communication services in the enterprise network. The method includes a data processor executing computer instructions stored on a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium to perform the steps of: (a) intercepting suspicious incoming VoIP calls from the Internet to the corporate network and routing the suspected incoming VoIP Calls to a VoIP honeypot acting as a network lure, and while call sessions automatically answer the suspicious incoming VoIP calls while tracking the suspicious incoming VoIP calls, and (b) interpreting suspicious outgoing VoIP calls from the Corporate network to the Internet and route the suspicious outgoing VoIP calls to the VoIP honeypot, which acts as a network lure and automatically handles the suspects during call sessions outgoing VoIP calls while tracking the suspicious outgoing VoIP calls.
In another aspect, the disclosure provides a system for dealing with cyber threats enabled by the convergence of data and communication services in the enterprise network. The system includes a network computer including a data processor and a non-volatile computer-readable storage medium. The non-transitory computer-readable storage medium stores computer instructions that, when executed by the data processor, perform the following steps: (a) intercept suspicious incoming VoIP calls from the Internet to the corporate network and direct the suspicious incoming VoIP calls to one VoIP honeypot, which acts as a network bait and automatically responds to the suspicious incoming VoIP calls during call sessions while tracking suspicious incoming VoIP calls, and (b) interpreting suspicious outgoing VoIP calls from the corporate network to the Internet and routing the suspicious outgoing VoIP calls to the VoIP honeypot acting as a network bait and automatically answering the suspicious outgoing VoIP calls during call sessions while tracking the suspicious outgoing VoIP calls.
In a final aspect, the disclosure provides a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium that stores computer instructions that, when executed by a data processor, provide a cyber-threat management method that facilitates the convergence of data and communications services in the corporate network by intercepting (a) intercepting suspicious incoming VoIP calls from the Internet to the corporate network and routing the suspicious incoming VoIP calls to a VoIP honeypot acting as a network lure and automatically during call sessions respond to the suspicious incoming VoIP calls while tracking the suspicious incoming VoIP calls; and (b) interpreting suspicious outgoing VoIP calls from the corporate network to the Internet and routing the suspicious outgoing VoIP calls to the VoIP network. Honeypot acting as a net while call sessions automatically answer suspicious outgoing VoIP calls while tracking suspicious outgoing VoIP calls.
In order to describe the manner in which the above and other advantages and features of the disclosure may be obtained, a more particular description of the principles briefly described hereinabove is provided by reference to specific embodiments thereof, which are illustrated in the appended drawings. Provided that these drawings illustrate only embodiments of the disclosure and are therefore not to be considered as limiting the scope thereof, the principles are described and illustrated herein with additional specificity and detail by the use of the attached drawings, in which:
1 an embodiment of a system illustrated
2 an embodiment of a network illustrated
3 illustrates an embodiment of Internet and corporate network,
4 illustrates the classification of a VoIP-only cyberattack
5 illustrates the classification of a converged VoIP and non-VoIP cyber attack,
6 illustrates the handling of VoIP cyber attacks at respective program layers of the VoIP profile,
7 illustrates a signaling scenario in which a Gateway Intrusion Detection and Protection (IDP) server forwards an incoming INVITE request to the VoIP honeypot;
8th illustrates a signaling scenario in which a gateway intrusion detection and protection (IDP) server passes an outbound INVITE request from an infiltrated corporate user agent to the VoIP honeypot;
9 illustrates a signaling scenario in which an unsolicited VoIP call (ie, SPIT) is recognized at a corporate VoIP user agent and the VoIP call is redirected to the VoIP honeypot;
10 Illustrated components of the VoIP honeypot and
11 and 12 together, a flow chart of a preferred method of redirecting VoIP calls and Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) in VoIP calls of data and communication services in the corporate network in 3 illustrate.
The present disclosure addresses a need in the area of cyber threat management techniques enabled by the convergence of data and communication services in a corporate network. First, there will be a discussion of a basic general-purpose computing device in FIG 1 and thereafter an exemplary network configuration in FIG 2 that can be used to put the concepts disclosed herein into practice. After that, a more detailed description of a system in 3 and procedures for dealing with cyber threats caused by the convergence of data and communication services in a corporate network of the system in 3 be allowed to follow.
With reference to 1 concludes an exemplary system 100 a general-purpose computing device 100 a processing unit (a CPU or a processor) 120 and a system bus 110 containing the various system components, including the system memory 130 such as a fixed memory (ROM) 140 and Random Access Memory (RAM) 150 , at the processor 120 couples, includes. The system 100 can be a cache 122 with high-speed memory that is directly connected to the processor 120 connected, in close proximity to the same or as part of the processor 120 is integrated. The system 100 copies data from memory 130 and / or the storage device 160 for quick access by the processor 120 in the cache 122 , In this way, the cache ensures 122 an increase in performance, the delays of the processor 120 avoids while waiting for data. These and other modules may be configured for the processor 120 to steer so that he performs various actions. It can also use other system memory 130 be available for use. The memory 130 may include several different types of memory with different performance characteristics.
It will be appreciated that the disclosure is on a computing device 100 with more than one processor 120 or work on a group or cluster of computing devices that are networked together to provide greater processing capacity. The processor 120 may be any general purpose processor and a hardware module or software module, such as a module 1 162 , a module 2 164 and a module 3 166 that in the storage device 160 are stored, configured for the processor 120 include, as well as a special processor, where software instructions are built into the actual processor design. The processor 120 may be essentially a fully self-contained data processing system that includes multiple cores or processors, a bus, a memory controller, a cache, and so on. A multi-core processor can be symmetric or asymmetric.
The system bus 110 can be any of several types of bus structures, including a memory bus or memory controller, a peripheral bus, and a local bus using any of a variety of bus architectures. A basic input / output system (BIOS) stored in the ROM 140 or the like, may provide the basic routine that helps to maintain the information between the elements within the computing device 100 transfer, such as during takeoff. The data processing device 100 also includes storage devices 160 such as a hard disk drive, a magnetic disk drive, an optical disk drive, a tape drive, or the like. The storage device 160 can software modules 162 . 164 . 166 to control the processor 120 lock in. Other hardware or software modules are considered. The storage device 160 is through a drive interface with the system bus 110 connected. The drives and the computer readable storage media associated therewith provide nonvolatile storage of computer readable instructions, data structures, program modules, and other data for the computing device 100 ready. In one aspect, a hardware module that performs a particular function includes the software component stored in a non-transitory computer-readable medium in conjunction with the necessary hardware components, such as the processor 120 , the bus 110 , an ad 170 and so on, to perform the function. The basic components are known to those skilled in the art, and there will be appropriate variations depending on the type of device, such as whether the device 100 a small, handheld computing device, a workstation, or a computer server is contemplated.
Although the embodiment described herein is the hard disk 160 It should be understood by those skilled in the art that other types of computer-readable media that can store data that can be accessed by a computer, such as magnetic cassettes, flash memory cards, digital versatile disks, cassettes, random access memory (FIG. RAMs) 150 , Read only memory (ROM) 140 , a cable or wireless signal containing a bitstream, and the like, may also be used in the example operating environment. The non-volatile computer-readable storage media expressly excludes media such as energy, carrier signals, electromagnetic waves and signals per se.
To have a user interaction with the computing device 100 enable an input device 190 any number of input mechanisms, such as a microphone for speech, a touch-sensitive screen for gestures or graphic input, keyboard, mouse, motion input, speech and so on. An output device 170 may also be one or more of a number of dispensing mechanisms known to those skilled in the art. In some cases, multi-mode systems allow a user to provide multiple types of input to the computing device 100 to communicate. The communication interface 180 generally controls and manages user input and system output. There is no limitation on working on any particular hardware arrangement, and therefore, the basic features here can easily be improved by improved hardware or hardware Firmware arrangements are replaced when they are developed.
For clarity of explanation, the illustrative system embodiment is envisioned to include individual functional blocks, including functional blocks referred to as a "processor" or processor 120 be designated. The functions that these blocks represent can be provided by the use of either shared or dedicated hardware, including hardware capable of executing software, and hardware, such as a processor 120 , which is specifically designed to operate as an equivalent to, but not limited to software running on a general-purpose processor. For example, the functions of one or more in 1 represented processors are provided by a single shared processor or multiple processors. (The use of the term "processor" should not be construed to refer solely to hardware capable of executing software.) Illustrative embodiments may include microprocessor and / or digital signal processor (DSP) hardware. Fixed memory (ROM) 140 for storing software that performs the operations discussed below and random access memory (RAM) 150 to save the results. Also, maximum integration (VLSI) hardware embodiments as well as custom VLSI circuits may be provided in combination with a general-purpose DSP circuit.
The logical operations of the various embodiments are implemented as: (1) a sequence of computer-implemented steps, operations, or operations running on a programmable circuit within a general-purpose computer, (2) a sequence of computer-implemented steps, operations, or operations run on a programmable circuit for specific use, and / or (3) interconnected machine modules or program machines within the programmable circuits. This in 1 shown system 100 may implement all or part of the mentioned methods may be a part of the mentioned systems and / or may operate according to instructions in the mentioned non-volatile computer-readable storage media. Such logical operations may be implemented as modules configured to the processor 120 to perform certain functions according to the programming of the module. Illustrated, for example 1 three modules (Mod1 162 , Mod2 164 and Mod3 166 ), which are modules that are configured to be the processor 120 to control. These modules can be on the storage device 160 be stored and runtime in the RAM 150 or the memory 130 may be stored in other computer readable storage locations as would be known in the art.
2 illustrates an embodiment of a telecommunications network 200 , As in 2 shown, closes the telecommunications network 200 Application Layer Gateways 204a . 204b , an application server 206 , Internet Protocol (IP) endpoints 208a . 208b and various interconnected IP routers 202a - 202h one. This particular configuration of an IP-based network is illustrative. The telecommunications network is not limited to an IP based network and is not limited to this particular configuration of application layer gateways 204a . 204b , IP routers 202a - 202h etc. limited.
Every IP router 202a - 202h is a device that receives IP packets over one or more incoming network connections and forwards the received packets along one or more outgoing network connections. Typically, the IP routers manage 202a - 202h dynamic routing tables that allow the routers to change the paths through which traffic passes through the network 200 is transmitted. The IP router 202a - 202h can network traffic over time along different paths through the network 200 redirect, in response to various conditions such as link failures, congested routes, charge changes, and so on. A data source, such as an IP endpoint 208a . 208b , or a network transmission mechanism, such as an IP router 202a - 202h , can mark certain packages according to their content. For example, audio traffic is marked as audio packets, video traffic is marked as video packets, and traffic is marked as data packets.
The application layer gateways 204a . 204b are data processing systems capable of providing one or more application layer features such as voice-over-IP (VoIP), FTP, video streaming, Internet Protocol Television (IPTV), remote desktop Services and so on. In addition, the application layer gateways 204a . 204b also able to join the Execution of one or more of the below and in relation to 3 to 12 involved in the tasks described.
The application server 206 is a data processing system that provides one or more services to support a particular application, such as VoIP or IPTV, and is also capable of engaging in the execution of one or more of the below and in relation to 3 to 12 involved in the tasks described. In an illustrative embodiment, the application server 206 VoIP services, such as establishing a connection between two or more Internet Protocol endpoints 208a . 208b , Connection modification, connection termination, etc., ready. The application server 206 may also provide services for other applications, including video conferencing, IPTV, in place of or in addition to VoIP.
Every IP endpoint 208a . 208b is a device such as an IP phone, an IP headset, an IP handset, an IP softphone, or an IP conference phone connected to other devices over the network 200 communicates according to the Internet Protocol (IP). In addition, the IP endpoints 208a . 208b also perform one or more of the tasks described below.
The revelation now returns to a discussion of cyber-threat engagement caused by the convergence of data and communication services in the system of 3 be enabled. 3 shows the internet 20 and various users, clients, and servers connected to the Internet. For example, a human user operates 21 a workstation 22 who with the internet 20 connected is. The user 21 also serves a desk phone 23 in a landline telephone system 25 , Consequently, the user can 21 another human user 26 call through the landline phone system to a desk phone 27 of the user 26 to reach.
The Internet 20 connects the landline telephone system 25 with VoIP phones, such as the VoIP phone 28 by a user 29 is served. The Internet 20 connects the landline telephone system 25 also with a wireless telephone system 30 Making calls to wireless devices, such as a cellular phone 31 of a human user 32 , can be made. In this example, the user has 32 a laptop computer 33 who with the internet 20 connected is. The wireless telephone system 30 also provides data services, such as text messaging and e-mail and Internet access, to smartphones and portable computing devices, such as a tablet computer 34 by a human user 35 is served.
A medium or large scale organization, such as a company or government agency, typically has a corporate network 34 , the workstation, such as the workstation 38 by the human user 39 is included. The corporate network 36 also has a gateway server 37 who has the corporate network with the internet 20 connects, leaving the workstation 38 through the gateway server 37 on the internet 20 can access.
The corporate network 36 also includes a number of VoIP phones 36 . 37 one. In this case, the gateway server 37 act as a Private Branch Exchange (PBX). For example, the PBX is reachable at a main telephone number, and the VoIP telephones within the PBX are reachable at respective extension numbers.
The gateway server 37 also has Intrusion Detection and Protection (IDP) software to block certain types of inbound or inbound traffic marked as originating from certain "blacklisted" IP addresses , The gateway server 37 directs suspicious VoIP traffic from the Internet 20 to a VoIP honeypot 40 around. The gateway server 37 derives suspicious non-VoIP traffic from the Internet 20 to a non-VoIP honeypot 41 around. The non-VoIP honeypot routes suspicious instant message (IM) traffic to an instant message honeypot 42 further. The honeypots 40 . 41 . 42 act as a network bait to keep attackers at bay while the attacks are being tracked.
4 shows a classification of a VoIP-only cyber attack. The source of a VoIP-only cyber attack is either external or internal to the corporate network. External VoIP-only cyber attacks originate from the Internet and include: (1) unsolicited VoIP calls (known as spam over Internet telephony or SPIT), (2) redirection, monitoring and paging, (3) reconnaissance and (4) exploitation of vulnerabilities. SPIT is further classified as "phishing", which requests sensitive information by mimicking a trusted source, and unsolicited advertising. The exploitation of vulnerabilities is still not exploited either as the exploitation of vulnerabilities known to developers of vulnerable software or as the exploitation of "tag zero" vulnerabilities discovered by hackers, but vulnerable software developers are known, classified.
Internal-source VoIP cyber attacks come from a compromised host in the corporate network. Typically, an external non-VoIP cyber attack has invaded the exploited host and infected it with malicious code in a program or hypertext markup language (HTML) document Service. Internal voice source cyber cyber attacks are further classified as (1) redirection, monitoring and eviction, (2) intelligence, and (3) exploitation of vulnerabilities. The exploitation of vulnerabilities can exploit either known vulnerabilities or "tag zero" vulnerabilities.
5 shows a classification of converged VoIP and non-VoIP cyber attacks. Such cyber attacks involve converged applications that combine VoIP with web or instant messaging (IM) services. These cyber attacks, which involve converged applications, are also compromised as phishing attacks that mimic a trusted source to request sensitive information, and attacks that do not mimic a trusted source, but a component of a third party or their service in a converged application , classified.
6 shows the handling of VoIP cyber attacks at respective program layers of the VoIP profile 51 , The VoIP profile 51 closes an application layer 52 at the highest level, a signaling layer 53 at a medium level and a media layer 54 at the lowest level. In the application layer 51 concludes the VoIP honeypot programs 55 for emulating various types of converged service, such as VoIP integrated with instant messaging (IM) and outbound calls triggered by user clicks on unsolicited electronic mail links, commonly known as SPAM. The programming 56 in the signaling layer 53 enables intrusion detection and protection (IDP) in the gateway server (FIG. 37 in 3 ) Detects Session Description Protocol (SDP) attacks, VoIP extension scanning and redirection attacks, and the VoIP honeypot learns attacker fingerprints that can be Session Description Protocol (SDP) attacks, VoIP extension scanning, and redirection attacks also be recognized by other signaling elements in the corporate network. The programming 57 in the media layer 54 enables intrusion detection and protection (IDP) in the gateway server (FIG. 37 in 3 ) detected calls, recorded messages, misinterpreted agents, and call and create patterns that indicate spam over Internet telephony (SPIT). The generated calls, recorded messages, misinterpreted agents, and call-and-hang patterns may also be recognized by other signaling elements in the corporate network.
7 illustrates a signaling scenario in which the gateway 37 with IDP an incoming INVITE request for the VoIP honeypot 40 forwards. The signaling scenario begins with an external "black hat" agent 22 (ie, a malicious agent on the Internet outside the corporate network) the INVITE message to the gateway server 37 sends. The IDP software in the gateway server 37 Detects that the INVITE message has a blacklisted or abnormal header, so the gateway server 37 the INVITE message transparent to the VoIP honeypot 40 forwards. The VoIP honeypot 40 completes the call session setup by providing a response code 100 indicating a call to the external "black hat" application agent 22 sends back and the VoIP honeypot 40 after a few seconds also a response code 200 indicating that the user agent has answered the call. Thereafter, the VoIP honeypot performs a phone conversation with the "black hat" application agent in a manner that mimics the behavior of a human agent 22 ,
For example, the VoIP honeypot automatically responds with a voice response "hello" followed by a pause, and then waits for a voice response from the "black hat" application agent 22 The VoIP honeypot also terminates a call when appropriate, for example, by saying "Goodbye" and then hangs up, or by saying, "If you have anything left, please leave a message on mine Answering machine. "The VoIP honeypot also responds automatically to a request to enter a number to get more information so that the honeypot enters the number and the call, possibly with a human user of the external "black hat" user agent 22 , will continue.
When appropriate, the VoIP honeypot will respond by acting as an automatic answering machine instead of mimicking a human user. In the case where the "black hat" user agent 22 has dialed a telephone number assigned to a virtual user agent of the honeypot, a human name and a virtual user agent virtual user allocation plan are established, and if the occupancy plan indicates that the virtual user is absent, then the call is made to the virtual User agents answered by the automatic answering system of the honeypot. The VoIP honeypot can also make a call to the automatic answering system of the honeypot when the honeypot VoIP detects that the honeypot VoIP is currently in contact with a human user of the external "black hat" application agent 22 speaks.
8th illustrates a signaling scenario in which the gateway 37 with IDP an outbound INVITE request from an infiltrated corporate user agent 38 to the VoIP honeypot 40 forwards. For example, the infiltrated user agent becomes 38 is infiltrated upon receiving a malicious HTML web page from the Internet, and the INVITE is generated when a human user clicks on a link in the HTML web page. IDP in the gateway 37 Recognizes that the INVITE has an abnormal destination, or an abnormal session behavior or an abnormal correlation with host intervention events, and in response, the gateway manages 37 the INVITE request transparent to the VoIP honeypot 40 further. The VoIP honeypot 40 completes the call session setup by providing a response code 100 Calling the infiltrated corporate user agent 38 sends back and the VoIP honeypot 40 after a few seconds also a response code 200 indicating that the user agent has answered the call. Then, in a manner that mimics the behavior of a human agent, the VoIP honeypot makes a telephone conversation with the infiltrated corporate user agent 38 ,
9 illustrates a signaling scenario in which an unsolicited VoIP call (ie, SPIT) is made to a VoIP enterprise application agent 38 is recognized and the VoIP call to the VoIP honeypot 40 is redirected. The SPIT can be self-acting through a program in the VoIP enterprise application agent 38 be recognized, or the SPIT can be redirected if a human user 39 VoIP Enterprise application agent decides that the VoIP call is SPIT, and a "SPIT Submit" button on the VoIP Enterprise application agent 38 activated.
In 9 The SPIT comes from an external "black hat" application agent 22 who made an INVITE request to the gateway 37 sends. The gateway 37 transparently directs the INVITE request to the VoIP enterprise application agent 38 further. The corporate user agent 38 completes the setup of the call session by providing a response code 100 indicating a call to the external "black hat" application agent 22 and the VoIP Enterprise Application Agent 38 after a few seconds also a response code 200 indicating that the user agent has answered the call. Then the external "black hat" application agent sends 22 SPIT to the VoIP enterprise application agent 38 , Once the business user agent 38 Detects that the VoIP call is SPIT, directs the corporate user agent 38 the VoIP call transparent to the VoIP honeypot 40 around. The VoIP honeypot 40 then continues the VoIP call by automatically mimicking a conversation with a human user. The corporate user agent 38 also sends a request to the gateway 37 to add the SPIT to a blacklist used by the Gateway's IDP software. If the human user 39 the business user agent has confirmed that the VoIP call is SPIT, this fact is also sent to the gateway 37 sent and noted in the blacklist.
10 illustrates components of the VoIP honeypot 41 , These components include the following; (1) a honeypot agent 61 who is responsible for answering incoming calls and investigating possible attacks (2) Protocol Profiles 62 for SIP 63 , SDP 64 and the Real-time Transfer Protocol (RTP) 65 , (3) a honeypot profile database 66 configuration files, (4) reconnaissance tools 67 and (5) an inference engine 74 , which is able to interpret the results of examinations automatically with the help of special measurements and a Bayesian mode. The reconnaissance tools include tools that block the received message for exploitation of VoIP and network protocols, such as SIP 68 , RTP 69 , Dynamic Name Service (DNS) 70 and Network Address Translation (NAT) 72 to verify. The reconnaissance tools also include a program 73 for tracking cyber attacks.
Tracking 73 , in combination with the inference of the inference engine 74 , by an attacker identifier 78 used to group attacks that appear to be from the same source due to the persecution or common features of the attacks. The attacker identifier 78 seeks a history of Endpoint User Agent SPIT behavior, searches for extension scanning behavior suggesting a SPIT distribution, and correlates various external IP source addresses by geographically mapping the source addresses to a common geographic location. The attacker identifier 78 assembles an attacker's fingerprint for each group of attacks that appear to come from the same source and stores the attacker's fingerprints in a database 79 for identified attackers.
The VoIP honeypot 41 further includes a voice and number response unit 76 capable of speech recognition and capable of responding to SPIT by conducting a speech conversation that is human Mimics users and responds to prompts to touch a number on a touch-tone keypad for further information by touching the number so that a VoIP call session resumes. The VoIP honeypot 41 also has a virtual user agent and a virtual user database and a reservation plan 77 which allows the VoIP honeypot to direct VoIP calls to a respective voice mailbox in an automatic answering system when the assignment plan indicates that a virtual user is absent. The honeypot also has a graphical user interface 75 to allow a system administrator to select and set up a honeypot profile, and to show traces, alerts, and statistics.
11 and 12 together illustrate a flow chart of a preferred method of redirecting VoIP calls and Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) in VoIP calls of data and communication services in the corporate network 3 , In a first step 81 Suspicious VoIP calls from the Internet are intercepted to the corporate network and routed to the VoIP honeypot, which acts as a network bait and automatically responds to suspicious incoming VoIP calls during call sessions while tracking suspicious incoming VoIP calls.
In step 82 Suspicious outgoing VoIP calls are intercepted from the corporate network to the Internet and routed to the VoIP honeypot, which acts as a network bait and automatically answers the suspicious outgoing VoIP calls during call sessions while tracking suspicious outgoing VoIP calls.
In step 83 an unsolicited VoIP call is routed to the VoIP honeypot when the unsolicited VoIP call has been received by a user agent in the corporate network and a human user of the user agent confirms that the unsolicited VoIP call was not requested.
In step 84 A non-VoIP honeypot in the corporate network responds to a suspicious client dropping VoIP packets by sending the VoIP packets to the VoIP honeypot. In step 85 The VoIP honeypot responds to references to non-VoIP resources through Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) by sending requests for access to the non-VoIP resources to a non-VoIP honeypot in the corporate network.
In step 91 in 12 a suspicious instant message (IM) is detected, and in response to the detection of the suspect IM (IM), the suspect IM (IM) message is sent to the IMR (instant message honeypot). 42 in 3 ), which mimics a human recipient of the instant message (IM) by assembling and returning an instant message (IM) response to the suspect instant message (IM). The instant message (IM) response is compiled, for example, by a rule-based expert system in the instant message honeypot.
In step 92 In response to detecting that an outbound VoIP call has been triggered by a user clicking on an unsolicited electronic mail, the outbound VoIP call is redirected to the VoIP honeypot.
In step 93 During a connected session, the VoIP honeypot responds to a suspicious VoIP call by assembling and returning a voice response that mimics a human receiver.
In step 94 The VoIP honeypot establishes virtual user slots of respective virtual user agents and forwards VoIP calls directed to the virtual users to voice mailboxes when the virtual user slots indicate that the virtual user agents virtual users are absent when the VoIP calls addressed to the virtual user agents are received.
In step 95 The VoIP honeypot identifies suspicious VoIP calls as coming from a common source and compiles statistics of the suspicious VoIP calls from the common source to identify suspicious VoIP calls from an unknown source that are likely to come from the common source. For example, once a "fingerprint" of distinctive VoIP call statistics for suspicious VoIP calls is made from the common source, that fingerprint can be used to detect suspicious VoIP calls from other sources or from unknown sources rather than from the common source to identify. In this way, the most threatening cyber-attackers can be prosecuted, identified and prosecuted as soon as sufficient evidence of unlawful activity has been gathered.
The system and methodology described above for addressing cyber threats to converged data and communication services coordinates VoIP and non-VoIP honeypots to provide consistency of ports, state, and data between VoIP and non-VoIP resources in the different honeypots. There is a transparent forwarding to the honeypots and a transparent forwarding between the different types of honeypots. There is a consistent analysis across the different types of honeypots.
The honeypots provide increased realism to enhance the value of the honeypots because the attacker spends more time with meaningless enlightenment. Realism is enhanced through the use of appropriate protocol fingerprints, by incorporating the Back-to-Back User Agent (B2BUA) feature for suspicious flows in-between (e.g., during gateway redirection of VoIP calls to the VoIP honeypot), by using automated voice answering for connected sessions with the VoIP honeypot and by automatically simulating IM conversations. The appropriate protocol fingerprints include the correct vendor-specific protocol headers and other identifying patterns, and the VoIP honeypot is configured to use these protocol fingerprints.
The redirection to the VoIP honeypot is controlled to avoid false positives that could adversely affect legitimate end users. The goal is to differentiate SPIT from calls with the wrong number and broken phone connections, and to distinguish phishing SPIT from unsolicited commercial SPIT. Techniques for avoiding false positives include looking for a history of SPIT behavior from the endpoint user agent, searching for enhancement scanning behavior that suggests a SPIT distribution, correlating various external IP source addresses with the geographical one Mapping the source addresses to a common geographic location and allowing the end user to confirm that a received call is SPIT.
The VoIP honeypot may act as an endpoint, agent, or signaling element in various configurations that provide converged services. For example, the VoIP honeypot may act as an endpoint via a back-to-back user agent (B2BUA) configuration in the honeypot or elsewhere in the call signaling path. The converged VoIP honeypot may act as an endpoint or signaling element in bifurcated portions of a call path or in redirected call paths. The converged VoIP honeypot can act as an endpoint or signaling element in call topologies including lawful interception, bridging, multipoint calls, conference calls, callbacks, and call recordings. The converged VoIP honeypot can act as an endpoint or signaling element in call sessions using third party call control. The converged VoIP honeypot may also act as an endpoint or signaling element in call topologies that use one or more feature servers.
The converged VoIP honeypot for calls comprising video or other streaming media may have video servers as sources of either in the call media path or out of band media, for example via an Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) service or web service that is presented to callers act as an endpoint or agent.
The converged VoIP honeypot may also act as an endpoint or facilitator for sessions that include web conferencing. The converged VoIP honeypot can either emulate the web conferencing endpoint or tune with a specific external honeypot or service to provide the emulation.
The converged VoIP honeypot can be signaled for call sessions using a peer-to-peer or overlay network, or in hybrid sessions where sections of the call path are signaled via servers and gateways and other sections are overlaid as an endpoint, signaling element, routing element, and / or or media element. In addition, some session media may be transmitted via client-server and other session media may be transmitted via an overlay or a torrent.
Converged data and communication services can use in-band and out-of-band transport. The Converged VoIP honeypot can be used as an endpoint or in converged service scenarios that combine streaming media, web services, http application connections, bidirectional http connections, instant messaging, SMS, IPTV, sensor networks and feeds, and torrents Act or otherwise participate in the signaling element, and the converged VoIP honeypot will coordinate each session component, either internally or with specialized honeypot elements or services or agents, to ensure consistency between the session components and realism for the attacker. The converged VoIP honeypot can implement a virtual call forwarding, in which a call to a virtual agent to another virtual agent is forwarded. The converged VoIP honeypot may also act as an endpoint or signaling element in sessions transmitted over bidirectional http or web services, such as the Web Service Initiation Protocol (WSIP).
Honeypots on different corporate networks can also be coordinated to exchange information about suspicious calls and thereby form a honeynet. When new VoIP attacks are detected on different corporate networks in the honeynet, the attacker's fingerprints and identifications are updated at a central database and downloaded to all enterprise networks in the honeynet. New corporate networks would gain the attacker fingerprints and identifications on a subscription basis.
Embodiments within the scope of the present disclosure may also include tangible and / or non-transitory computer-readable storage media that carry or have stored on the same stored computer-executable instructions or data structures. Such non-transitory computer-readable storage media may be any available media that can be accessed by a general-purpose or special purpose computer, including the functional design of any special purpose processor, as discussed above. By way of example and not limitation, such non-transitory computer-readable storage media may include RAM, ROM, EEPROM, CD-ROM or other optical disk storage, magnetic disk storage or other magnetic storage devices or any other medium that may be used to provide desired program code means in the form of computer-executable instructions To carry or store data structures or processor chip design. When information is transmitted or provided over a network or other communication link (either hardwired, wireless or combinations thereof) to a computer, the computer properly views the connection as a computer-readable medium. Consequently, any such connection should be properly designated as a computer-readable medium. Combinations of the above should also be included in the scope of computer readable media.
Computable instructions include, for example, instructions and data that cause a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, or special purpose computing device to perform a particular function or set of functions. Computer-executable instructions also include program modules that are executed by computers in standalone or network environments. In general, program modules include routines, programs, components, data structures, objects, and the functions inherent in the design of specialty processors, etc., that perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types. Computable instructions, associated data structures and program modules are examples of the program code means for performing steps of the methods disclosed herein. The particular sequence of such executable instructions or associated data structures are examples of corresponding acts for implementing the functions described in such steps.
Those skilled in the art will recognize that other embodiments of the disclosure in network computing environments include many types of computer system configurations, including workstations, handhelds, multiprocessor systems, microprocessor-based or programmable consumer electronics, network PCs, mini-computers, mainframe computers, and the like Practice can be implemented. Embodiments may also be practiced in distributed computing environments where tasks are performed by local and remote processing devices that are linked (either by hard-wired links, wireless links, or a combination thereof) through a communications network. In a distributed computing environment, program modules may reside in both local and remote storage devices.
The embodiments described above are provided for purposes of illustration only and should not be construed to limit the scope of the disclosure. Those skilled in the art will readily recognize various modifications and changes that can be made to the principles described herein without following the embodiments and applications illustrated and described herein and without departing from the spirit and scope of the disclosure.
QUOTES INCLUDE IN THE DESCRIPTION
This list of the documents listed by the applicant has been generated automatically and is included solely for the better information of the reader. The list is not part of the German patent or utility model application. The DPMA assumes no liability for any errors or omissions.
Cited non-patent literature
Nassar et al., VoIP Honeypot Architecture, in Integrated Network Management, 2007, pp. 109-118, IEEE, New York, NY [0009]
A method comprising: intercepting a suspicious voice-over-IP call associated with an external network and a local network via a processor of a data processing device, routing the suspect voice-over-IP call to a voice-over-IP honeypot acting as a network bait, and automatically responding to the suspicious voice-over-IP call during a call session while the suspect voice-over-IP call over-IP call is being tracked, and Reporting a source of the suspected voice-over-IP call.
The method of claim 1, wherein the suspicious voice-over-IP call is either an incoming call originating from the external network or an outgoing call originating from the local network.
The method of claim 1, further comprising directing an unsolicited voice over IP call to the voice over IP honeypot when the unsolicited voice over IP call has been received by a user agent on the local network and a human user of the user agent confirms that the unsolicited voice-over-IP call was not requested.
The method of claim 1, further comprising: responding to a suspicious client placing voice over IP packets by sending the voice over IP packets to the voice over IP honeypot via a non voice over IP honeypot in the local network.
The method of claim 1, further comprising: responding to references to non-Voice-over-IP resources via Uniform Resource Locators by sending requests for access to the non-Voice-over-IP resources to a non-Voice-over-IP honeypot in the corporate network , via the Voice over IP honeypot.
The method of claim 1, further comprising: the recognition of a suspicious instant message and in response to the suspicious instant message, directing the suspicious instant message to an instant message honeypot mimicking a human recipient of the instant message by assembling and returning an instant message response to the suspicious instant message.
The method of claim 1, further comprising: recognizing that an outbound Voice-over-IP call has been triggered by a user clicking on an unsolicited electronic mail, and redirecting the outgoing voice over IP call to the voice over IP honeypot.
The method of claim 1, further comprising: responding during a connected session of the suspicious voice-over-IP call by assembling and returning a voice response that mimics a human receiver via the voice-over-IP honeypot.
A system for dealing with cyber threats made possible by the convergence of data and communication services in a local area network, the system comprising: a processor, a memory storing instructions for controlling the processor to perform steps including: intercepting a suspicious voice-over-IP call associated with an external network and a local network via a processor of a data processing device, routing the suspect voice-over-IP call to a voice-over-IP honeypot acting as a network bait, and automatically responding to the suspicious voice-over-IP call during a call session while the suspect voice-over-IP call over-IP call is being tracked, and Reporting a source of the suspected voice-over-IP call.
Non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing instructions that, when executed by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform steps that include: intercepting a suspicious voice-over-IP call associated with an external network and a local network via a processor of a data processing device, routing the suspect voice-over-IP call to a voice-over-IP honeypot acting as a network bait, and automatically responding to the suspicious voice-over-IP call during a call session while the suspect voice-over-IP call over-IP call is being tracked, and Reporting a source of the suspected voice-over-IP call.
DE102011119388.3A 2010-12-27 2011-11-25 System and method for a VoIP honeypot for converged VoIP services Active DE102011119388B4 (en)
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DE102011119388A1 true DE102011119388A1 (en) 2012-06-28
DE102011119388B4 DE102011119388B4 (en) 2017-03-09
DE102011119388.3A Active DE102011119388B4 (en) 2010-12-27 2011-11-25 System and method for a VoIP honeypot for converged VoIP services
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JP2015164200A - improved photovoltaic cell assembly - Google Patents
improved photovoltaic cell assembly Download PDF
JP6082046B2 (en
デグルート マーティ
Degroot Marty
ガイ ラングロイス マーク
Guy Langlois Marc
ダウ グローバル テクノロジーズ エルエルシー
2015-04-02 Application filed by ダウ グローバル テクノロジーズ エルエルシー, Dow Global Technologies Llc, ダウ グローバル テクノロジーズ エルエルシー filed Critical ダウ グローバル テクノロジーズ エルエルシー
239000010410 layers Substances 0 abstract 2
239000000758 substrates Substances 0 abstract 2
230000001070 adhesive Effects 0 abstract 1
239000000853 adhesives Substances 0 abstract 1
230000001976 improved Effects 0 abstract 1
238000006722 reduction reaction Methods 0 abstract 1
H01L31/00—Semiconductor devices sensitive to infra-red radiation, light, electromagnetic radiation of shorter wavelength or corpuscular radiation and adapted either for the conversion of the energy of such radiation into electrical energy or for the control of electrical energy by such radiation; Processes or apparatus peculiar to the manufacture or treatment thereof or of parts thereof; Details thereof
H01L31/04—Semiconductor devices sensitive to infra-red radiation, light, electromagnetic radiation of shorter wavelength or corpuscular radiation and adapted either for the conversion of the energy of such radiation into electrical energy or for the control of electrical energy by such radiation; Processes or apparatus peculiar to the manufacture or treatment thereof or of parts thereof; Details thereof adapted as photovoltaic [PV] conversion devices
H01L31/042—PV modules or arrays of single PV cells
H01L31/05—Electrical interconnection means between PV cells inside the PV module, e.g. series connection of PV cells
H01L31/0504—Electrical interconnection means between PV cells inside the PV module, e.g. series connection of PV cells specially adapted for series or parallel connection of solar cells in a module
H01L31/0508—Electrical interconnection means between PV cells inside the PV module, e.g. series connection of PV cells specially adapted for series or parallel connection of solar cells in a module the interconnection means having a particular shape
H02S—GENERATION OF ELECTRIC POWER BY CONVERSION OF INFRA-RED RADIATION, VISIBLE LIGHT OR ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT, e.g. USING PHOTOVOLTAIC [PV] MODULES
H02S20/00—Supporting structures for PV modules
H02S20/20—Supporting structures directly fixed to an immovable object
H02S20/22—Supporting structures directly fixed to an immovable object specially adapted for buildings
H02S20/23—Supporting structures directly fixed to an immovable object specially adapted for buildings specially adapted for roof structures
H02S20/25—Roof tile elements
H02S40/00—Components or accessories in combination with PV modules, not provided for in groups H02S10/00 - H02S30/00
H02S40/30—Electrical components
H02S40/36—Electrical components characterised by special electrical interconnection means between two or more PV modules, e.g. electrical module-to-module connection
Y02B—CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION TECHNOLOGIES RELATED TO BUILDINGS, e.g. HOUSING, HOUSE APPLIANCES OR RELATED END-USER APPLICATIONS
Y02B10/00—Integration of renewable energy sources in buildings
Y02B10/10—Photovoltaic [PV]
Y02B10/12—Roof systems for PV cells
Y02E10/00—Energy generation through renewable energy sources
Y02E10/50—Photovoltaic [PV] energy
A photovoltaic assembly having an appearance that is aesthetically desirable is provided by reducing loss of electrical interconnection resistance between photovoltaic cells, suppressing a reduction in light receiving area. A plurality of photovoltaic cells comprising a photoactive portion having a top surface, an upper recovery structure on the top surface, and an opposite conductive substrate layer 22 opposite the top surface of the photoactive portion. And based on an improved photovoltaic cell assembly. It also includes a first conductive element 60 having a first surface 66 and bent at least once, wherein the first surface 66 is the upper recovery structure 28 and / or the top surface of the first photovoltaic cell. And in contact with the opposite conductive substrate layer 22 of the adjacent second photovoltaic cell, and at least a portion of the first surface 66 is maintained in contact with the cell by an adhesive. [Selection] Figure 3
This application claims the benefit of the filing date of US Provisional Application No. 61 / 380,457 (filed Sep. 7, 2010), the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
The present invention relates to an improved photovoltaic (PV) cell assembly, and more particularly, folded or bent to connect a bottom conductive substrate to the top conductive feature of an adjacent cell. The present invention relates to an improved photovoltaic cell assembly that interconnects a plurality of cells using the conductive elements provided.
Background Thin-film solar cells have several advantages, particularly when used in building-integrated photovoltaic applications, ie devices that are integrated into building structures, such as roofing boards or external wall coverings. One such advantage is that these components have a high cross-sectional area for absorbing incident light. That is, a very thin photovoltaic layer can absorb and convert a relatively high percentage of incident light. For example, in many thin film solar cell devices, the photovoltaic layer can have a thickness in the range of about 1 μm to about 4 μm. With these thin film layers, the device containing these layers can be flexible.
A conventional approach for assembling photovoltaic cells is the so-called string and tab method, where the solar cells are connected to each other using tin or solder coated flat wire (bus) ribbons, soldering and / or Alternatively, they are bonded by other adhesive materials such as conductive epoxides. The wire ribbon is typically bonded to a bus bar location on a conductive grid applied to the surface of the cell. It is believed that the cross-sectional area of the wire can be limited because thicker wires are too stiff and thin and wide wires are too much of the light barrier. The net result is that the interconnect resistance loss and the amount of active cell surface area blocked by the ribbon can cause a significant reduction in photovoltaic cell assembly (ie, PV device) performance. The string and tab method is particularly suitable for use in photovoltaic applications where the photovoltaic cell is rigid. This method can be difficult to use in thin film solar cells. This is because the resulting string of cells is brittle and can cause contact loss between the solar cell and the PV ribbon. Furthermore, the appearance of a large bath ribbon on the surface of the PV device may be aesthetically undesirable for the customer.
One approach for interconnecting thin film solar cells is the so-called “shingling” method, where the bottom conductive surface of one solar cell contacts the top surface of an adjacent cell. Again, this method can result in solar cell interconnections that are prone to contact loss between devices.
Among the documents that may be related to this technology, the following patent documents: US Pat. Nos. 6,936,761, 7,022,910, 7,432,438, and US 2007/0251570. No. 2009/00025788 and 2009/0255556, all of which are incorporated herein by reference for all purposes.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to an improved photovoltaic cell assembly that addresses at least one or more of the problems described in the above paragraphs.
One possible advantage of the present invention over the prior art is that the photovoltaic cell of the present invention does not require the horizontal planes of the solar cells to be substantially coplanar to maintain the electrical connection between the photovoltaic cells. It is believed that the power cell assembly is assembled and configured. This provides an additional degree of freedom regarding the flexibility of the module in addition to the flexibility provided by the flexible solar cell. Additional flexibility is provided at least once, preferably by conductive interconnect elements that are folded (or bent) with respect to the longitudinal axis (ie, the axis parallel to the longest dimension). It is believed that the folding (one or more times) need not be located along the center of the conductive interconnect element and / or its longitudinal axis, as long as it is folded at least once. The photovoltaic cell assembly described herein also does not have a large bus ribbon that blocks light entering the cell. The absence of a bus ribbon can also make PV devices more aesthetically appealing compared to conventional products prepared using a string and tab approach. In addition, this approach reduces the amount of silver conductive ink in grid applications by eliminating large silver busbars that are commonly applied to photovoltaic cell assemblies prepared using a string and tab approach. can do. It is believed that the cell string can be encapsulated in the polymer laminate after application of the conductive element. A further possible advantage is that it can improve the resistance to thermal cycling and wet heat treatment on adhesives or soldered connections that may be susceptible to degradation under thermal cycling and wet heat treatment type environmental stresses.
Thus, according to one aspect of the present invention, at least comprising a photoactive portion having a top surface, an upper recovery structure on the top surface, and an opposite conductive substrate layer opposite the top surface of the photoactive portion, at least A plurality of photovoltaic cells, having a first surface and being bent at least once, wherein the first surface is an upper recovery structure and / or an upper surface of the first photovoltaic cell and an adjacent first A first conductive element in contact with the opposite conductive substrate layer of the two photovoltaic cells, and at least a portion of the first surface is maintained in contact with the cell by an adhesive; A photovoltaic cell assembly is contemplated.
The invention can be further characterized by one or any combination of the features described herein. For example, each of the plurality of photovoltaic cells further includes a leading edge and a trailing edge, the conductive element is in contact with the first photovoltaic cell at the trailing edge, and the conductive element is adjacent to the second photovoltaic cell at the leading edge. In contact with the opposite conductive substrate layer of the photovoltaic cell, the leading edge of the adjacent second photovoltaic cell overlapping the trailing edge of the first photovoltaic cell, and the top The collection structure includes a series of spaced conductive traces of lower sheet resistance material than the top surface, the upper collection structure includes at least one bus line, and at least a portion of the peripheral edge portion of the cell is a non-conductive layer The non-conductive portion includes either a liquid dielectric cured by UV radiation or a non-conductive tape, the conductive element is a conductive adhesive tape, and the conductive element is an embossed surface. A foil tape that has an embossed surface At least 10% of the surface area is in direct contact with the cell, the adhesive is a conductive adhesive, the adhesive is a non-conductive adhesive, and at least one bend has an angle α of 0-90 °. The overlap of the conductive element on the conductive substrate layer is at least 2.0 mm in length, and the overlap part of the conductive element overlaps with an area of at least 10% of the bus line The conductive element includes a plurality of folds.
Thus, according to another aspect of the present invention, a method of manufacturing a photovoltaic assembly is contemplated, the method comprising (a) a photoactive portion having a top surface, a top recovery structure and a bottom conductive substrate, and a leading edge and Providing at least two solar cells including a trailing edge; (b) providing at least one conductive element each having a first surface; (c) providing at least one terminal bar; ) Placing the first cell near the leading edge of the first plurality of solar cells such that the bottom surface of the conductive substrate is in contact with the first terminal bar; and (e) the first using the conductive element. Connecting the terminal bar to the first cell; (f) folding the first conductive element about at least one turn; (g) placing the folded conductive element on top of the first cell near the trailing edge; Apply and accurately place and conduct Placing the element in contact with the upper surface and / or the upper recovery structure of the solar cell, and (h) placing the second cell on the folded conductive element already applied to the first solar cell; The bottom surface of the conductive substrate of the second solar cell is in contact with the folded conductive element, thereby forming a string having a first cell and a terminal cell; (i) optionally additional conductivity Fold the element at least once with respect to the axis and apply additional folded conductive elements to the top of the end cell near the trailing edge and place it precisely so that the conductive element contacts the top and / or top recovery structure of the solar cell And the additional cell is placed on the folded conductive element already applied to the terminal solar cell, and the conductive surface of the conductive substrate of the additional solar cell is folded. Contacting the element and the former terminal cell becomes an intermediate cell to form a string having a first cell and at least one intermediate cell and terminal cell; (j) optionally repeating step (i) (K) placing a second terminal bar so that the terminal bar is in contact with the top surface of the last terminal solar cell on a bus line that is part of the recovery structure edge of the terminal solar cell; l) Connecting the second end bar to the final cell using a conductive component.
The above-referenced embodiments and examples should be regarded as non-limiting, as others fall within the scope of the invention as shown and described herein.
FIG. 1 is a top perspective view of one exemplary embodiment of the present invention.
1A is a plan view of the lower cell of FIG. 1 including an exemplary bus line.
FIG. 2 is an exploded view of the example shown in FIG.
FIG. 3 is a more detailed side view of the example shown in FIG.
FIG. 5 is a more detailed side view of FIG. 4 illustrating exemplary layers.
FIG. 6 is a top perspective view of a PV device including a 4-cell photovoltaic cell assembly.
7A-7D are side views of exemplary bent conductive elements.
7E-7F are top perspective views of two conductive elements, one longer than width and one longer than length.
8A to 8B are side views showing examples of cells on different planes.
FIG. 9 is a top perspective view of an illustrative example of the present invention including terminal bars and alternating traces.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS The present invention relates to an improved photovoltaic cell assembly 10 as illustrated in FIGS. 1-5, which provides electrical energy when subjected to solar radiation (eg, sunlight). It can generally be described as several parts or parts assemblies that function as such. In one example, the improved photovoltaic cell assembly 10 can be incorporated into a larger photovoltaic device, such as a solar single 100 as shown in FIG.
Of particular interest and main focus of the present disclosure is an improvement comprising at least a plurality of photovoltaic cells 20 and conductive elements 60 and, optionally, first and second encapsulation layers 40, 50. Photovoltaic cell assembly 10. The conductive element 60 is folded or bent at least one to connect the conductive substrate 22 of one cell to the upper conductive feature 26 and / or 28 of the adjacent cell. In a preferred embodiment, the conductive element 60 is folded at least once along its longest dimension (eg, its length Lc). However, in certain embodiments, for example, if the fold is more than one time or is an accordion-type fold, the fold may be made along different dimensions (eg, as illustrated in FIGS. 7A-F). In general, a plurality of photovoltaic cells can be composed of a plurality of adjacent layers. These layers can be further defined as including at least: the conductive substrate layer 22, the photoactive layer 24, and the top electrical recovery structure 28 (eg, from bottom to top). It is also preferred that a non-conductive layer portion 30 is included, for example as shown in FIG. 5, at least along a portion of the peripheral edge of the cell. Further, the assembly 10 may be configured such that when the conductive element 60 is folded at least one time, the first surface of the conductive element 60 is adjacent to the upper photovoltaic structure 28 of the first photovoltaic cell and the adjacent photovoltaic. It is configured to be in contact with both of the opposite conductive substrate layers 22 of the cell.
The relationship between parts and part assemblies (eg, at least one geometrical and material property) is believed to be surprisingly important in solving one or more of the problems discussed in the background section above. Each of the parts and part assemblies and their relationships are disclosed in more detail and clearly in the following paragraphs.
Conductive base material layer 22
The conductive substrate layer 22 functions similarly to the upper conductive layer 24 in that it conducts electrical energy generated by the photoactive portion. The conductive substrate layer 22 may be rigid or flexible, but is desirably flexible, and in particular, the resulting photovoltaic device may be used in combination with a non-planar surface. It is flexible in the embodiment. The conductive substrate layer can be a single integral layer or can be formed from one or more layers, the layer being a metal, an alloy, an intermetallic composition, and / or combinations thereof Formed from a wide range of materials. In applications where a flexible substrate layer is desired, layer 22 is typically a metal foil. Examples include metal foils containing Cu, Al, Ti, Mo or stainless steel. Typically, this conductive substrate layer is formed from stainless steel and the photoactive portion 24 is formed on the substrate layer, although other configurations are contemplated and are consistent with the cell interconnect concept presented herein. Does not necessarily have an effect. In the illustrated embodiment, stainless steel is preferred.
Conductive substrate layer 22 is coated on one or both sides with a wide range of conductive materials including one or more of Cu, Mo, Ag, Al, Cr, Ni, Ti, Ta, Nb, W and / or combinations thereof. May be. A conductive composition comprising Mo may be used in the illustrated embodiment. A back contact layer 122 formed on the conductive substrate layer proximate to the photoactive layer assists in isolating the photoactive layer 24 from the support, and the support components migrate to the photoactive layer. Minimize this. For example, the back contact layer 22 can assist in blocking the migration of the Fe and Ni components of the stainless steel support to the photoactive layer 24. The conductive metal layer formed on one or both sides of the conductive substrate layer 22 is also protected from the S or Se, if used, during the formation of the photoactive region 24, such as the photoactive layer 24. The substrate layer can be protected against degradation that can occur during the formation of.
Photoactive portion 24
Photoactive layer or portion 24 of photovoltaic cell 20 comprises a material that converts light energy into electrical energy. Any material known to provide that function can be used, including amorphous silicon, CdTe, GaAs, dye-sensitized solar cell (so-called Gatchel cell), organic / polymer solar cell, or photoelectric. Any other material that converts sunlight into electricity depending on the effect may be mentioned. However, the photoactive cell is preferably an IB-IIIA-chalcogenide based cell, such as IB-IIIA-selenide, IB-IIIA-sulfide or IB-IIIA-selenide sulfide (ie, the absorbing layer is IB-IIIA- A chalcogenide, preferably a copper chalcogenide). More specific examples include copper indium selenide, copper indium gallium selenide, copper gallium selenide, copper indium sulfide, copper indium gallium sulfide, copper gallium selenide, copper indium sulfide selenide, copper gallium sulfide selenide and Copper indium gallium sulfide selenide, all of which are referred to herein as CIGS. It also formula CuIn (1-x) Ga x Se (2-y) S y ( where, x is 0 to 1, y is 0-2) can be represented by. Copper indium selenide and copper indium gallium selenide are preferred. Portion 24 can include a plurality of layers in addition to the absorbing layer, such as one or more emitter (buffer) layers, conductive layers known in the art to be useful in, for example, CIGS-based cells. (For example, a transparent conductive layer) and the like are considered here. These cells can be flexible or rigid and can vary in shape and size, but are generally fragile and subject to environmental degradation. In a preferred embodiment, the photovoltaic cell 20 is a cell that can be bent without substantial cracking and / or significant functional loss. Exemplary photovoltaic cells are taught and described in a number of US patents and publications, including US Pat. Incorporated herein by reference.
In the illustrated embodiment, the photoactive layer 24 may further be composed of any number of layers, such as a back contact layer 122 (usually Mo), an absorber layer 124 (usually CuInGaSe (S)), The buffer layer 126 (usually CdS), the window layer 128 (usually ZnO), and the transparent conductive layer 130 (usually indium tin oxide (ITO) or aluminum zinc oxide (AZO)). The cell 20 having this configuration is generally considered to be known as a “CIGS solar cell”. See FIGS. 5A-A.
It is contemplated that the photovoltaic cell 20 can be formed from other known solar cell technologies. Examples of these include amorphous silicon or cadmium telluride solar cell devices. Furthermore, the components in the photovoltaic cell 20 as described above can be replaced with alternative materials. For example, the buffer layer 126 includes a resistive transparent oxide such as Zn, Cd, In, Sn, which can be a sulfide, selenide, or oxide of Cd, Zn, In, Sn, and combinations thereof. An optional window layer may be included between the buffer region 126 and the transparent conductive layer 130. Preferably, the window layer is intrinsic zinc oxide.
The transparent conductive layer 130 can be disposed as an upper layer of the photoactive layer 24. A wide variety of transparent conductive oxides or combinations thereof can be incorporated into the transparent conductive layer. In an exemplary embodiment, the transparent conductive layer 130 is a transparent conductive oxide (TCO), with representative examples being fluorine doped tin oxide, tin oxide, indium oxide, indium tin oxide (ITO), aluminum Examples thereof include doped zinc oxide (AZO), zinc oxide, and combinations thereof. In one exemplary embodiment, the transparent conductive layer is indium tin oxide. The transparent conductive layer can be conveniently formed by sputtering or other suitable deposition technique.
It is believed that in certain photovoltaic cells 20, a clear transparent conductive layer 130 may not be required. For example, a GaAs cell typically does not require a transparent conductor because the GaAs layer can be sufficiently conductive. For purposes of the present invention, it is believed that the layer immediately below the collection structure 28 should be the top surface 26 of the cell 20.
These permutations are known to those skilled in the art and do not affect the cell interconnect concept presented herein.
Upper recovery structure 28
The upper recovery structure 28 functions to collect the electrical energy generated by the photoactive portion 22 and concentrate it in the conductive path. The recovery structure 28 can be deposited on the photoactive layer 24 (eg, the top surface 26) to reduce the effective sheet resistance of the cell's top layer (eg, the TCO layer 130). The retrieval structure 28 may typically include an optically opaque material and may be applied as a series of substantially parallel conductor traces 27 (eg, other configurations as shown in FIG. 9). And does not necessarily affect the concept of cell interconnection shown here), the spacing between traces allows the grid to occupy a relatively small area on the surface. One exemplary additional recovery structure 28 configuration is shown in FIG. 1A, where the structure 28 includes a bus line 29 that extends generally perpendicular to the other conductive traces 27 shown. In one preferred embodiment, the bus line 29 can be located near the peripheral edge of the cell 20 at the trailing edge 34 (eg, within about 10.0 mm). More preferably, it is located immediately adjacent to the non-conductive layer portion 30.
For example, in certain embodiments, the collection structure can have no more than about 5%, even no more than about 2%, or even no more than about 1% of the total surface area involved in light capture for allowing the photoactive material to be exposed to incident light. Occupies the following. The recovery structure 28 preferably includes a conductive metal such as, for example, Ag, Al, Cu, Cr, Ni, Ti, Ta, and / or combinations thereof. In one exemplary embodiment, the grid has a two-layer structure that includes nickel and silver. The recovery structure can be formed by a variety of techniques including metallization through a shadow mask using physical vapor deposition techniques such as screen printing, ink jet printing, electroplating and vapor deposition or sputtering.
Non-conductive layer portion 30
Non-conductive layer portion 30 functions as an insulator or dielectric to electrically isolate conductive element 60 from the edge of the solar cell. The presence of the non-conductive layer portion is believed to reduce the occurrence of electrical shorts at the edges of the solar cell that can be caused by contact with the conductive element 60. Insulators can be applied to the solar cell or conductive element 60 at one or both of the leading or trailing edges 32, 34 of each individual solar cell in the solar cell assembly. The insulator can be formed as a well-defined area along the edge of the device where the conductive element crosses the edge of the solar cell, or the entire length or substantial length of the edge of the cell 20. It can be applied as a single layer along the portion, thereby including a distinct layer between the cell and the conductive element 60. The insulator may be a type of synthetic polymer that is deposited as a liquid and that cures or crosslinks to form a solid material. Curing or crosslinking can be accomplished, for example, through the application of heat or ultraviolet (UV) energy. For UV curable compositions, it is desirable that the curing process can be performed in a short period of time, for example, less than 10 seconds, more specifically less than about 3 seconds. Many photocurable polymers require an energy of at least 300 mJ / cm 2 and more usually require about 500-1200 mJ / cm 2 of UV energy in the range of 200-400 nm. Illustrative embodiments include acrylate and epoxy resin based compositions. Alternatively, the non-conductive layer portion 30 can be applied as a solid material, such as in the form of a tape. Suitable alternatives include fluorocarbon polymers such as ethylene tetrafluoroethylene (ETFE), curable insulating polymers that can be coated on solar cells or interconnect materials, inorganic dielectric materials that can be applied to solar cells or interconnect materials. Can be mentioned. Moreover, it is thought that the material used as encapsulation layers 40 and 50, such as a polyethylene film, can be replaced. In a preferred embodiment, the non-conductive layer portion 30 is a liquid dielectric epoxy composition that is cured by ultraviolet radiation. In one exemplary embodiment, portion 30 is a polyimide tape. Such a commercially available tape is the Kapton® tape provided by Dupont®. In general, the non-conductive layer portion 30 can exhibit a dielectric constant greater than about 2, and can even be greater than about 4. Exemplary electrical insulation materials have a dielectric constant greater than about 4.8 and a volume resistivity greater than about 3 × 10 14 Ω-cm.
Conductive element 60
The conductive element 60 functions as an electrical bridge between the photovoltaic cells 20. It is contemplated in the present invention that an electrical bridge is formed between the top of one cell (eg, the recovery structure 28 and / or top surface 26) and the conductive substrate layer 22 of the adjacent cell. The element should have a relatively low electrical resistance (preferably less than 1.0 Ω / m, more preferably less than about 0.20 Ω / m, most preferably less than 0.05 Ω / m). It can be in the form of a conductive foil or conductive adhesive tape, or any similar structure that exhibits the bridge function described above. Exemplary conductive element metal foils containing Cu or Al can be Ag, Sn or Ni plated. According to one embodiment, the adhesive can be applied on the metal foil, thereby providing a means of attaching the foil to the top and bottom surfaces of the solar cell. It is contemplated that the metal foil tape may include an adhesive that can be conductive or non-conductive. An example of a commercially available metal foil tape is the EMI shield tape provided by 3M®. In the illustrated embodiment, the metal foil tape includes a non-conductive acrylic adhesive.
In a preferred embodiment, the conductive element 60 is applied along the region of the trailing edge 34 of the first photovoltaic cell that is in contact with the photovoltaic cell recovery structure 28 and the top surface 26 in the region of the leading edge 32. The As shown in FIG. 2, it is considered that the length (Lc) of the conductive element 60 crossing the trailing edge 34 of each cell can be changed from 50% of the length of the cell to the entire length. . The length of the conductive element 60 is typically 50-100% of the length of the trailing edge, preferably 75% -100% of the length of the trailing edge 34, and even more preferably the length of the trailing edge 34. 85% to 95% of the thickness. Preferably, the conductive element is in contact with at least a portion of the bus line 29 of the retrieval structure 28. In the illustrated embodiment, bus line 29 and conductive element 60 are approximately the same length.
The width (Wc) of the conductive element 60 to meet the resistivity requirement (eg, less than about 1.0Ω, more preferably less than about 0.20Ω, and even more preferably less than about 0.05Ω). It is believed that the size should provide sufficient contact between element 60 and conductive substrate layer 22 and recovery structure 28 and top surface 26. In one preferred embodiment, the overlap “C A ” for at least the conductive substrate layer 22 is in the range of about 2.0 mm to 50.0 mm, more preferably about 5.0 mm to 50.0 mm, most preferably Preferably, it is about 10.0 mm to 25.0 mm. In another preferred embodiment, the overlap “C A ” to at least the recovery structure 28 and the top surface 26 is in the range of about 2.0 mm to 20.0 mm, more preferably about 2.0 mm to 15.0 mm, most preferably Preferably, it is about 2.0 mm to 10.0 mm. In yet another preferred embodiment, the overlap “C A ” may overlap at least 10% of the area of the bus line 29, more preferably about at least 10% of the recovery structure 28 where the bus line 29 is present It may overlap by 50% and most preferably about 100%.
It is contemplated that the outer surface (first surface) 66 of the conductive element includes an adhesive that can bond the conductive element 60 to the cell 20, but instead of or in addition to the adhesive of the element 60. In addition, there can be an adhesive on the cell. Where the conductive element is a metal foil, a conductive adhesive element such as conductive epoxy or solder can be applied to adhere the metal foil to the top and bottom surfaces of the solar cell. In a preferred embodiment, the conductive adhesive includes at least an epoxy resin (usually a bisphenol-based epoxy resin), a curing agent, and conductive metal particles. The conductive metal particles are preferably silver or copper particles and constitute at least 30%, more preferably at least 50% of the conductive adhesive composition on a mass basis. If the conductive element is a conductive metal foil tape, the adhesive can be a conductive or non-conductive adhesive. In a metal foil tape with a conductive adhesive, the adhesive portion can include an organic (non-conductive) adhesive component and conductive particles. In an exemplary embodiment, the conductive adhesive can be an acrylic adhesive or a conductive epoxy. In metal foil tape with non-conductive adhesive, the metal foil is an embossed surface that allows direct electrical contact between the top and bottom surfaces of the solar cell and the metal foil portion, and the non-conductive adhesive is on the top surface of the solar cell. And a region in contact with the bottom surface. In a preferred embodiment, at least 10% of the surface area of the embossed surface of the metal foil is in direct electrical contact with the top and bottom of the solar cell in the region where the metal foil is in contact with the solar cell. More preferably, at least 40% of the surface area is in direct electrical contact with the surface of the solar cell. In a preferred embodiment, the conductive element 60 is a tin plated copper foil embossed with a pressure sensitive acrylic adhesive.
The thickness of the conductive element 60 should be sufficient to meet the resistivity requirement and still be thin enough so that the material can be folded. In a preferred embodiment, the metal foil tape is about 0.01 mm to about 0.15 mm thick, more preferably 0.025 mm to about 0.05 mm thick.
It is also contemplated that the conductive element 60 may be multiple pieces (two or more) as long as the above results are still achieved. A configuration example of folding (one or more times) in the element 60 is shown in FIGS. These are for illustrative purposes and should not be considered as limiting all possible bending configurations.
It is also conceivable that, for example, as shown in FIGS. 8A and 8B, the conductive element 60 does not fold completely over itself and maintains a certain angle α. In FIG. 8A, the cells 20 are arranged on different planes, and in FIG. 8B, the cells are on a curved surface. Although it is believed that the angle α can be up to 360 °, it is in the range of about 0 ° to 90 °, more preferably about 0 ° to 45 °, and most preferably about 0 ° to 15 °. preferable.
In another aspect of the invention, it is contemplated that the assembly 10 can also include an additional conductive element 60, as shown in FIG. 9, which is bent or bent. It does not have to be and functions to connect a series of cells 20 to one or more terminal bars 70. Terminal bar 70 functions as a conductor of electrical energy from assembly 20. It is believed that a connection can be made and / or maintained between the element 60 and the terminal bar 70 via adhesive (conductive or non-conductive), welding, soldering or any other joining technique possible. It is done.
First encapsulation layer 40
It is contemplated that the photovoltaic cell assembly can further include an optional first encapsulation layer 40 that can perform several functions. For example, layer 40 can serve as a bonding mechanism and helps hold together adjacent layers (eg, cell 20, conductive element 60 and / or second encapsulation layer 50). Also, the desired amount and type of light energy should be transmitted to reach the photovoltaic cell 20 (eg, the photoactive portion 24). The first encapsulating layer 40 may also function to compensate for irregularities in the shape of adjacent layers, or change those layers (eg, change in thickness). It can also serve to allow for deflection and motion between layers due to environmental factors (eg, temperature changes, humidity, etc.) and physical motion and bending. In a preferred embodiment, the first encapsulating layer 40 can consist essentially of an adhesive film or mesh, but is preferably a thermoplastic material such as EVA (ethylene vinyl acetate), a thermoplastic polyolefin or similar material. It is. It is considered that the layer 40 may be composed of a single layer or may be composed of a plurality of layers (first, second, third, fourth, fifth layers, etc.). The preferred thickness of this layer 40 can range from about 0.1 mm to 1.0 mm, more preferably from about 0.2 mm to 0.8 mm, and most preferably from about 0.25 mm to 0.5 mm.
It is believed that “good” adhesion by adsorption of the encapsulation layer to all contacting surfaces is important to maintain the integrity of the encapsulation assembly. As a general guide, the adhesion measured for adsorption to glass should be greater than about 20 N / 15 mm, more preferably greater than about 30 N / 15 mm, and even more preferably greater than about 40 N / 15 mm. Adhesive strength can be determined using a standard 180 degree tensile test as described in ASTM D903-98.
Second encapsulation layer 50
In another example of the encapsulation layer, the optional second encapsulation layer 50 is generally disposed in connection below the photovoltaic cell 20, but in some cases the first capsule It can be in direct contact with the activated layer 40. The second encapsulating layer 50 can perform the same function as the first encapsulating layer, but is considered not necessarily to transmit electromagnetic radiation or light energy.
Method The method of assembling the photovoltaic cell 20 into the assembly 10 is also considered inventive. The assembly method used to provide all of the above parts and to manufacture the assembly 10 is believed to include: Solar cells 20 are provided in a batch or stack and can be provided to an unloading station manually or automatically. The solar cell 20 may be provided in the form of a continuous roll including a plurality of solar cells, and may be separated from the roll immediately before assembly in a process called unitization. The unitized solar cell can be provided in containers (bins) classified according to photovoltaic performance. The cells 20 provided in the bin can be manually loaded by the operator manually. Or, more preferably, an industrial robot can be used to pick individual cells from the bin and place them in the inspection area. The vision system can then be used to guide the industrial robot to pick up the solar cell 20 with high precision and place it on a flat top vacuum conveyor in the proper orientation. In one embodiment, the vision system includes a camera that takes an image of the top surface of the cell, which communicates information about the exact orientation of the cell to the robot so that the robot picks up the cell and accurately positions it. Place on the conveyor in the specified orientation.
The first cell in the solar cell string is arranged in the vicinity of the front edge 32 of the solar cell 20 so that the bottom surface of the conductive substrate 22 is in contact with the first terminal bar. The first terminal bar is connected to the first solar cell using a conductive adhesive component such as conductive epoxy or solder. Alternatively, the first solar cell may be connected to the first terminal bar via a conductive element 60 that may be provided in the following manner for solar cell interconnection. For cell interconnection, the conductive elements are folded at least once with respect to the axis. It is contemplated that the conductive element can be provided in a continuous form, such as on a roll, and that the folding operation can be performed using a series of mechanical guides and rollers that fold the conductive element. The folded conductive element can then be cut to the appropriate length using a mechanical cutter such as nip scissors. The folded conductive element is preferably provided as a metal foil tape. However, if the conductive element 60 is provided as a metal foil, a conductive adhesive, such as a conductive epoxy, may be applied to the top surface of the solar cell 20 on the bus line on the retrieval structure 28 prior to placing the conductive element 60. Must be applied to.
The folded conductive element is then applied to the top of the first solar cell 20 near the trailing edge 34 and positioned accurately so that the conductive element is part of the retrieval structure 28 on the top surface of the solar cell. Or contact on a bus line that is “grid” on the solar cell surface and parallel to the trailing edge 34 of the cell. Thereafter, the vacuum conveyor is operated at an appropriate length, and the second solar cell is accurately placed on the vacuum conveyor, so that the bottom surface of the conductive substrate 22 of the second solar cell is already placed on the first solar cell. Contact the applied folded conductive element 60. The leading edge 32 of the second solar cell is considered to overlap the trailing edge 34 of the first solar cell. The process of applying conductive elements and cells is repeated until the desired string length is achieved. After placing the last cell in the string, a second terminal bar is applied to the top surface of the last cell so that the terminal bar contacts the bus line of the collection structure 28 near the trailing edge 34 of the last cell. be able to. The first terminal bar is secured to the first solar cell using a conductive adhesive component such as conductive epoxy or solder. In the case of a conductive epoxy, the conductive epoxy should be applied to the bus line of the last cell before providing the second terminal bar. Alternatively, the first solar cell can be connected to the first terminal bar via the conductive element 60, which conductive element can be provided in the manner described above for solar cell interconnection. .
Following completion of the interconnected assembly with terminal bars attached at opposite ends, a solar cell string may be placed between the first encapsulation layer 40 and the second encapsulation layer 50. it can. The product including the first encapsulation layer 40, solar cell 20, the plurality of conductive elements 60, the terminal bar and the second encapsulation layer 50 is laminated, for example in a vacuum laminator, thus completing the assembly. .
Unless otherwise noted, the dimensions and geometry of the various structures described herein are not intended to limit the invention, and other dimensions or geometries are possible. Multiple structural parts can be provided by a single integrated structure. Alternatively, a single integrated structure can be divided into separate parts. Moreover, while features of the invention may be described in the context of only one illustrated embodiment, such features may be considered one of the other embodiments for any given application. It may be combined with other features described above. It will also be appreciated from the above that the manufacture and operation of the unique structure herein constitutes a method according to the present invention.
A preferred embodiment of the present invention has been disclosed. However, one of ordinary skill in the art appreciates that certain modifications will be within the scope of the teachings of the invention. Therefore, the following claims should be studied to determine the true scope and content of this invention.
Any numerical value quoted in the above application is from a lower value to a higher value in 1 unit increments if there is at least a 2 unit gap between any lower value and any higher value. Includes all numbers. If the amount of components or the value of process variables such as temperature, pressure and time is described as, for example, 1 to 90, preferably 20 to 80, more preferably 30 to 70, 15 to 85, Values such as 22-68, 43-51, 30-32, etc. are intended to be explicitly listed herein. For values that are less than 1, one unit is considered to be 0.0001, 0.001, 0.01, or 0.1 as appropriate. These are merely examples of what is specifically intended and all possible combinations of numerical values between the listed lower and upper limits should be considered as clearly described herein as well.
Unless otherwise noted, all ranges include both numbers and all numerical values between the ends. Use of “about” or “approximately” in relation to a range applies to both ends of the range. Thus, “about 20-30” covers “about 20 to about 30” including at least the specified ends.
The disclosures of all articles and references, including patent applications and publications, are incorporated herein by reference for all purposes.
The term “consisting essentially of” describing a combination refers to the specified element, component, part or process, and others that do not substantially affect the basic and novel characteristics of the combination. Element, component, part or process.
The use of the term “comprising” or “including” to describe a combination of elements, components, parts or steps also contemplates embodiments that consist essentially of the elements, components, parts or steps.
Multiple elements, components, parts or steps may be provided by a single integrated element, component, part or process. Alternatively, a single integrated element, component, part or process may be divided into separate multiple elements, components, parts or processes. “A” or “one” to describe an element, component, part or process is not intended to exclude an additional element, component, part or process. All descriptions relating to elements or metals belonging to a particular group can be found in CRC Press Inc. Refer to the periodic table of elements published and copyrighted by. The group description is made for the group reflected in the periodic table of this element using the IUPAC system for genus numbering.
List of element numbers
Photovoltaic cell assembly 10
Photovoltaic cell 20
Photoactive layer 24
Top surface 26
Conductive trace 27
Recovery structure 28
Bus line 29
The outer surface 66 of the conductive element 60
Terminal bar 70
Conductive element length Lc
Conductive element width Wc
Overlap C A
Back contact layer 122
CuInGaSe (S) absorption layer 124
Buffer layer 126
Window layer 128
Transparent conductive layer 130
A photoactive portion having a top surface;
An upper recovery structure on the upper surface; and
An opposite conductive substrate layer on the opposite side of the photoactive portion from the top surface;
A plurality of photovoltaic cells, including
A first conductive element having a first surface and bent at least once;
The first surface is in contact with the upper recovery structure of the first photovoltaic cell and / or the upper surface and the opposite conductive substrate layer of the adjacent second photovoltaic cell; At least a portion of the first surface is maintained in contact with the cell by an adhesive;
Photovoltaic cell assembly.
The plurality of photovoltaic cells each further include a leading edge and a trailing edge, the conductive element is in contact with the first photovoltaic cell at the trailing edge, and the conductive element is adjacent The second photovoltaic cell is in contact with the opposite conductive substrate layer at the leading edge, and the leading edge of the adjacent second photovoltaic cell is the first photovoltaic cell. The photovoltaic cell assembly of claim 1, wherein the photovoltaic cell assembly overlaps the trailing edge.
The photovoltaic cell assembly of claim 1 or 2, wherein the upper recovery structure includes a series of spaced conductive traces of material having a lower sheet resistance than the top surface.
The photovoltaic cell assembly of claim 3, wherein the upper recovery structure includes at least one bus line.
The photovoltaic cell assembly according to claim 1, wherein at least a portion of the peripheral portion of the cell includes a non-conductive layer portion.
6. The photovoltaic cell assembly of claim 5, wherein the non-conductive layer portion comprises either a liquid dielectric or non-conductive tape that is cured by UV radiation.
The photovoltaic cell assembly according to claim 1, wherein the conductive element is a conductive adhesive tape.
The conductive element is a foil tape having an embossed surface, and at least 10% of the surface area of the embossed surface is in direct contact with the cell. Photovoltaic cell assembly.
The photovoltaic cell assembly according to any one of claims 1 to 8, wherein the adhesive is a conductive adhesive.
9. A photovoltaic cell assembly according to any one of claims 1 to 8, wherein the adhesive is a non-conductive adhesive.
11. A photovoltaic assembly according to any one of the preceding claims, wherein at least one bend forms an angle [alpha] of 0-90 [deg.].
12. A photovoltaic assembly according to any one of the preceding claims, wherein the overlap of the conductive elements on the conductive substrate layer is at least 2.0 mm in length.
The photovoltaic assembly according to any one of the preceding claims, wherein the overlap of the conductive elements overlaps at least about 10% of the area of the bus line.
14. A photovoltaic assembly according to any preceding claim, wherein the conductive element comprises a plurality of folds.
(A) providing at least two solar cells comprising a photoactive portion having a top surface, a top recovery structure and a bottom conductive substrate, the solar cell including a leading edge and a trailing edge;
(B) providing at least one conductive element each having a first surface;
(C) providing at least one terminal bar;
(D) disposing the first cell such that the bottom surface of the conductive substrate is in contact with the first terminal bar in the vicinity of the front edge of the plurality of first solar cells;
(E) connecting a first terminal bar to the first cell using a conductive component;
(F) folding the first conductive element about the axis at least once;
(G) A folded conductive element is applied to the top of the first cell near the trailing edge and positioned precisely so that the conductive element contacts the top surface and / or the top recovery structure of the solar cell. To
(H) Conductivity in which a second cell is placed on the folded conductive element already applied to the first solar cell, whereby the bottom surface of the conductive substrate of the second solar cell is folded. Contacting the element, thus forming a string having a first cell and a terminal cell;
(I) Optionally, the additional conductive element is folded at least once about the axis, and the folded additional conductive element is applied to the top of the end cell near the trailing edge and positioned accurately to And an additional cell is placed on the folded conductive element already applied to the terminal solar cell, thereby allowing the additional solar cell to contact the upper and / or upper recovery structure of the solar cell. A first cell and at least one intermediate cell and terminal cell such that the bottom surface of the conductive substrate contacts the folded conductive element, and thus the previous terminal cell becomes an intermediate cell. Forming a string having
(J) optionally repeating step (i);
(K) Arranging the second terminal bar so that the second terminal bar contacts the upper surface of the last terminal solar cell on the bus line that is a part of the recovery structure edge of the terminal solar cell;
(L) using a conductive component to connect the second terminal bar to the last cell;
A method for producing a photovoltaic assembly, comprising the steps of:
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Associate, Bachelor, or Master's in Accounting » Hodges University
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What Can I Do With A Degree In Accounting From Hodges University?
With an Accounting Degree from Hodges University, you will gain the skills you need to work in a numbers-filled world. The training you receive may ready you for employment in positions in general accounting, bookkeeping, tax preparation, auditing, business consulting, and other accounting-related positions in a public or private organization, or inspire you to open your own accounting firm. You’ll also learn Quickbooks™ and may have access to the renowned Becker Review CPA preparation materials. You will also be prepared to apply to the Master of Accountancy CPA-prep program.
The Hodges’ accounting program will help you understand the practice and theory of accounting principles, as well as general business principles, management, financial analysis and strategy, and more. Our monthly course start dates, online accounting degrees, and accelerated programs make it easy to complete your education, at your pace and on your schedule – whether you attend full-time or part-time.
The Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting offers you a gateway to more advanced education within the accounting profession. Our degree programs may even give you the basis needed to sit for the Enrolled Agent (EA), Certified Management Accountant (CMA), Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), and / or Certified Internal Auditor (CIA) exams.
Our degree programs flex around your work and family schedules, are accelerated, and offer workforce training, preparing you to work with global businesses. Isn’t it about time you started living the life you deserve, on your terms?
Contact our Admissions Coordinators to learn more about admissions into one of our Accounting programs today!
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Excellent Career Growth Outlook according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics for Accountants and Auditors: 6%.
Proven program readies you to sit for EA, CIA, CMA, CFE licensure exams.
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“Hodges was my first choice. The first step is the hardest, but I sent that email and they responded so fast,” she said. “Erlis (Abazi, Director of Recruitment) was so nice and talked with me about what I wanted to do. I signed up that day for the accounting program. Everyone at Hodges is so helpful. The professors are right there and they give you their number so you can contact them.”
Six months following her life-changing visit to Hodges, Diana earned a promotion from receptionist to accounting clerk at Germain BMW. Her goal is to graduate in 2021 with a bachelor’s degree in accounting and business. From there, she’s thinking about getting her master’s degree in accounting, becoming a CPA, and starting her own business.
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iLead because Leaders Lead
Orators speak, Leaders Communicate.
What made 50 cent’s arrest in St Kitts go viral?
Patrice Renee Harris / June 28, 2016
I don’t know what 50 heard about St Kitts but definitely this country won’t be a mother f*** PIMP for his publicity. Well at least that’s what they thought.
St Kitts and Nevis made global headlines for arresting American rapper 50 Cent after his performance at the 20th Anniversary of the St Kitts Music Festival. CNN carried a story about 50 Cent’s arrest and perhaps for the first time in the country’s history, St Kitts and Nevis was the number one trending topic on Facebook up to 24 hours after the event.
As expected, the decision to arrest 50 Cent met opposing views from persons on different sides of the moral compass. The St Kitts Music Festival Committee came under heat for booking the rapper whose music is just about 75% expletives. 50 Cent too was chastised for not obliging to the agreement made with the committee not to use curse words.
Before the island realized, the criticisms were not only coming from the less than 40,000 people inhabiting the island, the world too chimed in. A recent google search shows that about 200 articles spoke of the arrest.
Media organizations including BBC World News, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, TMZ, Mashable, The Shade Room, The Wendy Williams Show, Billboards Top Music Countdown and CNN covered 50 cent’s arrest. On Mashable alone, the story got 3.5 thousand shares. Simply put, publicity wasn’t an issue for both the rapper and the island, whose arrest went viral.
What’s Viral?
When we think of an item going viral we really mean how quickly it is shared on the internet between users.
According to the experts at BuzzFeed in order to make a story go viral on the web a few things must happen.
1. The story should never include the word viral. An item never really intentionally goes viral, it sort of just happens.
2. Users who share the item must be connected to it in some way, that is, it must share their beliefs in some way.
3. The item too must evoke strong emotional response to the issue.
4. The ‘virality’ of an item depends on how reporters write the story. Most writers are now taking into consideration search engine optimization. Simply put, people are writing so that their stories appear in the top pages of a google search. The popularity of the source by search engines such as google, the amount of persons on social media that share the item, as well as the number of times the story is referenced by a top source contribute to why some items become viral and others don’t.
What exactly made this story go viral?
1. 50 Cent behaved inappropriately at a concert days before performing in SKN.
50’s foul mouth is nothing new in the world of entertainment. In fact, it’s like a game, let’s see where 50 curses next! Tag St Kitts was it.
50 Cent Refuses to Leave the Stage in Atlanta, Curses Out Entire Radio Station
“You mean to tell me I can’t have one minute? I’m not leaving.”www.bet.com
2. 50 Cent is no stranger to scandal and the media.
The madness never stops with 50 Cent, from sex tape scandals, to filing bankruptcy and perhaps the most senseless of them all, mocking an autistic teen.
SEE IT: Rapper 50 Cent makes fun of autistic teen in video
50 Cent has angered the internet after a video surfaced showing the rapper appearing to making fun of an autistic…www.nydailynews.com
3. In the Caribbean there is no first amendment, people cannot say as they like. It is illegal to curse in public.
According to SKNVibes, “The [Small Charges] Act clearly states that anyone who makes use of any abusive, blasphemous, indecent, insulting, profane or threatening language in any public place, any place to the annoyance of the public, or tending to a breach of the peace commits an offence. That person, if found guilty, would be liable to a fine… or sent to prison…”
4. How could this tiny island, that no one knows arrest a famous rapper?
We all know what the world is thinking. Who or what is a St. Kitts and how dare they arrest a famous American rapper, using their archaic British laws? Truth be told, in the 68 square mile country inhabited by a little over 40,000 people, no one is above the law.
Source: Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Kitts
5. Why did the SKMF Committee expect 50 Cent to perform PIMP without curse words?
I counted 24 instances of expletives in this song, without due diligence, it is sort of impossible to belt out this song without those curse words. Take a look for yourself.
P.I.M.P. Lyrics
Now shorty, she in the club, she dancing for dollars She got a thing for that Gucci, that Fendi, that Prada That BCBG…www.metrolyrics.com
6. DMX was arrested in SKN at the same concert for the same offense ten years ago
You’d think after over ten years someone would have learned his or her lesson. Both the SKMF and the artist. C’mon now, you really shouldn’t be surprised by this, most people aren’t, if DMX got arrested why couldn’t 50 Cent sit behind bars?
DMX Arrested For Using Obscenity Onstage
DMX was arrested Saturday morning on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts for using profanity onstage at a concert held…www.mtv.com
7. 50 Cent posted a meme on his Facebook page about his arrest and comically downplayed his actions.
Care to note that the amount of persons who liked the picture almost equals the population of St Kitts.
8. There is a pending lawsuit about 50 cent’s PIMP Song.
Why not try to get the song back on the charts and make some money before you potentially lose a lawsuit?
50 Cent & Dr. Dre Reportedly Sued Over ‘P.I.M.P.’
A producer for 50 Cent’s 2003 smash “P.I.M.P.” has reportedly issued a lawsuit against the Queens rapper as well as Dr…www.billboard.com
9. Almost everyone on social media in St Kitts Nevis followed by the rest of the world posted about 50 Cent’s arrest.
50 cent’s arrest tops Facebook’s Trending list
10. 50 cent filed for bankruptcy. (Though he’s not really broke)
Far from broke! Bankrupt 50 Cent has more than $64 million in assets
Bankruptcy documents obtained exclusively by Daily Mail Online reveal 50 Cent has more than $64 million in assets and…www.dailymail.co.uk
June 28, 2016 in Blog, Entertainment. Tags: 50 cent, 50 cent arrested in St Kitts, Media Analysis, Patrice Harris, St Kitts Music Festival
An Easter away from home
Kittitian Delivers Class Speech at UVI Commencement Ceremony
Kittitian youth delegate shares experience at 7th UNESCO World Youth Forum
← 15 principles why men love bitches
My beach smells like sunscreen… →
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Regulatory »
5 use RTI for 'blackmailing' builders, booked
Police have booked five men from Kharar for allegedly procuring information about anomalies in building projects in Punjab using Right to Information Act and then using the details to blackmail builders.TNN | November 26, 2015, 08:10 IST
MOHALI: Police have booked five men from Kharar for allegedly procuring information about anomalies in building projects in Punjab using Right to Information Act and then using the details to blackmail builders.
The five accused - Kharar residents Deepak, Rahul, Rinku, Lal Chand and Jasbir Singh - have been booked on a complaint by Ludhiana-based builder Amrtipal Singh. The complainant has alleged that the accused would procure information about housing projects in the state using the Right to Information Act. As soon as they got information about anomalies in the projects, the accused would call builders and threaten them with holding press conferences and revealing everything if they did not pay the blackmail amount. The accused had already taken Rs 14 lakh each from two Kharar-based builders, it has been alleged.
Singh alleged that the accused were using WhatsApp to deliver the blackmail messages. The complainant said the text messages read: "Your project is yet to be approved by the government. If you don't pay us, we will defame your company and you will face huge loses."
As per police sources it was found that the accused had filed over 25 more RTI applications regarding building projects in the region. The purpose of filing these RTI applications was to blackmail the builders.
No police official could be contacted for comment. All accused have been charged with sections 384 (extortion), 506 (criminal intimidation), 511 (Attempting to commit offences punishable with imprisonment for life or other implementations) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of IPC. All accused are absconding.
Tags : Regulatory, RTI, Punjab, Mohali, Kharar
Most Read in Regulatory
Orris Infra & 3C must start work or pay Rs 1 crore fine a day: H-RERA
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Even Elephant Pregnancies Seem Shorter — DF Rants About Rosemary’s Baby
By David Fox on May 18, 2014 • ( Leave a comment )
I hadn’t planned to write about Rosemary’s Baby the mini-series – wasn’t watching four hours of it enough of a time sink? – yet I find I can’t let the jaw-dropping idiocies of this project pass without comment.
Ira Levin’s novel is no masterpiece, but in its way it’s perfect – a thrilling page-turner that is gripping not only as contemporary horror story, but also a knowing portrait of young marrieds, swept up in the glamour of New York. (I read it in Junior High, and was completely transfixed.) Roman Polanski’s 1968 film version was even better –remarkably faithful to Levin’s book, but with an added sense of sophisticated ambiguity.
Here’s some of what happened when the geniuses at NBC got hold of RB:
Levin’s setting – a Manhattan apartment based on the Dakota – was a brilliant choice, both grand and creepy, and embodying the kind of life Rosemary and Guy lusted after. At the time of the writing, it was also a fact that the real Dakota housed a very mixed bag of tenants – alongside celebrities, there were still some rent-stabilized holdouts from another era.
Agnieszka Holland’s tone-deaf adaptation moves the action to Paris for no particular reason, and then treats the city as nothing more than a generic pretty location.
The original RB featured the unlikeliest imaginable coven members – seemingly sweet old characters who might have been bused in from a tiny Midwest town. It was macabre and funny, and as Minnie Castevet, Ruth Gordon gave one of the great comic performances on film. In the NBC version, the coven is made up of rich Eurotrash – exactly the sort of people you expect to have dark secrets. The stunningly attractive Carole Bouquet plays Minnie (now Margaux) Castevet. As an actress, Bouquet is… well, she’s stunningly attractive.
As written, Guy Woodhouse (Rosemary’s husband) is an aspiring actor. Levin, who was an accomplished Broadway playwright, knew that world thoroughly – it feel real, and (sorry, actors) the vanity we associate with the profession made Guy’s moral compromises seem plausible.
Here, Guy is some kind of novelist by night, literary scholar by day – already straining credibility (especially as embodied by the boyishly pretty but feckless Patrick J. Adams). Nothing is more ridiculous here than the inexperienced Guy’s job interview to be chair of literature at the Sorbonne. (Note to TV writers, who apparently have no experience with academia – literature and creative writing programs are usually separate entities. Both are chaired by people with experience, and the appointment process does not involve a standard job interview.)
More Guy silliness – my favorite moment has Guy being introduced to various party guests by his host, Jason Isaacs, who says, “this is what a real intellectual looks like.” (At this moment, the voice inside my head said, “No – Susan Sontag is what a real intellectual looks like. This is what a B-list TV actor looks like.”)
Zoe Saldana was likeable enough as Rosemary – as with the original, Mia Farrow, she’s probably more notable for charm than any deep talent. But Farrow’s cheerful naïvete was absolutely perfect – we need to believe Rosemary’s gullibility, or nothing in the premise works. Saldana’s Rosemary was deliberately feistier, but that makes it worse – how could a smart urbanite possibly not see through this?
Polanski’s RB had psychological complexity; Holland’s has gore by the bucketful.
Polanksi’s RB runs 136 minutes; Holland’s is interminable.
I could go on, but why? This is the takeaway – I watched Rosemary’s Baby, so you don’t have to. You’re welcome.
Categories: Criticism, Television
Tagged as: #rosemarysbaby
DF Reviews Of Mice and Men at the Longacre Theatre, New York
How to Succeed (Walnut Street Theatre) and the Great Frank Loesser (DF for the City Paper)
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Telehealth adaptation of the Lidcombe Program of early stuttering intervention
Five case studies
Linda Wilson, Mark Onslow, Michelle Lincoln
This article describes and reports data-based outcomes of a low-tech telehealth adaptation of the Lidcombe Program of Early Stuttering Intervention. Participants were 5 children with early stuttering, ranging in age from 3;5 (years;months) to 5;7, and their families. All children met the speech criteria for completion of Stage 1 of the Lidcombe Program. Data suggested that the treatment method may be viable and that favorable outcomes may be achievable. Mean posttreatment stuttering rates in everyday speaking situations were available 12 months posttreatment for 4 children. Two children scored a mean percent syllables stuttered of less than 1.0 at that time, and 2 children scored a mean of below 2.0. As occurs often in standard delivery of the Lidcombe Progam, 1 child relapsed after Stage 1, apparently because of parental noncompliance, but this relapse was managed successfully. Follow up data were unavailable for 1 child. For 4 of the 5 cases, the number of consultations required exceeded established benchmarks for standard Lidcombe Program delivery, suggesting that telephone-based telehealth may be a less efficient version of the treatment. The implications of these preliminary data are discussed.
https://doi.org/10.1044/1058-0360(2004/009)
Wilson, L., Onslow, M., & Lincoln, M. (2004). Telehealth adaptation of the Lidcombe Program of early stuttering intervention: Five case studies. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 13(1), 81-93. https://doi.org/10.1044/1058-0360(2004/009)
Wilson, Linda ; Onslow, Mark ; Lincoln, Michelle. / Telehealth adaptation of the Lidcombe Program of early stuttering intervention : Five case studies. In: American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. 2004 ; Vol. 13, No. 1. pp. 81-93.
@article{003becfe9baa41fea080edad36a9fe82,
title = "Telehealth adaptation of the Lidcombe Program of early stuttering intervention: Five case studies",
abstract = "This article describes and reports data-based outcomes of a low-tech telehealth adaptation of the Lidcombe Program of Early Stuttering Intervention. Participants were 5 children with early stuttering, ranging in age from 3;5 (years;months) to 5;7, and their families. All children met the speech criteria for completion of Stage 1 of the Lidcombe Program. Data suggested that the treatment method may be viable and that favorable outcomes may be achievable. Mean posttreatment stuttering rates in everyday speaking situations were available 12 months posttreatment for 4 children. Two children scored a mean percent syllables stuttered of less than 1.0 at that time, and 2 children scored a mean of below 2.0. As occurs often in standard delivery of the Lidcombe Progam, 1 child relapsed after Stage 1, apparently because of parental noncompliance, but this relapse was managed successfully. Follow up data were unavailable for 1 child. For 4 of the 5 cases, the number of consultations required exceeded established benchmarks for standard Lidcombe Program delivery, suggesting that telephone-based telehealth may be a less efficient version of the treatment. The implications of these preliminary data are discussed.",
keywords = "Children, Lidcombe Program, Stuttering, Telehealth, Treatment",
author = "Linda Wilson and Mark Onslow and Michelle Lincoln",
doi = "10.1044/1058-0360(2004/009)",
Wilson, L, Onslow, M & Lincoln, M 2004, 'Telehealth adaptation of the Lidcombe Program of early stuttering intervention: Five case studies', American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 81-93. https://doi.org/10.1044/1058-0360(2004/009)
Telehealth adaptation of the Lidcombe Program of early stuttering intervention : Five case studies. / Wilson, Linda; Onslow, Mark; Lincoln, Michelle.
In: American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, Vol. 13, No. 1, 01.01.2004, p. 81-93.
T1 - Telehealth adaptation of the Lidcombe Program of early stuttering intervention
T2 - Five case studies
AU - Wilson, Linda
AU - Onslow, Mark
AU - Lincoln, Michelle
N2 - This article describes and reports data-based outcomes of a low-tech telehealth adaptation of the Lidcombe Program of Early Stuttering Intervention. Participants were 5 children with early stuttering, ranging in age from 3;5 (years;months) to 5;7, and their families. All children met the speech criteria for completion of Stage 1 of the Lidcombe Program. Data suggested that the treatment method may be viable and that favorable outcomes may be achievable. Mean posttreatment stuttering rates in everyday speaking situations were available 12 months posttreatment for 4 children. Two children scored a mean percent syllables stuttered of less than 1.0 at that time, and 2 children scored a mean of below 2.0. As occurs often in standard delivery of the Lidcombe Progam, 1 child relapsed after Stage 1, apparently because of parental noncompliance, but this relapse was managed successfully. Follow up data were unavailable for 1 child. For 4 of the 5 cases, the number of consultations required exceeded established benchmarks for standard Lidcombe Program delivery, suggesting that telephone-based telehealth may be a less efficient version of the treatment. The implications of these preliminary data are discussed.
AB - This article describes and reports data-based outcomes of a low-tech telehealth adaptation of the Lidcombe Program of Early Stuttering Intervention. Participants were 5 children with early stuttering, ranging in age from 3;5 (years;months) to 5;7, and their families. All children met the speech criteria for completion of Stage 1 of the Lidcombe Program. Data suggested that the treatment method may be viable and that favorable outcomes may be achievable. Mean posttreatment stuttering rates in everyday speaking situations were available 12 months posttreatment for 4 children. Two children scored a mean percent syllables stuttered of less than 1.0 at that time, and 2 children scored a mean of below 2.0. As occurs often in standard delivery of the Lidcombe Progam, 1 child relapsed after Stage 1, apparently because of parental noncompliance, but this relapse was managed successfully. Follow up data were unavailable for 1 child. For 4 of the 5 cases, the number of consultations required exceeded established benchmarks for standard Lidcombe Program delivery, suggesting that telephone-based telehealth may be a less efficient version of the treatment. The implications of these preliminary data are discussed.
KW - Lidcombe Program
KW - Stuttering
KW - Telehealth
KW - Treatment
U2 - 10.1044/1058-0360(2004/009)
DO - 10.1044/1058-0360(2004/009)
Wilson L, Onslow M, Lincoln M. Telehealth adaptation of the Lidcombe Program of early stuttering intervention: Five case studies. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. 2004 Jan 1;13(1):81-93. https://doi.org/10.1044/1058-0360(2004/009)
10.1044/1058-0360(2004/009)
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Tag: length
Lovd Ones ‘Thicker Than Blood’ hits #1 on iTunes Reggae charts
Austin Wakeman
Lovd Ones, a reggae music collective hailing from Orlando, Florida, has garnered a significant amount of attention from fans and fellow artists alike. This may in part be because of one member, well know for his previous accolades which include, four full length solo albums, Grammy award nominations and Dove award victories. That artist goes by the name of Benjah.
Beleaf ‘Red Pills and Black Sugar’ Hits #5 iTunes Hip Hop/Rap
Beleaf's first full length solo album, 'Red Pills and Black Sugar', released today, has reached number 5 on the iTunes Top Hip Hop/Rap albums chart.
Alert312 – Jaime
Steven Solis
Jaime is the third single from ALERT312’s full length LP, “Of Vice & Virtue”. Boogalu reflects on the Christ-like- servant- leader posture of his father Jaime and how it has molded him as a father today. Buy ‘Of Vice & Virtue’ on iTunes or Amazon
Rhema Soul Announces Release Date For ‘Dope Beats & Good News Vol. 2’
UPDATE: The announced date is for a single from the album.
Good City Music trio Rhema Soul (Butta P, K-Nuff, and Juan Love) just announced that the second installment to their ‘Dope Beats & Good News’ series is dropping on June 24.
The Ambassador releasing new ‘Hor d’oeurves’ EP
UPDATE: The Ambassador has confirmed this rumor to be true via social media.
Xist artist and veteran Christian emcee, The Ambassador, is rumored to be releasing new music for his listeners to digest. After his own redemptive story was celebrated in the 2011 project 'Stop the Funeral,' fans have been curious what would ...
FEDEL ‘VIP’ Cover & Release Date Revealed
The album cover for FEDEL’s third studio full-length album ‘VIP’ which will release on May 21, 2013. Stay tuned for tracklisting. Download the first free single “I Will Be“
FEDEL set to release new album VIP album Spring 2013
Chad Horton
Fedel announces the release of his next full-length album, VIP, for May 2013. After releasing his free 'Members Only Mixtape' only a week ago, fans are buzzing about his new music and asking about his next full length album.
Alert Announce New Album & Name Change
One third of the Beautiful Eulogy crew (Odd Thomas) spilled the beans about the possibility of an upcoming release from the record label’s resident hip hop band, Alert. The 4 piece, Chicago based band will release their debut full length record 'Of Vice and Virtue' in late January 2013.
Canon ‘Loose Canon Vol. 1’ EP #1 iTunes Christian & Gospel
Reflection Music Group recording artist Canon just released his first major project 'Loose Canon Vol. 1' EP and it's making it's mark on the charts already. 'Loose Canon Vol. 1' is sitting at #1 on iTunes Christian & Gospel chart currently.
Lecrae shows “Forgiveness” with TobyMac
Logan Remy
Reach Records recording artist, Lecrae will be featured on the song “Forgiveness” from TobyMac’s upcoming album ‘Eye On It’. In recent interviews TobyMac has applauded Lecrae for his craft but most importantly his heart for God (watch here). Toby’s album releases a week before Lecrae’s sixth full length album ‘Gravity‘. ‘Eye On It’ is available for pre-order at iTunes or ...
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Academy of Dance Arts
2019/2020 Info (605)342-4426 info@rcdancearts.com
Alumni Gallery
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Instructor • Advanced Tap Specialist
Abbey began dancing at the Academy of Dance Arts when she was five years old— and she hasn’t stopped! In her thirteen years studying under Academy faculty, she danced ballet, pointe, tap, jazz, lyrical, and contemporary styles. She also had the opportunity to perform with Trey McIntyre Project, the Black Hills Dance Theater, and most recently Daniel O’Donnell. Abbey continued to study dance at the University of South Dakota, where she graduated in 2019 with a degree in Elementary Education. She has spent the past two years teaching dance to students in Vermillion, and now she is thrilled to return to the studio that has always felt like home!
Back to Faculty List
Academy of Dance Arts, Rapid City, SD
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The Academy of Dance Arts is a premier dance studio located in the Black Hills of South Dakota with studios in Rapid City and Sturgis, offering dance classes for all ages in the styles of classical ballet, modern, lyrical, tap, jazz, hip-hop, pilates and an extensive early childhood dance program.
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Photography:Russell Jensen & Joleen Zoller | Website by KBJ
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retsuko —
Petratishkovna ( retsuko) wrote,
Petratishkovna
retsuko
Mood: good
ST: TNG ReWatch, "The Battle" & "Hide & Q"
These two episodes weren't awful, but they weren't great, either. I think the writers were in a rut of trying lots of new things in an effort to see what stuck.
In "The Battle," a Ferengi captain lures Picard to the site of a long-ago battle just so he can exact revenge on Picard for killing his son in a skirmish years earlier by means of a complicated mindfuck-heavy plot device that nearly drives Picard crazy. Seriously, this just seems so over the top that the Ferengi went from being mildly annoying to vaudeville level villains in the space of just one episode (if the head villain had busted out an old school wax mustache, I would not have been surprised.) I was rather amused that one of the sub-plots of this episode is between Riker and the Number 1 of the Ferengi ship, and it involves Riker suspecting something is up, the Ferengi Number 1 suspecting that something is up, and ultimately mutiny on the Ferengi ship. This part was probably the most satisfying element of the plot line, and I liked that we saw Riker being calculating and sneaky, and taking charge on his own, rather than just following orders.
The rest of this episode, though, is a bit frustrating because the way that the plot is structured, there's very little for the other characters to do until the Ferengi's complicated scheme reaches its peak. Data figures out a way to defeat the Picard maneuver (this turns out to be comparatively easy); Wesley solves the whole thing because he's been in Engineering and "playing around with the long-range sensors", as you do (he also snarks at his mom and Troi, who are too wrapped up in the drama to notice, or something); and Troi has very little to do except say lines like, "I wish I could say [what's wrong with the Captain]" and "I don't know." She and Yar were wearing TONS of eyeliner and for some reason, it was really prominent in this episode.
The best moment of the episode is at the end, when Picard comes back from the other ship and says how nice it is to be home on the Enterprise. Aw, Picard, you marshmallow! The other funny moment of the episode is the Ferengi Number 1 informing Riker, "There is no profit in revenge." If that's not a good moral of our story, I don't know what is!
FEE-MAYL count: Mercifully, only twice. The Ferengi are mainly concerned with the main plot and therefore don't have time for casual misogyny.
Morals are also a big part of the next episode, "Hide and Q," but they're... well, for lack of a better turn phrase, they're more annoyingly conveyed. At the beginning of the story, the Enterprise is racing to help out at a mining colony where there's been a mine collapse and fire. Then Q shows up and proceeds to mess with everyone, as is his wont. (A side note here: I love John deLancie, and I think Q is a pretty compelling character, but in this episode, he acts solely as an annoyance/hinderance to everyone, and I couldn't help thinking that deLancie didn't have to stretch when he did recent voice acting for Discord on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I did love his Shakespearean quote duel with Picard, though, and filming that must have been pretty damned amazing to observe.) Q drags most of the bridge officers down to a deserted planet so that they can fight pig-like monsters dressed as Napoleonic soldiers, and then he grants Riker Q-level powers for plot-related reasons. Predictably, this has terrible consequences.
The central conflict in this episode is Renaissance Humanist Picard versus Humans-Aren't-That-Great Q (choicest quote: "Your species is always suffering and dying.") I think the viewer's enjoyment of this story largely depends on how they respond to the previous sentence. Picard takes the long view that humans aren't done evolving, and to show him up, or mess with him further (it's not clear which), Q decides to give Riker Q-level powers. This gets demonstrated in a pretty shocking way: the pig-soldiers kill Wesley and Worf, but Riker resurrects them and rescues them from the planet. It's a surprisingly violent sequence and it feels out of character for the show, which has had action/death before, but not gore, especially not the on-screen death of a child character. (Contrast this shot with a shot later in the episode of a little girl's body that the crew retrieves from the disaster-afflicted planet, and it feels so out of place.) Speaking of out of character, Riker turns smug with power pretty damn fast. I wrote down:
OH NO HE DIDN'T!
* Riker dissed Picard! BURN!
* Riker disses EVERYONE!
* Riker disses everyone by being SMUG! UGH.
Riker says he wants to give everyone gifts using his Q-level powers, and Picard, sensing oncoming crazy, agrees. Riker ages Wesley 10 years (which looks about as odd as you think it would), gives Geordi sight, and provides a Klingon woman for Worf to ... I dunno, sex up right on the Bridge or something?! AUGH. Fortunately, before it can become too awful (and it is on the way to awful), Wesley, Geordi, and Worf reject Riker's "gifts" (let me just say it again: AUGH), Riker sees the error of his smug and rejects Q-level powers, and then the Q continuum turns on Q for reasons that were only half clear. And hopefully that's the last of Q for a while. He's like the Ghost Pepper of characters: use him sparingly, if at all, because he overpowers everything else so quickly.
Signs that it's THE FUTURE:
* Dr. Crusher says she rarely encounters headaches and the common cold is eradicated. Wishful thinking there.
* The Enterprise's bed technology is YEARS AHEAD of ours! (Seriously, not even a fancy mattress or something? Picard's bed looked like he was at a particularly joyless Motel 6.)
Signs it's NOT THE FUTURE:
* Well, any story involving Q usually necessitates future tech so that Q can show off his powers by messing with it. Both of these episodes need to take place in the future to work, and nothing feels out of place this time around.
Unintentionally Funniest Line:
Geordi: "Worf! Is this your idea of sex?!" (And, thus, a thousand terrible fanfics were spawned.)
The writers' 'ship=Geordi/Yar. This comes out of nowhere! And then is never mentioned again for the rest of the episode!
Tags: poison, rewatch, tv shows: star trek: the next generation
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Vision and Voyages for Planetary Science in the Decade 2013 to 2022
Mars Pathfinder Panorama
An improved, color enhanced version of the 360-degree Gallery Pan taken by Mars Pathfinder in 1997.
This is a more recent "geometrically improved, color enhanced" version of the 360-degree "Gallery Pan," the first contiguous, uniform panorama taken by the Imager for Mars (IMP) over the course of Sols 8, 9, and 10. Different regions were imaged at different times over the three Martian days to acquire consistent lighting and shadow conditions for all areas of the panorama. In this version of the panorama, much of the discontinuity that was due to parallax has been corrected, particularly along the lower tiers of the mosaic containing the Lander features. Distortion due to a 2.5 degree tilt in the IMP camera mast has been removed.
The IMP is a stereo imaging system that, in its fully deployed configuration, stands 1.8 meters above the Martian surface, and has a resolution of two millimeters at a range of two meters. The IMP has color capability provided by 24 selectable filters—twelve filters per "eye." Its red, green, and blue filters were used to take this panorama.
A 360 degree panorama of the Mars Pathfinder landing site on Mars.
The three color images were first digitally balanced according to the transmittance capabilities of a specific high-definition TV device at JPL, and then enhanced via changes to saturation and intensity while retaining the hue. A threshold was applied to avoid changes to the sky. An MTF filter was applied to sharpen feature edges.
At left is a Lander petal and a metallic mast which is a portion of the low-gain antenna. On the horizon the double "Twin Peaks" are visible, about 1-2 kilometers away. The rock "Couch" is the dark, curved rock at right of Twin Peaks. Another Lander petal is at left-center, showing the fully deployed forward ramp at far left, and rear ramp at right, which rover Sojourner used to descend to the surface of Mars on July 5. Immediately to the left of the rear ramp is the rock "Barnacle Bill," which scientists found be andesitic, possibly indicating that it is a volcanic rock (a true andesite) or a physical mixture of particles. Just beyond Barnacle Bill, rover tracks lead to Sojourner, shown using its Alpha Proton X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) instrument to study the large rock "Yogi." Yogi, low in quartz content, appears to be more primitive than Barnacle Bill, and appears more like the common basalts found on Earth.
The tracks and circular pattern in the soil leading up to Yogi were part of Sojourner's soil mechanics experiments, in which varying amounts of pressure were applied to the wheels in order to determine physical properties of the soil. During its traverse to Yogi the rover stirred the soil and exposed material from several centimeters in depth. During one of the turns to deploy Sojourner's Alpha Proton X-Ray Spectrometer, the wheels dug particularly deeply and exposed white material. Spectra of this white material show it is virtually identical to the rock "Scooby Doo," and such white material may underlie much of the site. Deflated airbags are visible at the perimeter of all three Lander petals.
Mars Pathfinder is the second in NASA's Discovery program of low-cost spacecraft with highly focused science goals. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, developed and manages the Mars Pathfinder mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. JPL is an operating division of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). The IMP was developed by the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Laboratory under contract to JPL. Peter Smith is the Principal Investigator.
Note: Sojourner spent 83 days of a planned seven-day mission exploring the Martian terrain, acquiring images, and taking chemical, atmospheric and other measurements. The final data transmission received from Pathfinder was at 10:23 UTC on September 27, 1997. Although mission managers tried to restore full communications during the following five months, the successful mission was terminated on March 10, 1998.
NASA/JPL-Caltech
Highest-Resolution
This color image, acquired by the Galileo spacecraft in 1997 on its ninth orbit around Jupiter, shows two volcanic plumes erupting on Io.
Active Volcanic Plumes on Io
The conceptual eMMRTG would preserve all MMRTG envelope, volume, interfaces and mounting points while offering significant increases in power.
Enhanced Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (eMMRTG) Concept
This video contains highlights of Space Shuttle mission STS-34, which launched the radioisotope-enabled Galileo spacecraft to Jupiter.
Galileo Launch and Deployment
This self-portrait of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity combines dozens of exposures taken by the rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) during the 177th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity's work on Mars (...
Curiosity Rover Self-Portrait
At equinox, the shadows of the planet's expansive rings are compressed into a single, narrow band cast onto the planet as seen in this mosaic.
Changing Seasons on Saturn
This marvelous panoramic view was created by combining a total of 165 images taken by the Cassini wide-angle camera over nearly three hours on Sept. 15, 2006.
In Saturn's Shadow
An enhanced color picture shows asteroid Ida and its moon, Dactyl.
Ida and Dacty
Ensuring the safety of launch-site workers and the general public in the communities surrounding the launch area is the primary consideration in this planning.
Mars Science Laboratory Launch Contingency Planning
A montage of New Horizons images of Jupiter and its volcanic moon Io, taken during the spacecraft's Jupiter flyby in early 2007.
Jupiter-Io Montage
This series of images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows the development of the largest storm seen on the planet since 1990.
Chronicling Saturn's Northern Storm
Production of heat source fuel for future NASA missions that could be powered by radioisotope power systems (RPS) has been fully re-activated at the Department of Energy (DOE).
Constant Rate Production of Fueled Clads
Neptune's largest moon Triton, is seen in this mosaic of images captured by Voyager 2 during the only visit thus far to the Neptune system.
Voyager's view of Triton
The first photograph ever taken on the surface of the planet Mars. It was obtained by Viking 1 just minutes after the spacecraft landed successfully landing on Mars in July 1976.
First Picture From the Surface of Mars
A color view is a Viking 2 Lander close-up of the surface of Mars. The metal cylinder at right is the shroud (or cover) for the surface
Viking Lander Trenches
This mosaic of images from the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on NASA's Mars rover Curiosity shows Mount Sharp in raw color as recorded by the camera.
Aeolis Mons Panorama
This image shows the closest face-on view of Neptune's Great Dark Spot captured by the Voyager 2 spacecraft during the only visit to the most distant of the eight major planets in our solar system.
Neptune's Great Dark Spot
This view of Jupiter's moon Io was captured by NASA's Galileo spacecraft.
Changing Surface of Io
NASA's Saturn-bound Cassini spacecraft looked back to see Jupiter as a thinning crescent 17 days after its closest approach to the giant planet.
A Farewell to Jupiter
There are no gas stations or mechanics in deep space. So, if you want the power to perform science in the deep, dark frontiers of our solar system, you must have an engine that is reliable for the...
Testing Maintenance-Free Engines That Power Science in Deep Space
Download the Next-Generation Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator presentation.
Huygens probe following its successful descent to Saturn's smog-enshrouded moon, Titan.
First Color View of Titan's Surface
This iconic image was taken by NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft from a distance of almost 4 billion miles from Earth. From Voyager's great distance, Earth is a mere point of light, less than the size of...
Earth as a 'Pale Blue Dot'
This image is the first panoramic view of the Martian surface, taken by the Viking 1 lander.
First Mars Panorama
Encircled in purple stratospheric haze, Titan appears as a softly glowing sphere in this colorized image taken one day after Cassini's first flyby of the moon on July 2, 2004.
Titan's Haze
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has delivered a glorious view of Saturn, taken while the spacecraft was in Saturn's shadow. The cameras were turned toward Saturn and the sun so that the planet and rings ...
A Splendor Seldom Seen
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Trips for 18-35 year olds
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The World’s Most Exclusive Hotel Experiences
By Kristy Alpert
Feast with Sumo Wrestlers at the Palace Hotel Tokyo
The Palace Hotel Tokyo is a heavyweight in the luxury hotel scene of Tokyo, where its prime location next to the Imperial Palace gardens offers stunning views from its 290 luxury guestrooms. But arguably, the best perspective at the hotel is reserved for guests booking the “Grappling Tokyo” package, a.k.a. the “sumo wrestler package.” The package goes behind-the-scenes of sumo wrestling and, during the off-season (two weeks leading up to each of the January, May, and September seasons), guests are able to tour the sumo wrestling training stables with a sumo sports writer and announcer, and then sit down with the athletes themselves for a hearty lunch of chanko nabe, the hearty stew the wrestlers cook and eat daily to prepare for their time in the ring.
Nihon Sumo Kyokai
Create Your Own Fireworks Show at the Las Ventanas al Paraiso
Ordering well is easy at the Las Ventanas al Paraiso, where the resort’s signature romance menu lists everything from white stallions to private beachfront movie screenings. The showstopper on the resort’s menu is the Create Your Own Fireworks Show, where guests work directly with the Cabo Fireworks Company to craft their own customized displays with a range of pyrotechnic effects, colors, effects, timing, and even music. After the arrangements have been made, it’s up to the guests where and when they want to view their show as they are given a specially-designed iPad that will launch the show at the click of a button.
Las Ventanas al Paraiso, A Rosewood Resort
Paint With Aboriginal Artists at the Ayers Rock Resort
Long before the mammoth red rock formation became a National Park, and even longer before it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the land encompassing Uluru was the home of the Anangu people. The aboriginal descendants are still charged with the protection and preservation of the land and have begun offering immersive experiences that give visitors a look into their local customs and culture. The Ayers Rock Resort holds a daily dot painting workshop where guests sit down with a local Anangu elder and an interpreter to learn about the history of the craft and then work side-by-side with an Anangu artist to create their own aboriginal dot painting.
Ayers Rock Resort website
Ride with Reindeer at the Kakslauttanen Arctic Resort
The glass igloos of the Kakslauttanen Arctic Resort made this northern retreat an instant Instagram celebrity, where hotel guests can gaze up at the Northern Lights from the comfort of heated glass igloos set deep into the snow. The resort is also home to a range of indigenous-led experiences, like the reindeer safari led by a local reindeer herder. Guests load up into a homemade sled and head out to forge their own paths in the snow-packed forest of Finland’s Lapland region with a local Sami and his reindeer leading the way. All day excursions include an outdoor lunch prepared by their Sami guide.
Valtteri Hirvonen
Learn the Ukulele From a Hawaiian Elder at the Four Seasons Resort Hualalai
The Ka’upulehu Cultural Center at the Four Seasons Resort Hualalai aims to share the spirit of aloha with guests through interactive programs and classes that delve deeper into the rich culture of the islands and its original inhabitants. Classes are taught by Kupuna (Hawaiian elders), and range from Hawaiian language lessons to Kahiko (ancient) or ‘Auana (modern) hula lessons. Don’t miss the ukulele lessons with “Uncle” Earl Kamakaonaona Regidor, one of the founding team members at the resort.
Ice Skate on an Island at the Jumeirah Vittaveli
Not only is the ice rink at the Jumeirah Vittaveli the first of its kind in the Maldives, but it’s the first sustainable synthetic ice rink in the Maldives that operates at a zero-energy level. The rink was christened by Olympic Gold medalist Evgeni Plushenko in March of 2018, and is now open to all guests for ice skating, ice hockey games, and private parties. An initial package of $75 comes with two hours of skating and includes all rentals, a post-skating ice cream sundae, and a few “super cool” souvenirs.
Learn to Play Horse Polo at the Estancia Vik Jose Ignacio
Horse polo has risen in popularity in the Southern Hemisphere over the past decade, especially in Uruguay where the most sought-after playing field lays. The field can be found at the ultra-luxe private retreat Estancia Vik Jose Ignacio, where it looks out across the lagoon and on towards the Atlantic Ocean. Guests have exclusive access to private polo lessons and daily clinics that range from beginner to intermediate levels. Upon departure, each guest receives a signature Vik polo mallet from the resort.
Courtesy of Vik Retreats
Paint, Tour, and Engage with Artists at The Inn and Spa at Loretto
Navigating Santa Fe’s more than 300 art galleries, 13 museums, and countless artist’s studios could take years, but with The Inn and Spa at Loretto’s Art & Soul of Santa Fe program, guests can get a curated look into the city’s vibrant art scene. Along with private tours of the galleries, the hotel offers a series of workshops and bespoke experiences onsite with the artists participating in their Artist in Residence program, from perfecting pastels with Lori Snable to exclusive pop-up galleries from emerging artists enrolled at the Institute of American Indian Art (IAIA).
Lori Snable
Become a Ninja Master at The Four Seasons Hotel Kyoto
It’s hard to pick just one unique activity to experience while staying at the Four Seasons Hotel Kyoto. The hotel’s ever-growing list of truly unique offerings includes private Zen meditation sessions with the head monk of Shoden-Eigen-in, Kiyomizu-yaki pottery classes with a local artisan, and chibi-maru lantern making sessions with a tenth generation Kojima master. If you do have to pick just one, don’t miss out on the hotel’s ninja experience where you’ll learn breathing and meditation techniques before learning to master your weapon of choice: ninja swords, Shuriken stars, or Fukiya blow darts.
Four Seasons Hotel Kyoto
Swim With an Olympian at Sanctuary on Camelback Mountain Resort and Spa
In a city best known for its arid climate, it comes as no surprise that the top experiences at Sanctuary on Camelback Mountain Resort and Spa are both underwater. Available in packages of one, five, or ten classes, swimmers looking to improve their stroke technique can book private lessons with Olympic gold medalist Misty Hyman in the resort’s lap pool. Lessons range from fitness oriented sessions to triathlon training sessions. For an entirely different sort of immersion at the resort, book an aquatic massage at the spa’s heated Watsu pool for a relaxing underwater spa experience with a licensed Watsu therapist, swimsuit required.
Sanctuary on Camelback Mountain Resort & Spa
Ash Board Down a Volcano at Mukul, an Auberge Resorts Collection
Where most hotels may shy away from offering extreme sports as regular packages for their guests, Mukul, an Auberge Resorts Collection, adds an extra layer of awesome to their most extreme offering: ash boarding down a volcano. The hotel’s proximity to the Cerro Negro Volcano makes it the ideal base camp for venturing out for a high-octane ash boarding adventure down the volcano. Guests of Mukul leave the resort by helicopter for the ultimate entrance to the sight before getting geared up with a brief training session followed by a seriously thrilling descent down a massive pile of ash.
Pete(CC BY-SA 2.0) / Flickr
Sleep Outside on Safari at Sanctuary Baines’ Camp
The Moremi Game Reserve in Botswana’s Okavango Delta is home to the Big Five (African elephants, black rhinoceroses, African buffalos, lions, and African leopards), along with a slew of other potentially deadly mammals spread throughout this densely populated wildlife reserve. Along with private game drives with local guides, the Sanctuary Baines’ Camp retreat offers guests the truly once-in-a-lifetime experience of sleeping outdoors on a private patio. Although each of the five suites is raised up from the delta floor, the only thing separating guests from the night air is a thin, white mosquito netting draped around a four-poster bed that the staff rolls out from the bedroom and onto the patio for brave guests. Guests are armed only with pocket-sized air horns and walkies talkies, but the experience is worth every sleepless second.
Meet-and-Greet with the Ghosts at the 1886 Crescent Hotel and Spa
Bizarre doesn’t begin to describe the inexplicable goings-on inside this Arkansas hotel. Located far off the beaten path, just above the petite Victorian town of Eureka Springs, the 1886 Crescent Hotel and Spa has been rated the most haunted hotel in America on numerous occasions. Book the Ghost and Spa Package for two tickets to the late night ghost tour and one night’s accommodations in one of the spookiest suites at this haunted hotel. Plan to spend the next morning at the spa, relaxing and detoxing after a night of paranormal proximity.
1886 Crescent Hotel & Spa, Eureka Springs AR
Track Gorillas at Volcanoes Safaris Bwindi Lodge
The Volcanoes Safaris Bwindi Lodge in Uganda was recently renovated to include eight luxury suites (bandas) and the brand new Forest Spa Humula mw’ Ishamba. Despite the additions, the main highlight for guests remains the wild encounters that take place at this eco-luxury resort. The lodge overlooks the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, where mountain gorillas roam freely. It’s not uncommon to see these giants relaxing nearby the resort, but the lodge also offers exclusive gorilla tracking expeditions that take no more than eight guests per day into the jungle to get a closer look at the lifestyle and livelihood of the Ugandan gorillas.
Alexandra Avila
English Gardening Lessons at The Deer Path Inn
To the avid gardener, the principles of English gardening are the I Ching of landscape gardening. The ideal English garden is a confluence of structured informality, where the design and selection of the natural and artificial elements work together to create a semblance of wild perfection (TRANSLATION: it’s not easy). The landscape team at The Deer Path Inn have perfected the art of the English garden, having even participated in the acclaimed Chelsea Garden Show in London. The landscapers give tours of the gardens, but will also provide private gardening sessions for anyone interested in learning more about English gardening techniques of picking, pruning, and planting. Pair the experience with the Inn’s Botanic Garden package that includes a guided tour of the Chicago Botanic Gardens with an English picnic lunch for the ultimate garden experience. Book a dinner in the Garden Courtyard to feast on specialty cocktails garnished with English florals that come paired with a special plant-based tasting menu.
Deer Path Inn
See more at Fodor's Travel
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I Ate the Titanic’s Last Meal at the Haunted Hotel From ‘The Shining’ and It Was All Play and No Work
Rumbay Travel Solutions
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search filter All ContentAll JournalsJournal of Experimental Medicine
Brief Definitive Report| March 04 2002
Estimating the Precursor Frequency of Naive Antigen-specific CD8 T Cells
Joseph N. Blattman
Emory Vaccine Center, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA 30322
Rustom Antia
David J.D. Sourdive
Unite de Biologie Moleculaire du Gene Institut Pasteur 25, rue du Dr. Roux 75724, Paris, Cedex 15, France
Xiaochi Wang
Susan M. Kaech
Kaja Murali-Krishna
John D. Altman
Rafi Ahmed
Address correspondence to Rafi Ahmed, Emory Vaccine Center, Rollins Research Center, Emory University, 1510 Clifton Rd., Atlanta, GA 30322. Phone: 404-727-4700; Fax: 404-727-3722; E-mail: ra@microbio.emory.edu
J Exp Med (2002) 195 (5): 657–664.
https://doi.org/10.1084/jem.20001021
Revision Received:
Joseph N. Blattman, Rustom Antia, David J.D. Sourdive, Xiaochi Wang, Susan M. Kaech, Kaja Murali-Krishna, John D. Altman, Rafi Ahmed; Estimating the Precursor Frequency of Naive Antigen-specific CD8 T Cells . J Exp Med 4 March 2002; 195 (5): 657–664. doi: https://doi.org/10.1084/jem.20001021
The constraint of fitting a diverse repertoire of antigen specificities in a limited total population of lymphocytes results in the frequency of naive cells specific for any given antigen (defined as the precursor frequency) being below the limit of detection by direct measurement. We have estimated this precursor frequency by titrating a known quantity of antigen-specific cells into naive recipients. Adoptive transfer of naive antigen-specific T cell receptor transgenic cells into syngeneic nontransgenic recipients, followed by stimulation with specific antigen, results in activation and expansion of both donor and endogenous antigen-specific cells in a dose-dependent manner. The precursor frequency is equal to the number of transferred cells when the transgenic and endogenous responses are of equal magnitude. Using this method we have estimated the precursor frequency of naive CD8 T cells specific for the H-2Db–restricted GP33–41 epitope of LCMV to be 1 in 2 × 105. Thus, in an uninfected mouse containing ∼2-4 × 107 naive CD8 T cells we estimate there to be 100–200 epitope-specific cells. After LCMV infection these 100–200 GP33-specific naive CD8 T cells divide >14 times in 1 wk to reach a total of ∼107 cells. Approximately 5% of these activated GP33-specific effector CD8 T cells survive to generate a memory pool consisting of ∼5 × 105 cells. Thus, an acute LCMV infection results in a >1,000-fold increase in precursor frequency of DbGP33-specific CD8 T cells from 2 × 102 naive cells in uninfected mice to 5 × 105 memory cells in immunized mice.
Two cardinal properties of the adaptive immune system are specificity and diversity; thus the immune system can mount exquisitely specific responses to a vast repertoire of possible antigens. As the immune system must accommodate this diversity within a relatively limited total population size there must be compromise between the repertoire of different antigens the immune system can effectively recognize and the number of precursors with any given specificity. Recent technical advances including the use of MHC class I tetramers complexed with defined viral peptide epitopes and measurement of the production of cytokines in response to stimulation with synthetic peptides have allowed CD8 T cell responses to be quantitated with great accuracy. However, neither method is sufficiently sensitive to measure the low frequency of naive antigen-specific T cells before expansion during the generation of an immune response (1–4).
The CD8 T cell response in C57Bl/6J mice to the Armstrong strain of lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) results in a rapid rise in the number of LCMV-specific CD8 T cells from below the threshold of detection (< ∼1,000 cells/mouse) to >107 antigen-specific CD8 T cells by 8 d after infection (3, 4). This expansion is followed by a death phase, during which there is approximately a 10-fold reduction in the number of LCMV-specific CD8 T cells from days 8 to 30, and thereafter the stable maintenance of an antigen-specific memory population. One of the immunodominant T cell responses elicited during this response is specific for the H-2Db–restricted glycoprotein (GP33–41) epitope of LCMV. Although analysis of the T cell receptors within this epitope-specific population has shown a heterogeneous usage of TCR Vβ gene segments (5, 6) adoptive transfer of excessive numbers of CD8 T cells from mice bearing a transgene encoding a TCR specific for this epitope (7), followed by challenge with LCMV, results in a highly restricted DbGP33 response using primarily the transgenic TCR Vβ8.1 and Vα2 TCR segments (8, 9).
In this paper we describe a novel approach for quantitating the precursor frequency of naive antigen-specific CD8 T cells in a polyclonal population. We adoptively transferred limiting numbers of naive antigen-specific TCR transgenic (TCR-Tg) CD8 cells (specific for the DbGP33 epitope) into nontransgenic syngeneic recipients and then measured the fraction of the epitope-specific response contributed by donor and endogenous cells after LCMV infection. In this quantitative-competitive system, adoptive transfer of increasing numbers of specific transgenic cells resulted in a greater fraction of the antigen-specific response arising from donor cells. If donor and endogenous epitope-specific cells have the same participation and proliferative properties, then the relationship between the number of transferred transgenic cells (T) and the fraction of the GP33 response which is transgenic (F) is given by:
\[F{\approx}\frac{T}{T+P}\]
where P is equal to the precursor frequency of endogenous epitope-specific cells. In the special case when the number of transferred cells equals the endogenous precursor frequency (i.e., T = P), half of the GP33-specific response will be generated by transgenic cells (F = 1/2). Using this experimental approach, we have measured the naive antigen-specific CD8 T cell precursor frequency in mice. Furthermore, we have verified that endogenous and donor transgenic epitope-specific cells have similar proliferative properties in response to antigenic stimulation in vivo and that transfer of exogenous cells does not significantly alter the magnitude or composition of the endogenous DbGP33 CD8 T cell response.
Animals and Virus.
6–8-wk-old female C56Bl/6J (B6) or P14 B6.D2-TgN (TCR-Tg) mice were obtained from The Jackson Laboratory. TCR-Tg mice were backcrossed to B6 background (>10 generations) at the Emory University animal facility before use. The Armstrong and clone-13 strains of LCMV were grown as previously described (10). The recombinant vaccinia virus expressing the GP33–41 epitope (VV-GP33) was generated and grown as described previously (11). For primary infections and generating immune mice, B6 mice were given 2 × 105 PFU of LCMV (Armstrong) intraperitoneally. For secondary infections, immune mice were given either 2 × 106 PFU of LCMV (clone-13) intravenously or 107 PFU of VV-GP33 intraperitoneally and assayed 5 d after infection. For chronic infection, naive B6 mice were given 2 × 106 PFU of LCMV (clone-13) intravenously.
Antibodies and MHC Tetramers.
Anti-CD8α (Lyt-2, clone 53–6.7), anti-Vα2 TCR (clone B20.1), and anti-Vβ8.1,8.2 TCR (clone MR5–2) antibodies as well as the panel of anti-Vβ antibodies were purchased from BD PharMingen. The anti-Db antibody (clone 28–14–8) was generated from the HB-27 hybridoma (American Type Culture Collection) and Fab fragments prepared using the Immunopure Fab preparation kit (Pierce Chemical Co.) in accordance with manufacturer's directions. H-2Db MHC class I tetramer complexes were refolded with synthetic GP33–41 peptide (KAVYNFATM) and prepared as previously described (3, 12). Biotinylated monomeric DbGP33 complexes were assembled into tetramers by the addition of allophycocyanin-conjugated streptavidin (Molecular Probes) in a 4:1 molar ratio.
Cells and Flow Cytometry.
Single cell suspensions of splenocytes were prepared as described previously (3). Peripheral blood lymphocytes were separated from whole blood over Histopaque®-1077 (Sigma-Aldrich) in accordance with manufacturer's recommendations. Cells were resuspended in FACS® buffer (PBS containing 2% bovine serum albumin and 0.2% sodium azide) and stained with the indicated reagents at a final concentration of 1 μg/ml for 30 min at 4°C. Cells were then washed twice in FACS® buffer, fixed in a 2% paraformaldehyde solution, and immediately acquired on a FACSCalibur™ flow cytometer (Becton Dickinson).
TCR Affinity Measurement by MHC Tetramer Fall-Off Assay.
Measurement of relative TCR affinity by a competitive tetramer fall-off assay was done as described previously (13). Briefly, 2 × 107 splenocytes from infected mice were stained with the DbGP33 tetramer and anti-CD8, -Vα2 antibodies as described above. After two washes, cells were incubated with or without unlabeled competitor anti-Db antibody Fab (clone 28–14–8f) at 2 mg/ml in FACS® buffer at 4°C. At the indicated times, 100-μl aliquots were removed and added to an equal volume of 2% PFA in PBS and immediately acquired on a FACSCalibur™ flow cytometer. Normalized total fluorescence less background staining was calculated using the following formula: NTFtime i = (% pos. × MFI)time i/(% pos. × MFI)time 0.
Adoptive Transfer of TCR-Tg Cells.
For cell transfers, single cell suspensions of splenocytes from naive P14 TCR-Tg transgenic mice, bearing TCR specific to the DbGP33 epitope of LCMV, were injected intravenously into the tails of recipient mice and infected 2 d after transfer. To account for differences in engraftment of such limited numbers of cells, splenocytes from naive P14 TCR-Tg transgenic mice were diluted in naive B6 splenocytes such that a constant number of total cells (2 × 106) were transferred into recipients receiving different doses of transgenic cells. For transfer of purified CD8+ populations, cells were positively selected by MACS separation (Miltenyi Biotec) in accordance with manufacturer's directions and purity determined (normally >90%) by flow cytometry before transfer.
Measurement of Precursor Frequency.
Adoptive transfer of an increasing number of naive TCR-Tg CD8 T cells into nontransgenic syngeneic recipients, followed by challenge with LCMV results in an increasing proportion of the DbGP33-specific response being contributed by donor cells (Fig. 1)
. Donor TCR-Tg cells were designated as CD8 T cells which specifically bound the DbGP33 tetramer as well as expressed both the Vα2 (Fig. 1 A) and Vβ8.1 (Fig. 1 B) TCR gene segments. When no cells were transferred, <5% of cells that bound the DbGP33 tetramer used both the Vα2 and Vβ8.1 TCR gene segments. Because only a very small fraction (<5%) of the endogenous response had the same TCR Vα and Vβ gene usage as the donor transgenic cells, we were able to use Vα2+Vβ8.1+DbGP33+ CD8+ cells to follow the donor transgenic response. The transgenic proportion of the DbGP33 response increased with the number of cells transferred and at the highest doses, the response was dominated by donor transgenic cells (>98%). Similar results were seen when Thy1.1+ TCR-Tg cells were transferred into Thy1.2+ recipients using the Thy1 marker to distinguish between donor and host responses (data not shown).
Calculation of precursor frequency requires accurate estimation of the engraftment or “take” of these donor cells in recipient mice. We observed that ∼10% of total donor populations were recoverable from spleens of recipient mice 2 d after transfer (Fig. 2
A). In addition, splenic recovery did not differ after transfer of either polyclonal cells (measuring a congenic difference at the Thy1 locus) or cells from TCR-Tg mice. Using 10% as an estimate of the number of transferred cells which persist in the spleens of recipient mice, we plotted the transgenic fraction of the DbGP33-specific CD8 T cell response versus the number of donor transgenic cells engrafted (Fig. 1 C). The fraction of the DbGP33-specific response attributable to donor cells increased with the amount of cells transferred in a dose-dependent manner. The transgenic fraction of the DbGP33-specific response closely followed predicted values, namely fraction transgenic (F) is equal to the number of transgenic precursors transferred divided by the total number of precursors (T/[T+P]). This allowed us to estimate the number of endogenous DbGP33-specific precursors in the spleen either by the best fit to this equation or by the number of transferred transgenic cells at which half the response was transgenic. We thus estimated that there are on average 56 (range 46–65: >95% confidence interval) endogenous DbGP33-specific precursors per spleen in uninfected mice. Given that there are on average 107 naive CD8 T cells in the spleens of uninfected mice, this translates to an epitope-specific precursor frequency of 1 in 2 × 105.
This estimate of precursor frequency depends upon several assumptions: accurate measurement of the engraftment or “take” of donor cells, similar proliferation of transgenic and polyclonal epitope-specific populations in response to antigenic stimulation, and that addition of increasing numbers of donor epitope-specific cells does not qualitatively change the recruitment from the endogenous epitope-specific pool. We have tested these assumptions directly and accounted for them in our estimate of precursor frequency.
Engraftment of Donor Cells.
We have defined engraftment or “take” as the percentage of total donor cells that are recoverable from spleens of recipient mice and have measured this to be 10% for large populations of either polyclonal or transgenic donor CD8 T cells. It is possible the number of donor cells surviving may (due to homeostatic mechanisms that limit the total number of naive CD8 T cells) diminish as increasing numbers of cells are transferred. To compensate for any variance due to the size of the transferred population, donor TCR-Tg cells were diluted in naive polyclonal cells such that in all cases, a constant number of total cells (2 × 106 splenocytes) were transferred. As shown in Fig. 1 C, the fraction of the DbGP33-specific CD8 T cell response attributable to transgenic donor cells was similar whether these were transferred alone (open symbols) or in the context of a larger population of polyclonal cells (filled symbols). Thus, our measurements demonstrate similar precursor frequency and engraftment of donor cells in recipient spleens regardless of the total number of cells transferred in these experiments. Also, it is unlikely that DbGP33-specific precursors in the donor polyclonal population made any significant contribution to the response as, given our estimate of precursor frequency, on average <1 antigen-specific cell is present in this population.
To directly compensate for any variance in the engraftment of donor transgenic cells into resident endogenous polyclonal populations, we transferred 108 polyclonal Thy1.1+/+ CD8 T cells (containing ∼500 DbGP33-specific precursors given our estimate) mixed with 500 epitope-specific Thy1.1+/Thy1.2+ TCR-Tg CD8 T cell precursors into naive irradiated Thy1.2+/+ recipient mice. These mice were then challenged with LCMV and their DbGP33-specific Thy1.1+ CD8 T cell response measured. If both the engraftment and proliferation of virus specific cells within these donor populations were similar, then roughly 50% of the DbGP33-specific CD8 Thy1.1+ T cell response would be due to each donor population. We observed a 2:1 ratio of polyclonal (Thy1.2−) to TCR-Tg (Thy1.2+) responders in challenged recipient mice (Fig. 2 B). Given the experimental constraints of transferring such a large number of CD8 T cells as well as genetic background differences in these strains, this indicates that our estimate of precursor frequency is off by at most a factor of 2. This would give an antigen-specific precursor frequency of 10−5 naive CD8 T cells in mice.
Transgenic and Endogenous GP33-specific Cells Have Similar Proliferative Properties.
In addition to accurate measurement of the donor cell “take,” our precursor measurement also depends on transgenic and endogenous DbGP33-specific CD8 T cells possessing similar proliferative properties during an immune response. To test the inherent proliferative “fitness” of transgenic and endogenous DbGP33-specific cells, we followed the increase in magnitude of each population and the ratio of endogenous to transgenic cells in individual mice during secondary responses to either LCMV or a vaccinia virus expressing the GP33 epitope (VV-GP33) (8, 11, 14). During recall responses in LCMV-rechallenged mice, both donor transgenic and endogenous DbGP33-specific CD8 T cells underwent expansion, with an approximately fivefold increase in frequency. A considerably greater expansion of both donor and endogenous populations (∼20-fold) was seen in mice rechallenged with VV-GP33. However, in both recall responses the ratio of endogenous to TCR-Tg donor DbGP33-specific CD8 T cells in individual mice did not change significantly during the secondary response compared with that seen before rechallenge (Fig. 3)
. These data indicate that polyclonal and transgenic cells do not have any significant proliferative differences that would skew our estimate of precursor frequency and that donor and endogenous DbGP33-specific CD8 T cells behave similarly following antigenic stimulation in vivo.
Another potential factor that could affect the proliferation of donor and endogenous DbGP33-specific CD8 T cells is competition and/or differential participation in the immune response due to differences in the TCR affinity of these two populations. As the transgene encoding the P14 TCR is derived from a polyclonal response, the affinity of the transgenic TCR for its DbGP33 ligand must be contained within the spectrum of TCR affinities of the polyclonal DbGP33-specific response (7). We have measured the relative affinities of transgenic and polyclonal DbGP33-specific CD8 T cells in competitive tetramer fall-off assays (13, 15). The DbGP33-specific TCR-Tg cells have initial fall-off rates similar to that of the polyclonal population (see Fig. 5
A). Similar to published reports, the tetramer fall-off rate from P14 TCR transgenic cells proceeds with linear first-order decay kinetics. However, although the vast majority of endogenous polyclonal DbGP33-specific CD8 T cells follow similar kinetics, quantitative analysis of this population is complicated by its broad TCR diversity (5). As lower affinity cells are lost from the sample population during the course of the assay, the overall affinity of the remainder is increased (see Fig. 5 B). Thus, there may be a minor population of higher affinity endogenous DbGP33-specific CD8 T cells; precisely what one would predict if the narrow affinity of the transgenic TCR falls within a broader spectrum of polyclonal TCR with both higher and lower affinities.
Antigen Availability and the Magnitude of the Endogenous Response.
Our measurement of precursor frequency may also have been affected by skewing of the endogenous response when increasing numbers of TCR-Tg cells are transferred (for example if competition for antigen affected recruitment of endogenous epitope-specific precursors). Thus, if the total number of precursors recruited into a given response were limited to a finite number, transfer of increasing numbers of donor cells may result in a partial participation by endogenous epitope-specific precursors. In the range where we have measured the endogenous precursor frequency, we observed little change in the magnitude of the endogenous DbGP33-specific response when low numbers of donor cells were transferred (Fig. 4
A). However, as transgenic cells became saturating, the endogenous response was effectively suppressed. Thus, in the range where we have measured precursor frequency antigen does not appear to be limiting, but as transgenic precursors become saturating, the viral infection is controlled faster and thus prevents recruitment from the endogenous pool.
We have directly determined the influence of antigen availability on our estimate of precursor frequency by increasing the viral burden and thus antigen load in recipient mice. Mice infected with the more virulent clone-13 strain of LCMV showed prolonged viremia and higher levels of DbGP33-specific CD8 T cell expansion in this system (data not shown). However, despite this larger expansion, we observed precisely the same dose dependence of transgenic cells in LCMV (clone-13) infected mice (measuring the transgenic fraction of the DbGP33 response) as in LCMV (Armstrong) infected mice (Fig. 4 B). Thus in either case, all available precursors were able to participate in the antiviral response indicting that our measurement of precursor frequency is not skewed by availability of antigen or suppression of the endogenous DbGP33 response. Also, increasing antigen load minimizes competition between cells with potentially different TCR affinities, further arguing against differences in participation between transgenic and polyclonal DbGP33-specific CD8 T cells due to TCR affinity.
Affinity and Diversity of the Endogenous Response.
Another factor that could potentially influence our estimate of precursor frequency is recruitment of a different subset of endogenous DbGP33-specific CD8 T cell precursors. We have directly measured both the affinity and diversity the endogenous responses in the range where we have measured precursor frequency. We observed no change in the affinity (as measured by the tetramer fall-off assay) of the endogenous DbGP33 CD8 T cell response (Vα2−) when an increasing proportion of the DbGP33 response was due to donor TCR-Tg cells (Fig. 5 B). Thus, endogenous DbGP33-specific CD8 T cell populations had precisely the same affinity regardless of whether 0%, ∼33%, or ∼66% of the response was contributed by donor cells. Additionally, we have compared the TCR diversity of the endogenous (Vα2−) DbGP33 CD8 T cells as increasing numbers of donor TCR-Tg cells were transferred. We observed no significant difference in the TCR diversity (in terms of TCR-Vβ gene segment usage) of the endogenous DbGP33 CD8 T cells in mice that received no transgenic cells or whose response was ∼50% transgenic (Fig. 5 C). Thus, in the range where we are measuring precursor frequency, we do not significantly affect the affinity or diversity of the endogenous DbGP33 CD8 T cell response.
Implications.
We have defined precursor frequency as the number of naive CD8 T cells specific for a given peptide-MHC combination in mice before antigenic challenge and have estimated this to between 10−5 and 2 × 10−5 or 50–100 cells/spleen. It has been estimated that an adult uninfected mouse contains between 2–4 × 107 naive CD8+ T cells. Based on this, we thus estimate that there are between 100–200 naive CD8 T cells specific for the DbGP33 epitope in an adult uninfected mouse. Certainly, an upper-bound estimate of the total number of antigen-specific CD8 T cells present would be equal to the 500 cells originally transferred.
As the response to a given epitope generally involves several different T cell clones the average precursor frequency per clone will be the precursor frequency per epitope divided by the number of clones (5, 6, 16–19). The total T cell clonal diversity has recently been estimated for humans (20) and mice (21). In mice at least 2 × 106 unique TCR were estimated. The reciprocal of this clonal diversity estimate in mice yields a clonal T cell frequency estimate of 2 × 10−6. This study also found a redundancy of ∼10 cells/unique TCR sequence (21). As it has been estimated that in a given epitope-specific T cell response ∼20 different clones participate (18, 19), this would indicate that on average 200 cells participate in an epitope-specific response, very similar to our estimate of the number of DbG33-specific precursors present in naive mice. Additionally, even though the clonal diversity in humans is increased only 10-fold, it has been estimated that there are ∼10,000-fold more CD8 T cells in humans compared with mice.
Although we have shown that the precursor frequency, defined as the total number of CD8 T cells specific for the DbGP33 epitope of LCMV, is 1 in 2 × 105, the precise relationship between this precursor frequency and the diversity of epitopes which could potentially be recognized is complex, dependent on both overlapping TCR specificities as well as the clonality of any given response. However the inverse of the precursor frequency provides a lower bound to the total number of epitopes that can be recognized, implying that at least 2 × 105 different epitopes may be recognized in mice.
In addition to obtaining an epitope-specific precursor estimate, this data also provides us with a more accurate estimate of the total number of divisions seen in LCMV-specific CD8 T cells during infection of mice. At the peak of the immune response to LCMV (8 d after infection), the number of DbGP33-specific CD8 T cells is roughly 107 (3, 4). Thus, there is a >50,000-fold increase in the number of epitope-specific CD8 T cells during the response to viral infection. Assuming there is very little death of antigen specific cells during this period (days 0–8), this also indicates that this cell population would have had to undergo on average >14 divisions. After the peak of this response, most of the virus-specific CD8 T cells undergo apoptosis, leaving behind a stable memory pool containing ∼5 × 105 DbGP33-specific CD8 T cells. Thus, in immune mice there is a ∼5,000-fold net increase in the number of antigen-specific cells contained in the memory CD8 T cell population.
The interrelationship between the specificity and diversity of T cell responses remain central to understanding the generation of immune responses to all pathogens. Estimating these parameters accurately is a first step in this process and facilitates a clearer understanding of the balance maintained in naive T cell repertoires versus the expansion of antigen-specific populations.
We would like to thank J. Miller, P.L. Mahar, and K. Madhavi-Krishna for technical assistance, and B.D. Evavold, E.J. Wherry, and J.M. Grayson for helpful discussion.
This work was supported by National Institutes of Health grants AI49334 (to R. Antia), AI42373 (to J.D. Altman), and AI30048 (to R. Ahmed). S.M. Kaech was supported in part by the Cancer Research Fund of the Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell Foundation (DRG-1570).
Givan, A.L., J.L Fisher, M. Waugh, M.S. Ernstoff and P.K. Wallace.
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Murali-Krishna, K., L.L. Lau, S. Sambhara, F. Lemonnier, J.D. Altman, and R. Ahmed.
. Persistence of memory CD8 T cells in MHC class I-deficient mice.
Murali-Krishna, K., J.D. Altman, M. Suresh, D.J. Sourdive, A.J. Zajac, J.D. Miller, J. Slansky, and R. Ahmed.
. Counting antigen-specific CD8 T cells: a reevaluation of bystander activation during viral infection.
Immunity.
Butz, E., and M.J. Bevan.
. Massive expansion of antigen-specific CD8+ T cells during an acute virus infection.
Blattman, J.N., D.J.D. Sourdive, K. Murali-Krishna, R. Ahmed, and J.D. Altman.
. Evolution of the T cell repertoire during primary, memory, and recall responses to viral infection.
Lin, M.Y., and R.M. Welsh.
. Stability and diversity of T cell receptor repertoire usage during lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus infection of mice.
J. Exp. Med.
Pircher, H., U.H. Rohrer, D. Moskophidous, R.M. Zinkernagel, and H. Hengartner.
. Lower receptor avidity required for thymic clonal deletion than for effector T-cell function.
Ehl, S., P. Klenerman, R.M. Zinkernagel, and G. Bocharov.
. The impact of variation in the number of CD8(+) T-cell precursors on the outcome of virus infection.
Zimmerman, S., A. Prevost-Blondel, C. Blaser, and H. Pircher.
. Kinetics of the response of naïve and memory CD8 T cells to antigen: similarities and differences.
Ahmed, R., and M.B.A. Oldstone.
. Organ-specific selection of viral variants during chronic infection.
van der Most, R.G., K. Murali-Krishna, J.L. Whitton, C. Oseroff, J. Alexander, S. Southwood, J. Sidney, R.W. Chesnut, A. Sette, and R. Ahmed.
. Identification of Db- and Kb-restricted subdominant cytotoxic T-cell responses in lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus-infected mice.
Virology.
Altman, J.D., P.A.H. Moss, P.J.R. Goulder, D.H. Barouch, M.G. McHeyzer-Williams, J.I. Bell, A.J. McMichael, and M.M. Davis.
. Phenotypic analysis of antigen-specific T lymphocytes.
Savage, P.A., J.J. Boniface, and M.M. Davis.
. A kinetic basis for T cell receptor repertoire selection during an immune response.
Moskophidis, D., F. Lechner, H. Pircher, and R.M. Zinkernagel.
. Virus persistence in acutely infected immunocompentent mice by exhaustion of antiviral cytotoxic effector T cells.
Sourdive, D.J., K. Murali-Krishna, J.D. Altman, A.J. Zajac, J.K. Whitmire, C. Pannetier, P. Kourilsky, B. Evavold, A. Sette, and R. Ahmed.
. Conserved T cell receptor repertoire in primary and memory CD8 T cell responses to an acute viral infection.
Busch, D.H., I. Pilip and E.G. Pamer.
. Evolution of a complex T cell receptor repertoire during primary and recall bacterial infection.
Maryanski, J.L., V. Attuil, P. Bucher, and P.R. Walker.
. A quantitative, single-cell PCR analysis of an antigen-specific TCR repertoire selected during an in vivo CD8 response: direct evidence for a wide range of clone sizes with uniform tissue distribution.
Maryanski, J.L., C.V. Jongeneel, P. Bucher, J.L. Casanova, and P.R. Walker.
. Single-cell PCR analysis of TCR repertoires selected by antigen in vivo: a high magnitude CD8 response is comprised of very few clones.
Yanagi, Y., A. Tishon, H. Lewicki, B.A. Cubitt, and M.B. Oldstone.
. Diversity of T-cell receptors in virus-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes recognizing three distinct viral epitopes restricted by a single major histocompatibility complex molecule.
J. Virol.
Arstila, T.P., A. Casrouge, V. Baron, J. Even, J. Kanellopoulos, and P. Kourilsky.
. A direct estimate of the human alphabeta T cell receptor diversity.
Casrouge, A., E. Beaudoing, S. Dalle, C. Pannetier, J. Kanellopoulos, and P. Kourilsky.
. Size estimate of the alphabeta TCR repertoire of naive mouse splenocytes.
The Rockefeller University Press
Adoptive transfer of increasing numbers of DbGP33-specific TCR Tg CD8+ T cells (Vα2+Vβ8.1+), followed by challenge with LCMV, results in an increasing proportion of the total epitope-specific response being contributed by donor cells. (A) Analysis of recipient mice after viral challenge. Contour plots are gated on CD8+ T cells and percentages indicate the relative proportions of DbGP33+ cells that are Vα2+ or Vα2−. Numbers above each plot indicate the number of TCR-Tg CD8+ T cells transferred. (B) Analysis of Vβ8.1 usage by epitope-specific cells. Histograms are gated on CD8+DbGP33+Vα2+ cells. Percentages under each histogram indicate the total Vα2+Vβ8.1+ portion of the DbGP33-specific CD8+ T cell response. (C) The donor TCR-Tg fraction of the epitope-specific response is plotted vs. the number of TCR-Tg cells engrafted. Open symbols circles represent mice that were given only TCR-Tg cells, while filled circles represent mice which were given TCR-Tg cells diluted in 2 × 106 naive polyclonal B6 splenocytes. The solid line is the best fit to the equation F = T/(T + P) while the dashed line indicates the dose of donor cells at which 50% of the DbGP33-specific response is endogenous.
Engraftment of TCR-Tg and polyclonal B6 CD8+ T cells are similar. (A) Splenocytes from either TCR-Tg or B6 (Thy1.1+) mice were injected into naive, nonirradiated B6 (Thy1.2+) recipients. Percentages indicate the fraction of naive TCR-Tg or B6 donor CD8+ T cells recoverable from spleens of recipient mice 2 d after transfer. Each bar represents >10 mice and error bars indicate standard deviation from the mean. (B) To discount differences in survival of TCR-Tg vs. B6 cells, 108 purified polyclonal CD8+ cells from C57Bl/6 Thy1.1+ mice (which, given our estimates, contains ∼500 precursor cells) were mixed with 500 purified TCR-Tg Thy1.1+/Thy1.2+ CD8+ cells. These were then injected into naive B6 Thy1.2+ recipients. After challenge with LCMV, epitope-specific donor cells (Thy1.1+) from recipient mice were analyzed for Thy1.2 (TCR Tg only) expression. Percentages indicate the proportion of the CD8+DbGP33+Thy1.1+ response due to TCR-Tg (Thy1.2+) or polyclonal B6 (Thy1.2−) donor cells.
TCR-Tg and polyclonal B6 epitope-specific CD8+ T cells have similar proliferative properties. LCMV immune mice containing a mixture of TCR-Tg and endogenous DbGP33-specific CD8+ T cells were rechallenged with either LCMV (clone-13) (A) or a vaccinia virus expressing the GP33 epitope (VV-GP33) (B). PBMCs were analyzed for the frequency of DbGP33-specific cells (bar graphs, left axis) as well as the fraction of the DbGP33+ response from individual mice due to donor TCR-Tg cells (right axis) before (memory) and after (secondary) rechallenge. Graphs indicate mean frequency of antigen specific cells (>6 mice per group) and error bars indicate standard deviation from the mean.
Transfer of increasing numbers of donor cells does not affect the TCR affinity or diversity of the endogenous DbGP33 response. TCR affinity. (A) Relative TCR affinity of P14 TCR transgenic (filled circles) versus polyclonal (open circles) DbGP33-specific CD8 T cells. For quantitative comparison of tetramer fall-off kinetics, data are shown as the (−) change in normalized total fluorescence (NTF, as described in Materials and Methods) over time. The mean (± SD) slope of each interval is equivalent to (NTFi − NTFi-1)/t where t is the length of the time interval. (B) Relative TCR affinity of endogenous DbGP33-specific CD8 T cells from mice whose DbGP33 response was completely due to endogenous cells (circles), 25–33% donor cells (triangles), or 66–75% donor cells (squares) were analyzed by tetramer fall-off assay as described. (C) TCR diversity. Endogenous DbGP33-specific CD8 T cells from mice containing either completely endogenous (open circles) or 50% transgenic DbGP33 cells (filled circles) were analyzed for TCR-Vβ usage using a panel of monoclonal antibodies. Shown is the percentage of the endogenous (Vα2−) DbGP33 response using each Vβ gene segment.
No suppression of the endogenous DbGP33-specific CD8+ T cell response due to limited antigen availability. (A) No suppression of the endogenous response was observed in the range of precursor frequency. Mice receiving different numbers of DbGP33-specific TCR Tg CD8+ T cells were challenged with LCMV and 7 d after infection, splenocytes were analyzed by flow cytometry. The magnitude of the endogenous polyclonal (open circles) and donor transgenic (filled circles) DbGP33-specific CD8+ response is shown per spleen versus the number of engrafted donor cells. (B) Increased antigen load results in precisely the same dose dependence of donor cells. Mice receiving different numbers of donor TCR-Tg cells were challenged with LCMV (ARM) (circles) or the more virulent LCMV (clone-13) (triangles). Plotted is the fraction of the response due to donor cells versus the number of donor cells engrafted.
T-bet Controls Autoaggressive CD8 Lymphocyte Responses in Type 1 Diabetes
c-Jun NH 2 -Terminal Kinase (JNK)1 and JNK2 Signaling Pathways Have Divergent Roles in CD8 + T Cell–mediated Antiviral Immunity
Differential Antigen Presentation Regulates the Changing Patterns of CD8 + T Cell Immunodominance in Primary and Secondary Influenza Virus Infections
About JEM
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About Usrussellconstru2017-09-01T14:06:51+00:00
Steve Russell started Russell Construction in 1983 with one truck, a lot of hard work and exceptional employees. RCA began in residential building and remodeling and quickly moved to commercial contracting. Steve has promoted excellence in commercial, residential and industrial building for the past 34 years, winning several awards for his company based on quality, service and skill. Steve is an Auburn graduate (’76), has a poor golf game (but still plays) and rides a bike regularly. His greatest joy now is engaging the young leaders in RCA to help them advance in their careers.
— Steve Russell, President/Founder
Russell Construction History
Steve Russell founded Russell Construction of Alabama, Inc. in 1983 and in the 33 years since inception has built a company of men and women of exceptional character and construction capability. Our completed projects have satisfied customers as diverse as the entire construction industry, including Wal-Mart, PowerSouth Energy, Baptist Hospital, Jackson Hospital, Community Health Services (multiple campuses), Auburn University, Faulkner University, Purina, 50 local churches, and hundreds of other project owners and developers.
Quality is our cornerstone. The word “quality” is used so casually today, it is almost a cliché. Everyone claims to believe in it, but at Russell Construction we have built a successful business by making quality the cornerstone of everything we do. In every size project and in every aspect of the project, we bring quality to the job every day. It’s an approach that has brought us remarkable success. Now in our third decade, we have grown to be a major construction company handling some of the most demanding – and unique – projects in the Southeast.
We serve our customers with delivery methods to suit their needs. We constantly work with architects throughout the Southeast to carry out their designs and assist them with our knowledge of construction methods, materials, time frames, and costs. We also provide companies, groups, and individuals with Construction Management services, complete Design-Build services, or typical general contracting depending on the needs of the client. We can take your project from start to finish or handle all aspects including design, site location, zoning and building code compliance, financing, budgeting and, of course, the construction itself.
We provide exceptional service. We have put together a team of quality people. Our staff is comprised of experienced professionals dedicated to sound project management and cost efficiency. We work every day to Partner with our customers and deliver the exceptional service they deserve.
We’re ready to get to work for you!
The word “quality” is used so casually today, it is almost a cliché. Everyone claims to believe in it, but at Russell Construction we have built a successful business by making quality the cornerstone of everything we do.
Healthcare Construction Certificate 2017
“Commercial New Construction” Best of 2017 for 9 Consecutive Years by the Montgomery Business Hall of Fame
2007 Outstanding Builder
2002 Safety Awards of Excellence Platinum Level
2000 Safety Award of Merit
Merit Award from Chambless King Architects
“Above and Beyond Award” from the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve
“The Butler Club” Membership due to member’s forceful salesmanship, professional management and honest business policy.
2004 High Performance Builder
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‘Yes I do’: Teemu Selanne believes Alex Ovechkin will break Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goals record
Teemu Selanne knows a thing or two about scoring goals. The Finnish Flash scored the most goals as a rookie in NHL history (76) and led the league in goal scoring three different times (76, 1992-93; 52, 1997-98; and 47, 1998-99).
So when Alex Ovechkin overtook the 1997 Stanley Cup champion for 11th on the all-time goal-scoring list, Selanne was both impressed and congratulatory. He also had some advice.
By Ian Oland 2 days ago
That’s more like it: numbers for the morning after
The Washington Capitals bounced back after a couple very poor losses to Metro Division teams with a win against yet another common division foe. The Caps and Ilya Samsonov shutout the Carolina Hurricanes 2-0 on home ice. I’ll take some more of that.
The Caps out-shot the Canes 30 to 23 and out-attempted them at five-on-five 44 to 29.
By Chris Cerullo 5 days ago
Ilya Samsonov records first career shutout in 2-0 win over Carolina Hurricanes
Ilya Samsonov can’t stop, won’t stop winning. On Monday night, the Russian netminder won his 13th game in his 15 start, extending his Capitals’ franchise record for wins to begin a career.
Samsonov made 23 saves in the 2-0 victory over the Carolina Hurricanes to record his first NHL shutout. At the final buzzer, Nicklas Backstrom collected the game puck and gave it to Samsonov.
Baby’s first shutout: Caps beat Canes 2-0
The Washington Capitals got back in a winning way on Monday night, downing the Carolina Hurricanes, who didn’t seem to be paying much attention to the hockey game they were in.
The goals came front loaded and off the stick of Alex Ovechkin. He scored both in the first period: one during even strength off a nice pass from Tom Wilson, and the second on the power play from his Ovi Spot. There were no more goals, and you know what that means:
Caps win! Ilya Samsonov’s first career shutout!
By Peter Hassett 5 days ago
Richard Panik wears face shield after a Miles Wood high stick detached his gums from his lower lip
Richard Panik is now in the running for the grossest Capitals’ injury of the 2019-20 season.
Saturday, against the New Jersey Devils, Panik absorbed a high-stick from Miles Wood. Panik left the game bleeding profusely from the mouth.
Tom Wilson waves to crowd after Capitals play 500-game tribute video
Tom Wilson became the fastest forward in Washington Capitals history to play 500 career games against the Carolina Hurricanes, Monday.
The Caps honored Wilson with a tribute video during the first period.
Alex Ovechkin scores twice in first period, now has the 11th most goals in NHL history
Alex Ovechkin has passed Teemu Selanne in all-time goals with two first-period goals against the Carolina Hurricanes on Monday.
Here comes Ovi goals number 685 and 686.
Injury report for Caps vs Canes
The Capitals are kicking off their week with hosting the Carolina Hurricanes. After tonight, the Capitals are officially DONE with the Hurricanes for the regular season!
Game starts at 7 PM. Here’s your injury report.
By Elyse Bailey 5 days ago
Caps vs Canes pregame: Caniac Conclusion
The week is kicking off with the Capitals at home playing host to the Carolina Hurricanes. That’s it! All done with the Canes after tonight! This is the fourth and final regular season rumble between these two teams. Such a weird schedule, but hopefully the Capitals can pull out a win tonight to finish the Canes series tied up at 2-2.
Puck drop is at 7:00 PM. The recap will be coming to you from Peter Hassett.
Ilya Samsonov to start against Carolina Hurricanes on Monday
Saturday’s miserable defeat at the hands of the New Jersey Devils appears to be having consequences. At practice on Sunday morning, head coach Todd Reirden announced that rookie goalie Ilya Samsonov will start against the Carolina Hurricanes on Monday.
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Feds may probe Southborough primate center after animal's death
Stop Animal Exploitation NOW!
S. A. E. N.
"Exposing the truth to wipe out animal experimentation"
http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/top_stories/x312166226/Feds-may-probe-Southborough-primate-center-after-animals-death
SOUTHBOROUGH — The federal government is weighing whether it will launch a formal probe into the practices of the New England Primate Research Center following the death of an animal there in June.
"The preliminary step is simply making the routine inspection," said David Sacks, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "Research facilities are responsible for following protocol to the letter."
During a June 29 inspection, the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services said it found the body of a primate on the floor of a cage that had been sent through a cage-washing system on June 9.
Sacks said yesterday the agency is uncertain about whether it will launch a formal probe.
In her report, Veterinary Medical Officer Paula S. Gladue, who works for the agency, said that "results of microscopic examinations of the body are consistent with the conclusion that the non-human primate had died before the enclosure was put into the cage washer."
The cause of death was not disclosed in Gladue's report. The report did not identify the primate's species.
Michael A. Budkie, co-founder of an Ohio-based animal rights organization called Stop Animal Exploitation Now, sent copies of the June 29 inspection report to the Daily News.
Sacks said the USDA makes its investigation reports available online.
He said the USDA is dedicated to enforcing the Animal Welfare Act. "It's typical for us to routinely inspect facilities like these once a year."
Budkie said yesterday that he's skeptical of the conclusion that the primate was dead before it was sent through the cage washer.
"Cage washers are designed to sterilize cages and that process would cause changes to the animal's tissue," he said. "You'd think that would compromise the ability to tell how the animal died.
"In the end, shouldn't they have noticed there was a dead primate inside the cage?"
The Southborough facility, owned and operated by Harvard Medical School, is one of eight National Primate Research Centers. It houses 1,800 primates.
USDA records indicate no violations were recorded during the facility's previous inspection, which was Feb. 9.
Gladue's report, however, suggests the facility's staff might not have been adequately trained.
"Whenever primary enclosures are cleaned using steam, primates must be removed to ensure the animals are not harmed, wetted or distressed in the process," Gladue stated. "The failure of personnel to remove a primate from a primary enclosure prior to cleaning by steam in a mechanical cage washer has direct and adverse affects on the health and well-being of the animal.
"The research facility needs to take appropriate steps to ensure that all personnel are instructed in the requirements of this section for the health and safety of the animals."
Harvard Medical School did not respond to requests for comment.
Dead monkey raises alarms Primate lab gets USDA citation - Media Coverage
Feds may probe Southborough primate center after animal's death - Media Coverage
2 Aug 2010 - USDA Cites Harvard as Primate Found Dead in Cagewasher; Watchdog Group Demands Inspection Tour of Primate Center - Press Release
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› Swansea Bay Health News
› Critically ill patient care boosted by bedside technology
Critically ill patient care boosted by bedside technology
Above: Senior sister Rhiannon Hall at the ICU’s mobile workstation.
Care of critically ill patients at Morriston Hospital is being boosted by new bedside digital workstations.
The introduction of both fixed and mobile computer stations in the hospital’s intensive care unit (ICU) has significantly changed the way nurses and other healthcare staff record patient notes.
The busy unit, which hosts 28 beds across three wards, looks after patients who are critically ill. They need intensive monitoring and support to recover, so access to up-to-date records is vital for the staff looking after them.
Previously, nurses and other healthcare workers took notes by hand before going back to an office to transcribe them into a computer. This was time-consuming and took them away from patients.
Now, nearly every bed in the unit has a fixed computer workstation alongside it for staff to immediately update records.
The sister in charge also has access to a movable tablet PC stand which can be taken around the wards.
All of these stations are linked to hospital records so they can be immediately updated and staff can call up crucial patient information when they need it.
Since they were introduced to the ICU, the sisters in charge alone have already saved more than 45 minutes a shift.
Rhiannon Hall, senior sister in ICU, said, “Digital technology is helping us get out there, where we are needed, and not locked away in our offices. Now we can make real-time updates at the bedside.”
ICU consultant Dr John Gorst, added, “This way of working also means nurses can spend more face-to-face time with patients and relatives.”
Mobile technology is one of the health board’s digital transformation priorities. It has already been used across several other hospital wards to improve patient safety and flow, and ensure staff are providing the best care.
Matt John, chief digital officer, said, “It is fantastic to see how the workstations are helping nurses in ICU.
“We are now looking at how we can use more mobile devices like this in other areas of the health board.
“In particular we are looking at ways to support electronic prescribing, and will be piloting an electronic nursing documentation project.
“Devices and software like this will transform the way healthcare staff work, and ultimately improve the way patients are treated.”
The digital services team is also in the process of making sure all ICT technology in ICU and other key clinical areas, such as A&E, is fit for purpose and running smoothly, so that healthcare staff across the board have more time to treat patients in need.
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Jenny Salmean
Jenny Salmean is an artist and producer based in Aberdeenshire. She studied Intermedia Art at Edinburgh College of Art, graduating in 2014, and is currently Programme and Communications Manager at Scottish Sculpture Workshop.
From 2015– 2017, Jenny was a Committee Member at artist-led project Rhubaba, Edinburgh. During this time the committee produced projects including ‘You hardboiled I softboiled’ (2017), a long-term polyvocal correspondence and investigation into love, how it may be practiced and appropriated across digital and physical distance and terrain.
Over this period, she also worked at Inverleith House, Edinburgh, as an Exhibitions Officer. Alongside coordinating touring exhibitions and displays across the botanic gardens, she supported on the exhibition and public engagement programme, ‘Plant Scenery of the World’ in 2017, which brought together new and commissioned works by artists including Laura Aldridge, Oliver Osborne and Charlie Billingham, alongside existing works and materials from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh’s archives and collections.
www.ssw.org.uk/
@SSWLumsden
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Scottish Contemporary Art Network is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCIO): Charity Number SC043016.
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SCHLEBRUGGE.EDITOR
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New Releases » The Architecture of the Generali Foundation
The Architecture of the Generali Foundation
Christian Jabornegg, András Pálffy (eds.)
Texts by Sabine Breitwieser, Otto Kapfinger, Regina Karner, Albert Kirchengast, and Moritz Küng
German/English, 136 pages, numerous color images, 22 x 29.5 cm, softcover
€ 42,00 [A]
€ 40,90 [D]
In 1995, the Generali Foundation – founded as the nonprofit art association of the Generali Group Austria – relocated to premises in the fourth district of Vienna, designed by the architects Jabornegg & Pálffy. It moved to a building complex called the Habighof, which dates back to the beginning of the 20th century, when it was used as a hat factory. Here, the Generali Foundation housed an exhibition space, underground storage, study rooms and offices. In 2015, the collection of Generali Foundation was transferred to the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg as a permanent loan, and the site in Vienna was closed down.
This book examines this architectural landscape – which has since been listed as an historic site – in its international context as a trend-setting exhibition space. It explores the relation between internal and external architectural structures and examines the commitment of companies in the field of visual arts and architecture in a shifting social context.
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MUS Honor Scholarship
High School seniors graduating June 2020
High school must be accredited by the MT Board of Public Ed
The MUS Student Financial Services administers the MUS Honor Scholarship. The MUS Honor Scholarship is a 4-year renewable scholarship, that waives the recipient’s tuition when used at an eligible campus. The value varies depending upon which campus the student attends (the average value at a 4-year Montana campus is $5,000 a year or $20,000 for four years).
The MUS Student Financial Services office offers up to 200 scholarships annually (contingent upon continued funding of the program). For more information on the scholarship, visit mus.edu.
Montana's STEM Scholarship
Montana’s STEM Scholarship is a 4-year renewable scholarship. Students who are awarded a scholarship and continue to meet the requirements may receive; $1,000 the first year, $1,500 the second year, $1,500 the third year and $2,000 the fourth year. For more information on the scholarship and eligibility requirements, visit mus.edu/scholarships.
Scholarship Award Process
Application packets must be POSTMARKED by March 15th
Our office will send award notifications in early- to mid-April
Once awards are announced High School Counselors/Designees will be notified, in addition, ALL recipients of these scholarships will be notified by mail.
If awarded, each recipient must accept or decline the offered scholarship, please be sure to return the information promptly.
Applications are now being accepted for the MUS Honor Scholarship through March 15, 2020. Sign up or log in and apply now!
Search through more than 1000 scholarships available for a variety of subject areas, academic levels, and state and tribal colleges and universities.
Note: This Scholarship Search tool is a service provided by the Montana University System. Unless otherwise noted, we do not endorse, represent or warrant the accuracy or reliability of any of the information or content, distributed through or linked from this site. Most links on this website lead to resources on servers maintained by third parties over whom we have no control and accordingly we accept no responsibility or liability for any of the material contained on those servers. Any reliance upon any information, content, advertisements, materials, products, services or vendors included on or found through our service shall be at the user's sole risk.
Deadlines, eligibility and other criteria may change often and without notice. Please check with the organizations directly for the most up-to-date and accurate information.
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When a citizen or visitor calls the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office for assistance, the initial responding Deputy Sheriff is assigned to the Patrol Division. Deputies at the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office who are assigned to the Patrol Division handle all of the initial investigative duties that pertain to calls for service in the County of Santa Rosa. These Deputies meet with the reporting person, interview witnesses and suspects, collect evidence, render first aid, effect arrests and conduct traffic stops. If a scene or criminal investigation is complex, Patrol Deputy can request assistance from a specialized unit for additional investigative resources; however, the initial case is worked by the Patrol Deputy.
Many Patrol Deputies have received specialized training in investigative techniques, narcotics detection and investigation, evidence recovery, Community Policing and crisis intervention training (CIT) which enhances their response to our Community. Patrol Deputies receive advanced training in Community Oriented Policing, Use of Force, Police Vehicle Operations and a myriad of other law enforcement topics. The Patrol Division is supported by the Police K-9 Unit, the Traffic Unit, the Marine Unit, the School Resource Officers, Crime Scene and the Victim Services Unit. All of the Special Response Units report to the Special Operations Division. The Special Operations Division includes Emergency Response Team, Crisis Negations Unit, Dive Team, and Honor Guard.
The County of Santa Rosa is divided into 5 patrol Districts. There are two rotations with three shifts of Deputies that provide Law Enforcement services within Santa Rosa County 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and 365 days a year. Each Shift is supervised by a District Lieutenant, three Sergeants and is staffed by numerous Deputies to ensure an efficient and effective patrol response. Santa Rosa County is aligned by Districts such as Navarre, Gulf Breeze, Milton, Pace, and Jay. Each District has a substation of what is commonly referred to as a District Office.
For Command and Control purposes, Sheriff Johnson maintains 4 Patrol Lieutenants which work primarily evening hours and serve in the capacity of senior OIC’s or Officers in Command of the entire County.
Santa Rosa Sheriff's Office FL USA (Dodge Charger)
Passenger takes over airport monitor for video game - WLOS
Nice catch: Two West Virginia men set new state records for carp, catfish sizes - mycbs4.com
Dispatch: (850) 983-1190
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SHAG Succeeds With Middle-Market Senior Living, Unconventional Branding
By Chuck Sudo | October 3, 2018
This year has been one of redefinition for Sustainable Housing for Ageless Generations (SHAG). The Washington-state based senior housing provider — the largest in the Puget Sound area — celebrated its 30th anniversary with a new vision, and came close to changing its name altogether. SHAG’s acronym used to stand for “Senior Housing Assistance Group.”
“We were actually thinking about changing the acronym away from SHAG,” Executive Director Jay Woolford told Senior Housing News. “But when we did market research, we realized there was too much brand equity. People knew SHAG, but they either didn’t know what it stood for or had a misperception that we were a quasi-government agency.”
The acronym’s new meaning embraces the group’s updated mission of helping its tenants age gracefully and continue to be vital contributors in their communities, and a commitment to diversity within their communities. SHAG has also embraced the diversity of its 28 communities through irreverent, quirky marketing. One example of its unconventional approach: When a visitor to SHAG’s website clicks on Woolford’s headshot, it transforms into a photo of him playing guitar.
Courtesy of SHAG
SHAG Executive Director Jay Woolford
SHAG has also embraced the inevitable “Austin Powers” references to its name.
“When I started, the number of people who laughed because they thought of Austin Powers was astounding,” Woolford said. “We decided to embrace our inner SHAG.”
Senior Housing News interviewed Woolford about SHAG’s new mission, its operational model and its future plans, including working more closely with Medicare Advantage insurers and other managed care organizations.
Senior Housing News: You joined SHAG in 2010. How has the organization changed in that time?
Jay Woolford: The focus was on new development. As I visited each community and talked to managers and residents, I came away realizing we were doing a great job of providing housing. But we needed to prepare ourselves to support the residents living in our communities, to allow them to age within our communities.
We recognized we needed to redefine the mission. We want to preserve and sustain affordability, and highlight what we’re doing to support and sustain people to age in community.
Affordability has always been the foundation of SHAG’s mission statement. What do you do to ensure affordability?
From the beginning, our model has always focused on providing affordable housing for middle-market seniors who earn too much to qualify for subsidized housing, yet don’t make enough to enter independent living communities. We target folks who are either living on a fixed income, people who aren’t retired and fall within the broader spectrum of income levels.
We take advantage of the state’s 4% low income housing tax credits and volume cap bonds almost exclusively to develop our properties. We’ve found, from experience, the 4% credits are not as competitive as the 9% credits, and it’s a bracket where we’re able to develop properties in a manner to comfortably offer rents that conform to 60% of a renter’s annual median income (AMI).
Is this an operational model that can be duplicated elsewhere? Or does SHAG have the right confluence of policies, pricing, scale and market conditions in your operating area?
I believe our model is replicable, but definitely needs to adapt to market conditions. Median income, property prices and market rents definitely are a factor. As I mentioned, the economics are generally favorable for projects with a 50% and 60% AMI income qualification. There is a growing need though to serve folks in the 40%-50% AMI income bracket.
In recent years, housing costs have risen while incomes have remained static. What else has SHAG undertaken to help residents maintain affordability?
Over the last couple years, we’ve developed supportive services teams which help connect our residents available services in an area. That can include anything from nutrition support to transportation support to access to health care and economic support. We’ve also developed partnerships with local groups and nonprofits, which allow residents to connect with the neighborhoods where they live while also granting them access to local services.
How does SHAG evaluate those partnerships?
It begins in our annual planning sessions, looking at what areas we want to focus on. We try to be intentional in fostering these partnerships, but we also need to know when to be opportunistic when we’re approached by other organizations that are interested in working with us.
We’ve been reporting on how Medicare Advantage plans are starting to cover non-skilled in-home services, which could potentially make MA a payer in senior living. Is SHAG in any discussions with MA plans or eyeing opportunities to work with different managed care organizations/payers?
SHAG has very much been involved in discussions about opportunities to best support healthy living in affordable housing. We believe that this must be accomplished through partnerships with ACOs, HMOs, CMS and other provider networks and insurance carriers, to begin to look at effective models of delivery, preventive measures and cost containment. Everyone needs to recognize that housing is an essential part of health care. As new programs move into our market, we are actively pursuing discussions. We also continue to advocate for ways to create payer models that will support aging in community.
Can you talk a bit about SHAG’s scale?
We’re focused on the Interstate 5 Corridor, from the Canadian border down to Olympia and Puget Sound. Currently, we operate in excess of 5,400 affordable units. We have several new communities under construction. Our communities tend to be larger — the sweet spot is in the 200-unit range. We have density by design, and it gives us another advantage: a diverse population we serve. Unlike a lot of communities that are predominantly homogenous, our communities reflect the population in the area. With that comes diversity.
What does your pipeline look like?
We recently opened a new senior living facility in Tukwila, in conjunction with the city. We took several parcels and built the housing, along with a standalone community center, a coffee shop and an outdoor plaza where we’re able to do farm stands in the summer. The plaza is next to a library and brings in a lot of intergenerational traffic.
We’re building two to three new buildings a year and will now be redeveloping several of our older communities. We closed bond financing last week on a property we developed 15 years ago. This will allow us to bring the community up to a new standard.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Written by Chuck Sudo
SHAG, Sustainable Housing For Ageless Generations
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Opera – Blu-Ray Review
By Owen Hughes 22 January 2019 11 February 2019
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Back in secondary school, the idea of watching a euro-horror like Opera pretty much meant me and my fellow teenage mates were guaranteed nudity. It’s crass, immature and completely devalues the social and gender commentary that is so rife in this much varied sub-genre, but that is the reputation these movies still endure to this day for younger fans. The giallo (and gialli, such as Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion) means, for a lot of people: exploitation, sexploitation and lashings of gore.
Today, the likes of Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento (Suspiria, Phenomena, Tenebrae) mean something different to me. The influence they had on the genre as a whole is plain to see if you watch any modern horror; European, British, American or otherwise. Arguably slashers would never have become a ‘thing’ through the 70s/80s without the influence of the pulp-fiction adaptations that flew out of Italy in the early parts of the decade, films like Argento’s Animal trilogy, Deep Red and Inferno.
Opera, originally released in 1987 (well after Italy stopped churning out giallo movies by the dozen), follows a young opera singer, Betty (Cristina Marsillach), who is repeatedly captured and forced to watch as a disguised super-fan murders her friends and colleagues in the most gruesome ways. CultFilms has released this 2K restoration with colour regrading carried out under instruction from the maestro himself and in reference to his own, preferred, original cinema print. It could be argued that now, more than ever, is the perfect time to watch the horror master’s shocking thriller.
The movie uses Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth as a motif. Music from the opera can be heard throughout with most of the grizzly deaths occurring inside the opera house itself. However, what makes Opera a compelling watch – if you’ll excuse the pun – is how Betty is physically forced to observe the killings by her mysterious assailant. Nails are taped to her eyes to force them open as the murders are committed in front of her. It could be allegorical for what a filmmaker goes through; Argento pours his utmost efforts into realising the most visually shocking and creative concepts imaginable, but people look away. He forces Betty to watch, as he would force his audience to. Alternatively, it could be an allegory to the audience in general, in a Haneke’s Funny Games kind-of-way, begging the question: Why do people want to see these horrendous acts? What is it that makes the person on the other side of the screen wilfully partake in these acts, however passively they occur?
READ MORE: Glass – Film Review
Or, of course, it could just be that anything to do with pointy objects and their proximity to eyeballs is going to make the audience uneasy and make for some incredibly tense scenes in a movie designed to thrill. Given the fact that the horror director-turned opera director Marco (Ian Charleson) was based on Argento himself, it can safely be assumed that there was more going on than meets the eye. A good question to ask in these circumstances isn’t “what does it mean,” but “what do you see?” In this case, the eyes are the windows to the soul and they are being force-fed brutality. It could be interpreted that Opera is no ordinary film but a cry for help from a filmmaker who feels his very own soul is being tortured by the images he inflicts on not just himself, but also on those loved ones, friends, acquaintances, colleagues and fans. Or, of course, it could just be that pointy objects, eyeballs, tense, blah blah blah.
Opera so keenly fits into the descent of Argento’s oeuvre that it is almost a shame to see it unravel thread by thread in this 107 minute horror. It is not controversial to suggest his best work was well and truly behind him by this stage in his career and that he would never recapture what once made him so unique and such a visionary. In the politest possible sense, he grasped the foundations laid by Hammer for popular horror, remodelled it into something more sinister, twisted and despicable through the 70s right up until Opera’s release, then was forced to sit back and observe as others built on his success. Despite the smattering of typical Argento visual genius and memorable individual scenes, the film is largely a generic slasher full of contrived conveniences, a sedate pace and a pretty nonsensical plot and motive.
However, it’s hard to fault CultFilms’ dual format release. The HD presentation is flawless. Watching ‘Aria of Fear’ – a brand new candid interview with director Dario Argento, revisiting his work from a fresh viewpoint – on the extras that accompany the release will provide some new insight into the movie, as will a behind-the-scenes ‘making of’ documentary called ‘Opera Backstage’. There’s even the option to watch the movie in Italian rather than the English audio, with subtitles for us monolingual language speakers.
Whether the reputation of euro-horror in the UK and the rest of the West will ever escape the trappings of how it is viewed by the young and excitable as “guaranteed nudity” is hard to know; if it even is something that it should (or wants) to escape. A lot of these fans are the reason these movies still live. But if Opera shows us anything, it’s that Argento was capable of delivering greatness and not just gallons of red corn syrup.
CultFilms presents Dario Argento’s horror masterpiece Opera on Dual-Format Blu-ray, DVD and VOD now.
Tags: Cristina Marsillach dario argento Ian Charleson Opera
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Cleanin’ Up the Town: Remembering Ghostbusters – Review
By Dominic Hastings 28 November 2019 27 December 2019
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“I’ve seen sh*t that’ll turn you white!”
Ghostbusters is, perhaps, the greatest comedy of all time. A sequel, reboot, animated series, tonnes of ancillary products and millions of fans, 35 years later an exciting new documentary has come in the form of Cleanin’ Up the Town: Remembering Ghostbusters. Directed by Anthony Bueno, and written by Anthony and Claire Bueno, Cleanin’ Up the Town has the potential to be the greatest documentary of all time.
Over the course of a decade, Anthony Bueno and his team consisting of more than 10 producers, conducted interviews with 99% of Ghostbusters’ cast and crew, and captured an entire containment grid full of archive footage too. Cleanin’ Up the Town successfully works as both a retrospective and “making of” production, providing terrific coverage on the varying aspects that made Ghostbusters so successful, from the origins behind the surnames of the Ghostbusters to fire-testing the iconic Stay Puft Marshmallow Man outfit. There are so many different points of interest present, it’s amazing. The viewer is presented with so much intriguing information on filmmaking from a different period; a period only 35 years ago, but essentially light years ago in filmmaking terms, especially special effects and so on. As a fan, Cleanin’ Up the Town is gold. The ultimate fan service.
READ MORE: The Dwelling / Tilt / State Like Sleep – Horror & Thriller Round-Up
The great notion of documentary film is that, as a viewer, you experience not only the reinforcement of a subject or topic, but you are presented with new information. Documentaries are there for people to learn about something, and the best documentaries provide information that is new to at least someone, regardless of said information’s obscurity. In Cleanin’ Up the Town, there is an overwhelming abundance of intriguing information, tremendous recollections of the Ghostbusters production, and beautiful imagery.
There is a consistent ambience throughout, suggesting that Cleanin’ Up the Town was produced with pure love from a true fandom of Ghostbusters. Not once does this documentary feel false or studio manufactured. There is a rawness and beauty adding legitimacy to the cause. Technically, you could say that Cleanin’ Up the Town is generic – standard interviews, archive etc. But because the content within is so supreme, a generically made documentary, becomes a great one. One of Cleanin’ Up the Town’s greatest strengths is that it goes way beyond the main cast of Ghostbusters – so much of the interview content comes from the crew, the 1984 film is remembered as a piece of iconic filmmaking, and more than just iconic star power.
READ MORE: Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound – DVD Review
There are, however, a few spooky elements. As a decade-old project, Bueno and his team were able to, obviously, acquire interviews with cast members who are no longer here. There is an utter heartbreak in seeing the late Harold Ramis on screen – not only because he subsequently passed on, but because Cleanin’ Up the Town establishes a feel of him still being alive. The same goes for David Margulies, who played the Mayor.
The timing for Cleanin’ Up the Town is purely written in the stars: 35 years after the original Ghostbusters, 30 years after Ghostbusters II, and only a matter of months prior to the release of the next franchise instalment, this fabulous documentary should inspire you to get suited up and ready to catch ghosts. To put it lightly, Cleanin’ Up the Town is the ultimate film-based documentary. A treasure for any fanatic of Ghostbusters and must-see documentary for years to come.
Cleanin’ Up the Town: Remembering Ghostbusters premieres at the BFI IMAX on 3rd December before going on theatrical release at selected cinemas. It will also be available on VOD from 27th January 2020, with a DVD and Blu-ray release to follow.
Tags: Cleanin' Up The Town: Remembering Ghostbusters Ghostbusters
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60PLUS MILFS 9
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These horny old moms have heard all about JMac. They know he has one of the biggest, thickest cocks in porn and doesn’t hold back when he’s fucking pussy, filling it up and stretching it out, using the women he’s with like sex dolls, dicking them in positions they never knew existed. So when these six 40something moms came to our studio, they wanted The JMac Experience, and they got it! But are they up to the challenge? You’re damn right they are. Features 41-year-old Billi Bardot, a MILF with tits so big, she’s a SCORE Girl, too. This is the first all-JMac DVD ever. Read more »
LOOK WHAT MOM'S FUCKING!
When their husbands and kids are away, these 12 real-life moms open up their toy boxes and fill their fuck boxes with the wildest, most-unusual toys you’ve ever seen. Those butt plugs, vibrators and dildos stretch out their old cunts and make them cum like crazy. Watch and cum along with them! Loaded with DP action because some of these MILFs need to have both of their fuck holes filled at the same time. Our wildest and hottest mature masturbation movie ever. Read more »
BUSH BABIES 5 (2-DISC)
They're growing up and their pubes are all grown out! Yeah, it's a jungle down there, and you're the Bush Man who can handle these Bush Babies. And because au naturel means more than hairy pussy, some of these babes have hairy armpits and legs, too. Twelve girls, all amateurs--two of them MILFs--show off their overgrown cunt hair and finger themselves to orgasms so intense, you can practically smell and taste their musk. Movies entirely devoted to girls with hairy pussies are rare, which is why the Bush Babies series has been an international best-seller among discerning pube lovers. Read more »
TEEN BAIT
These girls are young. They should be having sex with guys their own age, but 18-year-old boys are immature and cum way too fast. So they turn to men more than twice their age--men old enough to be their fathers--to give them the loving they need. Their daddies would freak out if they found out that their little darlings were sucking and fucking men as old as they are, but the truth is, these little darlings are just daddy's girls at heart. . Read more »
SCORE BIG BOOB HALL OF FAME (2-DISC)
For the first time, a movie devoted entirely to the members of the SCORE Big-Boob Hall of Fame. Voted on by the readers, a spot in the Hall of Fame is reserved for the elite…the legends of big tits. Packed with solo and XXX scenes, all of them remastered for this very special edition. All of the greats are here, from SaRenna Lee, Danni Ashe and Linsey Dawn McKenzie to Daphne Rosen, Crystal Gunns and Christy Marks. Twenty-four girls. Read more »
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From the folks who brought you Bush Babies, the best-selling series featuring girls with hairy pussies, it's Big Tits, Hairy Snatch, starring 12 SCORE and Voluptuous babes with huge tits and bushy cunts. Disc One features six girls--including three newcomers--in hardcore action. Disc Two contains six solo girls with some of the biggest tits and the hairiest snatches you've ever seen, including super-busty reader's wife Shelby Gibson and the great Vanessa Y. in her hottest scene ever. Read more »
BIG FAT TITS 4 (2 DISC)
The 16 girls in this movie have really big, fat tits and know how to use them. They shove their natural beauties in your face, bounce 'em, lick 'em, suck 'em and do all the things you love to see. Made by big-boob lovers for big-boob lovers and loaded with many of 2019's best stacked 'n' packed new girls, including Cheryl Blossom, Dina Sahari, Lissa Hope, Annabelle Rogers, Maria Body, Sigal Acon, Kim Velez, Anna Blaze, Ana Montes and Jenni Noble. An incredible collection of great babes in all-new scenes. Read more »
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When these girls say they’re close, they mean really close. When they say they share everything, they mean everything…especially cock. Loaded with GGB and GGBB action in which the girls suck each other’s tits, eat each other’s pussies and suck each other’s cunt juices off lucky guys’ big, hard rods. There’s a scene in which two 19-year-olds get fucked on the floor of an auto body shop and another in which a 52-year-old MILF has sex with her 18-year-old female student and a male student. This is group action at its finest. Read more »
AFTER SCHOOL SLUT CLUB 7
While other girls are off at drama club or math league, the six naughty teens in After School Slut Club 7 are having a much better time sucking and fucking big cocks. Mommy and Daddy don't know what their little girls do when school gets out, but what they don't know won't hurt 'em right? Fuck cheerleading! Stars Violet Rain, Kelsey Cage, Elle Voneva, Candy White, Zoe Bloom and Ana Rose, stripping out of their prim-and-proper schoolgirl outfits to have after-school fuck sessions. . Read more »
GRANNY LOVES YOUNG COCK 2
What are these 50somethings and 60somethings doing? Sucking and fucking young cocks for all the world to see, that’s what! Yeah, they’re grannies. Yeah, a lot of people might say they shouldn’t be fucking guys who are young enough to be their sons, even their grandsons. But they don’t care what anybody else thinks. They love the ego boost and sexual thrill that comes from satisfying young, hard cock. This is 100% genuine mature porn from the worldwide leaders. Read more »
TAG-TEAMING GRANNIES 3
We thought super-granny Rita Daniels had done it all, but then she said, "I want to be air-tight for my 69th birthday." So we made her birthday wish come true..her first air-tight scene: one in her mouth, one in her pussy and one in her ass at the same time. Caroline Hamsel is a 62-year-old street hooker who gets DP'd by two johns. 61-year-old granny Mia Magnusson and 63-year-old Classy Katia get their mouths and old-but-still-tight pussies filled at the same time. And sexy blondes Madison Milstar, 66, and Erica Lauren, 61, share a big, young cock. This is total GILF raunch from the folks who do MILF and GILF porn best. Read more »
FUCK MY OLD ASS 11 (2 DISC)
Super-MILF Victoria Lobov got hooked on porn cock, and now this 47-year-old, big-titted Russian wife is taking it up the ass for the first time in one of the hottest scenes of the year. Plus, nine more super-horny moms in hot 'n' sleazy anal action. It wasn't enough for these 40something women, all of who have kids at home, to come to our studio and fuck big-dicked porn studs for all the world to see. They wanted those cocks up their tight assholes, too. This is genuine MILF porn with real women-next-door, not porn stars. Read more »
MILF SHOW 2 (3-DISC)
They're wives and divorcees. They're moms. They're in their 40s, and their pussies have seen a lot of cocks..been stretched out by some pretty huge dicks. And now these ladies are here, showing off their pink, well-used, often-gaping fuck holes for all the world to see. Twenty-four real women-next-door, all 100% age-verified, almost all of whom had never gotten naked on-camera for all the world to see until they came to us. Read more »
YOUR MOM LOVES ANAL 2
So you walk up to your best buddy and say, "Hey, Dude, I just saw your mom in this new movie. She was sucking some young guy's cock, then he slammed her old pussy with his big dick. Man, she was moaning and cumming all over the place, and you know what he did next?" And your buddy says, "Don't tell me he stuck his cock in my mom's ass." And you say, "Hey, you said it, I didn't. And I hope you don't mind, but I jacked off to your mom." The moms in this movie are MILFs-next-door Cyndi Sinclair, 50; Arianna Steele, 51; Beth Sinkati, 57; Maya Luna, 57; and Melissa Johnson, 58. Plus, 1980s porn star Keli Richards, 52, makes her cumback scene and gets a huge cock in her ass. Read more »
GLAZED GRANNIES
The six moms and grannies in this movie aren’t exactly posing for family photos, not with some stud’s white, sticky spunk covering their faces and dripping down their chins. They’re real women from all walks of lives. Most of them had never fucked on-camera before they came to our studio. Then they sucked and fucked young guys they’d met about five minutes earlier and got their old, wrinkled faces glazed with cum. All age-verified 50Plus MILFs, no fakes, 100% guaranteed. Read more »
CHOCOLATE STUFFED MILFS 7
They’re old white ladies who have lived lives of privilege, and they’re used to getting anything they want. What they want are big, black cocks stretching their mouths and pussies, even their assholes, and they don’t care who knows it or sees it. 100% genuine MILF porn with ladies in their 50s and 60s…even a BBC-loving 70-year-old granny! Stars Seka Black, Veronika Vixon, Arianna Steele, Cashmere, Crystal King and Melissa Johnson. Almost all of these moms and grannies had never fucked on-camera before they came to us. Read more »
DOUBLE STUFFED PLUMPERS 5 (2-DISC)
What do you give a girl with huge, natural tits, a big ass and a soft, curvy body? More meat! The 10 big, busty, beautiful girls in the fifth edition of this best-selling series are doubling their pleasure, doubling their fun by sucking and fucking two studs at the same time. Our plumpest edition of this best-selling series stars Kiki Rainbow, Veronica Bow, Katrin Porto, Charlotte Angel, Amy Villainous, Jordynn LuXXX, Cami Cooper, Nila Mason, 18-year-old Sylvia Bateman and Africa SeXXX, who's now a super-plumper with ginormous tits. Shot in PlumperVision for maXXXimum views and boner effect. . Read more »
SUPER SIZED RIDES 6 (2-DISC)
When these girls go for a cock ride, their big, natural tits quake, their asses shake and their thunder thighs ripple. The sixth edition of this best-selling series is loaded with great new girls like Katrin Porto and Amy Villainous plus the legendary Samantha 38G and Africa Sexxx, plumper than ever with ginormous tits. Ten scenes of some of the hottest, bounciest XXX you’ve ever seen, filmed by plumper lovers for plumper lovers. Read more »
XL GIRLS ICONS
They're the best of the best, the naturally super-stacked girls-next-door that big-tit plumper lovers keep demanding. They're XL Girls Icons, and this is a one-of-a-kind collection, shot by plumper lovers for plumper lovers. Features M-cup Alaura Grey (who shot only for us) in a spectacular scene from Inside Alaura Grey, Anna Beck, who also has M-cups, in her three-way from Double-Stuffed Plumpers 3, plus Nila Mason, Emilia Boshe and Canadian Roxee Robinson in hardcore action never before seen on DVD. . Read more »
SCORE SILHOUETTE 2 (2-DISC)
It's one thing for a girl to have huge tits or a tiny waist, but both of those assets together? You don't see that too often. The 18 rare beauties in SCORE Silhouette 2 are spectacular in every way, from their super-curvy bodies to their in-your-face modeling styles that'll make you feel like you're right in the middle of the action. Features super-stacked blonde beauty Katy Ann, a classic SCORE Girl who just might be the big-tit discovery of the decade..or even the century! Plus readers' wives Shelby Gibson and Victoria Lobov, the legendary Minka, Newcomer of the Year Korina Kova and many more. Read more »
FUCKIN' NATURALS 3
With Voluptuous magazine celebrating its 25th anniversary, we're reminded of the old days, when it would often take years for a special girl to go all the way on-camera. More often than not, there was that long, slow tease that culminated in the big event. Times have changed, and the new movie Fuckin' Naturals 3 is proof of that. Three of the girls--Lissa Hope, Anna Blaze and Jenni Noble--are brand-new to nude modeling, and they're already sucking and fucking real cock for all the world to see. Plus, a new Codi Vore scene in which she's your girlfriend, Marie Leone as a busty maid who fucks and Diana Frost in the hottest tit-fuck/blow job scene you'll ever see. Read more »
PRIVATE SCHOOL SLUTS 3 (2 DISC)
Tight. Schoolgirl. Twats. That’s what it’s all about in the third edition of this best-selling series. Sixteen teen girls who are barely old enough to do this (some of them don’t even have hair on their pussies) take off their tartan skirts and diddle their clits. Read more »
YOUNG & ASS-FUCKED
As if their pussies weren’t tight enough to make the average guy bust a nut in seconds, now these six young girls are offering up their vise-tight buttholes to studs with the biggest cocks ever. Their daddies would throw a shit-fit if they saw them here, getting dicked in their regular hole, but in the ass??These girls might get grounded for life. But they know it’s worth it for the wildest, nastiest sex they’ve ever had. Our hottest young-girl movie ever. Read more »
FLAT & FUCKED 12
Just because these young hotties have nothing but nipple up top doesn't mean they don't know how to fuck, and they're here to prove it. In the 12th edition of this best-selling series, six babes who are barely legal enough to fuck on-camera--and sure as hell can't use their tits as proof of age!--show that they have perfectly fine mouths for sucking and pussies for fucking. And as a special bonus, Lolli Lane gets ass-fucked by a stud with a giant-dick. Loaded with messy facials. Read more »
XXX TROPHY WIVES
Sure, these 40somethings are all somebody’s wife, but don’t be afraid to blatantly check them out. Ogle them all you want. They’re trophy wives, and their hubbies are rightfully proud of the way they look. They’re obviously not over-protective. After all, they gave the okay for their hot, horny wives to come to our studio and suck and fuck hung, young studs for all the world to see. Read more »
MOM DID A PORNO!
These women are respectable members of the community. They’re moms and P.T.A. members. They’ve always done what everyone else expected them to do, but now they’re having a little fun of their own. Yeah, their kids would be shocked if they found out, but they don’t care. Read more »
LOAD LOVIN' MOMS
These moms love the taste of cum. They can’t help it. They just need it. And they came to 40Something so they could get their experienced pussies (and sometimes their assholes) fucked by hung studs before opening their mouths for wet, sticky loads. They try to swallow it all, but there’s just too much cum, they get their faces coated in jizz, too. Read more »
THICK CHICKS ON DICKS ANAL ED. 4 (2-DISC)
The 10 girls in this movie have huge, natural tits, thunder thighs and soft, plump bellies. They’re built like real women. They have mouths for sucking and pink pussies for fucking. And you know what else they have? Big, cushiony asses for fucking. Features spectacular newcomer Amy Villainous in her first on-camera anal scene, former slim ‘n’ stacker turned mega-plumper Africa Sexxx and many more. Read more »
AMATEUR PUSSY HUNT 3 (3 DISC)
Sometimes you need to get to know a girl better before you really get to know her better. The 24 beautiful, young newbies in the third edition of this best-selling series were total amateurs when they walked into our studio. First, they tell us all about themselves…their fantasies, their hobbies, school, their lives back home. After that, they strip naked and show off their fuck holes on-camera for the first time. Get to know each girl before she makes you cum. Read more »
BEST OF ON LOCATION (2-DISC)
For over 25 years, nobody has filmed big tits in paradise like The SCORE Group, and this once-in-a-lifetime collection brings you 21 scenes of sun-drenched fun in the tropics. Beautiful, busty babes with all-natural tits bouncing on the beach, getting wet and having fun in the sun in idyllic tropical locations. A true collector's edition that would cost you several hundred dollars if you tried to put it together yourself. We put it together for you at an unbelievable bargain price. Read more »
HARDSCORE 8 (3-DISC)
They're slim 'n' super-stacked--the bustiest girls in the world--and they're fucking on-camera for all the world to see. They're elite SCORE Girls with off-the-chart sex drives. You're a big-boob lover who won't settle for anything but the bustiest and hottest. You find it right here in the newest edition of this best-selling hardcore series. Features newcomers Amber Alena and Victoria Lobov plus 13 more babes, including Internet sensation Mia Khalifa--a girl we discovered--in a blow job scene that's never been on any DVD. Read more »
THE NEW NATURALS (2-DISC)
There's nothing like a pair of never-before-seen naturals to get a big-boob lover's heart racing. This first-of-its-kind movie features 16 newcomers who are taking the big-tit world by storm. They unhook their bras and shove their huge racks in your face. They have the excitement only a new girl can have. You can see it! Features sensational covergirls Maria Body, Annabelle Rogers, Diana Frost, Erin Star, Cheryl Blossom and many more, most in their first-ever DVD. Read more »
ERIN STAR
She’s young. She’s stacked. She has a pair of the most-beautiful H-cup naturals you’ll ever see, and she loves to play with ’em, self-suck ’em and shove them in your face. Now, in the Romanian girl-next-door’s first exclusive video, rising superstar Erin Star shows us her workout and stretching routine, gets her voluptuous body wet and soapy and puts on a slo-mo boob show that has to be seen to be believed. Seven hot scenes. Read more »
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ST PAULS - Online Book Shop
Home > Spirituality > Icon in My Pocket, The > Reviews
A remarkable travel book
By: 'Fr Michael Goonan, The Catholic Weekly' - 31st of August 2008
Most of us love to travel and we do so for all sorts of reasons – to discover something new, to break the routine of our lives, to have fun, perhaps to escape from the troubles that beset us. Surprisingly these outward journeys – even journeys of escape – often trigger another journey we all need to take – the inner journey to greater self-understanding, and to surprise encounters with the God who is the core of our being.
‘The Icon in My Pocket’, by Swedish writer, Owe Wikström, is a remarkable travel book for its focus is not only on the outward journeys we take but on the inner journey that such travel provokes. Rome in late summer stimulates reflections on character-building and ‘deflating the over-confident’; Paris in autumn reveals the pain of beauty; an elderly couple in Les Halles speak with wordless eloquence about lovability.
I highly recommend this book to all who feel the lure of travel and the longing to take the inner journey, a journey for which no road maps can be drawn.
– Excerpt from Fr Michael Goonan, SSP, Review of ‘The Icon in My Pocket’ by Owe Wikström in ‘The Catholic Weekly’, 31 August 2008.
...a timely work
By: 'Br Brian Grenier, CFC, Catholic Leader' - 14th of May 2009
The Cistercian mystic Thomas Merton once wrote: ‘The geographical pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out of an inner journey’. Owe Wikström, the Swedish Lutheran pastor and psychotherapist, takes this insight a step further in his delightful book ‘The Icon in My Pocket’ by applying it to travel in general.
Given the popularity of package tours, the omnipresence of backpackers and other tourists and the increased interest in religious pilgrimages (notably the Camino de Santiago de Compostela), it is a timely work.
In keeping with its subtitle, the book is divided into two parts – The Outward Journey and The Inward Journey.
The writer presents a simply written and engagingly original account of journeys he has made to the Canary Islands, to Rome in late summer, to Paris ‘the home of cultural refinement’ in late autumn and to Venice in the winter rain.
In doing so he reveals himself not only as a widely read and cultured spectator of what these places have to offer to a well-educated person but also as a shrewd observer of his fellow travellers and the people he encounters.
It is evident from the serious conversations he has with these casual acquaintances and from his reflections on the reading material he has brought with him that to be far from home is, potentially, to be nearer to oneself.
It is in such circumstances that we may find ourselves challenged to replot our life’s course in response to such basic questions as ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Where am I going?’
Throughout his journeys Owe Wikström carries in his pocket a small Russian icon made of plastic in the form of a triptych depicting in its panels the Virgin Mary and her child, Christ Pantocrator, and St Nicholas.
Folded, it is about the size of a credit card.
It reminds him that he is both the observer and the observed and that God is his constant companion on the walk – both the starting point and journey’s end.
This book would make a good gift to a friend with a philosophical bent, even to one who, though interested in travel, shows little interest in spirituality.
If you take a copy with you on your next vacation, you may return to find both you and your home base changed.
– Br Brian Grenier, CFC, Review of ‘The Icon in My Pocket’ by Owe Wikström in ‘The Catholic Leader’, 14 June 2009.
INTERNATIONAL ORDERS (click here)
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Selkie 646
by Dave on June 24, 2015 at 12:16 am
You could do worse for a spirit animal than the ocean’s master of disguise and trickery.
I still slip and forget Amanda's earrings sometimes.
└ Tags: Amanda, Sai Fen, Selkie, Todd
June 24, 2015, 12:19 am | # | Reply
What do you do when you meet your kid, and you don’t much like her?
What do you do when you meet your kid, and you realize she’s a horrible little shit to someone you actually care about?
What do you do when you meet your kid and you remember that the first time you met her was in an orphanage and that you didn’t realize it was her and your ex just dropped an emotional nuclear bomb on you and you know the kid doesn’t know that she and your other kid are siblings and you’re still wracked from the bomb and just want to hold the child you’ve mourned for the past eight years but you can’t?
Coco Kanade
That final panel in a nutshell.
You take it slow and easy.
Farmer John
What do you do when you meet your kid, and she’s eeriely similar to you when you were adopted?
Kilyle
So far he’s got zero reason to dislike her, aside from Selkie’s earlier assessment — an assessment that could just as easily come from one sibling about another. I’ve heard my nephews and nieces treat each other worse than this; “I mean, for a stupid fish” is quite mild when it comes to how kids rib each other.
Whether Todd can take a certain level of teasing as “normal” for kids, I dunno, but I vaguely recall him getting some teasing from his siblings, so that’s unlikely to be a problem.
djaevlenselv
You know, that’s actually a pretty good point. WE as readers know that Amanda is a bully, but Todd actually doesn’t know yet. I don’t recall Selkie ever going into much detail about who bullies her at school (and previously at the orphanage) to her father, so Todd basically only knows what he’s seen, and his only serious experiences with Selkie being victimized was by Heather and Truck. Todd may very well have little to no bad preconceptions of Amanda.
June 24, 2015, 12:51 pm | # | Reply
Just so we’re clear, I’m 99.99% sure Amanda was calling the octopus a stupid fish, not Selkie.
That’s how I took it, and it’s kind of like “My Little Ponies? Only babies watch that stuff!”
So, dismissive of something the other person is really interested in, as well as implying that they are inferior for liking it. Typical kid talk.
Sionyx
Wow. Amanda’s attitude was helpful for a change. Knock Todd out of his anger/hurt mindset enough to get his brain working on how he’s going to handle this. Baby steps, Todd..
I was about to ask if Selkie wanted earrings, but then…
VileTerror
Best comment. Hands down, best comment.
LeDayz
Awe they were almost getting along for once but Amanda just can’t help herself. Also, Sai Fen….!
Despite the front Amanda puts up, we’ve seen her be civil/friendly/helpful with Selkie before (biggest example: when she was in the nurses office & needed her “medicine”…despite the horrible reveal of knowing about Amanda’s abuse & the betrayal of trust & all that…)
A lot of it is the “different/weird=make-fun-of” aspect of humanity that can take practice to overcome (unless you’re already over it; hooray for acceptance!) and the anger at Selkie for being the center of attention when she arrived at the orphanage (woo flashbacks). Since time has passed and they lived together for those years, there’s still the teasing, but there’s compassion too (almost a sibling rivalry sort of thing, but with too many siblings & lots of extra chaos added in). When there isn’t anyone around to impress and nothing is spiraling out of control, Amanda seems like she could be a good kid. A bit bossy, but still a human with all the potential that contains.
I think having other “Selkie’s” around and the missing-mom scare threw Amanda off her “look how much better I am than you” game, so she’s being less prepared and more authentic(odd wording…I think you all get what I’m trying to say though)
Right, long post. Um…Felix is waving hi to Todd, and that’s outstanding (or he’s going for a high-five…either way: great)
LadyObvious
See guys? No secret sharing.
I wonder how he can even talk about that. Especially without making her despise Andi.
Even though she would justifiably deserve Amanda’s anger as well.
Yeah, I’m starting to wonder about that. How to explain the existance of Todd to Amanda without making her ragingly mad at Andi?
Blue Coyote
You know after the last few pages of conversation the cross-talk between Amanda and Selkie is almost friendly banter at this point.
I have to say that eventually, I can imagine Selkie and Amanda being good sisters as time goes on . But, not now.
Todd totally needs to take baby steps around Amanda. Her past makes her guarded and I can imagine the big shock it would be for both sisters to find out the fact that their half sibs and how much of a setback it might cause between her and Amanda growing relationship.
Still, a Octopus is actually a pretty good spirit animal for Selkie .
Hey Dave, there’s a principle of art wherein you don’t let lines touch if the objects aren’t meant to be read as touching. Selkie’s nose looks like it’s attached to Amanda’s pigtail (second panel). The way to avoid this is to have the overlap be pretty clear, or to make the two figures not touch in the first place (space between them).
I’ve noticed this a few times before but never commented on it. But it’s a thing that will make your art read better if you make sure that lines never meet (at corners/edges, I mean) if the objects are separate.
Dinru Farore
Hi there, longtime fan! Just commenting to say that your use of the phrase “spirit animal” in the artists comments is, as far as I’m aware, actually a racist act against Native Americans. It’s a common phrase though, but I thought that you might be the sort who would rather avoid using such phrases.
That being said, I’m really glad with how this arc is turning out (though sympathetic towards Todd, and maybe a little toward Andi if she is indeed being manipulated and abused by her mother to a huge degree). I’m really glad that Todd isn’t dropping the drama bombs yet ;;
Vandarial
Actually the idea of a “Spirit” or “Totem” animal is just about universal to most tribes around the world. They can be seen in N. American, S. American, Australian, and African tribes even today. Many Practicing Pagans call on them for all sorts of different reasons; from inspiration in how to act, to using them in spellwork. Using the phrase “spirit animal” isn’t derogatory or racist.
Not in this context anyway.
I’m not sure I see how it’s racist. The spirit animal is a very general concept.
It’s not racist. First, it’s not racist to simply mention a piece of another’s culture (especially in an admiring way) and secondly, the spirit guide/spirit animal/animal totem/etc is, like you said, a concept that is far-reaching. I am Pagan and that is part of my spiritual beliefs. I have spirit guides I honor and respect. You using spirit guide in this context is not at all offensive to me nor any other person I can imagine. Also, they’re kids! Kids say things that might be taken as offensive (like theoretically making light of a religious/cultural belief) but you’ve got to have thicker skin than that! No harm was meant and I really can’t see how this could ever be considered racist since the cultures and spiritualities that believe in the concept of a spirit guide are so diverse and world wide. There is no one race you’re singling out here.
It’s culture appropriation from Native Americans. It’s exclusive to them and that’s what makes it racist.
hey, token Native here, they said spirit not totem, so it is more general. For the record “shaman” is actually Indo-european/Mongolian the Native term is Medicine Person. Also I give them a pass for being eight. If adults had said it it would be different, but it is a concept very popular in children’s programming.
I’m curious if we can expand on that a little bit. So the “spirit animal” phrase is not problematic coming from a child character, but if Todd had said the same line it would be problematic?
If Todd had said it I would question his character, he seems much more enlightened than that. Most of the vegetarians I know do it for moral reasons and are very socially aware. Todd seems from past comics to be one of the moral vegetarians and at least to my mind, Todd seems like he would be opposed to any form of discrimination or racist comments. He’s been very accepting of Nathanial sr. and treats him as a him even though he doesn’t bind. So it would seem really out of character for him to throw something like that off (similarly why I was very glad you changed the “cow” insult regarding Andi).
Children get a pass because so many scouting groups teach “Native skills” as part of their curriculum and many cartoons use Native ideas as part of their teaching of values, and I appreciate these things because it is teaching the younger generation that Native ways should be honored and not treated as “devil-worship” or something that needs to be beaten out of people.
Some racism is blatant like the name of the Washington sportsball team or a white teen wearing a warbonnet, some is more subtle like people calling a meeting a “Pow-wow” or randomly calling people “chief”. At least in America there is a long history of taking the best parts of Native culture with no credit and treating the tribes like vermin (and even calling them vermin and offering bounties for proof of having murdered an Indian- where scalping came from, whites did it to natives to claim their bounty money. The tribes started doing it back out of outrage)
It’s been a slow battle for acceptance and cultural identity, hopefully everyone knows the sordid history of the residential schools, where thousands of children were forcibly removed from their homes to be “re-educated” into white culture. They were tortured, starved, raped, subjected to medical experiments, and killed.
People like to say racism against black is so terrible (and it is, I’m not saying totherwise) but Native Americans were not even counted as American citizens until 1924, or given voting rights until 1948.
A.Beth
June 25, 2015, 10:28 am | #
One way I’ve seen of dodging the term (and the possible reading of cultural appropriation*) and retaining the sentiment is using “Patronus” instead.
(* as Blue Coyote says, “At least in America there is a long history of taking the best parts of Native culture with no credit[…]” — and depending on the context, going “X is my spirit animal!” can be seen as taking something lightly that is meant to be a religious experiment. Sort of as if someone were selling Peanut Butter And Jelly Communion Wafer Snackwiches in the grocery store. Only with extra added “treating the tribes like vermin” (including outright extermination, and Trail of Tears stuff) as a historical context.)
So, as a writer who’s hoping to include a variety of ethnicities and cultures without being unintentionally offensive, I’m also curious about how this all works.
Because it seems to me that the way good customs spread around is through mimicry, where cultures that originally didn’t have the customs end up trying them out, liking them, adapting to them, and thus the meme spreads until a fair number of people don’t even recall where it came from.
Christmas, for example, is celebrated in a variety of fashions across many cultures, and is an enjoyable custom, and it ties back to the start of Christianity but even further back than that, because the winter celebration was borrowed from some decidedly non-Christian groups and altered so that Christians could enjoy it too, without acting against their own beliefs or offending other Christians.
Many of the customs we have nowadays stem from the way the holiday was celebrated prior to the Christians. Like, for example, the Christmas tree, or the use of certain foods.
So, was it wrong to “appropriate” the culture of others, even though it ended up spreading all over the world in a variety of forms that bring joy to many nowadays? If it was wrong, what is the reasoning? That practically nobody recalls the original meaning of anything, or remembers the people who originally started it? That it got mixed in with the beliefs of the people who borrowed it, so that nowadays it’s largely associated with a specific religion? Or is it something else?
The cultural appropriation thing, as far as I’ve been able to figure, is when one takes the concept from a culture that is not a majority culture, and then ignores the origin (or exotic-izes it, or acts like it came from a dead culture).
It’s not really a good parallel to do Christmas, even though it has been mutated into something that’s practically secular in many places, because it’s still running parallel — at least in America — to a religious majority. (Look, “In God We Trust” is on our money, okay? Not “gods,” not a different word for god, not even “the Divine,” not “the spiritual essence of life”… God. The Christian concept of God.)
Not to mention that — as you alluded to but kind of missed — arguably the whole Winter Holiday thing was appropriated in order to co-opt pre-existing competing religious holidays in the first place, BUT ANYWAY! 🙂
Perhaps it would be better to think of a concept like the Hanukkah games, with the dreidel, being taken by a Giant Toy Company, packaged with some variant rule set and design (like a Greek gods/Pokemon combo!), and given its own totally 50’s White American cartoon show (still with Pokemon Greek gods) as an extended advertisement context. And T-shirts. And cheap fast-food toys.
If that’s not hitting the disgust over “stealing a concept and revamping it for your own entertainment”… I could try other ideas. I bet something would wind up being offensive enough that one would go, “Wait, that’s taking the trappings, pretending like you invented them or discovered them from a dead culture, and ignoring why it’s a thing of joy and/or spirituality that came out of this cultural and historical context.”
Which is not to say that this use is OMG Terrible, because, hey, Selkie is a kid. But you asked, so there’s my two bucks. O:>
Also not racist to quote a character, which he did: Selkie said it first:)
The Creeper
I see nothing wrong with comment. Spirit animals are talked about everywhere and almost every animal has its traits used to describe it in common language.
This is a very general concept. Relax. Also, *a kid would say this* — you don’t get to call the author out for having a character do something they would do. Saying “X is my spirit animal” is actually really common in America, whether or not you think it’s racist.
I don’t have a problem with being called out, I just don’t really agree with this particular racism assertion.
pyrpyr
Ehhhh – i agree this isn’t racism, but commonality does not determine whether something is racist (or otherwise inappropriate) or not. It’s more of a whether-or-not-the-subject-is-treated-respectfully kind of thing.
As mentioned above, the concept of the spirit/totem animal is not exclusively Native American/First Nations. Heck, not even all tribes espoused the concept in the first place.
Dave would be far from the first author to borrow the concept for a created religion in their works/universe.
The line between cultural misappropriation/fetishization and respectful adoption or reference is unfortunately quite fuzzy; again, not black-and-white. An author basing a created religion off of any real-life example, done respectfully (I do not yet see any evidence to the contrary), does not fall into the misappropriation category.
Yeah, that’s why I opined that it was ok, “spirit” instead of “totem” leaves it open to be a part of any animistic religion, and really the larger part of pre-Judeo religions had a lot of animism (the idea that animals, plants, stones, places, weather or other phenomena are somehow aware/alive and able to be petitioned/interacted with)
pumpkincat
Interestingly, even the roots of “Judaeo” religions had their own elements of animism which were later shut down. And in the ‘Book’ religions (the big three, Judaism, Christianity, Islam) there are distinct comparisons made at times where the traits of certain animals were considered worthy of emulation or even given to individuals.
Most often showing up in the stories for children handed down, but also sometimes appearing, as they say, in the source material.
Okay, he got his first impression of Amanda.
I guess the next step is to get home, and break the whole thing to his parents. They have been grieving for eight years, too.
I’m quietly looking forward to the eventual “discussion” between Todd’s parents and Andi’s mother. That’s bound to be … educational.
Educational? More like “break out the popcorn” time…
I wonder if Todd´s parents will have more sympathy for Andi, after experiencing the attitude of Andi´s mother. They´re one step removed from the entire tragedy, and knowing the pressure Andi was under from her mother might do the trick.
Thermonuclear education.
Er, he has met Amanda before. First time was when he went to the orphanage, and was interviewing kids to adopt. He was Less than thrilled upon meeting her and passed her by to adopt Selkie, it happened on about page #8. So, not his First impression of Amanda, but the first impression of his Daughter.
Yes, but now he *knows* she’s his daughter. That changes things. Todd’s sense of responsibility – and the fact that he had been adopted himself – makes him duty bound to get to know Amanda and include her in his life. It’s the extent of that last bit that’s still being determined.
I actually didn’t read that he was less than thrilled upon meeting her – if I recall correctly, she was a contender up until he actually met Selkie.
Ok, after a pause to look it up, she was in the running but he went with Selkie. He thought her adorable: https://selkiecomic.com/comic/selkie21/
Gee, Todd and Amanda both have a trait of hugging themselves when they want they are controlling their emotions. (Last panel)
“Hi Todd!”
And *still* think Felix looks damn smug.
Nikkasaurus
Wow now that I look at them side by side, it’s amazing how much Todd & Amanda look alike. I think Todd’s expression is more one of heart break… he’s seeing just how much hurt this poor little girl has had to go through.. how cynical his child is from being an orphan for so long. I guarantee you he’s looking at her and seeing himself… more than anyone, Todd can relate to what she’s going through and he’s gonna be the best medicine for Amanda becoming happy again.
That’s really the worst nightmare of an abuse surviver. A lot choose not to have children just because of the fear their child may relive what they went through—especially if they still have ties to their family of origin.
He can perhaps make some intuitive leaps about what she’s been through, but so far he has not seen any evidence of the trauma she’s undergone. So far she’s just a little kid, and the type who rolls her eyes at people liking “inferior” things — typical kid. I expect this will likely change soon, but let’s not judge Todd’s experience from the basis of the stuff we have seen that Todd has not.
Well here’s my thing: Todd knows how children ‘usually’ act.. Selkie, while dealing with a lot, is generally optimistic and happy. Most children her age are…. it’s a huge red flag for a kid to be THAT cynical/unimpressed. Especially because he ALREADY knows amanda through selkie being bullied. He’s finally met her in person and he’s putting 2 & 2 together. She hasn’t been with Andi long & he knows from his own experience how easy it is to just give into hating the world. I just really feel that the way he looks at Amanda in this panel is really not “Look at how much of a jerk this kid is” more like “Every second I see this girl I’m reminded more and more of myself.”
Looking at this page, Todd meeting Amanda may actually go better than I thought it would.
Also, octopi are totally cool animals.
Wonder if, down the line, Todd helps Amanda through these tendencies. The father-daughter similarities are eerie though – not for the similarity itself, but for the implications of abuse and emotional issues.
Also LOL SAI FEN. Way to interject!
Starkman
You know, “sneaky, smart and breaks out of cages” DOES fit selkie
Sai Fen is so cool. How did you get so cool, Sai Fen?
She is turning out to be my favorite character. 🙂
She’s definitely close to the top of my list of favourites. And even though he’s a new addition, I love Felix so much. Felix don’t care about your puzzles. Felix wants CLAMS. AND HE WILL RUIN YOUR @#&* TO GET THEM.
Even now he’s just there. Chilling out. Biding his time like a boss. Felix will have his vengeance.
Regalli
HAIL TO OUR CEPHALOPOD OVERLORDS!
ALL HAIL LORD FELIX!
May 1, 2016, 5:04 pm | # | Reply
I’m looking forward to Todd becoming Superdad. I don’t know how he will manage it, but I have faith in him.
Reply to Kilyle ¬ Cancel reply
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SHAINE SCARMINACH
Curriculum Vitae – November 2019
Curriculum Vitae (In Brief)
Ph.D. in History, University of Connecticut, 2014-Present
M.A. in History, California State University, Los Angeles, 2014
B.A. in History, University of San Francisco, 2010
2019 CLAS Graduate Fellowship, The Graduate School, University of Connecticut
2019 Research Stipend, The Rockefeller Archive Center
2018 Gerald R. Ford Presidential Research Grant, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation
2017 Thomas G. Paterson Graduate Fellowship in the History of US Foreign Relations, Department of History, University of Connecticut
2016 Field Research Grant, The Tinker Foundation
2015 Pre-Doctoral Funding Award, El Instituto: Institute of Latina/o, Caribbean, and Latin American Studies, University of Connecticut
2014 Outstanding Scholars Program Fellowship, The Graduate School, University of Connecticut
2013 Eugene Fingerhut Award for Outstanding Graduate Student in History, Department of History, California State University, Los Angeles
2010 David Herlihy Prize in History for Undergraduate Honors Thesis, Department of History, University of San Francisco
2020 Presenter, “Unruly Ocean: The Law of the Sea Convention and the Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans,” American Society for Environmental History, March 25–28.
2019 Presenter and Panel Organizer, “Refusal and Resignation: The Reagan Administration, the NIEO, and the Law of the Sea,” Rethinking Reagan and the Global South panel, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Annual Conference, June 20–22.
2018 Presenter, “Oceans Come First: The United States, Ecuador, and the Ocean Environment,” Workshop for the History of Environment, Agriculture, Technology, and Science, October 5–7.
2017 Presenter, “Of Borders and Boundaries: The United States, Ecuador, and the Ocean Environment,” New Perspectives in Environmental History, April 27.
2016 Presenter and Panel Organizer, “Making Waves: Territorial Sovereignty and Resource Nationalism in U.S.–Ecuador Relations,” Environmental Diplomacy in the Cold War Americas panel, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Annual Meeting, June 23–25.
2015 Presenter, “Salt of the Earth: The Salinity Problem and U.S.–Mexican Relations during the Nixon Administration,” New England Historical Association Annual Meeting, April 18.
University of Connecticut, Instructor of Record
United States History since 1877 (Writing Intensive)
American Environmental History (Writing Intensive)
University of Connecticut, Teaching Assistant
American Environmental History (Course Grader)
Modern Western Traditions (Discussion Leader)
United States History to 1877 (Discussion Leader)
History of Modern Japan (Course Grader)
History of Modern Mexico (Course Grader)
Latin America: National Period (Course Grader)
SHAINE SCARMINACH, Proudly powered by WordPress. ABOUT
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The RELIGIOUS iNSTITUTE sUPPORT & EDUCATION PROJECT (R.I.S.E)
is to drive the movement for all religious institutes to provide adequate practical & emotional support
We have a duty of care to protect victims of violence and to provide adequate support to survivors of Psychological Trauma and Mental Health.
Unfortunately, this is something lacking within our Religious Institutes and we can no longer continue to pass blame, make excuses or avoid our responsibilities for fear of reprisals or not knowing how.
The R.I.S.E Project Pledge:
To Account, Act & Advocate to protect and provide for our community, who are Suffering in Silence
To Rise, Speak Out & Stand Together, unified to be the voices of the vulnerable and to break the Chain of Silence
To highlight our Pledges Proudly, to integrate into our Society and Serve our Community
The R.I.S.E Project is an initiative, that all Religious Institutes should commit to, so we can improve support provisions and unite in building a stronger, safer society.
Guest Speaker Invitation on Islam Channel TV Show: Women’s AM to discuss Trauma & Survival. This will provide an insight to the Projects personal backstory, and discussing this crucial need →
Achieved by:
Providing designated/appointed Specialist Male & Female Support Workers in all Religious Institutes
Notice Boards clearly displaying the Specialist Support Workers Information & Awareness Posters for Domestic & Sexual Violence
Educating members of Religious Institutes on these ‘taboo’ topics during Khutbahs, Sermons etc
Building partnership working with local Police Officers, Local Authorities & Organisations
Creating & following adequate Safeguarding procedures and Safety Plans
Specialist Support Worker Role & Responsibilities:
Every Religious Institute (RI) will appoint Specialised Support Workers, male and female. Recommendation is to provide at least 2 male and 2 female Support Workers, a Lead and an Assistant.
The Specialist Support Worker must be adequately trained with Trauma-Informed Training, Domestic & Sexual Violence Training and Safeguarding Training.
As part of our R.I.S.E Project, She Can Consultancy Ltd will provide an Exclusive Training Package for all Religious Institutes, who want to enrol this initiative, and become part of the movement. You can view our Training Package information at the bottom of this page.
The Specialist Support Worker will commit to providing voluntarily, a number of hours a week, to be available for those needing support, inside the Institute. As well as their contact information being displayed clearly on the RI Notice Board. The logistics of the schedule is to be discussed with the RI and the Specialist Support Team.
Working closely and building partnerships with local police officers (PCSO’s), local authority and local crisis centres. Mayameen has experience with this, and has worked with police officers who have dealt sensitively with crisis cases, attending in ‘out of uniform’ if necessary, to provide advice and non-pressurised support.
The Specialist Support Worker will be independent from the trustees/committee board members etc, this is to prevent any institutional pressures from refraining or delaying to implement protective and preventative measures.
The Specialist Support Worker, will be compassionate, sensitive to cultural barriers and work foremost to provide practical and support services to those in need.
Exclusive Training Package:
A 1 Day Accredited Workshop combining:
Trauma Awareness
Domestic & Sexual Violence Awareness (including FGM/Harmful Practices and Child Sexual Abuse)
Safeguarding Basic Understanding
Certificate of Attendance will be provided with CPD Accreditation.
The R.I.S.E Project will also provide an online quarterly support group for Specialist Support Workers.
Once you have enrolled the R.I.S.E Initiative into your own Religious Institution, we will also announce your RI on our Enrolled R.I.S.E Members List below.
You can also purchase and download resources and merchandise to aid your fundraising, publicity and awareness raising, that together, we can make a change.
REQUEST TRAINING / MORE INFO NOW
How can we Afford this?
We know that funding/costs will always be a concern for Institutes, however the question should be, how can we not afford this!
The initial cost outlay will consist of Training, we will provide training based on a 1 day Fundraising Initiative, for example: if you allocate a Friday for the Khutbah to raise awareness of The R.I.S.E Project and stipulate that all money raised from that days Khutbah will be allocated to training.
This is the same for a Christian Church, to allocate a Sunday Service for the fundraising of training, a Synagogue, a Temple, a specific Religious Centre etc.
You can also bring the project into any other fundraising events you organise. We know, that many people are passionate about this cause and will be happy to donate and support as much as possible.
We are all accountable for our next generation, and the good deeds we have done for our current.
Money is not a barrier to protecting innocent victims and helping to rebuild innocent lives.
How do we appoint a Specialist Support Worker?
The Support Worker will need to be independent, but the selection process is left to the Religious Institute who will know its community members well. The same safeguarding and processes will be undertaken to appoint a Support Worker, as it is to appoint a leader, teacher etc.
The appointed, will need to have the right character, resilience and passion to be a Specialised Support Worker, be ‘a person of good standing in their community’ and DBS checked.
What Commitment is required?
Firstly, the Religious Institute needs to be fully committed to the Initiative and the Pledge.
The Specialist Support Worker, needs to be able to commit to a few hours a week to be at the Institute, available for members to access them. How many hours they can commit too, is to be discussed and scheduled via each RI and Team.
This is why we recommend appointing 2 male and 2 female Support Workers, so they can share the role.
Their contact number will need to be displayed clearly and accessible for members to contact them, when they are not at the Institute.
Of course, we appreciate completely that this is a voluntary role, respectfully understanding what time they can give.
What about support for the Support Workers?
Providing practical and emotional support to others can take its toll, and of course it is really important that Specialist Support Workers also look after their own well-being.
We offer a quarterly Support Workers Group,to share information or experiences with other support workers from like-minded Religious Institutes.
Our Support Workers meet quarterly to share information, discuss the issues they face and provide emotional and practical solutions to problems they encounter.
The support workers also share best-practice and useful information on other areas of their work.
It would also be the duty of the Religious Institute to include and provide any necessary case supervision or support as may be required.
It is important, that you treat the Specialist Support Worker role as you would any other role inside your Institute, this includes meetings and sharing information with one another as per your own Institutional processes.
How would we deal with a Crisis or Immediate Risk?
Remember, you are not a crisis centre, therefore you would follow the safeguarding procedures inside the Religious Institute, as part of the Specialist Support Worker role, you would be building partnership working and making sure the Religious Institute has the correct Local Authority safeguarding processes in place.
You can obtain this information from your Local Safeguarding Boards and you would follow the necessary actions.
If there was immediate danger to a child or an adult, you would contact the police dialling 999, or 101 for no immediate risk.
Your role is supportive and you will make sure you are aware of the local crisis teams, and refer appropriately.
Never, try and take a crisis situation into your own hands, there are services and provisions in place for referring into.
How will this project Tackle the Taboo?
It will bring awareness into our Religious Institutes, that many have avoided for years. Talking about Domestic Violence, Child Sexual Abuse, or Rape or Exploitation has been the elephant in the room for too long.
We can no longer make excuses for the lack of awareness we provide, Religious Institutes hold standing, influence and connections, which makes it a powerful place to contribute to eradicating violence.
As RI’s hold this powerful position, why are we not providing a duty of care and a service to our community?
If someone is a perpetrator attending the Institute, and they hear a sermon about violence, it may well make them think twice, if someone attending the Institute is a victim, and they hear via the Khutbah, that the Institute is open and able to provide a confidential, sensitive, trusted Support Worker, it could be the difference between life and death.
That may sound far fetched, however statistics are speaking for themselves, that violence is causing murders, that suicide rates are prevalent from trauma and mental health is a crisis.
Further, we are not immune to the fact that Religious Institutes are often called out for not being pro-active on these issues, that vigilante groups are accusing Religious Institutes of covering up and ignoring the issues surrounding communities.
If we take accountability, and responsibility to create this Initiative, that we accept there are issues to be addressed, as there are in all communities, but that we are pro-active in tackling them, then we will no longer need to be vilified from the far-right.
We stand together, united in diversity, to protect humanity.
Is this Project only for Domestic & Sexual Violence?
Absolutely not! The R.I.S.E Project is to provide practical and emotional support for anyone in our community suffering in silence.
Psychological trauma is a type of damage to the mind that occurs as a result of a distressing event. Trauma is often the result of an overwhelming amount of stress that exceeds one’s ability to cope, or integrate the emotions involved with that experience.
No one is immune from trauma, and trauma can arise from any distressing event, such as a bereavement, sudden death, a terrorist attack, an accident, homelessness… the list is exhaustive.
The R.I.S.E Project is for anyone who needs to reach out for support. They may also be suffering from stress, anxiety, depression and general struggles.
Yes, the Project is to also address the ‘taboo’ topics, to help eradicate violence as a whole, but it is inclusive to anyone and everyone who needs ‘support’.
It is to break the chain of silence, to recognise that you are not weak in seeking help, and this is equally important for men, who male feel less likely to reach out.
Again, emphasis on the goal, to address these issues every so often during our Khutbahs, Sermons etc, then we normalise these topics which may feel uncomfortable at first and put an end to the shame of mental health and suffering.
What about additional Training?
Although, the Exclusive Training Package we provide as part of The R.I.S.E Project is more than adequate for the role of Specialist Support Worker, I would definitely encourage seeking further additional training to enhance this role.
Recommended further external training:
Advanced Safeguarding Adults
Designated Safeguarding Officer
Human Trafficking & Modern Slavery
Child Sexual Exploitation Awareness
Domestic Violence & Abuse
Preventing Radicalisation & Extremism
Drug & Alcohol Awareness
Safer Recruitment
Sexual Harassment for Employees
ENROLLED R.I.S.E MEMBERS
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Tag Archives: West Brom
Man City Away – Ticket Pricing Scandal
So the news out today is that we are being charged a massive £58 to go Manchester City for the away game on 14th December. I don’t think any of us are really surprised at this but the whole away ticket issue has been on the forefront lately and it’s getting worse. We charged City £62 last season I believe which is just a colossal amount for an away fan to have to pay. Our club is just as bad and are not helping the situation.
It’s got to take us fans doing something to stop this happening. We need to change the thinking of clubs on the away fan ticket price otherwise where does it stop? Before long you will have spent £200 before even walking out the door on match tickets and trains. With you having to drink and eat when at the game the average fan will not be able to afford the away trips any more. The problem is that when you raise the issue of fans not going to the games and not buying their ticket their response is always the same, if I don’t go someone else will. I understand this and they are right but the only way we can send a message is to vote with our feet and not go to the game. Make sure our away attendance at this game is one of our lowest ever and then people will realise.
Our own club hasn’t helped this situation and in fact we have probably inflamed it with the introduction of categorised games. The class A games are the most expensive in the league and whilst I don’t agree with the prices we charge, what we make our own fans cough up is our own business. This should not interfere with the price we charge away fans, and in fact I believe there should be no difference throughout the league on what away fans are charged. All clubs should charge the away fans the same price, £30/35 at a maximum.
Its happening throughout the league, not just with the so called big clubs like City and ourselves, Norwich charged Arsenal fans double the amount we made their fans pay at our ground. The so called smaller clubs see a cash cow when the big teams roll into town and they know they can charge what they like, as our excellent away fans will pay it and be there regardless.
I know I’m asking for a lot on this and it will probably fall on deaf ears but I encourage all Arsenal fans to not go to the City game, go down the pub with your mates and put £58 into the whip instead, have a few beers and a laugh with your pals in the boozer rather than line the Sheikhs pocket even more.
How they can charge that much when they have one of the richest men in the world who owns their club, not only that but their ground was free and given to them by the council! At least we had to pay for ours out of our own pockets!
Clubs need to follow the lead of Newcastle, Swansea, West Brom, Hull and Palace who have all entered into pricing agreements with each other to ensure away fans do not get charged over the odds. Fans of both clubs will pay the same amount when visiting each other which is a perfect idea. Have a look into this here. Hopefully other clubs take note of this and follow suit.
Have a look at these guys as well, trying to change things for the better
Follow @MattWigley
This entry was posted in Arsenal and tagged Arsenal, Arsenal FC, Hull, Manchester City F.C., Norwich, Swansea, West Brom, West Bromwich Albion F.C. on November 12, 2013 by norbyafc.
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Difference between revisions of "User:Oddoneout/Ghosts: The Return"
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Sam couldn't believe it she was going to be late for the rendezvous. She couldn't help it that she lost track of time whenever she started navel gazing. Three months ago the young human woman named Samantha Maiuri had integrated with her Malti-Poo RIDE becoming a single techno-organic being. It was only a few hours later that she was snatched up and taken to an Enclave at the edge of the Dry Ocean. For her it was horrible, she wanted to go back to Aloha, top her friends and family. But she wouldn't, she didn't think they would all be able to accept what she had become. So she stayed away from them and slowly began to accept the idea that she was better off that way, after all they were just mech and meat. Now that she was away she was free to fully indulge her guilty pressure of playing MMORPGs.
Which is exactly what she was doing. She crested another hill as the grass have way to stone and the sky grew cloudy, ahead of her the Tower of Dusk reached high into the air. Oz was a fairly new MMO whose servers where run and maintained by a group of Integrates living in Aloha. They were 'very' strict about not letting people use their Intie powers to tip the game in their favor. The game was in a high fantasy setting with a special set of mechanics and to allow for mech and meat to play as a fusing pair. They could be separate when they needed or wanted to be but fusing provided its own advantages and disadvantages.
To everyone in the game Sam appeared as a black furred Malti-poo Fuser dressed in an ornate white and gold robe. Last month she had found a good group of fellow Intie players and joined their clan. Today was important because it was her first true raid boss. She was ecstatic and very glad she had put in the extra time to learn some decent offensive spells. As she jumped to clear a trench she caught sight of a RIDE and its partner before she was yanked downward into the trench.
"Slow down Sam. Let the mechie get beaten, then we'll have our run." The speaker was a heavily armored grizzly bear Integrate in Fuser disguise with a massive sword strapped to his back.
"Dominic's right," a hyena rouge spoke up "this should be good for a laugh if nothing else. It's practically impossible for an Intie to solo The Bone Hoard. There's no way a mechie can manage it even if they were fused."
"Especially with how they've got their settings done." another member spoke up drawing everyone's attention" They have their system assist and feedback canceler's turned off."
"How can anyone play like that? Even we have to use the system assist and without the canceler on things feel a little too real for most people to be comfortable."
"I had a cousin who played MMOs like that," Sam said "but he disappeared years ago."
Dominic asked the obvious question "Did he Integrate?"
She shook her head "I don't think so. He got a government job and we heard from him regularly for a few months. His last message said something about a new assignment, then nothing."
"Have you tried hacking?"
She nodded "His personnel file is there but it’s all dead ends."
He frowned "I'll put out some requests; someone has to know more about what happened to him."
A rattling announced the awakening of The Bone Hoard. The powerful raid boss burst from the ground, a giant serpentine skeleton one hundred meters long with dozens of pairs of legs and a wicked set of pincers. Red light shone from the empty sockets of its triangular head. Equally massive horns adorned its head. The HUD displayed five health bars and with her scanning skill Sam should have been able to see its level. Instead all she saw was a skull, anyone trying to fight it alone would spend more money than they would make, assuming they managed to kill it.
The person was instantly in motion covering the distance to the boss in a matter of seconds. One of its pincers shot forward only to be knocked aside and quickly severed by a plain looking black broadsword. He kept moving and severed the remaining pincer taking out the boss's main weapons and a portion of its first health bar in the process. The Bone Hoard's AI refused to let it settle into a pattern as it constantly adapted. Normally this would give it an enormous advantage, even against raid groups, but ultimately it's ability was rendered useless by one thing, speed. The solo player had been fast to begin with and only got faster as the battle moved into its second minute.
"Look at the HP," Dominic said "Do you see it?"
Sam nodded "Whenever he dodges he uses his free hand for some kind of unarmed DOT counterattack."
In the space of three minutes The Bone Hoard's HP had been cut down to only one and a half bars. It lashed out with one of its remaining legs throwing the swordsman off balance, disarming him with a quick follow up. He jumped away, he had to be fleeing either to rearm or to give up. He did neither, with a shout he charged straight at its head ducking under as it thrust forward in an attempt to swallow him. His right hand shot up and struck the bone plate under its mouth and The Bone Hoard shattered into glittering iridescent blue dust, killed by a single unFused and unassisted player in just over four minutes.
He slouched as he shook out his wrists. His RIDE retrieved the fallen sword. They seemed...subdued, disappointed, like things hadn't gone the way they were hoping. Dominic, as be fitting his status as raid leader, was the first to recover from the shock they had all received. He clambered out of the trench running towards and hailing the mystery duo. Sam followed after him a moment later.
"That was amazing! I've only ever heard of people soloing The Bone Hoard and they didn't do nearly as well as you just did." All true but why was he kissing up to mechie?
Now that Sam was closer she could see their mystery man was actually a mystery woman. She stood about a meter and a half tall. Her white blonde hair was in short pixie cut. The woman's broadsword was indeed the black color Sam had originally thought it was. Her RIDE tags were very unusual. She had a feline nose, the rounded ears of a lion, white fur, goat horns and a black cobra for a tail. Sam shuddered as both pairs of green eyes turned to look at her.
The woman's RIDE was easily the most bizarre mythical Sam had ever seen. She was easily the size of a large horse, marking her as a Heavy class RIDE. Her she had the body and head of a lion with the horns of a goat. Her white fur was the same as her partner's and her black cobra tail was staring intently at Dominic. A large pair of dark iridescent blue bird wings completed her appearance.
Finally the woman sighed "I was nine point three seconds off."
Her ride giggled “Aren’t you the one who’s always saying that it’s just a game Claire?”
Claire frowned “I know but the benchmark gives us a place to start looking.” She gestured and several windows appeared “The more important question is why y’all are here. This area is supposed to be closed off for maintenance. There was a game wide announcement yesterday.”
Dominic stiffened “Um, none of us were on yesterday.”
“They sent out a memo to everyone just in case, you should have gotten it as soon as you logged in.”
“We were all busy prepping for this raid. When I got on I came straight here, didn’t have time to check my messages and since you said this area is closed what are you doing here?”
“Obviously we’re here to perform the maintenance.” Her RIDE deadpanned
“Thank you Mel. Now, I’m going to need your player IDs.”
“So you can ban us?”
She laughed “I could ban you even without them but it’s not my job. I’ll pass the info on to one of the other GMs, they might have given y’all open access to this area. If they didn’t and think you need to be banned they’ll contact you so you can appeal your case.”
“Oh so it’s just that you’re lazy?”
“Yup, now that I can afford to be lazy I’ve gotten to the point where enabling God Mode is too much of a hassle. Easier just to go without and fight my way through. That’s also why I don’t use the assist and have the canceler disabled.” She frowned “But y’all already knew that didn’t you.”
Sam was suddenly nervous. Claire was clearly skilled IRL, how else could she beat a raid boss alone, and she somehow knew they had peeked at her settings. On top of that she was a GM and, Intie or not, could insta-ban them on a whim. Sam had read the message she was talking about and just assumed it was wrong or meant for non-Inties, in hindsight she realized she had just been fooling herself. She liked to think that she didn’t buy into the whole Integrates Ascendant thing at all. But seeing a human deftly manage what would be an extreme and time consuming challenge in mere minutes and then subtly hint that she ''knew'' exactly what they were. Half a dozen members of the raid team suddenly disconnected and Claire shook her head.
“Apparently you people buy into your own press ''way'' too much.” Mel said
“What did you do?” Dominic asked
“It’s not what we did but what they tried to do. Which was hack us. Claire and I have had extensive time to prep for a variety of things, one of the perks of having a forward thinking boss. As such we can easily shut you out when you try and hack us.”
“Hey boss, let’s just give them our IDs and go. No need to start a fight.” The speaker was a burgundy Allosaurus.
“You scared of mech and meat, Durendal?”
“When the flesh alone can kick that much ass? Hell yeah, I’m scared out of my scales right now. Besides Mel's right, this is just a game and it’s supposed to be for fun.” There was a quiet round of agreement “If the other GMs are willing to trust these two then we should too. Since they got the job they must be exceptionally skilled.”
Claire quirked a smile as she received several data packets “Roland Durendal, you named yourself after the paladin and his sword from the Matter of France?”
He shrugged “I used to study medieval literature as a hobby.”
“Claire,” Mel said “I’ve just finished submitting our report.”
She nodded “Good, unfortunately this is where we all part ways. To everyone who has transmitted their data, thank you for your cooperation. We’ll do our best to make sure you don’t get banned because of your raid leader. Please, direct any further questions to this com code.”
As the two logged out Sam came to a decision, she needed to move out of her Enclave and get away from the supremacy ideas that governed it. Another mage used a group teleport spell to bring them all back to a safe zone so they could all log out. When she opened her eyes in the real world Sam came to a second decision. Rather than another Enclave she would go back to her family, everyone had seen the now famous reunion footage of the Munn family with its long absent Integrate members. So for the first time in months she accessed her lifetime mailbox.
{{Separator|k}}
Claire Olivia Maiuri groaned as she got up from her cot and stretched after her marathon play session. Across the room Mel yawned as she carefully did the same, mindful of her wings. Their home was the cargo area of The Forward Unto Dawn. The Dawn was a D82-EST Darter, a single deck twenty meter sub-orbital, she bought after returning to Zharus proper just over three months ago. After five hard years her mission had finally ended and she had come home to Zharus.
At the time he had been Stuart Miles Maiuri, a person he no longer wanted to be. Luckily his bonus and hazard pay had made him a small fortune. If he was careful he would never have to work again. Because his dad had worked for Nextux RIDEWorks all his life, the first thing he decided to do was find a RIDE partner.
His post mission handler had suggested he try a small dealership in Nuevo San Antonio. He spent most of the day talking to the occasional RIDE who caught his attention. He had spent most of the day looking when he the owner said he wanted to introduce him to someone. In the back area was a RIDE named Melody, Mel for short.
She was an experimental unit, a Nextus RIDEWorks CMA(f)-ASA-001. The last of the half dozen produced and the only one who's RI had survived the program's termination. The original idea had been a variation on the one introduced by the Sturmhaven WLF-CSA-01As. A secondary RI core in the tail that would manage an extra sensor suite, long range communications, and point defense. The idea was for it to free up extra processing power to allow more accurate targeting and deliver artillery strikes from an unparallelled range. Unfortunately it ran into some of the same problems as the CSAs, the RIs wouldn't link.
In the end the secondary core idea had been scrapped when they succeed in producing a single RI core capable of doing the entire work load. That RI was Mel. The higher ups had been pleased with the results but not enough to overlook the price tag. Between the parts they needed and increased cost for the specialized RI core, it was less than a month after her First Boot that the project was scrapped.
She had honestly expect to have her core destroyed like her predecessors, luckily the RIDEWorks still "owned" her core, DE and weapons package. Rather than let Nextus destroy her, she had been discreetly sold her to their friend who owned the dealership. She had spent her weeks worrying about what would happen to her if Nextus found her. The owner introduced them and after an hour Mel and Stuart had begun discussing where they would live. She had made the suggestion that they get a sub-orbital as a starting point in case they had to run. After all, Nexts had been known to go to lengths to recover things, even if it never belonging to them.
As far as ASA's went she was on the smaller end of the spectrum, in Walker mode she stood at just over two and a half meters and a solid three in Fuser mode. The empty space in her tail's cobra head was retooled to house an extra set of sarium batteries. Her ASA chassis came equipped with two retractable plasma cannons and a particle beam cannon in her mouth.
They had just finished loading up their new D82-EST Darter when Nextus Material Recovery Service showed up. Stuart tried to talk them down and provided ample proof that he, and the dealership before him, had legal ownership over Mel and the weapons. When they refused to back down he sent a few messages and started stalling. It didn't take long for him to get a response.
The MRS Officers apologized for their mistake and attempted to make a ''very'' quick exit, promising that it would ''never'' happen again. Claire wouldn’t let them off that easily. She swore to them that if it ''did'' their boss would in serious trouble. Stuart was employed by the Zharus Planetary Authority and had, until recently, been conducting espionage, on Earth.
It was supposed to be a five year mission, seven counting travel, and everything had gone wrong from the first day off the boat. His cover had nearly been blown and it was only quick thinking and a quicker kill that had saved his life. He spent the next three years gathering Intel and practically living underground. After three years they were finally able to extract him. He spent a week being debriefed before they put him on indefinite leave and gave him a nice fat bonus. He had also been given a set of direct comm codes and told that if he needed anything to reach out to them.
Once cleared, she had upgraded her military cortical implant with quibitite. If she was in trouble she wanted to have the best chance of coming out on top. They spent almost a month traveling around Zharus. When they had been out in the Dry Ocean they ran into a group of Integrates who were looking to hire a temporary GM in their game, Oz.
It was an easy job. Mel and Claire were told to do their best to break everything in game and send their observations on to the Dev Team. Claire began checking her email and flagged several things for her implant to draft responses to before reading one from Sebastian, her ZPA handler. After five years and two months she would finally be able to see her family again. She sent out a flurry of emails letting everyone know she was in Aloha and would be flying to Nextus to see everyone at their family compound.
"Mel, I can finally introduce you to my family."
She perked up "I'll file a flight plan with ATC."
Claire stripped out of her underwear and went to take a shower while her implant began running the pre-flight checks. Everything checked out as she finished her shower, replies coming in as began to dry off. She sighed as she looked through her rather limited wardrobe. She ruled out her beloved combat gear, too many questions. After sorting through her crossover gifts she settled on a yellow sun dress Sebastian had sent her. His note had said she needed something she could 'actually' use instead of the usual gag gifts.
'':Mel, we need something for you to wear. As much fun as it would be to show up in a metal bikini, I don't think my family would like it.''
'':Can it be black? I was thinking of a nice sweater skirt combo.''
'':Sure, it'll match your tail.''
As they fused up Mel felt Claire's nervousness and did her best to comfort her. She reabsorbed the metal-kini anatomically correct RIDEs often wore for decency. Some of her hardlight winked out then came back up projecting her outfit of choice. She had chosen a knee length skirt and loose sleeved sweater complimenting her form and drawing attention up to her face and away from her chest. They stopped in the small kitchen and made a quick lunch of last night's take out before the lifters warmed up.
They sat down in the cockpit as they received a message from ATC approving them for departure. At twenty meters long the D82-EST Darter was a small transport craft. It had a lifting body design and top of the line heat shielding ensuring it could land without the use of its lifters. They had split the cargo area in half, turning the forward section into their living quarters/maintenance area with a bathroom and kitchen.
They taxied out of their hangar and into the civilian departure zone. No one would suspect that their modest little black and white craft was fully stealth capable…or armed. Claire had spared no expense in overhauling their home. The end result had been a ten percent increase in mobility and enough offensive power to take out a large military sub. Sebastian made sure what they were doing was within the letter of the law.
They dropped into virtual for a time compressed lesson as they waited their turn for takeoff. They walked through the basic stances of Claire’s duel sword style. She was critiquing her foot work on the first set of intermediate forms when they had to stop. They quickly began to pick up speed as the lifters’ output increased and the hardlight aero shielding adjusted for maximum speed and lift. The surface fell away beneath them as the sky gradually changed from blue to a star studded black.
Even at top speed, Sam had a long flight to the Aloha aerodrome but it gave her plenty of time to check the outgoing flights. Finally she found one that she could slip onto unnoticed. She slipped into the lobby and boarded the high speed sub. She settled into her seat to wait. She had gotten a surprise when she checked her mail.
Her cousin Stuart had finally turned up and was flying out to Nextus from Aloha. She had already checked and couldn’t find his name on any of the passenger manifests. She had waited five years. She could wait a few more hours. Without a second thought she logged back into Oz.
She had a message from Dominic waiting for her. She read it a few times before deleting it and removing herself from the guild. Now that she realized her emerging bigotry she was going to work hard to get rid of it. Her next order of business was getting to Taft where new players arrived fresh from the tutorial. She had heard rumor of a dungeon hidden beneath the town.
She made her way to the western part of town and stopped at a player owned shop to sell her guild gear. Most of the uniform was inferior to what she had been using before. She smoothed out her red robe and settled its armored plates into place as she re-equipped. Her old Hound Saber was a welcome change from the stereotypical mage staff she had been using for two weeks. The bonuses to her spell were less because of the change but she preferred being a red mage anyway.
She made her way to a massive cathedral. If the rumors were true the entrance to the bonus dungeon was hidden somewhere inside. As soon as she stepped inside she realized that just finding the entrance would be a chore. You could have easily fit a Starmaster into the main worship area. She started by checking the dozens of side rooms for anything odd.
There were a lot more than she thought. It took her the entire flight to thoroughly check half of the side rooms. She sighed as stood up on the sub. If the bonus dungeon did exist the GMs were keeping information about the entrance tightly controlled. It was probably filled with exclusive gear unobtainable anywhere else. Once outside the aerodrome she lifted into the Fuser/scooter traffic lanes and headed for her family's compound on the southern end of city. Sam was ten and a half kilometers away when she got a nasty shock when a familiar grizzly Fuser flew up next to her.
"Sam it’s nice too finally meet you IRL." Dominic said
She stiffened "How did you know?"
He smirked "I didn't. I noticed you decided to leave the guild."
"You said I could leave whenever I wanted. ''You'' said that neither mech nor meat could beat us but that GM this morning, she opened my eyes.” She shook her head “In some ways we are better than meat, but they have us beat in other areas.”
He snorted “Here in the real world they’re nothing compared to us.”
She stopped “Get bent Dominic. I don’t want anything to do with people like you anymore."
He sputtered "I'm trying to help you!" he grabbed her wrist "We are the next step in human evolution. You don't need mech or meat for anything!"
"Let go." a pulse gun formed on her wrist "I'm not afraid to shoot you."
He laughed "Both of your halves were civvie." he whispered "I'm ex-military; your little pop guns won't scratch me."
"How about mine?" a woman's voice asked
A feline hand landed on his head and he heard the whine of charging capacitors. How had she snuck up on him? He instinctively reached out to hack them and had to bite down on his tongue to keep from screaming. He felt thousands of tiny burning bites all over his body before his DIN burnt out. Even without it the sensations persisted and he had to concentrate just to maintain his disguise.
"Ah, you're one of ''those'' people. Too bad your little tricks are less than worthless against us." The speaker was a two and a half meters chimera Fuser. "Now, you can let her go or I can cut you in half."
Dominic felt a chill down his spine. These two were extremely dangerous. The fact that they had snuck up on, not just one but, two Integrates was proof of that. Their tone of voice was casual, like they had all been discussing the weather. His military instincts were screaming at him to run. But his pride as an Integrate wouldn't let him.
"I'm not scared of meat!"
She sighed "Wrong answer."
She lifted her hand and tapped two fingers against his hardlight. His systems suddenly started blaring half a dozen different warnings at him. What had they just done to him?
"Here's a little physics lesson for you. ''Everything'' has a frequency where it will resonate. Under certain conditions it can cause things to build up energy till they literally shake themselves apart. That's what’s happening to your hardlight emitters right now. They’ll fail sometime within the next ten minutes. I suggest that you get as far from Nextus as possible before they do."
They had him backed into a corner. “This isn’t over meat!” He vanished and ignoring how the chimera’s black tail tracked his progress as he flew. He had been completely humiliated. Somehow he would get back that damn mechie.
Sam took the opportunity become invisible and leave as well. She still had ten klicks left to get to the family compound. She quickly covered the remaining distance and landed on the lawn in front of the main house. Her aunts, uncles, cousins, and her mother’s parents were milling about. Her cousin Joseph and Dexter, his coyote RIDE, were talking to her parents. Everyone stopped when she revealed herself.
“Sam? Maria?” her mother asked
Sam nodded “We…I, go by Sam, but yes. It’s me, I’m back.”
She was engulfed by her family. She was given so many hugs and asked so many questions. She had trouble keeping up for a second. She sent the details over to everyone’s RIDEs. After a few minutes of time compressed sharing everyone was caught up.
“So, where’s Stuart?” there was ping on Sam’s sensors
She turned around. Standing several meters behind her was the same chimera Fuser from earlier. She was wearing a loose black sweater and matching knee length skirt. Her wings gave a nervous twitch, like she was trying not to run away. It took a few seconds but RIDE and rider finally seemed to come to an agreement.
The Fuser slowly split open and a young woman in a yellow sun dress stepped onto the lawn. Her white blonde hair was in a pixie cut. She had feline ears, swiveling at every sound and matching nose was twitching at every smell. She nervously thumbed the end of one of her goat horns while her black cobra headed tail curled around in front of her.
She hesitated before saying “Tadaima.”
Sam stared at her in disbelief. She used time compression to replay everything a dozen times to make sure she reached the right conclusion. Since her family lived and breathed crazy it made perfect sense. After all only one person in their family would use Japanese. Claire was her cousin Stuart.
Only one way to be sure "Stuart?"
She grinned nervously "Hey," she sniffed and her eyes widened "Sam you integrated? Last time we spoke you refused to even think about getting a RIDE."
Now it was turn Sam to smile "A lot can happen in five years. Why don't we all go inside?"
"No," Sam's Aunt Cathy, the youngest daughter, spoke up "You can't be Stuart. You can't be my son."
"Cathy." her husband warned
"No Bill, I don't want to hear it! There is no way that woman can be our son!"
"Before I left I got you a sterling silver bracelet. The note I put on it said that no matter what I put you though I wanted you to know how much I loved you."
"This bitch has probably been spying on us." Aunt Gina said "I'll bet she's here to try and scam us."
What little confidence Claire seemed to have built up disappeared. “This was a mistake.” She said as tears began welling up in her eyes before she fused with Mel. Sam and Joseph recovered first. Dexter quickly fusing with his partner.
'':Sam, I believe her. Only my brother, sister, would know that. Aunt Gina is just being a spiteful bitch.''
'':Normally she would lash out and bite right back. Do you think there's something wrong with her?''
'':Maybe, we’re lucky her RIDE wants her to stay.''
'':Yeah, it looks like Mel is trying to calm her down. You guys are with the Marshal right?''
'':We’re Diamond Stars, why?''
'':Can you find out what kind of RIDE Mel is?''
'':One step ahead of ya. I sent out an inquiry when we saw her enter the property and Dexter just got a match.''
Sam paled '':CMA(f)-ASA-001, skimmer mode is a high speed flier.''
'':I’ve read the report about them, project canceled due to quote unquote budget issues. I hope she isn’t still combat capable.''
'':She is. The only thing she’s missing is her hand carried weapon.''
'':Then let’s count that as a blessing.''
Behind them Gina had continued to spout increasingly caustic and illogical words. At last her Aunt Cathy seemed to remember ''who'' was talking and ignoring her. Everything was starting to fall apart. What should have been a happy family reunion was turning into a feud. As they finally got close enough Mel there was a smack from back on the porch.
“Regina, be quiet.” Geosaffati said to his third daughter.
Geosaffati J. Maiuri Junior, Pawpaw to his friends and family, stepped down from the front porch. The family patriarch eyed his assembled children and grandchildren, eyes settling on Joseph/Dexter, Sam and Claire/Mel. At just over 100 he had seen more than his fair share of fighting, first on Earth and then during the Sturmhaven Nextus War. On Earth, his skills hheld a high level management position and made a fortune in investments.
He was a big broad shouldered man who worked hard to maintain his physical health. What little hair he had left on his head was wispy gray and going white. White furred simian ears twitched atop his head as his tail lashed behind him. Even with his face marred by a frown you could still see the lines etched into it from years of laughing. Behind him stood his RIDE, MKY(m)-LMA-009L, Vinnie.
Claire blinked as she felt a pair of strong arms wrapped around her. She hesitated before she gently reached out and hugged her grandfather. When they separated she took a few deep breaths. She could do this. She ‘’had’’ to do this. After a few seconds they broke part.
“Thanks Pawpaw. Mel, you can let me go now.”
“Aw, does this mean I can’t keep you?” she teased before they defused.
Claire and Mel had obviously spent a lot of time fused. Her nails had begun to narrow and were curved to a slight point. She had the slight beginnings of a muzzle, complete with short whiskers. She even had a slightly feline tongue and her canines were definitely getting longer. The real kicker was the fine layer of white fur that had recently started to cover her; most people missed it because it blended seamlessly with her skin tone.
“We keep each other. We’re partners, equals, and don’t let anyone try and tell you otherwise.”
“I’m glad you found such a good match.” Joseph said “Now let’s go inside. I’m sure y’all have quite the story to tell about working for the Zharus Planetary Authority.”
It had taken about an hour for Claire to finish telling her family about her job helping to bust a smuggling ring. That was the cover story she had been given. It would be in all the official records. It was also partially true. She was originally assigned to the Contraband Task force.
"You were on the Contraband Task force? Stu...Claire, that's impressive." Cathy said
"They wanted my eye for detail. You know better than anyone just how good I am at hiding in plain sight." Also true and she had been reassigned.
"So they wanted you to act as an observer?" Dexter asked
"Yeah." Also true.
"Then why have you changed so much? Everything I know about you shows that you were a lot more energetic. It's like you're a completely different person. What happened?" Claire looked away.
Joseph sighed "Sis, we're just trying to help. We can't do that if you won't let us."
Mel sheltered her with a wing "Its okay. Why don't we stay here tonight, hmm?"
"You'll have sleep in the family room. You're old room's been turned into an expansion of the workshop." Vinnie said
Mel started licking her ears "Come on Claire! You can't lie to me. We both want to!"
"Alright. Alright!" she said as she laughed "We can sleep here tonight! No more kitty bath! It tickles!"
"''That's'' why I do it." she said and gave one more sloppy lick "It was more fun when you had long hair."
"Maybe for you."
Mel smiled "I know for a 'fact' one of your favorite pictures is the aftermath of the first tongue bath."
Claire blushed as she slid out from under the wing "Tha-that's because it was the first one! It was a special event."
"Is that why you're grinning like an idiot?"
"I'm not like an idiot."
"Oh? Let me guess you ''are'' an idiot." Mel narrowed her eyes as she got off the RIDE couch.
"Damn right I am." She crossed her arms.
There was a full minute of silence "Well," Bill said "it’s nice to see you acting like yourself again."
Claire blinked and went red, brushing a hand along her right horn. Mel purred as she rubbed up against her. Sam watched all of this from the kitchen as she helped Pawpaw finish preparing dinner. Spaghetti with a three meat sauce, his specialty dish and a family favorite. Mentally, her Maria half was fully expressing itself by worrying over her cousin's biometrics.
"There's something wrong with her." Pawpaw said "Vinnie said her biometrics are wonky. So I know you can see it to."
Sam sighed "Maria thinks so too. I would've missed it if she hadn't split off to point it out."
He nodded "How is she?"
Sam frowned "That's part of the problem. We can't tell."
He chuckled "Not Claire, Maria. I don't know how Integration works but I know she's forever part of you now."
"Oh," she flushed at her blunder "never better, but she still wants a proper weapon. I've read some stuff about how it 'might' be possible to get one. But if get caught or something goes wrong I'd be in really deep trouble."
"Fritz, right?"
"How did you know?"
He smiled "Dear, I know people and he ''isn't'' as omnipotent as he wants everyone to believe. Besides that, there are other people you could ask for help. Especially if you're going back to live with your folks in Aloha. I know the Marshals have hired a lot of Integrates so you might be able to ask Joseph for some comm codes." he stepped into the doorway “Alright everyone time to eat.”
There is only one word that can be used to describe dinner with the Maiuri family, loud. Of the seventeen people, Joseph and Michael were the only two louder than the assembled mothers. It may have been louder than Claire liked but its familiarity was a welcome comfort. She noticed that Sam deliberately sat next to her. The paranoid part of her thought it was a statement about how she was probably going to be the next one to ‘ascend’.
"So Cous, I noticed you have some heavy fuse signs."
"Mel is a lot of RIDE for someone to handle."
“So…have you two considered…Integrating?” Sam asked.
Mel groaned from the other room “You know Claire ''killed'' the last person who asked us that right?”
“I only did that because she was trying to force it onto us. Besides we both know he probably survived.”
“Not for lack of trying on your part.”
She put her elbow on the table and rested her chin on her hand “If he had held still for another half a second I could’ve destroyed his brain and…what?” The table had gone silent “It was self-defense.”
“Based on the intel we have now I think ''pest control'' is a better term."
Sam couldn’t keep the disbelief out of her voice “Back up, you two walked away from a fanatic without being Integrated, how?”
“By frying his DIN port, shelling him from fifteen hundred kilometers and destroying sixty-seven percent of his body mass.” At Sam's incredulous look she shrugged and started twirling her loaded fork between her fingers "You asked."
Sam stared at the fork. "All things considered you are an excellent shot, but I recommend sticking to CQC." Mel said
She had seen before, it was a nervous habit. "So we should practice by taking pot shots at the Rodinian Nature Preserve? Aim for the deadest looking trees?"
Replace the fork with a knife. "Rohit would be pissed when she found out."
Claire had been telling half-truths "You mean if."
She was supposed to be on the task force but had done something else instead. "No, I mean ''when''. Someone will notice and she would be able to trace it back to us. I'd rather not have ‘'her'’ angry with us, pacifist or not."
Sam cleared her throat "All of this is very interesting but you still haven't answered my question."
She sighed "We have thought about it. For now it's not for us, maybe someday but it'll be because it’s what we want."
Sam nodded "Glad to hear that you aren't planning on rushing into it. Being an Integrate is nice, but it has its drawbacks."
"Like the fact that your leaders are all the bad kind of crazy."
"Among other problems, yes. On the subject of supremacists I'd like to know what you did to Dominic."
"He a friend of yours?"
She snorted "Not anymore."
Claire blinked “Alright, you’ll have to be more specific.”
“When he tried to hack you.”
“Oh that," she ate her forkful of spaghetti "not much to tell, I have a special program called Cardinal.”
“And…?” Sam asked.
She shrugged “That’s all I know.”
Sam groaned “You’re kidding.”
“Nope, the rest of the information is above my pay grade.”
At this point the rest of the table had returned to normal conversation. Claire and her father got into a discussion about RIDE maintenance. He really wanted a chance to give Mel a once over. It was strictly out of professional curiosity. Mel accepted the offer on the condition that it be performed at their house with their tools, a perfectly reasonable request.
They asked about Claire's co-workers on the task force, more half-truths. They asked about her crossrider party and the gifts she received, most were surprisingly useful. Why she had waited so long to contact them, she had been told to by her handler. What Sebastian, her handler, was like and why she even needed one. She said to keep her safe, a straight lie.
Regina wanted to know if Claire would be moving back to Nextus, no way in Hell. Then she wanted to know if Claire was planning to live in Sturmhaven like her. This earned a string of words in a language no one could identify and a small rant about idiotic feminists. When Claire had first returned to Zharus a Valkyrie had tried to force herself on him. Marshal intervention was the only thing that had prevented a fight from breaking out.
Right now they were living out of their sub. They were usually docked at the Aloha aerodome since they were working for Oz. Sam and Bobbie wanted to know more about that. Bobbie was a programmer and as always interested in learning more. Bobbie's hare and Keith's deer were both on their way back from running out to pick up dessert.
“I heard there’s a dungeon in Taft.” Sam said
“That’s right. A hundred sub-basements beneath a church, each one is a microcosm unto itself. We just made it down to the seventy-fourth yesterday.”
“It took you two months?”
“I spent sixty hours power leveling before I could start that dungeon. You could make it pretty far at your current level, but it would be time consuming.”
“Once you find the entrance there’ll probably be some people you can party with, or you can go with me. Though, you’ll still have to find the entrance on your own.”
She groaned “I spent my sub flight over checking the side rooms and found nothing.”
“Sorry Cous, that’s the way it is. I’ll meet you there later.”
She shrugged “Alright, it’s not like I have anything better to do.”
“You could find a job.” Her mother said
Sam harrumphed. If she was looking for a job her best bet a Fuser based establishment, like a Fuser bar. She didn’t mind going back into that line of work. She might even go back to school. Online classes had a lot more appeal to her now. But it wouldn't do her any good if she just cheated her way through.
A few hours after dinner Claire was finally able to log into Oz and meet Sam in Taft. One second the room was empty, the next Claire was sitting in one the pews with Mel sprawled in the aisle. Sam had spent the entire time searching the church's remaining side rooms. She quirked an eyebrow but didn't say anything as she went back to searching. Half an hour later she sat down and leaned back against the alter, only to yelp as it slid backwards.
Sam sighed "Beneath the alter, how cliched."
"The entrance is different for everyone, but it’s always literally in the last place you look. That's why I couldn't help you find it."
"So I have to search this place every time?"
"Once you reach the first town it gives you a teleport spell. You can also use it to travel between the various floors."
They were able to start off on the fiftieth floor dungeon. Claire played as the forward guard drawing in the attention of the mobs and letting Sam get bonus xp and special items for killing them. The few times she attacked her blade would cut down groups at a time. When they reached the fifty fifth floor Claire took her to a blacksmith for new gear and upgrades. They spent the next several hours traipsing through the floor dungeons until they reached the seventy fourth floor.
By the time they got there Sam was several levels higher and had replaced most of her gear thrice over. They met up with other players along the way, several of which made no attempt to hide their Integrate status behind disguises. Sam soon joined them reveling in the new found freedom. The others shared stories about various raids, trades, duels and integrations. They made it halfway back to town before she noticed Claire and Mel were gone.
She dropped back into the real world and noticed her internal chronometer said it was close to four in the morning. They had probably logged out to go to sleep and she just hadn't been paying attention. She quietly stretched as she went down to the kitchen to get a snack. On her way back she peeked into the family room. Mel was lying awake in the middle of the room, her head resting on her paws. Claire was fast asleep on her back, half her face buried in Mel's scruff like it was a fuzzy living pillow.
As she turned to go back upstairs she heard the faintest of whimpers. She looked back and saw Claire start to twitch in her sleep as she whimpered again. Mel looked concerned as she shifted, trying to make her more comfortable without waking her up. When the whimpering continued, a part of Sam realized that she was intruding on something very 'very' private. The instant Claire began to thrash Mel fused up around her, staying on hands and knees as she interrupted whatever figment was tormenting Claire.
Sam watched as the Fuser took several deep breathes before curling up on the RIDE couch and seemingly going to sleep. She quietly returned to her room, never once noticing that the eyes of the cobra tail had been watching her the entire time. Everything about her cousin's odd behavior confirmed her theory. Something terrible had happened to Claire.
The first thing Sam noticed when she came down for breakfast was the twenty meter sub-orbital parked in the backyard. A quick query showed it was registered to, and owned by, Claire. She grabbed a bowl of cereal to eat as she went outside to take a closer look. When she stepped outside she could hear the voices coming from inside it.
"It's good to see you, I would've been here last night but I got caught up at the office."
"It’s okay, thanks for the crossover gift."
She laughed "I bet it got some strange looks when you opened it, but I always thought the traditional gifts were a little dumb."
As she stepped into the sub Sam recognized her older cousin Heather. The petite wolverine tagged ZPA employee was still half a head shorter than Claire. Her brown ears were almost completely hidden by her shoulder length dirty blonde hair. Sam heard the end of the comm discussion the two of them were secretly having as Heather broke the hug she had on Claire.
'':I'm sorry, if I had known where they were sending you I wouldn't have put your name up as a possible for The Ghosts.''
'':It’s okay, from what I heard I'd be dead if I had stayed with the task force.''
'':Still.''
"Heather allow me to reintroduce you to our cousin Samantha and her RIDE Maria."
Before she could blink Heather had wrapped her in a bone crushing hug. "Look at you two, all Integrated and furry!"
She returned the gesture "Thanks, what are The Ghosts?"
That wiped the smiles off their faces "Classified, and don't even try to dig up information on it. Integrate or not you won't find anything."
"Alright, alright you don't need to go biting my head off. Where are Mariko and Mel?"
"Over here." Mel called from the other room "Your Uncle was just finishing his inspection."
Bill shook his head as Mel was released from the cradle "You have an excellent chassis, looks like it could take just about anything. Like those wings, they weren't in the original design. At least not any of the drafts I’ve seen."
"I felt like I was in the wrong body. We tried a bunch of things but it wasn't until we were in Rodinia that we found an answer. They used a winged lioness as one of my bases."
He nodded recognizing the symptoms of body diaspora "Installing micro solar panels for solid state feathers, pretty clever idea."
"Glad you like, it was Claire's."
"It’s nice being on indefinite leave, lots of time to travel and just relax." Claire turned to Heather "Earlier you said there was some sort of convention I might like to go to?"
"That's right; it’s a convention for people with ASA RIDEs. Kind of like a RIDE or skimmer show, you can meet lots of people and learn more about maintenance and stuff. I thought it might do you some good to spend time with people you aren't related to."
"I do that in Oz."
She gave Sam a pleading look "You've been having nightmares."
She looked away "Maybe."
"There might be people who can help you."
"Claire," Heather put a hand on her shoulder "you're not alone anymore. If you're still having nightmares let us help you. At the very least let Mel help, she's your partner for crying out loud."
"I know that." she snapped "At least, I do intellectually. I'm trying but it’s not easy, it’s a hard
habit to break after three years."
Sam sighed "Let's make a deal. I had planned to take you shopping today, that dress is probably one of the few outfits you can actually use." Claire's blush confirmed this "So we'll go to the Con with you and, when you want to leave, we'll take you shopping for some real clothes. Deal?"
Claire groaned "Fine, you've got me backed into a corner."
Sam waved at her "And that's why I'm your favorite."
"Besides," she smirked "I could use proper pair of sweats anyway."
Now it was Sam's turn to groan as she punched Claire's shoulder. Stuart had never understood the appeal of being fashionably dressed. Ironically this had an incredible fashion sense, he could look downright amazing if he wanted to. But he would much rather run around in comfortable clothing regardless of whether or not was in style or matched.
Within an hour the five of them were on their way to the largest convention center in the polity. Artillery Support Armor was a bit of misnomer. The classification included everything from gunships and indirect fire to low orbit bombardment and sniper style direct fire units. This broad range meant they were also produced in an equal large range of sizes, mostly on the larger end of the scale. Thus they needed a convention center whenever they wanted to gather in large groups.
There were thousands of people and RIDEs packed into the center. They were even able to spot a few Integrates taking advantage of the crowd to wander around exposed to the world. They ended up meeting up with a few veterans of Nextus-Sturmhaven war. Whenever Mel was noticed she immediately became the center of attention and received everything from sympathy and comm codes to death threats.
Claire had just sat down in the food court when a hand landed on her shoulder "Excuse me ma'am," a feminine voice said "but it’s important that I speak to you."
Her tail hissed as it examined the woman behind her. She yanked her hand back in surprise, badger ears flattening. The fact that she didn't step away from Claire said she was used to getting what she wanted. Her accent marked her as belonging to the upper levels of the Nextus government.
Claire sighed "About what?" Why did Sam and Heather have to get food now.
"That RIDE belongs to you right? My superiors in the MRS want me to demand its return."
Mel growled "We're partners, we belong to each other. A few months I ago I had to send some of your co-workers packing."
She snorted "I heard about that."
"Lieutenant Colonel Steele, how nice to see you again." Heather, Fused with Mariko, walked over with a tray of food.
"D-Director, I...I didn't see you there."
"Oh course you didn't,” she sat down "I just got back with our food." she pushed out a chair "Please, sit down." It wasn't a request. "This is the second time Nextus has harassed one of my operatives. I thought I made it clear what would happen if this continued, regardless of 'who' was doing the harassing."
“I understand, but my superiors obviously don't." she pinched the bridge of her nose "This was supposed to be my weekend off, got it approved months ago. I just wanted to come here and enjoy the time with other people with ASAs. Then I got a call an hour ago and was told that facial rec placed you here and was given orders to try and convince you to hand you RIDE over to me."
"How long have you been partnered?"
She smiled tiredly "Fifteen years now, she’s a BDR(f)-ASA-014W. She ran into some of her friends who’ve already mustered put. I think this whole debacle is a sign that we should tender our resignation.”
“Any idea why your top brass is so interested in Mel?”
“Not a clue, someone in the military or one of the upper tiers might be putting them up to it. You know quid pro quo.”
Claire grunted “I ‘hate’ career politicians.”
There was a murmur of agreement “Well, I’ve bothered you enough.” Steele offered her hand and Claire shook it. “I’m going to find Cressa and get back to enjoying the convention.”
Sam showed up shortly after Steele left and they ate their late lunch. This time when Claire said she wanted to leave there were no objections. The trip had served its purpose which was to get introduce Claire to other people. A handful of the RIDEs gave Mel advice on how to help Claire deal with her night terrors.
Compared to everything that was happening at the convention shopping was uneventful. However Sam’s idea of shopping hadn’t included the half a dozen specialty stores Claire dragged them into. That aside, it was easy to find clothes for her. Convincing her to buy some of the more feminine ones was impossible. It took a while to talk her into defusing to actually try on different outfits. Her pragmatism about clothes had clearly crossed over with her.
They caught a lucky break, one of shops was run by an Integrate and Sam was able to try on real clothes for the first time in months. Claire refused to entertain anything that had frills or lace. Just about the only feminine clothes she bought were sundresses and a pair of sunhats. Everything else was t-shirts and shorts. As far as she was concerned indefinite leave was the same as retirement, just with better pay.
The entire time they were shopping Claire was doing something on the net. Sam’s fear of the mysterious Cardinal System was the only thing that prevented her from taking a closer peek. After all, just because she could look in on everything digital didn’t mean she should. Everyone was entitled to just as much privacy as she was. Then again, she could always ask.
“Claire, are you going to share the reason you’ve been on the net for the past six hours with the group?”
She was silent for a bit "Swear not tell anyone?"
"On pain of death."
"Therapy," she was blushing "you know I had a nightmare last night. The problem is I've been having them for several months now. They're less frequent now but I'm still having them. Cardinal was helping at first but now its doing more harm than good."
Heather swore "Nobody said you were given a copy of Cardinal."
"They probably didn't think it was important."
"Like Hell it isn't. Who authorized it?"
She shrugged "Romulus something or other."
Heather groaned "Romulus Mengsk?" a nod "That power hungry idiot. Cardinal is designed for rapid tactical analysis not psychiatric care. Do you at least have control over it?"
"Umm..."
Sam frowned "I'm guessing this Mengsk person didn't tell you that you could adjust it."
Claire snorted "He didn't say much of anything about it. I could probably hack it."
"Don't," Mariko said "I'll pass over the control codes so you can disable it, take an image before you adjust it."
"Hopefully Tassidar will throw him out on his ass, politics be damned."
"Um, are you sure its okay for you guys to discuss this in fornt of me?"
"Its useless to anyone else you might know."
Sam briefly thought of Fritz "I'm not sure about that."
"The Bosscat wouldn't be able to do anything useful with the information. Even if he wants Mengsk to stay in power he knows better than to try anything."
"Wait the ZPA knows about Fritz?"
"We've had contact with certain individuals who brought him to our attention. We've been...monitoring the situation ever since."
"We understand you're scared of him but he's just a person. If it came down to a fight the odds are stacked 'against' his favor."
"Easy for you to say." Sam muttered.
Claire, stilled Fused with Mel yawned as she woke up the next morning.They had a very productive night in OZ, lots of level grinding with Sam. The boss room had been found and its raid was currently in the early planning stages. Depending on the information the scout teams gathered they might be able to clear it within a few days. But that was just wishful thinking on her part.
With most of Cardinal disabled Claire had been able to download a lucid dreaming app for her implant and get a direct look at her subconscious. If she ever saw Mengsk again he would be subjected to a swift and unbearably painful death. That bastard had tried to use Cardinal to brainwash her into becoming his obedient little puppet.It was easy enough to fix what he had changed and Mel kept meticulous notes on what they found. It was damning enough that he would probably be locked up for the rest of his life.
For the first time since coming back Claire really felt like herself. At breakfast she had a pointless argument with her brother (she lost), pounced on Vinnie, and generally made a minor nuisance of herself. Though she didn't say anything she could feel Mel's approval of the return towards her true normalcy. She knew she could never go all the way back, too much had happened, but she could get close.
Last night they had flown to Cascadia to visit one of Keith's friends and do a little sight seeing before heading back to Aloha. It had been going great until they announced that they were going to let some of the rain through the domes. It wasn't really dangerous, more of a minor annoyance, but it did force them to cut their tour short. They were almost to the aerodome when Claire put a hand on Sam's shoulder.
'':We're being followed.''
Sam checked her sensor '':Doesn't look like it.''
'':Trust me we are, take your parents and get back to The Dawn. I, we, will handle this.''
Sam noticed the hesitation with the pronouns '':Alright.''
It took only a few minutes for them to be out of sight "You can come out now."
From under a nearby awning stepped a red panda Fuser "Corporal Mort and Private Eugene," she shook the offered hand "its a pleasure to meet you ma'am."
A fellow Ghost "Likewise, now let's get down to brass tacks. Why were you following us?"
He offered he a tablet "Emergency orders, direct from Colonel Tiger himself."
"I'm supposed to be on leave. Why didn't he just comm me?"
"He's been trying to."
Claire swore "I bet its something Mengsk imbedded in that copy of Cardinal. We're gonna have to get a full work up done on my implants."
Colonel Tiger Sauer was the founding member and commanding officer of the Ghosts. It had been he who sent her on indefinite leave, after approving her new partner. He was also an Integrate and gave every Ghost a special encryption key. There was no doubt in her or Mel's mind that he was fully aware Claire had family with her right now. If he was giving her direct orders there were no other options.
The mission was a simple extraction operation that required them to stop at the southern end of a mineral formation called the Towers. She wouldn't be required to fight anyone. All she had to do was fly in pick up the fire-team and fly them all out without attracting the attention of the local Enclave.
If Sam hadn’t been watching the entrance she would have missed Claire and Mel’s return. She could tell something was different as soon as they stepped aboard. Her parents didn’t notice Mel’s hardlight fur had become smooth armor.
“There’s been a slight change in our flight plan. Claire and I need to make a work related detour.”
“I thought everything Oz related was in Aloha.” Bobbie said.
“This is ZPA related. Need to pick up a survey team we have out in the Towers. They’re probably going to be tired. So, I want y’all to try and stay out of their way.”
“There might not be anyone for you to pick up. There’s an Enclave in the Towers and they have been known to forcibly remove tethers from RIDEs and they sometimes…encourage Integration in others.”
“Trust me the Enclave has no idea that they’re there. Its more towards the central section so they won't notice us either.”
"I don't know..."
"Sam we were able to sneak up on you and Dominic."
She winced "There's going to be a lot more than just two this time."
Claire/Mel shrugged "Two or 2000, numbers are only important if they're paying attention. Now, I'm going to grab something from my room and then we'll be off."
The trip from Cascadia to the Towers was very short. A straight line flight instead of an parabolic arc. Sam couldn't believe how fast The Dawn was Claire had done some major upgrades from its stock configuration. It was only very strict self-control that kept her from running a deep scan to find out what made her tick. That and Sam was worried that she might expose them if she did.
Claire had the loading ramp open before they even landed. Everything was still and it would have been eerily quiet if the wind stopped. They sat there for ten minutes before she kicked on her stealth and went to go talk to Claire. Except the cockpit was empty. A quick search proved both she and Mel had left The Dawn.
Throwing her worries aside she reached out and pinged Mel on the sidebands. Several seconds passed before Mel pinged her back letting her know she had met with the survey team and they were on their back. Sam walked into the back area and stood right in the entrance her sensors on full alert.
She stood there for fifteen minutes and was about to walk back in when an arm wrapped around her neck. She would've screamed if the a hand hadn't clamped over her mouth. She was quickly dragged backwards into the main cargo area as the ramp closed sealing up the ship.
A man's voice growled in her ear "If I where an enemy you'd be dead." she was released "Come on Probie, Mike and Aug need help with Mosley."
Mosley turned out to be a wounded Bandicoot Integrate being tapped on cheek by a Wombat Fuser "Come on Mosley stay with us!"
She caught the wrist before it could tap against her cheek again "Hit me again and I'll break your wrists."
The Fuser gave a sigh "Thank God you're alright. Ajax, Probie, give me a hand getting her to kitchen."
Ajax turned out to be an LSA black lab Fuser. When Sam made no move to follow he grabbed her wrist and dragged her forward. With a combination of lifter control and hand support they got Mosley settled on the kitchen table. Ajax opened a cabinet and gave a spare sarium battery to Mosley. Why had he called Sam been Probie?
"Where's Claire?" Sam asked, the quiet hum of the lifters answered her question.
"The LT is making sure we get out of here in one piece." Mosely answered "I know we asked for emergency evac but I didn't think they'd send the Ace of Aces herself." she looked over at Sam "Probie, front and center. I thought I knew every female Ghost and recruit we have."
Claire's voice came over their comms' '': Neither, she's my cousin.''
"That explains her lack of reflexes." Ajax said.
"I'm standing right here you know."
'':Where are y'all going to stay when we get to Aloha?'' Mel asked.
'':No idea. We were supposed to be out here for another week.''
"Um you guys can stay at my house." They looked at her. "Well its technically my parents house. But we've got plenty of room for guests."
"You'll have to run it by them first and I don’t think there is anyway they’ll let us stay for a week."
It was the second night after they arrived in Aloha. Ajax (Andrew and his RIDE Jackson), Mosley, Mike and Aug had spent the first day busily preparing their reports and getting some much needed rest. They had most of the day in Oz being brought up to speed on the raid strategy and gathering supplies. They had already spent most of the night out on the town, slowly going from bars up to clubs with Claire getting progressively drunker, probably because she was lounging on Mel’s back when they traveled, her hair now shoulder length.
“I had no idea Claire was a happy drunk.”
“Let’s just hope she stays that way.” Ajax said.
“Pray that you never have to find out.” Mosley muttered as Claire babbled to Mel.
“What language is she speaking anyway?”
“No idea, she must have picked it up on her last assignment.” Aug said
Sam shook her head "We have about two hours till the bars close up for the night, any suggestions."
"Loch Ness, its on 32nd Street." Claire giggled as she motioned its general direction.
Mosley patted her head "No more for you."
Loch Ness turned out to be a rather upscale bar staffed only by marine Fusers. They grabbed seats at the bar proper, Claire half slumping over in hers. The place was surprisingly full for its location and the time of night. They were on their second round of drinks when a musk-ox Fuser walked over and started talking to Claire.
"What's cookin good lookin?" Sam frowned at his Cape Nord accent. "How about I buy you a drink."
Claire giggled "Sure, Edradour on the rocks."
What was she doing? She had agreed she wouldn't have another drink and why was Ajax smirking? Sam looked at the others. Mosley looked resigned while Mike and Aug just looked confused. Clearly the three of them were missing something. Claire's Scotch sat there for a minute before the Fuser said anything.
"Well aren't you going to drink it?"
"Nope, Mosley said no more for me so no more will I drink." she grinned.
He spluttered "But you said I could buy you a drink!"
"And you did, you didn't ask if I could drink it, which I can't." she shrugged.
He frowned "Well, then why don't we go somewhere else and you can have a drink there."
"She said no more so it doesn't matter where. I can't drink any."
"Then how about I take you over to my place. I got a nice hotel room just down the street." He gave her a winning smile.
Claire let out a laugh and patted him on the cheek "You are just to cute, but I'm not that kind of crossrider."She winked at Mosley.
"Then your friend can come to." his grin widened "How about it?"
"Mm, no."
"Aw come on it'll be fun."
Mike/Aug grabbed his arm as he tried drape it around her shoulders "Dude, she said no.
"Stay outta this." The man sneered, jerking his arm free and spilling Claire's Scotch.
Sam blinked and almost missed it. There was a massive crash as Claire slammed the Fuser face first into the bar. They all heard the crunch of metal as his muzzle deformed. He stumbled backwards as Claire stood up. Gone was the happily giggling drunk from a fraction of a second ago.
The man took a swing at her and she just seemed to slide out of the way. He swung again and she slipped around behind him grabbing his tail and yanking him into a spin towards the front. Mosley pinched the bridge of her nose while Ajax was laughing so hard he had fallen out of his seat. She slipped past his strikes again and again before counter attacking. This time Sam missed it because of Mel, but she still heard the rending crash as the man broke through the wall and landed in the street.
Before Claire could take another step she was engulfed by Mel. She put her hands over her heart, eyes closed, as she took deep breaths. Sam could hear the blaring of police sirens as the APD showed up.
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Daphne Guinness for MAC Collection -- Heir Apparent?
Brewery heiress Daphne Guinness has all the makings of a fashion and beauty icon: she's extremely thin (and, sadly, many consider this a pre-requisite to attaining any mode-related accolades, though we hope this standard changes soon); there's an enigmatic quality to her face so that, even when posing for pictures, there's a sense that she's keeping some wonderful secret to herself; she's an artist and yet she doesn't announce it to the world with any sort of affectation (quite rare for a socialite); her style choices are often unorthodox (starting with her platinum blond mane featuring a single skunk-like raven stip) and yet she makes them seem fanciful and inspiring, even when they involve enormous lobster-claw shoes (as seen here), a black lace veil covering an intricately braided updo (as pictured here), a dominatrix-meets-equestrian ensemble with a back top hat (as in this shot), or sky-high platforms with no heel at the back that require walking on the balls of one's feet and on the toes, as if wearing pointe shoes. She also has a profound respect for designers, makeup artists and fashion editors with a true and unique vision, which is why she developed such an intense friendship with the late Alexander McQueen and why, in 2010, she bought the entire wardrobe of her friend and McQueen's mentor Isabella Blow, hoping that by doing so she could retain its sancity and protect it from vulture-like collectors simply interested in turning a profit. Guinness, then approached fashion as art, and she takes the medium quite seriously, offering it the respect it deserves, while also allowing herself to express her more whimsical tendencies.
It was hardly surprising when, for Fall 2010, makeup genius François Nars unveiled an astounding color cosmetics collection inspired by Daphne Guinness or when, in September 2011, NYC's Fashion Institute of Techology launched the "Daphne Guinness Exhibit" featuring pieces from Guinness' own extensive wardrobe.
But when MAC Cosmetics, usually one of the more forward-thinking cosmetics brands, announced it was releasing a makeup collaboration with Daphne Guinness for Winter 2011/2012, we raised an eyebrow. Why follow in the footsteps of NARS? And, if MAC was bold enough to take such a step, could its collection possibly match the level of ingenuity showcased in the NARS one?
Sadly, the answer is no. Though the Daphne Guinness for MAC collection features products inspired and allegedly developed by Guinness herself, the colors and textures seem tame, predictable, and even boring. Sure, a few pieces stand out from the fray, offering a glimpse of the boundary-pushing eccentricity we associate with Guinness, but these are rare occurrences.
The result is so disappointing that it feels almost nonsensical. How do these muted pinks and purples reflect the persona of a woman who recently admitted to using nail polish as lipstick (not only a kooky idea but a dangerous one as most lacquers contain such toxic chemicals as formaldehyde and toulene)? How are these colors are different from MAC's regular fare?
Perhaps our expectations were too high but, then, once you invoke Daphne Guinness' name, it's hard not to anticipate drama and cutting-edge technology.
Still, for all its flaws, there are a few treasures lurking in the Daphne Guinness for MAC collection so, check out the entire collection along with swatches after the jump.
Continue reading "Daphne Guinness for MAC Collection -- Heir Apparent?" »
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Win a Lauren Merkin Silver Patent Calfskin Clutch & a John Frieda Full Repair Touch-Up Flyaway Tamer
Over the holidays, John Frieda and Lauren Merkin teamed up to release two limited-edition clutches, both of which perfectly fit one vital John Frieda styling product.
Since we swear by the John Frieda Full Repair Touch-Up Flyaway Tamer, a tube with a mascara-style wand that allows you to brush a frizz-controlling serum to any unruly strands and stray hairs while on the go, we're swooning over the Lauren Merkin for John Frieda Full Repair clutch.
Not only will you be receiving a full-sized tube of this John Frieda beauty essential, but you'll get your hands on an authentic clutch by New York-based designer Lauren Merkin. This taupe-ish silver calfskin clutch features a glossy patent leather finish, a slim rectangular shape, an envelope-like top flap with a darker-colored accent strip along the curved bottom of the flap, and red suede lining along the interior. Made in NYC, the clutch measures 9.5" in width and 5.5" in height.
The John Frieda for Lauren Merkin clutch retails for $275 at LaurenMerkin.com and it could be yours for free, so enter now!
To enter, visit our official giveaway page on Facebook (you can find it under the "Promos" tab on the left-hand side of the Sicka Than Average fan page) and make sure to take the steps indicated:
1. Like Sicka Than Average on Facebook (Facebook.com/SickaThanAvg)
2. Like John Frieda US on Facebook (Facebook.com/JohnFriedaUS)
3. Like Lauren Merkin Handbags on Facebook (Facebook.com/LaurenMerkinHandbags)
4. Follow @SickaThanAvg on Twitter
5. Follow @JohnFriedaUS on Twitter
6. Follow @LaurenMerkin on Twitter
7. For en extra chance to win, tweet the following: "I just entered to win an @LaurenMerkin and @JohnFriedaUS clutch from @sickathanavg!"
For extra chances to win, leave a comment below or tweet about the giveaway on Twitter!
That's it! The contest ends on January 20th, so best of luck!
Posted at 11:25 PM in Beauty, Fashion, Giveaway | Permalink | Comments (33) | TrackBack (0)
Burt's Bees New & Improved Honey & Shea Body Butter Is The Bee's Knees!
Surely you've heard the expression "the bee's knees" and, most likely, you've wondered whether these hive dwellers even have knees and, if so, why these joints would be deemed praiseworthy. Well, here's the most rudimentary answer: though bees don't have knee caps and such, they do have segmented legs with femurs, tibias and tarsis, and their legs rely on joints that give these insects a fuller range of motion. But what makes the notches in these anthropods' legs special is their function as a storage location for pollen. Like a treasure chest at the bottom of the ocean, then, the "knees" store the most precious substance in a bee colony, making these anatomical regions vital in importance. When you say something is "the bee's knees," then, you're touting its greatness.
Moving past the apiology lesson and the corresponding linguistic exploration, I can say the Burt's Bees New & Improved Honey & Shea Body Butter ($13 at BurtsBees.com) is deserving of the "bee's knees" label — and not just because the rich moisturizer contains honey or because the brand has the word "bees" in its moniker. No, what makes this body butter a prized beauty find is its ability to hydrate and soften skin, providing some much-needed relief for those of us in wintry climates that exacerbate skin woes ranging from dryness and itchiness to ashiness and overall discomfort.
The Honey & Shea Body Butter relies on honey, a natural humectant given its hygroscopic nature — in other words, honey naturally absorbs the moisture in the air so that, when it's applied to the skin and exposed to the air, it will draw moisture to the skin and seal it into the dermis — and a natural antibacterial, as it contains an enzyme that produces hydrogen peroxide, thereby killing any bacteria and helping to accelerate the healing of wounds and inflammations. Shea butter extracted from karite tree nuts moisturizes and softens skin thanks to its high concentration of linoleic acid, which helps to repair the skin barrier, delays the emergence of visible aging signs, and functions as an emollient and anti-inflammatory agent. Aside from these two ingredients, the body butter contains such skin-nourishing ingredients as: sweet almond oil, which restores the skin to its optimal moisture balance and conditions the skin; coconut oil, which is mostly composed of lauric acid, which boasts anti-microbial and anti-viral properties, and also contains linoleic and oleic acids, which help to alleviate topical skin problems ranging from eczema to psoriasis and dermatitis; cocoa butter, a powerful lubricant that helps to prevent the emergence of scars and stretch marks; jojoba butter which, given its similarities in composition to that of sebum, is easily absorbed by skin, moisturizing and conditioning without leaving behind any greasy residue; soybean oil, which contains antioxidants that protect the skin from free radicals; lactic acid, a natural Alpha Hydroxy Acid that improves texture, exfoliating gently and restoring elasticity to the skin by promoting collagen and elastin production; and sunflower seed oil, a vegetable triglyceride loaded with vitamin E and boasting a lightweight consistency.
Though it's billed as a body butter, this 99% natural moisturizer has a relatively lightweight consistency (even lighter than, say, yogurt), making it a nice alternative to heftier butters that leave behind a thick, greasy, waxy layer that not only feels uncomfortable but can often take more than a half hour to be absorbed by the skin. In contrast, the Honey & Shea Body Butter will instantly provide relief to those with parched or itchy skin, but it will quickly smooth the surface on which it's applied, making it feel silky soft.
The one caveat: don't expect for this lotion to smell like Honey Nut Cheerios or Greek honey cookies. The smell is considerably earthier and nuttier which, in a way, makes it feel more rustic and natural, but which some may find unsavory (particularly if they're accustomed to more refined scents). I personally don't find the body butter's aroma to be troubling, though I wouldn't necessarily swoon over it either. Then again, given that the scent doesn't linger on the skin for hours on end, it's a small quibble even if you do dislike the aroma.
Posted at 04:28 PM in Beauty | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Current Beauty Obsession: Maybelline Color Sensational Lip Stain
Admittedly, ever since Sephora became my go-to store for makeup purchases, I can sometimes overlook the treasures awaiting me at the drugstores closest to me — a huge mistake since, oftentimes, these brands incorporate products just as efficient as their prestige counterparts (and, oftentimes, markedly cheaper). Don't get me wrong: like any beauty junkie, I'll splurge on such products as a Make Up For Ever Aqua Cream, a Tarte Amazonian Clay Blush, or a NARS The Multiple stick. But I should never underestimate drugstore brands' new releases as they can be just as exciting and ground-breaking as those ushered into high-end boutiques.
A perfect example: Maybelline's Color Sensational Lipstain. I've tried a billion lip stains — among them POP Beauty's Stain Stay, the Stila Cherry Crush Lip & Cheek Stain, Benefit's Benetint, and the Revlon Just Bitten —but none can even hold a candle to the Maybelline Color Sensational Lipstain. Available in 10 shades ranging from a matte nude (No. 5 In the Buff) to a lollipop red (No. 75 Cherry Pop) and a magenta-ish açai berry hue (No. 45 Bitten Berry), these felt-tip pens look like chubby marker and they deposit a sheer wash of color for a just-pinched effect that's natural, easy, and youthful. The applicator tip is pointed enough for you to properly trace the outline of your mouth, accentuating the cupid's bow and following the outer corners of the lips to create a pout that's as rounded or stark and angular as desired; at the same time, if you tilt the tip slightly, you can color in the inside of your mouth using the more rounded sides (a time saver!).
Because the pigments are water-based, they're sheer enough to give you that I-just-came-in-from-the-cold or I-just-ate-a-popsicle tint, but the color is still robust (and, of course, if you layer it, you can build up the intensity). Plus, the pigment lasts all day -- even as you eat, drink, and gab away. You may have to fill in the center of your mouth if you happen to be drinking more water or coffee than usual, but that's a rarity. In fact, I've even smooched my boyfriend while wearing the Cherry Pop color and he was stunned that he didn't have to wipe any color from his lips, as he usually does when I wear lipstick (regardless of whether or not it's a long-wearing formula).
But perhaps what makes this lip stain top of the class is that it doesn't feather or migrate, nor does it dry out lips (a common frustration with other lip stains). In fact, the formula contains a vitamin-enriched berry nectar that hydrates and moisturizes lips, ensuring that the color doesn't fade and that lips remain smooth and crack-free.
Lately, I've been crushing hard on the No. 75 Cherry Pop and the No. 55 Plum Flushed Shades. If you're curious to see what the shades look like, check out the photos after the jump.
Have you tried the Color Sensational Lipstains yet? If not, pick some up at your nearest drugstore for $7.49 each. They're worth every penny!
Continue reading "Current Beauty Obsession: Maybelline Color Sensational Lip Stain" »
Laser Tag: Round Two -- Chronicling our Experiences with the TRIA Hair Removal Laser
In late November, I mentioned I'd be keeping a log of my experiences with the TRIA Beauty Hair Removal Laser. Like many women, I've had a long, troublesome, frustration-filled history with hair removal — whether I experimented with shaving creams and cutting-edge razors, went to a spa to have my stems waxed, experimented with DIY wax strips, or tried depilatory creams and gels. This journey has involved such incidents as a failed experiment with a spray-on hair removal cream that ultimately ended in my legs being covered with first degree burns. And then, of course, there's the time I stripped off a layer of skin by attempting to wax my own legs a bit too aggressively, not to mention the countless indignities suffered at the hands of unseemly razor bumps that left me looking like I had an incurable case of chicken pox. Needless to say, I've often contemplated investing in laser hair removal but my investigations always ended in frustration as I calculated the type of financial commitment I'd be making in order to ensure permanent results, not to mention the time I'd spend in the dermatologist's office as they zapped each inch of stubbly surface.
Imagine my excitement, then, when I heard about the TRIA Beauty Hair Removal Laser, an at-home device valued at $395, that vows to permanently remove hair in six months. The handheld hair removal device features a small tip that emits a laser which, when pressed against the skin, disables hair follicles, thereby preventing future hair growth. When I was approached about testing the TRIA laser over six-month period and documenting my experiences, I pounced at the offer, eager to see if the device would deliver the groundbreaking results it promises.
How does it work? Well, though it's a handheld (albeit hefty) device, it relies on the same FDA-approved diode laser technology used in professional settings. The driving force is photothermolysis, a process whereby the beams of laser emitted by the device are absorbed by the hair's natural pigment and converted into heat. This thermal energy then disables follicles, hence preventing future hair growth.
Ideally, you want to use the TRIA laser every two weeks (I'd suggest marking the days on your calendar so that you can make sure you don't wait too long or, alternatively, repeat the process too early on). Thus far, I've been completed two separate treatments, focusing on my legs (from knees to ankles). Before using, you want to shave your legs so that the surface is completely smooth and dry.
Handling the device isn't necessarily intuitive, so I would definitely suggest reading the instruction manual from beginning to end (no skimming, okay?). Perfect example: even when the device is fully charged, it won't start working just because you hit the power button. To activate, you need to place the flat bottom of the device atop a steady surface area on the skin (like the top of your thigh, say) and the built-in skin sensor will register that the device is ready to be unlocked. Then you can press the power button and activate the TRIA Laser. Once it's on, you can pick between five treatment settings, each of which corresponds to a heat level. The levels are shown in the display window at the top of the device, represented by pill-shaped ovals.
You're advised to select the highest level you can tolerate but do be advised that Levels 4 and 5 are for those gutsy gals who can really withstand more than a wee bit of pain. In fact, I started out with Level 3 and had to switch to Level 2 (and gals, I have six tattoos, suffered from painful gall stones before finally getting surgery, and gave birth to a hefty 8 lb. child, so my tolerance for pain is pretty high). Eventually, I did move back up to Level 3, but it did require some Lamase-style breathing to get through the full treatment.
Now, when you use the TRIA, you want to press the treatment window against the skin lightly, making sure it's positioned flat against the skin. Next, you'll keep the device on that spot until you hear a beep indicating that the area has been treated. This should happen in a matter of seconds, so pay close attention. Once that area is treated, you'll want to lift the device and move on to the next area. To cover the entire surface area, you can glide the device up and down in linear strokes or try to move the treatment window using small circular motions.
As you're treating the affected area, you'll feel a bit of a prickling sensation. If you have tender skin, you might feel more of a zap or nip (imagine a mini current or an elastic snapping against the skin). It's not pleasant, but it's tolerable — particularly when you keep in mind that you might be hair-free in a matter of months by just bucking up and withstanding the discomfort.
After my first treatment, I didn't notice any changes, but I was forewarned that this would be the case. After the second treatment, however, I'm noticing that less hair is growing back in and that it seems to be a bit thinner.
I'll still have to shave, of course, but hopefully as I continue these routine treatments, I'll be one step closer to having smooth, hair-free legs!
Stay tuned, gals!
Tom Ford Violet Blonde Eau de Parfum -- When Violets Are Far From Blue
As we tiptoe into 2012, many of us are searching for a new signature fragrance, one that makes us feel like we're ready to conquer the world this year. Given the ubiquity of the magazine print ads touting its wonders and the fascination with all things Tom Ford-related, you might consider embracing Tom Ford Violet Blonde Eau de Parfum ($100 for 1.7 fl. oz. and $145 for 3.4 fl. oz. at Nordstrom.com) as your go-to scent. Described as an ode to opulent, Old World perfumery, Tom Ford Violet Blonde presents the violet as a sensual, enigmatic, alluring floral, then juxtaposes it with orris (the root of the iris flower) for an earthy mysteriousness and incorporates the feminine finesse of the jasmine sambac flower.
The fragrance features top notes of violet leaf absolute, Italian mandarin, and baie rose which shoud, ultimately, create a lush green impression with hints of citrus but, in actuality, the effect is floral from the very beginning. At the heart, the scent incorporates two forms of Tuscan orris, Tuscan orris butter and Tuscan orris absolute, both aged and distilled in the hills of Florence and Siena during a process spanning more than a year. These earthy orris notes serve as the fragrance's backbone, connecting the fragrance to the soil and countering the delicate mystique of the jasmine sambac note also at the heart. Last, the fragrance incorporates base note of benzoin, cedarwood, Haitian vetiver absolute, silkolide and soft suede to create the sensation of warmth and carnal sensuality.
Regardless of the notes in Tom Ford Violet Blonde's composition and the intent with which they were incorporated into the scent, the fragrance actually fell a bit short of my expectations. When I first spritzed the fragrance on, I didn't detect any citrus elements nor did I notice any dewy leafy or mossy notes — just the violet leaf note which is initially overpowering but quickly softens, moving from a shout to a whisper.
In reality, the orris notes seem to overshadow even the violet flower's wild and feminine allure, making this more of an earthy scent than a floral one. It's still a lovely fragrance, but I'd say it's more of an intriguing, mysterious aroma than a traditionally feminine floral offering.
It's a lovely scent, but it hardly compares to Tom Ford's Black Orchid, a triumph in perfumery, or Tom Ford White Patchouli, which completely redefined how consumers perceive patchouli. Worst of all, the fragrance seems to have the lifespan of a firecracker, shooting up then exploding in a flash and trickling away in the blink of an eye. This short lifespan may be its biggest shortcoming — even if you prefer a softer scent that can only be detected as people inch closer, Tom Ford Violet Blonde might prove a bit too timid for your sensibilities.
Botanicals From Kenya, Uganda, Senegal, and Namibia Nourish Tresses In Bella Lucce's African Adventures Collection
As part of her dedication to incorporating the highest quality natural and organic ingredients, Bella Lucce founder Lela Barker strives to constantly expand her understanding of plant and fruit oils, seed and nut extracts, sea minerals, and ground spices, studying how they can be incorporated into her skin care and hair care formulations. Her newest collection, Bella Lucce's African Adventures Collection, is the result of six trips to Africa in a two-year period, during which Barker traversed the continent, studying the botanical wonders and the beauty traditions of the women in Ghana, Morocco, Mali, Egypt, South Africa, Uganda, and Kenya.
The eight-product collection, then, incorporates ingredients like: South African rooibos extract, the plant used to make African red tea; yangu (otherwise known as cape chestnut) oil sourced from Kenya; Madagascar vanilla absolute; oils from the seeds of Kenyan baobab trees; and nilotica shea butter cold-pressed in Uganda.
On the hair care front, the collection includes the Bella Lucce Baobab & Red Tea Naturally Nourishing Shampoo ($22 at BellaLucce.com), a sulfate-, paraben-, phtalate-, and silicone-free cleanser that still lathers deliciously thanks to the hydrolyzed wheat protein, hydrolyzed oat flour, and hydrolyzed wheat starch in the formula. The shampoo has a sheer yellowish tint and a sightly sappy consistency that's thin without being runny, and the fragrance has an earthy, herbal quality that's slightly spicy and refreshing. Unlike other shampoos that feel like they're drying out the hair, making your strands feel tangled even as you massage the product into the scalp, the Bella Lucce Baobab & Red Tea Naturally Nourishing Shampoo removes dirt and impurities with acacia flower extract, a natural cleansing agent, while also moisturizing, fortifying strands, stimulating hair growth, and soothing scalp dryness. This feat is accomplished via a potent formula that relies on softening Ugandan shea butter; Kenyan baobab oil, which is rich in essential fatty acids and vitamins A, D, and E; panthenol, a natural conditioning agent; manketti oil, which protects strands from environmental hazards; neem oil, which provides relief for those with dry and itchy scalps; and antioxidant-rich rooibos extract, which safeguards hair color so that it doesn't appear dull or faded.
Once you've cleansed your hair thoroughly, the real treat begins as you apply the Bella Lucce Mongongo & Shea Nutritive Conditioner ($26 at BellaLucce.com), a divine moisturizer that leaves strands silky soft. It takes a bit of effort to pump it out of its slim bottle and the texture is similar to that of a lightweight body lotion but here's the magical part: when you press your palms against your wet hair, the conditioner seems to melt onto the hair. Think of how, when you spread margarine atop piping hot, seconds-out-of-the-toaster bread slices, it sinks right into the toast, turning its tint a gorgeous yellow gold hue. Now, imagine a conditioner that would be as easily absorbed by your strands as the butter was by that toast. It's extraordinary!
Among the key ingredients in the conditioner is Namibian mongongo oil (also known as manketti oil), which contains high levels of vitamin E and eleostearic acid, both of which provide a protective layer against UV rays, as well as linoleic acid, an omega-6 fatty acid that helps to stimulate hair growth and allows strands to locks in moisture. Yangu seed oil, extracted from the black seeds of trees native to the South African region, smooths and moisturizes hair with its high concentration of oleic, linoleic, and palmitic acids, as does the watermelon seed oil in the formula, which hydrates without weighing tresses down or leaving behind any greasy residue. Moringa oil, meanwhile, penetrates the hair cuticle, moisturizing it from within, while soothing and hydrating the scalp to fortify strands at the root. Baobab seed oil, avocado oil, and shea butter further hydrate and soften strands. Last, a dollop of honey seals the hair shaft, locking in all the vitamins and nutrients delivered by the ingredients in the formula.
Both the shampoo and conditioner are packaged in slim bottles made of recyclable materials, each bearing a label made of an eco-friendly corn-based material, with a slim black elastic band wrapped around the base of the pump applicator, a tiny silver elephant charm dangling from the elastic to add a dose of safari fun.
You'll be left dreaming of Africa and thanking the Cradle of Civilization for breathing new life into your hair.
Pantene Wants You To Have Rockstar Hair This New Year's Eve -- Check Out The Look (Modeled By Me)!
The countdown to 2012 has officially begun and, unlike all the doomsday prophets and fatalistic ramblers who predict the world coming to an abrupt end (and not in the beautiful manner Lars Von Trier imagined for his film Melancholia), I believe the new year will unfold much like any other year: with the promise of new and exciting horizons, with the possibility for enlightenment and personal growth, with the dream of soul-stirring connections, and the reality that disappointments and hindrances will surface alongside triumphs and successes. But, for tonight, we're focusing on the promise the new year holds, on wiping the slate clean and entering 2012 with clearness of mind, endless gratitude, and a sense of purpose.
If your New Year's Eve celebrations involve hitting a nightclub or attending a special bash, ensure that all eyes are on you with a cool-as-can-be hair look that conveys the idea that you bring the party to any place you enter. To party like a rock star, then, celebrity hairstylist Carlos Vera (who has worked with Thalía and Shakira, among others), a vital member of Pantene's team of hair gurus, suggests a pompadour look with lots of volume at the crown, slicked sides and pin-straight, flat-ironed ends.
In the brief video above, Carlos Vera discusses how to get this look and what Pantene products to apply when styling your tresses. I had the honor of being Vera's model for this Pantene video (I was one of three New York-based Latina bloggers participating in this #TuPantene campaign), and I fell in love with the final look so, hopefully, you will too!
Check out the Pantene video, get some inspiration for your NYE hair look, and I'll catch you gals in 2012! Happy New Year to you all!
Gleaming the Cute -- Zoya Gems & Jewels Holiday Collection
Tomorrow evening, as you ready to toast the start of 2012, coat your nails in a jewel-toned shade with either a mirrored sheen or speckles of glitter and shimmering tinsel-like bits. The Zoya Gems & Jewels Holiday 2011 Collection ($8 per nail lacquer at Zoya.com) will help you attain this precise effect with its six fireworks-worthy shades.
The collection focuses on three gemtastic color families: emerald green, deep pink rubellite, and blue topaz. Three high-shine colors perfectly capture the luminosity of these jewels: Holly, a deep emerald green with swirls of darker forest green and very small emerald green pearl particles; Noel, an icy blue topaz shade with swirls of silver and tiny frost-like silver pearls; and Izzy, a deep fuchsia pink with swirls of lighter pink color and magenta pearl shimmer.
The remaining three shades feature a clear base but are saturated with glimmering pearls along with a unique brand of glitter that resembles tiny threads of metallic tinsel, lending nails a hologram-worthy effect. These colors can be worn alone (though you should expect to apply at least four coats if you wish to cover the majority of the nail plate and leave less gaps on the surface of the nail) or layered atop other shades for a more intense dose of color. There's Twila, which features blue zircon pearl glitter alongside deeper azure blue bar glitter; Rina, which features emerald pearly bits and green bar glitter that appears cyan and teal as the light hits it; and Kissy, which is loaded with bright fuchsia-meets-magenta pink pearls and holographic silver bar glitter that resembles the icicle strands you'd use to trim a tree.
You can give your nails enough razzle dazzle to rival a Vegas showgirl's stage ensemble with these glimmering colors — particularly when you layer them atop their sister metallic shades.
Get to know the shades with the photos after the jump!
Continue reading "Gleaming the Cute -- Zoya Gems & Jewels Holiday Collection" »
Nuance Salma Hayek Cucumber & Rosewater Dual Phase Makeup Remover -- Swipes Away Makeup And Sweeps You Off Your Feet
Back in September, during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York City, a small group of beauty bloggers and editors (including yours truly) gathered at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Columbus Circle to meet pint-sized Mexican actress Salma Hayek, who was unveiling her new cosmetics and skincare brand available exclusively at CVS: Nuance Salma Hayek.
As far as modern day beauty icons go, few rank as high as Salma Hayek, making her an ideal candidate for this type of entrepreneurial endeavor.
Hayek first seduced audiences with her voluptuous figure, luscious black curly mane, and alluring almond-shape eyes when she appeared in Robert Rodriguez's cult hit Desperado (1995), playing a mariachi-guitarist-turned-gunslinger's love interest. After a few lovable albeit forgettable roles in romantic comedies like Fools Rush In and Breaking Up, Hayek amassed the type of fan base (and the bankable star factor) to suss out meatier roles that allowed her to prove herself as more than another pretty face — a herculean feat when your face is that striking.
And yet she accomplished this goal, far surpassing the expectations of naysayers who dismissed her as an interchangeable piece of eye candy. In 2001's TV movie In the Time of Butterflies, Hayek brilliantly played the idealist, fiery, fearless Dominican revolutionary Minerva Mirabal who, along with her two sisters, worked to overthrow dictator Rafael Trujillo's oppressive regime during the 1960s. Then, in 2002, Hayek turned critics into putty in her hands with her stoic portrayal of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, a figure as intriguing as she was tortured, in the Oscar-nominated film Frida. Her dramatic skills unchallenged, Kahlo then showcased her comedic chops via such roles as that of Jack Donaghy girlfriend on Season 3 of 30 Rock (watching Hayek go to-to-toe with Alec Baldwin led to some side-splitting scenes). And, in a natural progression, she took a stroll behind the lens, producing the short-lived but much beloved, Emmy-winning series Ugly Betty, about a plucky but homely college grad whose charm and inner beauty allow her to succeed in the superficial world of fashion, and directing The Maldonado Miracle, an independent film about a small town in which an unexplainable religious phenomenon causes residents to reexamine their faith.
Nuance, then, seems to be a fitting name for her skincare, haircare, and cosmetics brand since, after all, she's been slowly but surely revealing small nuances of her own personality. She has also unveiled different stages of beauty, aging gracefully in the youth-obsessed world of film.
At 45, Hayek still manages to outshine any woman in the room — even the 20-something neophytes with the perky breasts and blinding smiles. Sure, a few laugh lines and crow's feet are visible if you examine her complexion closely, but Hayek has done nothing to erase them, instead considering them mementos of special moments, vital pieces in he map of her life journey. If anything, the wisdom and self-assurance she has developed over time have only bolstered her appeal, making her appear all the more radiant and exquisite.
The secret to her good looks? Well, genetics aside, Hayek says she credits her grandmother for teaching her some age-old beauty rituals involving plants and spices she found in her native village in Mexico. When developing Nuance Salma Hayek alongside CVS, then, Hayek envisioned a line that would incorporate many of these ingredients sourced in Mexico — among them: blue agave, the base ingredient of tequila and an excellent skin purifier, de-clogging pores, refreshing the skin, and restoring skin's natural pH level; cape gooseberries (known in Mexico as tomatillos or camapús), ripe fruits that boast anti-aging benefits due to their high vitamin C content; and tuna, not the fish type but a species of prickly pear that possesses anti-inflammatory properties.
The Nuance Salma Hayek line, then, is a tribute to Hayek's grandmother and a way of bottling some of the homemade beauty remedies Hayek learned as a young girl in Mexico. In fact, Hayek says she jotted down many of her grandma's recipes from memory while developing the products in the line, then traveled to Mexico to learn more about these ingredients and how they could be cultivated en mass, and discussed her ideas with the chemists and the product development team at CVS until they finally arrived at cost-affordable recipes that remained true to her vision while also boasting longer shelf lives and allowing for bulk manufacturing.
One of the star products in the line is the Nuance Salma Hayek Cucumber & Rosewater Dual Phase Makeup Remover ($7.99 at CVS.com), which removes makeup while toning, refreshing an softening the skin. The gentle liquid cleanser has a rosy tone when packaged in the bottle, and it's formulated with soothing chamomile and lavender extracts, along with cooling cucumber, and refreshing rosewater, a natural toner and antiseptic that reduces redness, brightens the skin thanks to its vitamin C content, and fortifies the delicate, wrinkle-prone area with its concentration of flavonoids and tannins. Mimosa, blue agave, camapú, and prickly pear extracts, meanwhile, work to stimulate collagen and elastin production, moisturize the skin from within, and tighten the complexion. Last, glycerin both moisturizes and softens skin.
The hypoallergenic, fragrance-free Nuance Salma Hayek Cucumber & Rosewater Dual Phase Makeup Remover feels gentle on even the most sensitive skin. Unlike so many makeup removers that are saturated with drying alcohols and harsh chemicals, this one feels as refreshing and delicious as a spritz of water with just a hint of botanical oils. To use, you simply pour some of the makeup remover onto a cotton pad and swipe it over the skin. Initially, you might feel a slight oily residue but it quickly dissipates as the botanical extracts seep into the skin. Best of all, after you remove your makeup, your complexion actually looks brighter, with a nice healthy flush.
At $8.00 per bottle, less than half of what most makeup removers cost, it's a fantastic purchase for all you frugal beauty hounds.
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Silver End Parish Council
Parish Project Plan
Community Speed Watch
Parish Council Financials
History of Silver End
Window On Silver End
Red Telephone Boxes
Click below to view some of the historical photos of Silver End
The Factory and Power House. The Power house provided power to the factory and lighting for the houses and streets.
The Bakery. Attached to the Department Store in Broadway, also selliing sausages and meat pies with meat from the Boars Tye Farm.
An artist’s impression of Silver End school. Designed by J. Stuart. It has since been extended but still retains its original charm from the front.
Silver End village plans showing in black the housing completed in 1927 and in red, planned housing, some of which was never actualy completed.
“Le Chateau” on Boars Tye Road. Built in 1927 by Frederick Macmanus of Sir John Burnet & Partners for one of the managers.
Boars Tye Farm provided the village with fresh produce. Land surrounding this has been developed but the barn has been converted for residential use.
“Silver End Village Hall in 1928. Designed by Murray Hennell and including a library, billiard and card rooms, restaurant and cinema.
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Protests take to the streets against homelessness and the Tory Housing Bill
by Alistair Farrow
Published Sat 16 Apr 2016
Marching in Leeds (Pic: Darryl Calvert Photography)
Housing campaigners staged sleep-outs and demonstrations across Britain yesterday, Friday.
The actions were in solidarity with homeless people and against the Tory Housing Bill.
The protests were also organised as part of the build up to today's People’s Assembly demonstration against austerity in London.
The movement against the Tory Housing Bill is growing and is part of the increasing mood of resistance to Tory rule.
Some 200 people joined a March for the Homeless in London from Downing Street to a sleep-out in Southwark, south London.
The story was the same across London with people coming out to protest on town hall steps. In Tower Hamlets, east London, a junior doctor brought solidarity down to the protest. In Southwark, doctors from Maudsley Hospital sent a message of solidarity to the sleep-out.
In Leeds 50 people marched around the city centre to show solidarity. One organiser was arrested and police harassed protesters.
Councillors spoke at the protests in Hammersmith, Harlow and elsewhere.
However, some protesters criticised Labour for not doing enough to fight the cuts.
Ricky from Milton Keynes said, “It’s good that Jeremy Corbyn is leader of the Labour Party but we need people out on the streets demonstrating.
"Labour councils that are implementing cuts ought to be ashamed. They need to grow a backbone and stand up to this vicious government.”
Some £122 billion worth of property in England and Wales is owned by offshore companies. Some 36,342 properties covering 2.2 square miles of London are owned by shell companies.
Homeless activist Paul attended the London march. He told Socialist Worker, “It’s sickening how billionaires are buying up houses as investments and holding them empty to push up prices. They’re putting down spikes to stop us from sleeping in the street. Where are we supposed to go?
“I was in the army. Many of us end up on the streets. We get in trouble, go to prison, they don’t care.”
Tanya from Southwark Kill the Bill campaign said, “We need to think about what to do if the bill passes.
“If every Labour council refused to implement the bill, I don’t think the government is in a position to force it through.
“We need local organisations capable of putting enough pressure on councils to get them to vote against implementation.”
Eddie in Hammersmith agreed. “The Housing Bill is an attack on working class people," he said. "It must be opposed in the same way as the poll tax.”
The bill will mean that households with combined earnings of £30,000, or £40,000 in London will be forced to pay market rents. Thousands will have to move home and some will be made homeless.
Henry, branch secretary of the Unite union at Southwark council said, “I only make £24,000 a year. But if I wanted someone to move in with me then I’d have to begin paying market rates, three times what I pay now. I’d have to move.”
Ricky from Milton Keynes said, “I’ve been homeless. I’m here in solidarity with homeless people.
“We need to kill the Housing Bill. Let’s bring thousands of people onto the streets to bring this country to a standstill.”
Thanks to Sarah Creagh, Graham Hodgin, Mick Patrick and Christian Hogsbjerg
Sat 16 Apr 2016, 10:31 BST
Campaigners step up the fight against the Tory Housing Bill
Private matters: How capitalism hides its filthy hoard
Protests and sleepouts planned as councils could sell even more homes
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Features - 5 Inspiring Mid-Century & Modernist Interiors Captured By Julius Shulman
5 Inspiring Mid-Century & Modernist Interiors Captured By Julius Shulman
Features - 18 Feb 2019 - Share
Known for his extensive documentation of Mid-Century Modern architecture and urban development in Los Angeles and beyond, American photographer Julius Shulman captured the idyllic spirit of the post-war building-boom era in his photographs of modern domesticity. Shulman fostered relationships with a number of Modernist architects, notably California’s Richard Neutra, John Lautner, R M Schindler and Gregory Ain. His photos of their projects present both architectural features and the behaviour of their inhabitants. These images helped to shape the appearance of the Southern Californian lifestyle during the 1950s and 1960s, which spread to the rest of the country and the world. Something Curated highlights five inspiring Modernist interiors shot by the late photographer.
Frey Residence, Palm Springs, California || Albert Frey (Photographed in 1956)
Frey Residence, Palm Springs, California, Albert Frey | Photo: Julius Shulman, 1956 (Courtesy Taschen)
A disciple of Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier, Albert Frey moved to Palm Springs in 1934 and built his own house in the desert city in 1941. Shulman photographed Frey’s home throughout the progressive stages of its development, which included the addition of a spacious living-sleeping area and a solarium, a swimming pool outside, and a garden pool within to the original three-room base structure.
Woods Residence (The Dome House), Cave Creek, Arizona || Soleri and Mills (Photographed in 1950)
Woods Residence (The Dome House), Cave Creek, Arizona || Soleri and Mills | Photo: Julius Shulman, 1950 (Courtesy Taschen)
The Dome House is named after its aluminium and glass hemispherical covering, which brought architects Paolo Soleri and Mark Mills wide recognition for incorporating passive principles in heating and cooling. The influence of their mentor Frank Lloyd Wright can be seen in the use of boulders and concrete, with the most extraordinary structure housing the bedroom.
Residence, Los Angeles, California || William Alexander (Photographed in 1952)
Residence, Los Angeles, California, William Alexander | Photo: Photo: Julius Shulman, 1952 (Courtesy Taschen)
This 1,200-square-foot hillside house was designed as a single studio for living and working. A large storage wall with perforated doors housed the television, books, paintings and sculpture, while plywood floors were covered in cork, and heat was provided by a screened fire bowl in an iron tripod with a copper hood.
Spring Hotel, Bequia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines || Crites & McConnell (Photographed in 1967)
Spring Hotel, Bequia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Crites & McConnell | Photo: Julius Shulman, 1967 (Courtesy Taschen)
A nine-room hotel on a former plantation in the Caribbean, “this project is oriented primarily to views which reveal the splendour of the site and the interplay of interiors and exteriors”, Shulman explained. “The native stone walls serve to buffer the extensive use of native wood.”
Greenberg Residence, Palos Verdes, California || Buff & Hensman (Photographed in 1966)
Greenberg Residence, Palos Verdes, California, Buff & Hensman | Photo: Julius Shulman, 1966 (Courtesy Taschen)
Conrad Buff and Donald Hensman were architects who built houses for the likes of Steve McQueen and Saul Bass, the latter pioneering in its creation of different zones: work, formal and family. The Pasadena-based firm was born out of pragmatism. As gifted undergraduate students at USC’s School of Architecture, Buff and Hensman were already designing hundreds of affordable tract homes for a prominent California builder before starting their own joint practice.
All images from Julius Shulman. Modernism Rediscovered (Courtesy Taschen)
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Fionn Regan - Cala - Albums - Reviews - Soundblab
Fionn Regan - Cala
by Brian Thompson Rating:7 Release Date:2019-08-09 Label: Abbey Records
Whether or not you are personally captivated by his troubadour charm, it’s hard to deny that Irish singer-songwriter has always separated himself from the wave of “Brit-folk,” effortlessly putting his signature stamp on age-old genre ingredients. Through the years, he has deviated from the formula slightly with buzzing pop songs and waves of full-band instrumentation, but here on his sixth studio album, he has stripped away the excess, leaving us with what he does best: sleepy, atmospheric folk tunes. Emotive and concise, Cala is Fionn Regan’s most affecting effort to date.
In many ways, Cala is a straightforward folk album. Opening with the one-two advance of “Collar of Fur,” a bittersweet and spirited fingerpicking ode, and “Head Swim,” focused on even the most seemingly innocuous details, Regan sets the stage for a journey that is elegant in its simplicity. From there, the album plays like a walk-through of the genre, beckoning us to follow from creaky, vintage folks songs (“Brass Locket”) to Leonard Cohen-esque triplet plucking (“Hunting Dog”) to the inclusion of electronic atmospheres. Regan is as much a curator of music as he is a craftsman.
It’s these little touches that elevate Cala beyond simply collecting coffee shop, open mic acoustic confessionals. Ambient and exploratory flourishes on tracks like “The Ocean Wave” and “Cala” draw Regan’s otherworldly charisma into the present. Slight as they may seem on the surface, moments such as “Volca,” with its echoed harmonies, or “Glaciers,” as Regan whispers into the void, find him sharpening his sound. We’re able to chart the progression as drifting, enveloping “Riverside Heights” leads up to the expansive, shapeshifting album closer “Under the Waves/Tokyo.”
Cala is a calming mood piece, truly able to wash over the listener with its soothing, restorative waters. Fionn Regan has keyed into the rhythm of storytelling, and now it feels as though he has accomplished what he’s been after all along. Stripped down to their instrumental bare bones, Regan’s quirky tales of love and loss feel just as potent as ever. He has always felt like he was drifting through time and space, and with Cala, it feels like he’s finally home.
Fionn Regan - The Shadow of an Empire
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Spark Chronicles
Home Game PlayStation 5: possible price, features, design and more news
PlayStation 5: possible price, features, design and more news
Omar Khan
The Sony company surprised all video game lovers, the PlayStation 5 console will hit the market during this 2020. The fifth installment of the company born in Tokyo, Japan, has news that more than one has left with ‘mouth open ‘.
The first revelation was the logo that the presentation will have when starting (turning on) the console. Sony took advantage of its conference at CES 2020, Consumer Electronics Fair in Las Vegas, to give the “notation.”
PS5 will go on sale at the end of 2020. This will include a Dualshock 5 control, a 3D audio chip, ray-tracing and a high-speed solid-state drive, and, if that were not enough, it will also read the PS4 games
Among the elements of the video game console, ray-tracing stands out: it is based on the simulation of solar rays in real-time and 3D audio: it redefines the sound that can be made in a video game.
Optical discs will naturally support 4K resolution at 60 frames per second. Sony said its console will hold up to 8K at 60 FPS. If all this seems enough to you, well with the next detail you will fall in love and you will long for it.
Haptic technology
The Dualshock 5 will feature haptic technology in its buttons. In each game, you can feel a variety of very diverse textures when piloting through grass fields or if the vehicle is above the mud.
No doubt the value of this new “toy” will have to be seen before acquiring it. Experts estimate that the value does not exceed USD 400, it is worth clarifying that it depends on the country and region where it is sold.
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Omar Khan is a Writer for last two years. He had been for three years in the digital media industry. His only aim is to deliver some good and valuable contents in a simple, credible way through sparkchronicles.com without any exaggeration.
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Nigel J. Marley
Nigel J. Marley, British tardigradologist.
University of Plymouth, Plymouth, United Kingdom
0 taxon names authored by Nigel J. Marley
DeMilio, E., Lawton, C. & Marley, N.J. 2016. Tardigrada of Ireland: a review of records and an updated checklist of species including a new addition to the Irish fauna. ZooKeys 616: 77–101. DOI: 10.3897/zookeys.616.8222 . Reference page.
Marley, N.J., Kaczmarek, L., Gawlak, M., Bartels, P.J., Nelson, D.R., Roszkowska, M., Stec, D. & Degma, P. 2018. A clarification for the subgenera of Paramacrobiotus Guidetti, Schill, Bertolani, Dandekar and Wolf, 2009, with respect to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. Zootaxa 4407(1): 130–134. DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.4407.1.9 Reference page.
ZooBank: 3A141969-7900-451F-AD5D-79E8518C4634
Retrieved from "https://species.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nigel_J._Marley&oldid=6240697"
Tardigradologists
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SP - Find info on diffraction pattern spots
(9/25/06)
Finds the intensities at all the points of a lattice or at a single point or finds the center and radius of a ring, e.g. of spots from a powder diffraction pattern.
.OPERATION: SP
.OPTION L/S/R:
[Enter 'L' to find the lattice parameters and the intensities of all the spots in a lattice,
'S' to find the intensities of one or more spots one-at-a-time, or
'R' to find the radius and center of a ring, e.g. for a powder pattern.
Entering a character other than 'L', 'S' or 'R' ends the operation.]
.SIZE FACTOR: 4
[Enter the reduction factor used to create the reflection document file in WEB (see Note 2). Entering a value of 0 ends the operation.]
.INPUT: LAT001
[Enter the name of the image file with the spots to be measured.]
.REFLECTION LIST: WIN001
[Enter the name of a document file to be used for selecting the spot(s) to be measured.]
.FIRST KEY FOR REFL LIST (0 TO RETURN): 3
[Enter the key corresponding to the index of the first spot you want to measure--it is helpful to have a printed output of the window file.]
.MODE: MAX(1)/CNTR OF DEN(2)//NO BK CORR(-): 2
[Choose the method used to determine the intensities. Either the position of the maximum value or the center of gravity within the window is used to calculate the subsequent window positions. If MODE > 0, a linear background subtraction is performed before the calculations; if MODE < 0, no background is subtracted.]
.WINDOW SIZE(ODD #): 25,35
[Enter two numbers (odd works best, but is not necessary) for the size of the window you wish to use. If the second number is 0, it is reset equal to the first, i.e. a square window. The intensity is calculated for the mode and window size chosen; then you are prompted for a new window size. To find the intensity of another reflection, enter '0' as the first number.]
NEXT KEY FOR REFL LIST (0 TO RETURN): 5 [Enter the next key number. Continue in this fashion until you have measured all the spots you want at each of the window sizes you want; then enter '0' to return.]
[Enter the reduction factor used to create the reflection document file in WEB (see Note 2). Entering a value of '0' ends the operation.]
.DO YOU WANT A WINDOW POSITION DOCUMENT? (Y/N): Y
[If you want to examine windows around one or more of the measured spots, enter 'Y'. If you will want to use the 'S' option to measure the intensities of individual spots, enter 'Y'.]
.DO YOU WANT A PATTERSON FUNCTION DOCUMENT? (Y/N): Y
[If you want to list the intensities for H and K less than or equal to 16, answer 'Y'. A procedure has been written to produce a 33-by-33 image from such a document. The operation 'PW' can then be used to produce a Patterson function.]
.WINDOW SIZE: 41,41
[Enter NX,NY for the width and height of windows within which the intensities will be measured. If one number is entered, the window will be NX by NY. If no numbers are entered, or if the first number entered is 0, you are returned to ".OPERATION:".]
[Choose the method used to determine the lattice vectors and the intensities. Either the position of the maximum value or the center of gravity within the window is used to calculate the lattice parameters. If MODE > 0, a linear background subtraction is performed before the calculations; if MODE < 0, no background is subtracted.]
.REFLECTION DOC.: RFL001
[Enter the name of the document file in which you have stored the indices and positions of three reflections to be used to calculate the lattice parameters.]
.MAX RADIUS,MIN RADIUS: 1500,50
[Enter the largest distance from the lattice center to which you want to extend the measurement and the closest such distance. If the first value entered is less than the second, the message 'MAX RADIUS LESS THAN MIN RADIUS; TRY AGAIN!' appears, and you must re-enter the two values.]
.REFLN. INDEX FOR REL. INT.: 8,4
[Enter the H- and K-indices of a spot which will be divided into the measured intensities to give relative values.]
.DOCUMENT FILE: WIN001
[If you answered Y to the window position query, enter the name of the document file in which you want to store the information about the positions and sizes of the windows used to determine the lattice and measure the intensities. At the conclusion of the operation, the total number of window positions listed will be put into register X34.]
.DOCUMENT FILE: PAT001
[If you answered 'Y' to the Patterson function document query, enter the name of the document file in which you want to store the intensity data for producing the image for which PW will give the Patterson function.]
.NUMBER OF SPOTS (3<M<21): 5
[Enter the number of spots to be used in calculating the center and radius of the ring.]
SPOT DOCUMENT: RFL001 [Enter the name of the document file in which you have stored the indices and positions of reflections to be used to calculate the center and radius of the ring. This document file must be in the same format as that produced by the REFLECTION command in the program WEB: a heading record and three records with the key (integer), 5, key (floating), H-index, K-index, SAM position, ROW position (all floating).]
This option makes one calculation and then exits the operation.
The reflection and spot document files must be in the same format as that produced by the REFLECTION command in the program WEB: a heading record and three records with the key (integer), 5, key (floating), H-index, K-index, X-position, Y-position (all floating).
The reflection list format must be the same as that of the window document produced by the 'L' option: a heading record and document records with a key (integer), 6, H-index, K-index, X-position, Y-position and NX and NY window sizes (all floating). N.b. the window positions are the upper left coordinates of a window centered on the H,K spot.
The reflection list document file is searched sequentially, so you will encounter an error if the keys are not entered in ascending order.
If fewer than three spots are to be used in option 'R', you are returned to ".OPERATION:"; if there are three spots, the appropriate equations are solved exactly; if there are more than three and fewer than twenty spots, a circle is least-squares-fitted to the coordinates of the spots; and if there are more than twenty spots, only the first twenty are used.
This operation has not been used here in years. If you have problems please contact us.
LATICE, SOLVE, SPOTWT, PLNEDG, SINGLE, WFTCIRC
DIFF1O
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De Angelis Closes Out Season with Victory in Race 2
Roman De Angelis wraps up Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge USA by Yokohama season with another win…
IMSA Wire Service
Photo: Jake Galstad/IMSA
Eighteen-year-old Canadian driver Roman De Angelis capped a phenomenal season of Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge USA by Yokohama competition with his 11th victory in a close battle during the 2019 season finale at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta.
Driving the No. 79 Kelly-Moss Road and Race Porsche 911 GT3 Cup machine, De Angelis took the lead in Turn 1 on the opening lap of the 45-minute race from pole-sitter and Thursday’s race winner Riley Dickinson.
However, De Angelis would spend the next 45 minutes keeping Dickinson’s No. 53 Moorespeed Porsche in his mirrors.
Dickinson got particularly close in the final few laps of the race, but De Angelis managed to hold him off to win by 0.536 seconds. It was De Angelis’ 15th podium result in the 16-race season.
He wrapped up the Platinum Cup class title for Porsche 911 GT3 Cup cars built between 2017 and 2019 in Thursday’s race at Michelin Raceway.
Last month, he won the Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Canada by Yokohama Platinum Cup championship also.
The back-to-back podium results by Dickinson were his sixth and seventh podiums of the year and moved him up to third in the final Platinum Cup standings to finish out his rookie GT3 Cup Challenge USA campaign.
Max Root finished third in the No. 7 Wright Racing Porsche to wrap up second place in the Platinum Cup standings.
In the Platinum Masters class for drivers 45 years of age and older, Alan Metni secured his second consecutive championship with his eighth victory of the season in the No. 99 AM Motorsports/Kelly-Moss Porsche.
Whereas it took until the season-ending weekend at Michelin Raceway for Metni to get the Platinum Masters lead in 2018, this year, he took it with a victory in April’s season-opening race at Barber Motorsports Park and never relinquished it for the remainder of the year.
Fred Poordad finished second in both the Platinum Masters race and the season championship in the No. 20 Wright Motorsports Porsche.
Vernon McClure followed suit in the No. 36 TPC Racing Porsche, finishing third in the Platinum Masters race Friday morning as well as the season championship.
In the Gold Cup class for Porsche 911 GT3 Cup machines built between 2014 and 2016, Sebastian Carazo topped off a dream season with his 12th victory.
Like De Angelis, Carazo also clinched his title on Thursday, but he maintained his perfect record of podium finishes in every race with his 16th trophy of the season.
Rob Ferriol finished second in the No. 5 Moorespeed Porsche, followed by Curt Swearingin in the No. 17 ACI Motorsports Porsche. Ferriol also took second in the final Gold Cup season standings, while Swearingin was third in Gold Cup.
The final Yokohama Hard Charger Award of the season went to Wayne Ducote in the No. 61 Kelly-Moss Road and Race Porsche as the Gold Cup driver who improved the most overall positions from start to finish in the race. Ducote started 26th and finished 22nd.
The NBCSN broadcast of the Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge by Yokohama weekend at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta will air on Friday, October 18 at 2 p.m. ET.
RESULTS: Race 2
Related TopicsIMSARoman De Angelis
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Roman De Angelis clinches Porsche GT3 Cup Challenge Canada by Yokohama title...
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Policy and Funding in England (October 2019)
srhe
The Society for Research into Higher Education
Tag Archives: Teaching metrics
by SRHE News Blog Leave a comment
The Impact of TEF
by George Brown
A report on the SRHE seminar The impact of the TEF on our understanding, recording and measurement of teaching excellence: implications for policy and practice
This seminar demonstrated that the neo-liberal policy and metrics of TEF (Teaching Excellence Framework) were not consonant with excellent teaching as usually understood.
Michael Tomlinson’s presentation was packed with analyses of the underlying policies of TEF. Tanya Lubicz-Nawrocka considered the theme of students’ perceptions of excellent teaching. Her research demonstrated clearly that students’ views of excellent teaching were very different from those of TEF. Stephen Jones provided a vibrant analysis of public discourses. He pointed to the pre-TEF attacks on universities and staff by major conservative politicians and their supporters. These were to convince students and their parents that Government action was needed. TEF was born and with it the advent of US-style neo-liberalism and its consequences. His final slide suggested ways of combating TEF including promoting the broad purposes of HE teaching. Sal Jarvis succinctly summarised the seminar and took up the theme of purposes. Personal development and civic good were important purposes but were omitted from the TEF framework and metrics.
Like all good seminars, this seminar prompted memories, thoughts and questions during and after the seminar. A few of mine are listed below. Others may wish to add to them.
None of the research evidence supports the policies and metrics of TEF (eg Gibbs, 2018). The indictment of TEF by the Royal Statistics Society is still relevant (RSS, 2018). The chairman of the TEF panel is reported to have said “TEF was not supposed to be a “direct measure of teaching” but rather “a measure based on some [my italics] of the outcomes of teaching” On the continuum of neo-liberalism and collegiality, TEF is very close to the pole of neo-liberalism whereas student perspectives are nearer the pole of collegiality which embraces collaboration between staff and between staff and students. Collaboration will advance excellence in teaching: TEF will not. Collegiality has been shown to increase morale and reinforce academic values in staff and students (Bolden et al, 2012). Analyses of the underlying values of a metric are important because values shape policy, strategies and metrics. ‘Big data’ analysts need to consider ways of incorporating qualitative data. With regard to TEF policy and its metrics, the cautionary note attributed to Einstein is apposite: “Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that is counted counts.”
SRHE member George Brown was Head of an Education Department in a College of Education and Senior Lecturer in Social Psychology of Education in the University of Ulster before becoming Professor of Higher Education at the University of Nottingham. His 250 articles, reports and texts are mostly in Higher and Medical Education, with other work in primary and secondary education. He was senior author of Effective Teaching in Higher Education and Assessing Student Learning in Higher Education and co-founder of the British Education Research Journal, to which he was an early contributor and reviewer. He was the National Co-ordinator of Academic Staff Development for the Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals (now Universities UK) and has served on SRHE Council.
Bolden, R et al (2012) Academic Leadership: changing conceptions, identities and experiences in UK higher education London: Leadership Foundation
Gibbs, G (2017) ‘Evidence does not support the rationale of the TEF’, Compass: Journal of Learning and Teaching, 10(2)
Royal Statistical Society (2018) Royal Statistical Society: Response to the teaching excellence and student outcomes framework, subject-level consultation
Categories: Evaluation, Policy and HE, Quality, Standards, Performance, Evaluation, Teaching Learning & Assessment | Tags: neoliberalsim, Teaching Excellence Framework, Teaching metrics | Permalink.
Green shoots before the Green/White Paper
By Rob Cuthbert
Over the Summer the new(ish) English Minister for HE, Jo Johnson, has been making speeches about his plans for a Teaching Excellence Framework, with hints about what it might contain. But only now, as SRHE News goes to press in mid-October, is a Green, or perhaps White, Paper expected. Clearly these things are easier to talk about in broad terms at election time than to lay out in specific terms six months later.
It was easy to see why the Government want to bring in a Teaching Excellence Framework. We already had a Research Excellence Framework, and outgoing Minister David Willetts was making increasingly apocalyptic statements about teaching quality both before and after he ‘stepped down’ from office. Nobody is against excellent teaching, so a pledge to reward it was an ideal manifesto-filler: it didn’t give any ground on undergraduate student fees, and it might even have placated some students (and their parents) about the value for money of their £9000 a year investment. And of course it might be possible, when we get to the detail, to justify uncapping fees completely for at least some of the Russell Group, and perhaps even to take more money off the rest, as the REF and the RAE have tried so hard to do.
This wasn’t, of course, where we started from. Continue reading →
Categories: Teaching Learning & Assessment | Tags: Green Paper, Teaching Framework, Teaching metrics, TEF, White Paper | Permalink.
By Ian McNay
This contribution is adapted from a paper first written to brief the trustees of Coventry Students’ Union, and just before a THE feature on senior staff from Coventry. So, it emphasises the need for a student involvement in assessing teaching excellence, but the messages have resonance for the rest of us, I hope. There are four basic questions to ask:
How do we define excellence/s? (The plural is important; excellence is contingent, it varies by purpose)
How do we measure it? Output and outcomes may be easy; process less so
How do we encourage and develop it?
How do we reward it?
None have yet been answered, even at a basic level.
Jo Johnson’s speeches to UUK had some good points, but Continue reading →
Categories: Teaching Learning & Assessment | Tags: Teaching Excellence, Teaching metrics, TEF | Permalink.
This forum is designed for those interested in Research into Higher Education across the globe to present their views and exchange ideas. It is managed by the Society for Research into Higher Education - for further details visit www.srhe.ac.uk
Contributions welcome!
To put forward an article for consideration to be published on this blogsite, please e-mail the editor rob.cuthbert@uwe.ac.uk with rob.gresham@srhe.ac.uk in copy.
The opinions expressed by the contributors to this site and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) or any employee thereof. The SRHE is not responsible for the accuracy of any of the information supplied.
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Income Tax (Exemption of Interest and Other Payments on Economic and Technological Development Loans) Notification 2015
Published in Subsidiary Legislation Supplement
Please check the legislation timeline to ensure that you are viewing the correct legislation version. See also FAQ B3.
find current version as at
SL 52/2015
Enacting Formula
2 Exemption
Get Provisions
Whole Document
Published in Subsidiary Legislation Supplement on 02 Feb 2015
Authorising Act
or find current version as at
Search within Legislation
No. S 52
(CHAPTER 134)
Income Tax (Exemption of Interest and Other
Payments on Economic and Technological
Development Loans) Notification 2015
In exercise of the powers conferred by section 13(4) of the Income Tax Act, the Minister for Finance hereby makes the following Notification:
1. This Notification may be cited as the Income Tax (Exemption of Interest and Other Payments on Economic and Technological Development Loans) Notification 2015.
2.—(1) There shall be exempt from tax the interest payable on or after 24 April 2014 by MTM Antwerp Pte Ltd. to Nissin Unyu Co., Ltd. under a Bareboat Chartering Agreement dated 2 April 2014 for the leasing of the vessel “MTM Antwerp” (referred to in this Notification as the vessel).
(2) The exemption under sub‑paragraph (1) —
(a) is subject to the terms and conditions specified in the letter of approval dated 23 September 2014 issued by the Ministry of Finance and addressed to MTM Antwerp Pte Ltd.; and
(b) shall not apply to any interest payable after the earliest of the following:
(i) 22 April 2019;
(ii) the date of termination of the Bareboat Chartering Agreement;
(iii) the date of transfer or disposal of the vessel;
(iv) the date immediately preceding the date of closure or deemed closure or suspension of the registry of the vessel under the Merchant Shipping Act (Cap. 179).
Made on 19 January 2015.
LIM SOO HOON
Permanent Secretary
(Finance) (Performance),
Ministry of Finance,
Singapore.
[R032.012.0006.Pt26.V61; AG/LLRD/SL/134/2010/5 Vol. 4]
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=== Relationships === Ned's dogged friendship inspires the loyalty of others; when his Leftorium appeared on the verge of bankruptcy shortly after it opened, Homer arranged a Frank Capra-esque scene akin to {{W|George Bailey}} by advertising the Leftorium to many left-handed people in Springfield. ==== Romantic relationships ==== [[File:Ned sara sloane.png|thumb|Ned and Sara on their first date]] At some point before or after college, Ned met and married the equally meek and religious Maude. They had two children together; the sheltered and naïve Rod and Todd. Maude died an untimely death in a freak accident involving t-shirt cannons,<ref name="Alone Again, Natura-Diddily">"[[Alone Again, Natura-Diddily]]"</ref> leaving Ned alone and grieving. He is technically still married to a woman named [[Ginger Flanders]], whom he married on a drunken bender in Las Vegas.<ref name="Viva Ned Flanders">"[[Viva Ned Flanders]]"</ref> Ginger came to live with Ned and his sons for a brief period following Maude's death, but she quickly grew tired of the Flanders' sickly-sweet personalities and fled.<ref>"[[Brawl in the Family]]"</ref> Also since Maude's death, Ned has been connected romantically with a beautiful Christian-rock singer, [[Rachel Jordan]],<ref name="I'm Goin' to Praiseland"/><ref name="Alone Again, Natura-Diddily"/> and a movie star, [[Sara Sloane]] with whom he had a sexual relationship,<ref name="A Star Is Born Again"/> despite his own "no sex before marriage" beliefs. Ned and Marge had once almost kiss twice, since Homer spent too much time as [[Carl]]'s assistant and Ned felt alone. Marge had hit Ned with a hammer, so she invited him to dinner. While helping [[Marge]] with the food they were going to kiss, but the oven rang, later, while eating cream strawberries, they almost kiss again, but Marge remembers Homer so they just hug before Homer arrives.<ref>"[[The Devil Wears Nada]]"</ref> He then entered a relationship with [[Edna Krabappel]].<ref>"[[The Ned-liest Catch]]"</ref> They had a small difference in opinion, but soon eventually sorted it out,<ref>"[[The Falcon and the D'ohman]]"</ref> ending with Edna moving in with Ned. Edna was then married to Ned.<ref>"[[Ned 'n' Edna's Blend Agenda]]"</ref> up until her death.<ref>"[[The Man Who Grew Too Much]]"</ref> ==== Friendship/One-sided conflict with Homer Simpson ==== Flanders personality makes him think of Homer as good and friendly, but Homer actually hates Flanders. Homer tells Ned to "shut his stupid face" on a regular basis, and has even prayed for his ruin and death — "I've learned that life is one crushing defeat after another, until you just wish Flanders was dead." Ironically, at one time, Homer becomes Flanders' best friend, but becomes so annoying that Flanders starts to hate him, but eventually things go back to the way they were.<ref name="Homer Loves Flanders"/> Homer and Ned's relationship has been good on occasions, in which Homer seems to genuinely care for Ned, despite still expressing (and often acting on) feelings of loathing. Examples of this include Homer comforting Ned following Maude's death (seconds after preparing to bash Ned's head in with a rock) largely due to Marge's insistence that the Simpson family must now be supportive of the Flanders family in wake of the tragic loss of Maude,<ref name="Alone Again, Natura-Diddily"/> and helping Ned build Praiseland Amusement Park.<ref name="I'm Goin' to Praiseland"/> Despite their friendship, Homer wrote the song "[[Everybody Hates Ned Flanders]]", and even sang and produced it with {{Ch|David Byrne}}.<ref>"[[Dude, Where's My Ranch?]]"</ref> When Ned was embarrassed in front of the entire community after two young women who rented his house were found to be using it to film a racy website (for which Homer helped spread), Ned moves away in shame. Homer genuinely misses Ned's absence, especially when a gruff, unneighborly man buys the house, and is overjoyed when Ned returns to Springfield.<ref name="Home Away from Homer"/> Homer and Ned became friends when they got a job as bounty hunters.<ref name="Sex, Pies and Idiot Scrapes"/> ==== Friendship with Bart Simpson ==== When Bart becomes a camper, he would seem to have taken a liking to his head camper Ned Flanders. This is shown by Bart talking in Flanders normal diddly-doodily fashion.<ref>"[[Boy-Scoutz 'n the Hood]]"</ref> However, Ned reassures Bart that Homer is his true father, and that Bart must be a receptive son in order to help Homer be a concerned father during [[Trappuccino|Springfield's darkest hour]].<ref name="The Simpsons Movie"/>
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Previous Chapter Chapter 25: Nonverbal Communication, Race, and Intergroup Interaction Next Chapter
John F. Dovidio, Michelle Hebl, Jennifer A. Richeson & J. Nicole Shelton
In: The SAGE Handbook of Nonverbal Communication
Chapter 25: Nonverbal Communication, Race, and Intergroup Interaction
Edited by: Valerie Manusov & Miles L. Patterson
Subject: Nonverbal Communication
Dovidio, J., Hebl, M., Richeson, J. & Shelton, J. (2006). Nonverbal communication, race, and intergroup interaction. In V. Manusov & M. L. Patterson The SAGE handbook of nonverbal communication (pp. 481-500). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc. doi: 10.4135/9781412976152.n25
Dovidio, John F., Michelle Hebl, Jennifer A. Richeson and J. Nicole Shelton. "Nonverbal Communication, Race, and Intergroup Interaction." In The SAGE Handbook of Nonverbal Communication, 481-500. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2006. doi: 10.4135/9781412976152.n25.
Dovidio, J, Hebl, M, Richeson, J & Shelton, J 2006, 'Nonverbal communication, race, and intergroup interaction', in The sage handbook of nonverbal communication, SAGE Publications, Inc., Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 481-500, viewed 18 January 2020, doi: 10.4135/9781412976152.n25.
Dovidio, John F., et al. "Nonverbal Communication, Race, and Intergroup Interaction." The SAGE Handbook of Nonverbal Communication. Valerie Manusov and Miles L. Patterson. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, Inc., 2006. 481-500. SAGE Knowledge. Web. 18 Jan. 2020, doi: 10.4135/9781412976152.n25.
Nonverbal Communication, Race, and Intergroup Interaction
Perceiving others and oneself in terms of group identity influences the way people interact with others. When group memberships are salient, interactions are often guided by social roles (Eagly & Wood, 1999). To the extent that people rely on category-based, rather than individual-based, processing in their interaction, their perceptions will be influenced by group stereotypes and attitudes that can be activated automatically and without full awareness. When people think of themselves as members of a group, they view themselves not only as a [Page 482]representative of that group but also as the embodiment of that group's values, beliefs, and interests (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher, & Wetherell, 1987). Thus, interpersonal interactions under these conditions become, ...
Chapter 24 Nonverbal Dynamics in Computer-Mediated Communication or: (And the Net: ('S with You, :) and You :) Alone
Chapter 26 Uses and Consequences of Nonverbal Communication in the Context of Organizational Life
Chapter 1: An Historical Overview of Nonverbal Research
Chapter 2: The Evolution of Theories of Interactive Behavior
Chapter 3: Methods for the Study of Nonverbal Communication
Chapter 4: Automatic Cognitive Processes and Nonverbal Communication
Chapter 5: Nonverbal Skills and Abilities
Chapter 6: Nonverbal and Verbal Communication: Hand Gestures and Facial Displays as Part of Language Use in Face-to-Face Dialogue1
Chapter 7: The Biological Foundations of Social Organization: The Dynamic Emergence of Social Structure Through Nonverbal Communication
Chapter 8: An Evolutionary Approach to Understanding Nonverbal Communication
Chapter 9: Personality and Nonverbal Behavior: A Complex Conundrum
Chapter 10: Factoring in Age: Nonverbal Communication Across the Life Span
Chapter 11: Women's and Men's Nonverbal Communication: Similarities, Differences, Stereotypes, and Origins
Chapter 12: Culture and Nonverbal Behavior
Chapter 13: Casting Nonverbal Behavior in the Media: Representations and Responses
Chapter 14: Nonverbal Behavior in Intimate Interactions and Intimate Relationships
Chapter 15: Nonverbal Expressions of Dominance and Power in Human Relationships
Chapter 16: The Functions of Facial Expressions: What's in a Face?
Chapter 17: Why and How the Silent Self Speaks Volumes: Functional Approaches to Nonverbal Impression Management
Chapter 18: Nonverbal Communication and Deception
Chapter 19: The Interaction Management Function of Nonverbal Cues: Theory and Research About Mutual Behavioral Influence in Face-to-Face Settings
Chapter 20: Nonverbal Behavior and its Functions in the Ecosystem of Rapport
Chapter 21: Nonverbal Communication in Close Relationships
Chapter 22: Nonverbal Communication in Instructional Contexts
Chapter 23: Nonverbal Communication and Physician-Patient Interaction: Review and New Directions
Chapter 24: Nonverbal Dynamics in Computer-Mediated Communication or: (And the Net: ('S with You, :) and You :) Alone
Chapter 26: Uses and Consequences of Nonverbal Communication in the Context of Organizational Life
Chapter 27: Nonverbal Communication: Basic Issues and Future Prospects
implicit attitudes,
verbal behavior,
self-reports,
minority/majority,
prejudice,
minority groups
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Home/Politics/Is It #SuperTuesday Again? Have a Liveblog!
Is It #SuperTuesday Again? Have a Liveblog!
Courtney Caldwell March 15, 2016
It’s that time again! This race is getting increasingly polarizing, after an intense weekend for Donald Trump. Tonight doesn’t look like it will provide any relief in the form of major Trump upsets – but who knows!
Here goes!
Good morning! Looks like the votes are in for Illinois, and Clinton squeaked out a couple percentage points over Sanders! Delegates are awarded proportionally, so the delegates will be split just about 50/50.
In Missouri, both races are still too close to call a winner with 99% of votes counted. Trump & Clinton hold extremely narrow leads over Cruz & Sanders – in fact it’s within .2% on both sides.
Alright, folks – some of us have day jobs to get to in the morning and need our sleep. We’ll update in the morning on the Illinois (Dem) and Missouri (Dem/Rep) races! Until then, keep an eye on Real Clear Politics for real-time results.
With 91% of votes counted in Missouri, both races are still too close to call:
Sanders leads by about 11,000 votes right now, while Trump is still up by less than 3,000 votes. I’m fairly certain this is the closest primary race we’ve seen so far.
Here’s a “could be worse, but still pretty messed up” statistic for you. 20% of Democratic voters in Illinois said the candidate’s gender was a factor in some degree when they picked their candidate:
More depressing exit polls:
https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/709913295482793985
Important, but unsurprising tidbit from FiveThirtyEight. “Discontented” voters favor Trump:
There’s a lot of angst out there, particularly among Republican voters, and it’s showing up in exit polls. Perhaps not surprisingly, Trump is doing well with the more discontented voters:
This Missouri race is ridiculously close. With 68% of votes in, Trump leads Cruz by .2% – or less than 3000 votes. Wow.
Image Source: Real Clear Politics
Ugh, Joe Scarborough took a quick break from fawning over Donald Trump to tell Hillary Clinton to “smile.” Women everywhere rolled their eyes.
Smile. You just had a big night. #PrimaryDay
— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) March 16, 2016
Quick Delegate Recap!
Republicans: We’re still missing Missouri, but after his big wins tonight, Trump is now leading the pack with 619 delegates. Cruz is still in second (394 delegates) and Kasich rounds out the gang of three with 136. Technically, Rubio (who dropped out tonight) is still in third place, with 167 delegates. This amuses me to no end. Republicans need 1,237 delegates to win the nomination, meaning Trump now has half the delegates he needs to put a bow on this thing.
Democrats: No word yet on Illinois or Missouri, but Clinton still leads Sanders 1001 to 666 (insert Anti-Christ joke here). That isn’t including superdelegates, where Clinton’s leading Bernie by more than double – 1488 to 701. Democrats need 2,382 delegates to win, so Clinton is now more than halfway there with two states to go tonight.
Still too close to call over on the Democratic side in Illinois, and on both sides in Missouri. Both Missouri races are less than two percentage points apart. On the Dem side, Sanders is currently squeezing ahead of Clinton, while Trump is barely leading Cruz over on the Republican side.
The Republican winner takes all in Missouri, so Trump could get another 52 delegates here if his current lead works out. It’s a bit more complex on the Democratic side, though. Missouri’s 71 Democratic delegates are awarded proportionally to anyone who gets more than 15% of the vote, and assuming the race stays this close, it’ll essentially be 50/50. Still, a technical win in at least one state tonight would be a big PR win for Sanders, who hasn’t won a state yet tonight.
Here’s a great question we got on Twitter about the Marcio Rubio, wanting to know why Rubio’s dropout email had a Donate button. Here’s the answer, from rapper 2 Chainz:
Allow me to take a brief respite from the Presidential race, to bring you some good news out of Chicago! Anita Alvarez, Rahm Emanuel’s partner in crime, was defeated in her primary race. If you aren’t familiar, Anita Alvarez is the current Cook County State’s Attorney. Here’s some of her fine work:
[Alvarez is] under fire for waiting over a year to charge McDonald’s killer, and now The Daily Beast reports that Alvarez has failed to file charges against police officers in 68 fatal shootings, all told.
Reporter Justin Glawe writes that Alvarez often brushed off civilian shootings, with the media showing relatively little resistance or interest before before the Black Lives Matter movement gained momentum. But now that police violence is an election issue and Alvarez’s seat is up for reelection (and under fierce competition from Kim Foxx and Donna More), voters want to know why she hasn’t indicted more cops.
News outlets are calling Illinois for Trump, and with 37% of votes currently in, he’s up nearly 14% over Cruz. That’s more than double the lead pollsters had him at, but with 63% of votes still out that could obviously change.
Dems still close to call.
I just got the saddest campaign suspension email from #TeamMarco. It’s a little depressing unless you keep in mind that he’s a total dick.
Sanders is addressing supporters after losing in Ohio, Florida, and North Carolina. Watch it here.
Sorry for the radio silence for the past 20 minutes or so. I had to grab an Uber home from my dinner meeting, which turned out to be a really interesting ride! My Uber driver, as it would turn out, was a bit of a Trump supporter – and surprisingly this is my first time meeting one of them in the flesh. Living in the South, and given Trump’s popularity, you’d think this wouldn’t be such a rarity, but I guess I’ve gotten pretty good at building my #echochambers.
I have a general rule about not pissing off people who are driving me places, so I asked her some polite questions about why she liked Trump and tried to keep it cordial. She wanted me to know that she didn’t really like Trump that much, but would vote for him if it came down to it – but especially if it was Trump vs. Clinton. She said while at first, she supported Trump wholeheartedly, she’d recently come down more in favor of Cruz (or Rubio, who I didn’t have the heart to tell her dropped out).
I asked her what had caused this change of heart, hoping against hope that it would be something like “His rhetoric on Muslims is just a little too much for me” or “He has no experience and doesn’t know how to be a politician.” Nope! Instead, she responded, “I just didn’t like how he skipped out on that one debate… It just wasn’t very presidential.” Not exactly the inspiring answer I was hoping for.
And on that note, they just called North Carolina for Trump. At least I know how my Uber driver will be voting in November now.
The #RubioHaiku hashtag is killin’ it on Twitter. Here are our fav contributions!
Nightmare is over
Charge Rubio's batteries
’Til 2020 #RubioHaiku
— skepchicks (@skepchicks) March 16, 2016
Microphone is off
Placards lie on floor, quiet
Rubio is out#RubioHaiku
— skullsinthestars (@drskyskull) March 16, 2016
#RubioHaiku
Goodbye Rubio
Handsome hydrating robot
What will you do next?
— engdahljohnson (@engdahljohnson) March 16, 2016
Ohio has officially been called for Kasich, so I guess we have a few more weeks of pretending there’s hope for a non-Trump nomination. He gets all 66 delegates for Ohio, as they’re not awarded proportionally.
One step closer to Trump. pic.twitter.com/F64xBPB60m
— Jill Biden (@JillBidenVeep) March 16, 2016
In this shitshow of an election, it’s easy to think Rubio wasn’t that bad. But do remember, he was also very much a garbage human.
https://twitter.com/ParkerMolloy/status/709898858730561536
Seeing a few people on Twitter calling Ohio for Kasich, but nothing official quite yet.
Pundits had pointed to a possible Sanders upset, and poll aggregation only had her up by 8%. But with only 4% of votes in, Ohio is being called for Clinton – where she’s currently up by more than 30%. Surprised to see this called so early, but there you have it!
I’m seeing reports that Rubio did indeed drop out, following his rough loss in Florida. It was inevitable, but it’s still a bit of a surprise.
Woops! I forgot to mention the Northern Mariana Islands. The Northern Mariana Islands love Donald Trump, I guess. He’ll get nine delegates. Hooray.
North Carolina just got called for Hillary Clinton, which is no huge surprise. Polls had her up by ~24 points, and while only 5% of votes are currently in, those numbers are holding true. North Carolina also awards delegates proportionally, so we’ll update the final delegate count as it comes in.
Florida is the first state to close tonight and call some winners.
Polling aggregates on Real Clear Politics had Trump besting Rubio in his home state by an 18-point spread, and the polls were right tonight. The Florida GOP Primary is a “winner takes all” strategy, so all 99 delegates are going to Trump. I can’t even snark about this anymore, I’m just sad.
Clinton led polling by nearly 30 points, which also held pretty close to true. Florida Dems divvy up delegates proportionally, meaning so we won’t know the exact split until all precincts are in.
So what’s next? Will Marco Rubio drop out after a miserable showing in his home state? Probably not. He’s probably still holding out hope in his tiny little heart for a contested convention, but maybe he’ll go rogue and run third party. Just a few days ago, in a rare moment of political honesty, Rubio defeatedly admitted he doesn’t know if he can support Trump. Good on ya, Rubio. Your crisis of conscience means nothing to the dumpster fire that is the Good Ol’ Party, but good on you anyway.
clinton cruz dem fsm help us all GOP kasich primary rubio sanders super tuesday Trump
Quickies: Trump Presidential Library at a Trailer Park, GOP Admits Voter Suppression, and the LGBT Mafia Strikes Again
Ohio to Charge Doctors with Abortion Murder if They Don’t Perform a Surgery that Doesn’t Exist
Ohio Bill Would Give Students “Religious Freedom” in Science Class
I hate having the entire South be in the first half of the primary. More regional diversity, please. (I know it was done as Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s plan to make Clinton the nominee, and like most centrist Dems, she doesn’t care about November, and would really rather have her buddies in the GOP in charge of all three branches of government.)
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The wonderful Lower Goyt and Poise Brook Valleys would be trashed by the A6-M60 Bypass. But that is only part of the destruction that would be inflicted on our beautiful green places. Let’s follow the four-and-a half mile route step by step.
We start at the noisy and polluted M60 in Bredbury. Surprisingly, ancient woodland is close by. Crookilley Woods Nature Reserve is hidden from the motorway by its steep and thickly wooded valley sides.
Crookilley Woods runs across and below Crookilley Way and the M60. The tunnel green space begins in the right corner of the picture.
The Bypass plan attacks Crookilley Woods from two sides: the Bypass itself would cut into the eastern end of the woods, while busy Crookilley Way would be widened to skim the woods on the north side. The visitors’ entrance to the woods is on Valley Road.
Just south of the woods, the Bypass would plunge into a roofed cutting (or tunnel), starting in the car park of the Traveller’s Call. This is dual carriageway so the hole would be wide and deep. It would carry 60,000 vehicles daily (official estimate, 2004).
South of Stockport Road West, the planned course of the tunnel through Lower Bredbury is highly visible. The space has been kept clear of housing, allowing greenery to flourish. Halfway along, there’s a pretty hollow with a stream coming down a gully from the east. Access to the tunnel green space is from both sides of Osborne Street.
Houses on either side of the tunnel would be so close that residents would be at risk from exhaust fumes rising through ventilation shafts. The latest Bypass Business Case suggests a break in the tunnel might be necessary for safety reasons, presumably belching noise and fumes in what is now the peaceful hollow with the stream.
The Romans built a road here (though not a dual carriageway!) and remnants may be somewhere on the tunnel route. Deeper below ground is an arm of the geological Red Rock Fault, which exactly aligns with the tunnel-to-be.
South of Osborne Street, the gap for the tunnel becomes so green that it is rated official “priority deciduous woodland habitat” by Natural England.
The southern end of the tunnel green space meets at right-angles Vernon Road Woods Site of Biological Importance (the wood at the top of our aerial view of the Goyt Valley). This is a substantial strip of woodland running from Dark Lane/Bredbury Hall to Goyt Valley Road.
The Bypass would emerge from its tunnel amid intense noise and pollution. Out in the open, the Bypass would plough a shallow cutting into the fields of Stockport’s celebrated Lower Goyt Valley. (In the aerial picture, the Bypass plan is superimposed on the Valley. In practice road-building excavation and mud will cover a far wider area than is shown.)
For anyone following the route on foot, Dark Lane (aka Alan Newton Way) outside Bredbury Hall is a good starting point. The lane is a well-used cyclists’, runners’ and walkers’ bridleway running 150 yards or so downhill and to the south west of the Bypass route
For now, the valley is peaceful countryside despite busy roads not far away. Looking south east from the bridleway, no buildings can be seen to the far horizon, apart from local farms. To the south west is thickly wooded Woodbank Park rising above the far bank of the Goyt. To the north west is the pear-capped landmark of Pear Mill.
The bridleway soon bends sharply right. On the left is a footpath up across the Bypass route and through threatened Riley Wood (top picture). The Bypass would cut a swathe immediately south of the electricity pylon.
If we ignore the footpath and stay on the main bridleway, we cross the homely yard of Middle Farm (or Barlow’s) and then bend back to pass Goyt Hall (pictured below), a fine half-timbered manor house become farm.
The official environmental assessment of the route published in 2004 says that a potential archaeological site of ancient settlement will be lost to the Bypass on the higher ground above the hall. You can walk up hill to Clapgate (opposite Goyt Hall) to the unmarked site and some fine views across the valley. Just before the houses start on Clapgate, a path goes to the left to/from Riley Wood.
Almost exactly at the possible location of the ancient settlement, the Bypass would enter a deep cutting, next to electricity pylons. The dual carriageway would gouge a huge trench across the landscape 14 metres deep and up to 50 metres wide at its maximum close to houses of Romiley/Bredbury Green. The road would come back into full view on an embankment before crossing the Goyt on a 200-metre span bridge (assuming the suggestion of a nightmare 550-metre high-level bridge is not incorporated into the plans). On the other side of the river, the road would burrow into a wooded hillside and quarry.
By the river, it’s worth keeping an eye out for magnificent herons. They are the most visible of the valley’s rich wildlife. In the river are salmon, trout and barbell; on its bank evidence of otters. Above are buzzards and peregrines as well as smaller birds not usually seen close to an urban centre.
From the bridleway, a path on the right is angled back to the river. The Jim Fearnley footbridge takes us across and into the wooded haven of the Poise Brook Valley.
See plans of the Bypass route.
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Start watching with your public library card or university login
Nearly a thousand miles away from their beloved Moscow, Chekhov's Three Sisters live in virtual exile. Olga (Jeanne Watts), a schoolmistress, attempts to support her siblings and the home that is the sole legacy of their late...
Nearly a thousand miles away from their beloved Moscow, Chekhov's Three Sisters live in virtual exile. Olga (Jeanne Watts), a schoolmistress, attempts to support her siblings and the home that is the sole legacy of their late army officer father. Masha (Joan Plowright) finds relief from her empty marriage in an affair with a passionate young colonel, played by Alan Bates. Irina (Louise Pernell), the youngest, wills herself to return the affections of an ardent suitor in the hopes that he will whisk her off to the city before it is too late. Intoxicated by yesterday's triumphs and heedless of tomorrow's disasters, the Three Sisters are left to sift through the debris of their shattered dreams on the eve of the social and political upheaval that will transform Russia forever.
Stepping behind the camera for the first time since 1957's The Princess and the Showgirl, director Laurence Olivier demonstrates the same facility for cinematic expression that made his filmed versions of Hamlet and Henry V so definitive. In Olivier's assuredly brisk, graceful, meticulous, and witty rendering of Chekhov's masterpiece, the sisters are doomed to remain in their provincial purgatory. Olivier shepherds the cast of National Theater of London members (including Olivier himself and I Claudius star Derek Jacobi, in one of his first screen roles) through a compelling drama that never stoops to cliche. Photographed by ace British lensman Geoffrey Unsworth (2001: A Space Odyssey, Tess), Olivier and his cast propel Chekhov's play into a film that the New York Times' Vincent Canby acclaimed as "something quite rare."
Alan Bates, Joan Plowright, Laurence Olivier
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Saving Lives at Sea
Episode 5 Saving Lives at Sea
Subtitles Found! We found subtitles for the program Episode 5. Please scroll down to get them, or go here for a preview
Documentary series following the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. The Tenby crew race to a kayaker with suspected back and neck injuries after being caught out by a freak wave.
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We're an island nation, drawn to the sea that surrounds us.
0:00:02 0:00:05
For many, it's a playground.
For others, it's where we earn our living...
but the sea's unpredictable.
It can change in an instant -
and when accidents happen, they happen very fast.
The sea is a dangerous place.
You don't respect the sea, the sea will bite you.
There to save our lives is a volunteer army
of nearly 5,000 ordinary people...
ready to leave their jobs, their families,
to race to our rescue.
It makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up
to know that, if it wasn't for you, that person wouldn't be here.
They rescued me, but they also saved a mum, a daughter, a sister, a wife.
Oh, my gosh.
To see someone disappear under the water right in front of you...
is brutal, it's absolutely horrendous.
Equipped with their own cameras...
-Is my light flashing?
-Yeah, is mine?
..the crews give us a unique insight into every call out
as only they see it...
Another little wave.
..speeding through the roughest weather,
searching for people who may only have moments to live.
Can you still hear me?!
For those who risk their lives, it has become a way of life.
When those pagers go off, it's life and death.
The sandy beaches and rugged coastline of Tenby in South Wales
have been drawing in tourists for over 200 years.
The Victorians were content to swim and paddle,
but today's visitors are more likely to push the boat out.
There's always something new,
like, the newest big thing that could be on the water.
Obviously, we get windsurfers down here, we get surfers down here,
there'll be another big thing in a minute,
and that'll be something else that goes on the water that people buy,
ready for the summer.
People that live here and are around it all year, they respect the sea.
Now, many people that come on holiday are not aware of that,
and they get in trouble.
A beautiful morning towards the end of the season.
SIREN WAILS
The Tenby lifeboat crew is paged.
A 55-year-old woman has been caught in a kayaking accident.
It's believed she may have sustained injuries to her back and neck.
Phil came in,
he'd obviously heard what the call was.
We're always urgent - but it was really urgent.
It was flat calm, it was sunny, it was a lovely day.
There wasn't much sea.
I remember thinking, "How could sustain those kind of injuries
"in those kind of conditions from a kayak?"
The Tamar lifeboat is launched in under ten minutes.
The crew head to the cliffs of Stackpole Head,
ten miles down the coast.
I know where Stackpole Head is, and I can visualise,
but I don't know the actual scenario she's in.
I could feel the groundswell, it was a calm day, nice day -
but there was a bit of heave in the water.
It just starts playing on your mind,
sort of, "When we get there, what are you going to do?
"Who's doing first aid?"
Anything can change. The weather could change.
The wind might pick up, and it might start to get choppier,
which is harder to get the casualty aboard.
You don't know the full detail until you get on site.
At a top speed of 25 knots,
it takes nearly 20 minutes to reach the injured woman.
No two jobs are the same. It can make things difficult,
because what you had last time
isn't necessarily what you're going to get this time.
Stackpole Head.
As the crew reach the cliffs, they find a cluster of kayaks.
Lying on top of one of them is the casualty, surrounded by her friends.
The kayaks sort of parted, like the Red Sea,
and we could see the casualty.
All right? Are you all right?
We went straight over to her,
just to make initial communications with her.
Well, you stay as still as you can, my love. My name's Geoff
-and we're here to take you home, all right?
-Thank you.
You could see on everyone's faces
that they were all panicking for their friend.
They all knew the casualty,
and they were obviously all concerned for her welfare.
I was pleased that she was talking, because I thought that was
a...a good sign.
She could breathe, because she was talking.
She kept complaining of pain,
sort of around her neck and on her back.
You just feel so useless, because you can't do anything,
and you have nothing to offer her -
and I wasn't even sure that she could hear me,
because I think she was concentrating so much
on the pain she was in.
It was difficult. It was hard.
Can you just tuck your arm inside, so it doesn't get caught
-on anything, all right, darling?
-Keep it warm.
At the time, we were suspecting back injury and head injury,
which is the two worst, sort of, injuries you can be faced with
when you're transferring casualties.
SHE CRIES OUT IN PAIN
You always go for the worst case. Always go for the worst case.
Move her as little as possible, and only move her when you need to.
Any bump or jolt could cause Libby further damage or even paralysis...
Thank you very much, guys.
..but unless she can be lifted onto the lifeboat,
she won't get the specialist medical treatment she needs.
Being that she was on the kayak,
it wasn't an ideal position to be in.
She obviously wasn't laid flat.
The kayak didn't have many handles on it for lifting it -
but to try and transport it from the kayak into a stretcher,
whilst being in the sea ourselves, would have been a big no-go.
So it was decided the best course of action was to keep on the kayak
for the time being, use that as a backboard.
We're going to put your head up first, all right?
It takes four crew to lift Libby to deck level.
One... Two... Three!
SHE SCREAMS IN PAIN
-Sorry, love.
-That's it. Now, that's it.
She looked quite pale.
She was shaking. She was just barely...barely talking.
She was obviously in a lot of pain.
All right?
With the nature of her injuries still unknown,
the coastguard has scrambled urgent medical assistance.
The fastest way to get to hospital is via helicopter.
The coxswain maintained his speed,
and the paramedic from the helicopter
was winched down and landed on the deck.
So, what were going to have to do, guys,
I want to get her wet suit off her completely,
so once I've finished what I'm doing now, we'll cut down the legs,
and then we're going to look at moving her.
Now, I'm just going to feel around your back...
A bit further down...
I'll do the legs, you do the kayak...
We're going to lift her up on three, and drag the kayak at first count.
One, two, three, lift.
That's it. Keep her in the air.
There was no way that she was going to be winched on the kayak,
so it has to be in the stretcher.
It's a matter of getting a lot of people around her,
so that we can lift her in a way that is supportive,
and that she doesn't really move
from transferring from one position in a stretcher to another.
One, two, three, lower.
-There we go.
-SHE SCREAMS
She was in a lot of pain.
You could see she was in a lot of pain.
I think she was frightened. She was a brave woman, mind.
She... She listened to us, she communicated with us.
OK, so blanket over.
Libby's already spent more than 30 minutes in severe pain...
but after her time in the water,
her body temperature has dropped significantly.
Airlifting her in this state would increase the likelihood
of her developing hypothermia.
Pick them up.
The paramedic decides to delay taking Libby to hospital
till her temperature starts to rise.
We brought one of her friends on board from the...from her kayak,
just to reassure her.
You want a friendly face when you're scared and in need of help.
I just kept saying, everything's going to be all right, now,
everything's going to be all right, and just squeezing her hand.
Let me know as soon as that winch is ready.
Finally, after 20 minutes, Libby's core temperature has begun to climb.
Overhead, the Coastguard helicopter flies into the wind
at the highest speed possible, to maintain stability.
The swell's going to be the most awkward thing for them.
Yeah, yeah, totally.
At the helm, coxswain Phil must match the heading and speed,
while keeping the lifeboat deck as steady as possible.
OK, so that's good, that one's good.
They're good.
The helicopter's pretty stable,
but the lifeboat's going up and down on the seas.
Just to help the situation, we lifted the...
We lifted Libby up to a position level with the rail.
It seems like quite a snatch from-from the boat,
and it's-it's almost unavoidable.
It's probably quite scary.
You always think, you know, what's going to happen now
is, you know, is it just a bit of bruising?
Is it, you know, is she just cold?
Or, you know, is she, you know, genuinely hurt?
And you always hold out for the call that you're going to find out
what happens - and sometimes you don't,
and, you know, sometimes you do.
Libby had been in Tenby enjoying a girls' weekend
with a group of friends.
They'd hired kayaks for the day
and had gone out with experienced instructors.
As Libby took her turn to navigate a gap in the rocks,
she was caught by a freak wave.
It is the scariest thing that's ever happened to me, I think.
The doctors told me...
..how...what the state of my injuries were.
Well, I'd broken seven ribs, five of them in two places,
so had a total of 12 fractures...
..and there was one chap there whose hand I was holding really tight!
And I'm sure he didn't have any fingers left
by the time I'd been holding his hand,
because I was holding it so tight.
You feel blessed that you were there.
You feel humbled that you were able to get there in time
and help her, basically.
She was a very strong and a tough woman.
I would have made a lot more noise than she did, God love her.
I wouldn't mind going there again,
just stand and watch the waves and see whether it WAS just a freak wave
or whether, you know, whether I was just unlucky -
but I think that the sea is just so unpredictable
that you can never tell.
All seamen will tell you that the sea's unpredictable.
It's the nature of it.
Around the country, all volunteers attend regular training sessions
to prepare for whatever the sea can throw at them.
From recovering a capsize...
One, two, three.
..to casualty care...
..but however long you've been learning the ropes,
there are some events that no-one can predict or plan for.
You've got to kind of switch common sense off,
because things aren't predictable at sea.
You know, you've got the waves,
you've got the wind, you've got...
a 30-plus-tonne lifeboat pitching and rolling.
Common sense just doesn't go how you want it to when you're at sea.
You might think it might be a nice, easy call-out
and maybe halfway through it, something else might happen, and...
everything changes on a call-out.
You're never guaranteed an easy call-out.
We've been known to rescue a goat
down near Lynmouth that had been stuck on the cliff
and actually got an award
from the Feral Goat Society for rescuing this particular goat,
so, any animal is a good rescue.
We were called out to a Viking ship one day,
just up the coast, I think it was about five mile up the coast,
they were in difficulty,
and it's the strangest thing that we'd ever gone.
They're all kitted out with Viking hats and swords,
it was some kind of re-enactment.
Go and get dressed, yeah?
You can actually think you're going out to one job,
and you can actually end up doing another job.
We went out to a helicopter job last year
and we actually ended up going out to a sinking fishing boat.
Oh, for sure, it definitely makes things unpredictable.
When the pagers go off, it can literally be anything.
UK and Ireland's rocky beaches and sandy shores
provide food and shelter
to all manner of fur, feather and fins - both locals and tourists.
In Devon, the Dart estuary sits in a deep-sided river valley,
in which a grey seal colony, otters,
and even the occasional dolphin has made its home...
..but earlier this year, its biggest visitor to date made national news.
A moment that will live with a 12-year-old forever.
Most people have never seen a humpback whale in the UK,
so Slapton became a viewing hot spot.
20-foot humpback whales are normally found in the waters off Scandinavia
or New England, but, to the town's surprise, this one stayed.
I'm not sure why it was in the area at all.
It just suddenly appeared,
and it stayed for ages.
I think it just liked Dartmouth.
The crew at Dart lifeboat station are answering an emergency call.
It's rookie volunteer Katy's third shout.
I was actually in work, about to leave, and then it went off,
and then I was... quickly ripped the apron off.
I thought, "What's going to be faster, the car or run?"
And I just decided to run.
Chris was there already, and I said, "What is it?"
And he said, "The whale's got stuck." Couldn't believe it.
While trying to feed in the shallows of a nearby bay,
the Dartmouth whale's become trapped
in fishing lines attached to whelk pots.
Unless he can be freed quickly,
he could be seriously injured or even drown.
-RADIO:
-Will you be able to send your team up along the beach?
Reach across, we've got some rope down here you can grab hold of.
Five miles up the coast,
a team of divers specialising in marine life rescue
has also been called in.
The plan, to get them as close as possible to the whale
so they can cut him free from the fishing lines.
For the crew, it means placing the lifeboat carefully over the whale
as he thrashes below, and holding position.
When we got close enough to the whale,
the whale rescue guys had asked that we cut the engine...
and we were actually holding on to the pot and, pretty much,
when she came up out of the water,
any way you looked around the boat was just whale,
so she seemed pretty big in comparison to our boat.
That's going straight from there onto the tail.
-Yeah.
-Which means that these wraps and the pots
are going straight down to the bed.
Yeah. Tying around.
Already several hours into his ordeal,
the whale's becoming increasingly agitated by the ropes.
You just see it, obviously, coming up
every kind of three to five minutes,
and then it got... like, the gap got smaller,
so it was more every two minutes.
You could just see netting around it, really,
and obviously it was very distressed.
It was a fair chunk of weight for it to be towing.
Of course, while it's towing it, all the buoys are...
all the pots are bouncing on the bottom, getting entangled.
The whale probably weighed 15-20 tonnes,
and our boat was about five-and-a-half metres.
To know that that animal could swipe you out the boat
with one flick of its tail, terrifying.
In the small lifeboat, it's too dangerous to proceed.
We needed to come up with a better plan,
which, to me, meant more manpower and maybe a more stable platform.
The fishing boat that radioed in the alarm is still in the area,
so the crew take a different tack.
Cheers, guys.
The new strategy - hoist the whale's tail as high as possible
while a diver waits for it to rise, armed with a sharp knife.
It was a very tense few moments on the boat.
Um, something we'd never trained for, so it was brand-new,
brand-new situation.
I think even the marine life divers,
although they're trained in whale rescue,
this is the first one they'd actually been to.
On any job, but especially with animals,
you don't know how they are going to react, especially in distress.
Things can go wrong very, very quickly.
Your nerves are jangling at that point.
If a 20-tonne whale decides it wants to go somewhere else,
there's not a lot nine blokes are going to do about it, unfortunately.
Come on, guys!
It felt very tense, watching what was going on.
It got so close each time.
It got so close, and we just wanted it to happen.
It's quite an adrenaline buzz.
I felt quite humbled, actually,
being so close, to help such a large animal.
Everybody was pulling with all their might.
The whale surfaced more and more rapidly.
The final one, we knew it had been done because it just went,
it just really went.
There it is!
It felt like a once-in-a-lifetime thing.
I think any rescue is very rewarding, but this one,
it was special and it will always be special.
We've been on several shouts where we've saved lives
and done dramatic things and nothing has ever been said,
but all of a sudden, after this shout,
a lot of people have mentioned, "Oh, I heard you saved the whale!"
At the most westerly point of the mainland,
the cliffs of Land's End have been carved out by powerful waves,
rolling in off the Atlantic Ocean.
The waters here are patrolled by two crews,
Sennen Cove and the Penlee team based in Newlyn.
The area is a magnet for surfers and holiday-makers,
many oblivious to the fact they are just miles from some of the busiest
shipping lanes in the country.
Ships are going around there,
carrying all sorts. Chemicals, tankers, oil.
The coastline tells its own story of how dangerous the water here can be.
The land sticks out into the Atlantic
and is a corner, really foreboding.
That's Poldark country, if you like.
Mainly it's granite rocks.
Granite cliffs, so if you get washed ashore,
then only one thing will happen.
That is, the boat is going to get smashed to pieces.
3am - Penlee's 16-strong crew is paged by the coastguard.
I picked my best crew that had turned up,
picked the most experienced guys, and off we went.
Eight miles away, the team at Sennen Cove
is also pulled from their sleep.
Right, guys, one, two, three.
Turning somebody out of their bed at three o'clock in the morning,
as on this occasion,
and jump in the seat and be able to navigate
within ten minutes of being asleep
and dreaming of a Caribbean island or something,
it is a big ask.
Three miles south of Gwennap Head, a 3,500-tonne coaster,
laden with cargo and fuel has suffered engine failure
and broken down.
Her anchor is no longer holding, and a strong south-westerly wind
has started to push her towards the shore at a rate of a mile an hour.
The two crews now have just 2.5 hours
to stop her breaking up on the local cliffs.
I felt, this is not going to be an easy job.
If a ship ends up on a piece of coast like that,
he won't be getting off again.
Environmentally, it's a disaster.
Making best speed of 25 knots, both crews race to the scene.
We get on with Sennen, we've got a good relationship with Sennen
and there is a bit of friendly rivalry.
They're a right bunch down there, down Newlyn.
We've got the bigger boat,
but I expect Terry will say he's got a better boat.
Their boat is bigger than ours,
but our propeller has got five blades,
they've only got four.
When it comes to saving people's lives,
what bit of friendly rivalry you might have
just goes out the window when it's a job like that.
I know most of the crew - they're good as gold.
They're a good station.
25 minutes after launching,
the two crews get their first glimpse of the job in hand.
A coaster called the Lady Alida, all 3,500 tonnes of her.
I was thinking,
we might need a bigger boat!
Because of the way the wind was, and the strength of the wind,
she was drifting quite quick.
On the Penlee lifeboat, Patch has come up with a plan.
He wants to buy time by towing the coaster into deeper water
until a tug boat can reach her and deliver her safely into port.
Patch needs Terry in the Sennen Cove boat to agree.
Terry's initial reaction was,
he wasn't so sure whether we should or not.
We tow plenty of stuff but we rarely tow anything that big.
I knew that we had no choice, really,
because there was only one way that she was going to go if we couldn't.
The Penlee and Sennen Cove volunteers agree to work together
to bring the 88-metre wall of welded steel under control.
Both lifeboat crews need to find a position in front of the bow
so that lines can be thrown to the Alida's waiting crew -
but if they get too close, their own boats could be crushed.
One minute you're airborne and then you come down with a crash,
and then you go on again.
It's not a pleasant place to be when it's rough
and you've got pressure on to try and get to someone who's in trouble.
Just a question of timing, really.
You can feel you're not going to make it when the ship rose up
on the top of the sea - it's just waiting for it to drop back down,
and when you feel happy that you can make the throw, throw it.
Both lifeboat crews managed to throw their tow lines at the first attempt
but they still don't know if they have enough combined power
to pull the ship to safety.
We started to try and turn the boat 180 degrees
to get it pointing in the right direction.
We weren't even sure if we were going to be effective -
whether our boat would actually even move this boat.
It's quite hard, really, to train to tow vessels that sort of size,
but I did have my doubts whether we would be able to move it or not,
I must admit.
Gradually the coaster starts to turn.
With both lifeboats side by side, the slow tow out to sea begins.
It took two boats.
We would have struggled on our own.
When it's dark, you lose a sense of bearings, as well,
so you don't exactly always know which way you're going
and which way is left or right,
so you just get a little bit disorientated.
It was quite easy for one lifeboat to drift away from the other one
and go off at a larger angle.
Finally, after almost three hours,
the crews reach safe deep water five miles offshore.
The Lady Alida is able to drop anchor
and wait for the tug to arrive.
It was really good, the way the boats worked together.
Both crews did a really good job.
There's a lot of satisfaction
when you come from two opposite directions
in the middle of the night and put two ropes on a ship
and get it out of trouble.
As day breaks, both lifeboat crews head back
to the Penlee boathouse in Newlyn.
We got back to Newlyn about six o'clock in the morning
and we were all planning what we were going to have for our fry-up.
Have a cup of tea.
I think I got through about half a cup.
Another page from the coastguard.
It's the Lady Alida.
Her skipper is reporting that she's beginning to drag her anchor again.
Meanwhile, the rescue tug has been delayed by bad weather.
To make matters worse, the coaster is back where she started,
2.5 miles from shore and drifting inwards.
Your priority is the safety of the ship and the people on it.
We did need to be back out there.
You don't want to see a ship going on the rocks.
I've seen a few and it's awful.
They're living things, as far as I'm concerned -
a boat's a living thing,
and to see one go on the rocks and smash up is awful.
Once again, the two lifeboat crews must throw their tow lines on board.
In the daylight, the scale of the task, and of the Lady Alida,
is even clearer.
It was a fair old size boat and she was rolling quite heavily, beam on.
Can we get a rope on it and can we hold her off?
People say they've never been frightened at sea -
well, they're dangerous people,
because we've all been frightened at sea.
For a second time, the crews begin the long tow back into deeper water.
You do get tired.
Yeah, I was a little bit jaded by that point.
Fatigue and lack of awareness are things that creep in,
particularly if you are called out in the early hours
when your crew would have been at work all the day before.
Maybe they've had a couple of hours' sleep.
That's when it's at its most dangerous.
All they want to do is get home.
It takes a further six hours before the crews are able to rendezvous
with the salvage tug brought in to retrieve the coaster.
It was a good job.
There's no doubt that we saved that vessel from going ashore,
without a doubt, so it was a good job.
you're carrying on a tradition
and you're also representing your community.
Nearly 40 years ago,
an earlier generation of Penlee volunteers
were called to the aid of another drifting coaster.
It was the 19th of December 1981.
I remember it...
I remember it as if it was yesterday, really,
I think everyone does.
They'd been called to something fairly similar to what we'd had
with the Lady Alida. A ship called the Union Star...
..had difficulties, unable to manoeuvre, and was drifting ashore.
The Penlee lifeboat, known as the Solomon Brown,
went to her aid that night in hurricane conditions.
My dad was a trawler skipper.
He still says now that that was the worst weather that we've had, um...
..and he said that there hasn't been a night as bad as that since.
It was horrific.
The Solomon Brown attempted to get the crew off the Union Star
by going alongside.
The actual Solomon Brown lifeboat
got washed onto the deck of the Union Star.
They got some of them off
and went to attempt it again.
I think that's where it went horribly wrong, then.
The morning after,
the wreck of the Union Star was seen washed up on the cliffs.
There were no survivors.
The entire lifeboat crew was also lost at sea.
We drove through Mousehole the next morning
after we knew that a lifeboat had been lost,
and it was just people lining the streets.
It was horrible.
You could see bits of wreckage.
It was just horrible.
It was just a nightmare.
The Mousehole Christmas lights are dimmed for an hour
every year to honour the rescue that cost eight men their lives
and left ten children without their fathers.
What you think about on your shout
is the guys who were on the shout
and that you're following in their footsteps.
You just want to live up to their expectations, really.
You want to do the job right for them.
I think anyone...
..that can say they've been a cox in the Penlee lifeboat,
it's quite a big deal.
If you take that one, I'll take the heavy one.
Among nearly 5,000 volunteers,
many serve alongside members of their own families -
and it's never too early to start.
Can you point out the engine for me?
All right. OK, what horsepower is it?
-Where's the aerial?
Good stuff. Compass?
Ace. Where's the quoit?
Great. How many fuel tanks are there?
Greg is the helm of the Conwy lifeboat.
His ten-year-old daughter, Jasmine,
is already keen to find her own sea legs.
Everything I know about boats, he's taught me.
Just built my confidence with the water and the lifeboat things.
She'll have the training and she won't be able to go afloat
until she's passed the skills, so, no, I should be fine with it,
as long as she stays safe and looks after herself
and then, obviously, the others, they'll all look after her, as well.
I think it's a good tradition to follow,
and I think it must be a very proud moment when father and son
or father and daughter can get together
and share that experience hand-in-hand on the front line.
The lifeboat station here is on the River Conwy,
which leads onto a tidal estuary and a busy harbour
where many locals dock their boats.
On the surface, a tranquil setting - but looks can be deceiving.
We are very tidal, surrounded in sandbanks and local hazards,
rocks and currents,
so it makes it quite a challenging entrance to a harbour.
On a cold day at the end of January...
..a 70-year-old man has fallen into the marina and can't get out.
Somebody ends up in the water this time of year in Conwy,
certainly in the estuary, they're not there through choice,
they're there because there's an accident,
and they need help, and they're in danger.
In January, water temperatures can be as low as seven degrees.
Not only is the man at risk of drowning,
but hypothermia could set in within 15 minutes.
The conditions, especially that day,
it was very cold, so we knew that the casualty,
if they were in the water for a long period of time,
they didn't have a chance.
I was waiting outside my house for one of my friends to pick me up
to go and watch a local football game.
I only live round the corner from the station,
so it was about a 30-second run.
Have we got power on?
From the shower to actually hitting the water,
it was four minutes and 37 seconds, I think.
You can't really prepare for what you're going to.
The details you get given are... very limited.
The harbour is within sight of the lifeboat station,
but reaching the casualty quickly will still be a challenge.
The conditions on the river were quite choppy,
very unusually choppy for outside the lifeboat station.
A lot of spray coming into our face.
Once in the harbour,
the crew still need to locate the man
amongst up to 60 boats docked on the pontoons.
It is a complex searching area,
because the people could be trapped underneath the pontoon,
trapped underneath a boat,
trapped between boats.
Finally, the casualty comes into view.
OK, OK, I'll jump on.
An onlooker has managed to get a life belt to him...
Anything I can grab hold of?
..but he's wedged in against the boat,
weighed down by heavy clothing.
When we got to the casualty,
he couldn't talk to us, he was unresponsive.
The colour was very grey.
The 70-year-old man has now been in the water for 12 minutes,
his body temperature dropping rapidly.
We'll lose this life buoy and bring him up.
Greg decides to get one of his crew in alongside
to help keep him conscious.
OK, we need an ambulance.
As soon as I jumped in the water, I could feel the cold straightaway.
It hit me and I was in shock
but I knew I had to grab him so he didn't just give up and let go.
-VOICEOVER:
-There's a lot of pressure on my shoulders
and the decisions I make could be life or death,
certainly for the casualty,
so I don't want to be getting it wrong.
I need an ambulance.
Yeah, it's on its way.
The casualty was a dead weight.
A heavy lift out, because he was wet,
but also it was the angle of us trying to pull him out
because we were over the side of a pontoon.
Finally, with the help of an onlooker,
the crew are able to heave the man clear of the water.
Are you OK? Can you hear me?
His muscles had all stopped working.
He was... He was lifeless.
We'll get you on the lifeboat and we'll get you somewhere warm
as quick as we can.
Keep going, keep going, keep going. Then get in the boat.
I think he was quietly slipping away.
A lot of people, when they see the orange,
they think help has got there,
they can now give up because they're going to be OK.
For the casualty, that was not the case
because hypothermia had kicked in.
The crew's biggest concern is to keep the man conscious.
If he falls asleep, his whole body could start shutting down.
Dave, can you still hear me?
-He's still there.
-Dave, keep talking to me, OK?
Keep talking to me.
Get the rope up.
I was very conscious of...
shouting at the casualty and keeping a good strong grip of him,
but I was also trying to drive the boat back to the slipway, as well.
Dave, keep talking to me.
It was very scary.
I think he was very close to death.
There should be an ambulance coming to us straightaway.
Are you feeling really cold? Yeah, do you know your name?
It was important that we kept on talking to him,
engaging with him, to keep the casualty awake.
How old are you, Dave?
-70? Really? You're not going to give up on me now, are you?
What's your grandkid's name, Dave?
Sioned...
Sioned? Very good, how old's Sioned?
Again, what's the name of that granddaughter of yours?
By talking about his family,
the casualty knows he's got something to fight for.
All right, Dave, we're just going to get into the boathouse now,
we're backing into the boathouse, getting you out of the wind, OK?
So, it should be a lot warmer in here now.
OK, Dave, keep on talking, mate.
The crew have reached the warm shelter of the lifeboat house
and the paramedics are on their way.
Ambulance on the top of the bridge.
-Minutes.
-Dave, don't go to sleep, all right?
It's important you don't to sleep.
-Are you with me on that programme?
-Mm...
Good lad, well done.
-This is Holyhead coastguard,
can I have a sitrep on the casualty's condition, please?
-Over.
-We're on the edge.
Less than eight minutes after they plucked him from the water,
the Conwy crew hand the casualty over to the care of the paramedics.
He hasn't lost consciousness.
-He hasn't?
-When we got there, he was very unresponsive.
He's picking up a bit now, opened his eyes,
talking a little bit better.
Hello, sir.
Do you reckon you can stand, Dave?
If we stand you up?
If we hold you?
OK. Can you...
I was very worried. Nobody likes to come across that, and see that,
and feel that experience of somebody slipping away in front of your eyes.
When the ambulance went, we didn't really know what the outcome
of that patient was going to be.
It was on my mind...
for a while after the call-out, what had happened to the casualty?
I mean, I did sort of contemplate what it would be like
just to let your eyes... just to close your eyes...
..but the only thing you've got to do,
hang on to that flipping rope for life.
David is a retired engineer with two children and five grandchildren.
He had been trying to step onto his own boat when he lost his footing
and fell into the harbour.
While I was hanging on to the rope,
hoping that the lifeboat would arrive,
and you're thinking, all the time, "Any time now, any time now,"
but when I saw it just in the right-hand side,
and I still had my glasses on, I just saw an orange flash go past.
That was the point in time when I knew, God,
that somebody is here to help.
How lucky was David? A scale of one to ten?
Probably about 11. His angels were definitely around him that day.
It was amazing to me to think...
..that only four or five hours ago, I was...
..dicing with the idea of, "Will I die, or will I get out of here?"
To about four or five hours later, maybe six hours later, thinking,
"I wonder what we're going to have for tea."
Shoreham-by-Sea, on the south coast, was once a small fishing port.
These days, visitors to the beach
can enjoy a gentler seaside experience
than the one up the road in busy Brighton.
Since 2006,
Shoreham's shingle beach has been designated a nature reserve
for its unique vegetation.
The local crew are used to dealing with most of the challenges
the English Channel can throw at them.
We like to think that we're prepared
for everything here at Shoreham.
Most of the time we are.
On a mild afternoon at the end of March,
the coastguard has paged for assistance
after receiving 999 calls from worried members of the public.
I had no idea what I was coming to when I got into the station.
It was only once I came up and met some of the crew that were assembled
that they informed me there was an aircraft had come down into the sea.
I think a plane was the last thing I expected.
I just thought it would possibly be a towing or something like that,
I wasn't expecting a plane at all.
An aircraft has suffered engine failure and crash landed in the sea
en route to Shoreham Airport.
The crew have been told that the passengers were seen
climbing onto the wings
before jumping into the water and swimming safely to shore...
..but the abandoned plane is still a danger.
INDISTINCT RADIO COMMS
It was necessary to go and find the plane
because it was now afloat and drifting out to sea
and therefore could become a hazard to shipping and navigation.
On top of that,
the crew have no idea if it is leaking fuel into the water.
The plane went down two miles away, just off Lancing Beach.
Making your way down there,
you could have blinked and missed it.
If you didn't know there was a plane there, you wouldn't have known.
I can't see any pollution.
There is no fuel spillage to contain,
but the crew do have to work out how to get a 35-foot plane
weighing three quarters of a tonne
back to dry land.
Does he want us to try and tow it in?
Because it's floating.
-What's its call sign?
-I don't know, 08 Delta.
My concerns was what are we going to do with it
and how do you get a plane out of the water?
-There's the wings there.
-The tail fin here.
If we get a line around here, a hook on that little bit there.
Believe me, that bit's quite strong.
We just had to be cautious and not rush.
It's not something that happens every day, is it?
You get the chance to tow an aircraft.
Nice and slow...
OK, the weight is just about to come on, mate.
She's going, she's all right.
Lifeboats weren't really designed to pull planes,
and planes weren't really designed to travel through the sea.
Power wasn't an issue, it was more of a slow and steady.
It's definitely the first time I've towed a plane!
Done the odd jet ski, and boat, but nothing like a plane.
Not with a lifeboat!
Once in shallower water,
Mark and I were able to get out of the boat.
The water was just over knee deep,
and we could physically get hold of the aeroplane.
The wheels, by this time, were touching the ground.
After ten minutes, with the help of an outgoing tide,
the plane taxis onto the beach,
where a three-strong team of coastguards lend some extra muscle.
Keep it going, we've got a bit of soft sand here.
It's not every day you see a plane being dragged up the beach
by an RNLI crew, so, yeah, I think it raised a few smiles.
The aircraft looked...
pretty good, considering what had happened.
There was very little damage to it.
I think the crew of the plane were extremely lucky.
I don't know how he managed to do it, land it how he did,
because he was metres from the shingle beach.
It must have been a textbook landing, I think.
It looked as if it could just be refuelled and fly again.
I can't say I'd want to go back up in the plane
after it's been in the sea, though!
It was sort of like, "Oh, I just pulled a plane from the water!"
That was perfect, absolutely perfect.
Well done, lads.
200 miles down the south coast,
Salcombe in Devon is a fishing village that's become a hot spot
for well-heeled holiday-makers.
The lifeboat crew are used to dealing with emergency calls
from the great and the good...
It's a mix. Out on the sea, it could be the £100-boat man
or it could be the million pound super yacht.
You don't know who they are.
..but it's the first day of April,
the tourist season has barely kicked off,
and a call has already come in.
We thought it was all April Fool's but it was after midday
and he assured us it wasn't.
Just two weeks after its whelk pot emergency,
the Dartmouth whale has returned,
and it's entangled in fishing lines again.
This time, the Salcombe crew are paged to save the local leviathan.
The whale was up in Blackpool Sands again, so it's about 25 minutes,
30 minutes steam up there.
There's not really a lot you can do on the boat in preparation,
because you don't know what you're going to come across.
Southern coastguard, southern coastguard, Dart lifeboat, over.
Marine life rescue officers have also been recalled,
along with two members of the Dart lifeboat crew.
I know very little about whales.
I've seen one in the Natural History Museum but other than that,
I've never really been up close to a whale.
The whale could still move,
probably, 25 metre radius, I suppose.
It's still quite an area, so we had lookouts on the bow.
Chris was as high as possible to get a good view when we came in.
This time, the Dartmouth whale is in even more trouble.
He's enmeshed in more lines than before
and there's a danger the enormous weight of the whelk pots
will drag him down.
The whale was well and truly entangled.
I think there were various lines
around the tail and the fins and around the body.
It was pulling it around like you wouldn't believe.
You can't get over how strong an animal like that is,
even in a slightly weakened state.
It's amazing how the whale managed to swim and survive
with that amount of gear on it.
He was extremely worn out - and that became more apparent
the closer it got to us, because there were periods of time
where it just lay in the water doing nothing.
When it was coming to the surface and blowing,
it was almost like a scream.
It was a bit eerie, really.
Last time, a marine diver had to hang out of a boat
to cut the whale free...
..but the Salcombe team have a heavy-duty winch at their disposal.
Today's plan - to hoist the tangled rope up and out of the water
while a diver on a second boat
comes alongside to cut the whale free.
You've got to treat it like it's something you'd normally do,
so the things we'd normally do
is pull an anchor up or something like that,
so it's the same operation, it's just a different context.
Once we were committed to hauling the whale
and we had to keep on going,
we couldn't risk the lines parting off from the whale
and the whale swimming away still attached to gear.
If it did, it would have died, there's no two ways about it.
Marine divers have more than 20 tangled lines to hack through.
The boat could be looking up to the east one minute
and down to the west the next.
We really were being pulled around, because the whale had such power.
In exercises, we can tow the lifeboat with the smaller lifeboat
and it's quite a challenge -
but the whale was pulling it around with ease.
It was amazing, the amount of power it had.
I thought, "Oh, my God, it's too late," you know,
"It's had it."
Finally, after more than an hour...
..freedom.
Absolutely unforgettable moment.
Where else are you ever going to get the experience
to be there and have a humpback whale that needs rescuing?
So, yeah, what a great job!
No, we're not expecting to see it for a third time -
touch wood!
I'm pretty sure the collection tin the next day was a bit heavier
after people had found out about it.
I have to lift it in at the end of the day
and, yeah, definitely heavier.
Six months after her kayaking accident...
..Libby is back on her feet.
She and her group of friends are weighing up
what activity to try out next.
We have joked that we will be doing something a little less adventurous.
Crocheting.
A spa weekend might be a better idea!
Falling into Conwy harbour hasn't put David off taking his boat out.
He and his partner Susan are planning to spend the summer at sea.
We like dabbling about on the water,
sort of living on the water, in that sense.
Take the paper with us, and some sandwiches and that.
Make a pot of tea.
It will be all right now.
He'll have a bit more common sense this time.
As for the Dartmouth whale, he is expected to make a good recovery.
We saw the whale swimming freely again,
and that was about three days later.
That's how you want to see them, not all caught up.
We have to go into danger
to get somebody out of that danger.
You're thinking to yourself, "What if, what if?"
Your concern is falling into the water between both boats.
First information was a guy was in a sailing boat,
sailing to America.
At sea, if you don't give it any respect, it will kill you.
Every day around the UK, an army of unpaid volunteers put their lives on the line to try and save complete strangers. Saving Lives at Sea tells the story of the ordinary men and women of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) who, across the country, are ready to launch their boats and race to the rescue within minutes of a cry for help - 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, whatever the weather. Using footage shot on crews' own cameras, this series takes us right into the heart of the action, capturing the unpredictable work of the RNLI in never-before-seen detail.
In south west Wales, the Tenby crew race to a kayaker with suspected back and neck injuries after being caught out by a freak wave. Neighbouring Cornish crews must join forces in an epic 11-hour battle to stop a 3,600-tonne coaster breaking up on the rocks. And the Dart and Salcombe crews are astonished to be paged to the biggest shout of their lives.
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Our Products >> Between Good and Evil
Between Good and Evil
AN AUBURN NOTCH MYSTERY
Years after the Willis Asylum closed, the secrets of its past lingered in its decaying halls as a reminder to the good people of Auburn Notch—when Evil closes a door, he also opens a window. Sheriff Promise Flynn was new to the town, and she was about to find out some windows should never be opened.
Promise Flynn is an overly impulsive Metro Detective whose disregard for procedure finally resulted in her being shot and left for dead during an investigation. To repair her bruised ego and splintered confidence she abandons the callous dark alleys of Chicago to patrol the quiet, birch-lined streets of Auburn Notch—a favorite vacation spot of her youth. For two years everything was idyllic, until the body of a young girl found in the abandoned asylum outside of town awakens the insecurities she thought her new life would insulate her from.
As the new Sheriff she begins her investigation refusing to accept the similarities between the young woman’s death and her own case, oblivious to being unexpectedly recognized and penciled in at the top of a clever murderer’s To-Do list. Her internal struggle intensifies when a discredited crime reporter from the past suspiciously arrives in town to resurrect his threadbare reputation, along with an FBI agent chasing down a lead in a cold case. Both men quickly become entangled in Flynn's investigation and her attempts to finally put her past to rest.
Flynn reluctantly accepts the murder of the young girl might be the work of the two men responsible for her hasty departure from Chicago, but Agent MacGregor insists the evidence points to a man he’s been chasing. As the rising current of her past threatens to pull her under, Flynn finds herself unprepared for option three.
Michael is a classically trained artist turned mystery writer. By combining his creative talents with a passion for mysteries he conceived his first series—The Ernie Bisquets Mysteries. It introduced Ernie Bisquets, a retired London pickpocket who decided he was going to assist the London police with there most difficult cases—whether they want his help or not. Michael has completed 3 books in the series, and has plans for at least five additional books.
Michael travels a bit, especially to Great Britain, but also has a fondness for New England. He spent many winters in the shadow of the White Mountains, skiing and enjoying the beautiful countryside. Those fond memories are the backdrop now for the new Auburn Notch Mysteries being published by Sunbury Press. The main character is Sheriff Promise Flynn—an ex-metro detective who left a dark past and her big-city detective shield behind and moved to a small New England town. What follows is anything but therapeutic.
When not painting or writing Michael is an avid antique collector, filling his current home—an 1894 Queen Ann Victorian he is restoring with his wife and son—with an assortment of antiques from around the world. Michael also enjoys cooking, working in the garden, and playing in the yard with their two rescues, Beau and Pup.
6 x 9 trade paperback
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Research > About SRI > Scientist Profiles > Scientists G-L
Scientist Profiles
Scientist profiles G-L
SRI Profiles
Sander L. Hitzig
St. John's Rehab
285 Cummer Avenue, Room B1 05
M2M 2G1
Email: sander.hitzig@sunnybrook.ca
BA, 1997, psychology, University of Western Ontario, Canada
Honours standing psychology program, 1998, York University, Canada
MA, 2002, educational psychology, McGill University, Canada
PhD, 2009, psychology, developmental and cognitive processes, York University, Canada
Appointments and Affiliations:
Scientist, Evaluative Clinical Sciences, St. John's Rehab Research Program, Sunnybrook Research Institute
Assistant professor, department of occupational science and occupational therapy, University of Toronto
Assistant professor, Rehabilitation Sciences Institute, U of T
Adjunct faculty, school of kinesiology & health science, faculty of health, York University
Affiliate scientist, Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, University Health Network
Research Foci:
Quality of life and community participation
Outcome measurement
Chronic pain and emotional well-being
Research Summary:
The focus of Dr. Hitzig’s research is on examining issues associated with aging with a disability, assessing the impact of primary impairments and secondary health conditions on quality of life, and identifying factors that promote health and well-being in the community.
His interests include understanding the role of social networks on health and quality of life outcomes following disability, developing and validating patient-reported outcomes, and evaluating novel technologies and clinical services designed to enhance community living.
See current publications list at PubMed.
Related News and Stories:
A cut above: Amid funding pressures, SRI scientists post stellar results (Feb. 1, 2019)
Ask a scientist: "What is the biggest misconception about being a scientist?" (SRI Magazine, 2017)
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Uganda, officially the Republic of Uganda (Swahili: Jamhuri ya Uganda), is a landlocked country (except for its borders with Lake Victoria and Lake Albert) in East-Central Africa. Uganda is in the African Great Lakes region. Uganda also lies within the Nile basin, and has a varied but generally a modified equatorial climate.
It is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. The southern part of the country includes a substantial portion of Lake Victoria, shared with Kenya and Tanzania.
Uganda takes its name from the Buganda kingdom, which encompasses a large portion of the south of the country, including the capital Kampala. The people of Uganda were hunter-gatherers until 1,700 to 2,300 years ago, when Bantu-speaking populations migrated to the southern parts of the country.
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The official languages are English and Swahili, although “any other language may be used as a medium of instruction in schools or other educational institutions or for legislative, administrative or judicial purposes as may be prescribed by law.” Luganda, a central language, is widely spoken across the country, and several other languages are also spoken including Runyoro, Runyankole, Rukiga, Luo and Lusoga.
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We arrange a cultural tours to local villages where you witness an authentic way of life that exists in few places in today’s world. You are welcomed into a traditional home to observe meal preparation, familial structure and ancient practices. The itineraries are culturally-sensitive so that your visit has little to no impact on the village and people.
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Uganda is a beautiful country in the East Africa region with outstanding wildlife parks and nature reserves. It encompasses savannah, Lakelands and mountain highlands. It’s also home to mountain gorillas.
The “Big Five” game animals of Africa, that is the lion, leopard, buffalo, rhinoceros, and elephant, can be found in Uganda national parks and these include the rare mountain gorillas that can only be tracked in Uganda, Rwanda and D.R Congo.
A significant population of other wild animals, reptiles and birds can be found in the national parks and game reserves in the country. SunTrack Adventures offers the finest and budget friendly Uganda jungle safari and wildlife safari tours & game walks.
Uganda’s National Parks:
Queen Elizabeth National Park, Murchison Falls National Park, Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park, Kibale Forest National Park, Lake Mburo National Park, Kidepo Valley National Park, Mgahinga Gorilla National Park, Mount Elgon National Park, Mt. Rwenzori National Park, Semliki Forest National Park, Budongo Forest Reserve, Semliki Wildlife Reserve, Katonga Wildlife Reserve, Mabira Forest, Kalinzu Forest Reserve, Pian Upe Wildlife Reserve
SunTrack Adventures jungle safaris and wildlife tours will take you to top national parks and game reserves for a premium game viewing experience in Uganda. Choosing a jungle safari in Uganda can be confusing as there is a whole lot more to explore and discover yet time is not always enough to key out all the highlights.
Please browse through our Uganda jungle wildlife safaris packages above and choose the best package that you believe will give you the best experience in Uganda.
Gorilla Trekking Safari Uganda
Wildlife Camping Safari
If you are passionate about kayaking adventure, it is here at the source of Nile river in Uganda, that the world’s kayakers come to play. SunTrack Adventures offers complete kayaking trips at the Nile in Jinja, Uganda.
A Jinja trip, is not incomplete without a water activity, and we believe that the best way to explore the world’s longest river is on the water itself.
SunTrack Adventures organizes tailor-made peak climbing tours, mountain climbing safaris and hiking experiences to Mount Elgon and Rwenzori for groups or individuals who are looking for a mountain wilderness adventure.
Our peak climbing trips are personalized itineraries without set departure dates. Climb some of Africa’s highest peaks of Mt. Elgon and the Rwenzori mountains.
Rwenzori Mountain Peak Climbing
SunTrack Adventures’ Rwenzori mountain climbing packages are available throughout the year. Mt Rwenzori hikers will enjoy being amongst the parks primates, birds and rare tree species.
Mount Elgon Peak Climbing
Our Mt. Elgon tours are best for first climbers. Aspirant hikers need to be reasonably fit, but no specialized equipment or skills are needed to reach the peaks, and the mountain is not so high that there’s a serious risk of the altitude-related illnesses. Trails lead past caves, viewpoints and waterfalls, with the option of camping overnight on the mountain slopes. The 7km (four-hour) mountain bamboo trail to Kapkwai Cave passes through tropical and bamboo forest.
Get the ultimate adrenaline rush by exploring the white waters of the Nile river. White water rafting at river Nile in Uganda is a perfect exhilarating adventure activity that involves rafting in rough waters. SunTrack Adventures offers the best white water rafting in Uganda from a one-day excursion or several days’ safari.
You will get the opportunity to enjoy the scenery, viewing the birdlife and admiring a variety of wildlife. You can also combine this activity with wildlife safari, volunteering experience or any other tours in Uganda. If you are looking for something adventurous, thrilling and exciting then raft the mighty river Nile in Uganda with us
Our White Water Rafting hot deals on River Nile in Uganda are ideal for those with a day to spare when visiting Kampala, Mukono or Jinja in Uganda. Beat the summer heat as you head out for some thrilling river rafting in Uganda and experience that adrenaline rush as you break the waves.
The river Nile is among the best rivers for white water rafting in the world due to its high rafting grades. The river rafting packages include all your food, some drinks, 1 night accommodation and one full day or half day whitewater rafting experience.
SunTrack Adventures river rafting deals are great ways to save on your favorite whitewater rafting adventure in Uganda for you and your group. We offer budget river rafting hot deals and special discounted rates for upcoming trips, 3 day weekend discounts and more.
Book an affordable budget friendly white water rafting tour package online with us today. Enjoy rafting the Nile in Uganda with the best deals ever!.
Full Day White Water Rafting Grade 5
Half Day White Water Rafting in Uganda
Most people who visit Uganda explore the country in a safari van, but the hills, mountains and rough roads are actually perfect for cycling. People mostly visit Uganda to see animals, explore the cultures and also to see new landscapes.
Most travel in off-road vehicles. Few people know that you can also explore the most interesting parts of the country just as safely on a bike, and get much closer, too. In Uganda, bikers enjoy beautiful scenery and can meet with like-minded adventurers in cycling clubs.
Road Cycling is such an enjoyable sport in Uganda because you get to burn calories while exploring and sightseeing, plus de-stress and bond with friends. SunTrack Adventures brings you face to face with the sights, sounds, and wonders of the Pearl of Africa through our road cycling tours and safaris.
These affordable budget road cycling tours offer an experience to last a lifetime; you’ll meet local tribes-people, visit the rich tea and fruit plantations and experience the variety of culture that makes up this great country
SunTrack Adventures weekend cycling tours Uganda are the best way to spend your weekend. It is a break from the normal nine to five routine, or whichever work schedule you may have, and instead you concentrate on spinning the pedals in some of the most scenic views in the countryside or suburbs.
Your weekend road cycling tours Uganda can be two days of cycling with an overnight camp or one day of cycling, one day of another exciting adventure and the overnight camp. When it is all over, however long the cycling distance is, you come back home a totally different person – more energized and ready to tackle the week ahead.
We handle the stress, you enjoy the cycling bliss of our weekend cycling tours. Experience the real Uganda as you can on a bike. Encounter wildlife from your saddle, immerse yourself in to the culture and colour of the people and landscapes, and camp in the wilderness under a cloudless Uganda sky.
Mountain Bike Tours Uganda
Weekend Road Cycling Tour Uganda
These are other trips.
Ultimate Birding Safari Uganda
Classical Camping Safari
Rural Farm Camping Tour
Overland Camping Tour
Total Eco Tour Experience Uganda
Mukono Discovery Eco Tour
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Why my tv turns on and off by itself
Ferris Bueller's Day Off is a 1986 American teen comedy film written, co-produced, and directed by John Hughes, and co-produced by Tom Jacobson.
A DISH receiver that's turning on and off by itself is usually caused by an issue with electrical power or The reset process my take up to 5 minutes to complete.
But, the fans have responded so passionately towards it, and I'm not really sure why." However, Lafferty has said that there is a genuine relationship between Nathan and Haley: "It started as something sort of based on betrayal and deceit. The No Fourth Wall trope as used in popular culture. Some series can go their entire lives without breaking the Fourth Wall once. Some series will … It's undeniable that smart TVs are now obsolete, and at this time, the choice to buy a smart TV would not be a smart thing to do. Here's why. The queries he receives range from merely odd to downright diabolical: • What if I took a swim in a spent-nuclear-fuel pool? • Could you build a jetpack using downward-firing machine guns? • What if a Richter 15 earthquake hit New York City…
The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You trope as used in popular culture. A monster is on the loose terrorizing a bunch of innocent people. As long as the … Naturally, however, that doesn’t mean that magic and sorcery don’t exist. Yet on February 26, the night of this year’s Academy Awards telecast, the movie industry has the rare opportunity to speak truth to the real power in America.
It's undeniable that smart TVs are now obsolete, and at this time, the choice to buy a smart TV would not be a smart thing to do. Here's why.
22 Aug 2019 The TV Turns on or off by Itself. Applicable Products and Categories of This Article. Follow the steps below to troubleshoot this issue. Note: Your 11 Apr 2018 The TV turns off or shuts down by itself. If the TV turns on or off at regular intervals, such as 30 minutes or an hour, it is likely that one of these functions is set. How do I completely shut down or turn off my computer. The TV 6 Oct 2016 If your tv is turning itself off, its not a faulty tv or power supply. Nor is it eco mode or sleep timer. Please watch and I hope this helps. **IF THIS
Samsung TV On/Off Issue - Repair: A few years ago many Samsung TV models were between on and off repeatedly and/or an annoying clicking noise while turning on. In my case two capacitors had gone bad, as seen in the picture. My 50" samsung started constantly resetting itself over and over again after a power TCL R615 Roku TV keeps turning off by itself I would then have to turn it back on. section on my Roku home screen with a "Turn TV off" function inside it. 20 Nov 2019 This answer provides information for disabling different features that may cause the TV to turn on or off automatically:
The series centers on Ryan Atwood, a troubled but gifted young man from a broken home who is adopted by the wealthy and philanthropic Sandy and Kirsten Cohen.
Welcome back to Important Toy News, the SYFY WIRE column that shows you a week's worth of amazing new playthings, collectibles, and shelf candy and gives you soothing words of why impulse buying is a very good idea. A look back at the esteemed personalities who've left us this year, who touched us with their innovation, creativity and humanity Marceau appeared on Skelton's CBS television show three times, including one turn as the host in 1961 as Skelton recovered from surgery. He was also a guest on the three Funny Faces specials that Skelton produced for HBO. During the This Is It tour Jackson broke several records from ticket sales, and it was covered by almost every media, but we do not mentioning it on the lead. It focuses on the fictitious William McKinley High School glee club, the New Directions, which competes on the show choir competition circuit while its disparate members deal with social issues, especially regarding sexuality, race…
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mytaxi To Switch From Fixed Fee To Marketplace Model — Drivers To Choose 3%-30% Revenue Share
The taxi app wars are about to get a whole lot more interesting. German taxi startup mytaxi, founded in 2009 and currently operating in six markets with 10 million app downloads under its belt, is planning to switch from taking a fixed-fee cut of taxi journeys to a marketplace model where drivers choose the percentage revenue per journey to give over. Pricing can be set at between 3 percent and 30 percent of the final fare.
Driving jobs are then assigned by mytaxi taking the level of revenue share into consideration. mytaxi is claiming this real-time bidding system is the first example of an auction model being applied in the taxi industry.
Co-founder Sven Kuelper told TechCrunch it has just sent out new contracts to the 45,000 drivers using its app detailing the pricing model changes. The marketplace model is due to go live on February 1, with the mytaxi driver app getting an update on January 20 that will add the slider function (pictured above) to allow drivers to select their chosen revenue share.
Discussing why it’s making the switch from fixed-fee to flexible percentage, Kuelper said an auction model makes sense for the taxi industry being as the value of a taxi journey varies, depending on demand. And demand varies according to a plethora of factors such as time of day, season, location and other even more volatile variables such as the weather.
All of which, he argued, gives taxi drivers an incentive to be flexible in how much revenue they share with the company that’s sending driving jobs their way.
mytaxi has developed an algorithm to use the auction model to determine how to distribute jobs by taking the size of the revenue share a driver is willing to give into consideration — along with other factors crucial to ensuring a quality taxi service: namely the distance a taxi is away from the customer wanting a cab, and the quality rating the taxi has.
“It’s a delicate balance and we have to do our learnings,” said Kuelper. “At the beginning, for example, we will be really careful which means that the price [revenue percentage] hasn’t got the highest rating [within the algorithm] but the distance to the customer and quality has the higher rating. And then when we see it works out, then we change the balance.”
Being as it’s treading new ground, Kuelper said it’s hard to predict what sort of average revenue share mytaxi is going to get from the new pricing system — but he estimated it could be around 10 percent.
Of course there’s a risk it ends up at the lower end, too — with mytaxi then likely getting even less than its current fixed-fee cut of 79 cents per journey. Kuelper described that as the “biggest risk” of the new pricing model.
Another risk in switching from the simplicity of a fixed fee to a variable marketplace is creating pricing complexity that’s off-putting for drivers — being as they are continuously required to weigh up where to set the level of revenue share vs their driver peers.
But Kuelper argued that this is likely to be seen as a benefit by drivers, being as it gives them the flexibility to determine how much they want to make — and to increase their chances of making some money when there is low demand for cabs.
“There are certain advantages for the drivers that they really appreciate — in terms of flexibility and, for example, also that quality also matters. If they are offering a good quality with a brand new car and a nice driver they will also get more tours. This is also taken into consideration and this is something that they will like. And that they can really actively determine how much revenue they want to make,” he added.
mytaxi will also be providing a guideline for drivers as to the current market price for a journey — based on the percentages selected by other drivers in the area. These percentages will be displayed in the app, giving the driver more context when setting their own revenue share at that location and time of day.
mytaxi currently operates mostly in European cities but is also in the U.S. in Washington D.C. Its five current European markets are Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland and Spain, with its home market of Germany being the strongest.
Kuelper told TechCrunch mytaxi is eyeing up expansion into new markets but said it isn’t disclosing specific target markets at this point.
mytaxi competes against the likes of Hailo, Uber, GetTaxi and Easy Taxi to name a few of the hoards of taxi app startups in circulation, and has raised a total of $30 million funding since launch — with investors including T-Venture Holding (Deutsche Telekom), Daimler Mobility Services (Daimler), KfW, e42 GmbH, Lars Hinrichs (Cinco Capital).
Kuelper said it’s not currently looking to raise any more funding at this point, having closed its last tranche (a Series C) in October. He also said it’s anticipating becoming profitable by the middle or end of this year.
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Aug. 25, 2016 10:31 am
WebLinc went green with 12,000 volts of solar power
The 38 panels atop 100 Market St. now cover 75 percent of the office's energy needs.
Technical.ly Developers Conference
WebLinc's solar roof.
(Courtesy photo)
Old City ecommerce shop WebLinc plunked down $40,000 on some new gear for its 100 Market St. location.
No, they didn’t get a dozen vintage pinball machines or gold-dipped handles on all the doors. Rather, they installed 38 solar panels on the roof, which covers 75 percent of the office’s energy needs.
Keepin' it #? with our new #solar modules. ? Our new system will help power neighboring homes and businesses! photo cred: David Maialetti Read all about it on @phillydotcom Thanks @maykuth for the write up!
A photo posted by WebLinc Commerce (@weblinc_) on Aug 19, 2016 at 5:32pm PDT
In four days, the installation was up and running. Thanks to a 30 percent tax rebate on the technology, the investment will pay for itself in five and a half years, the company says.
“Solar is a personal interest of mine,” says cofounder Darren Hill. “For almost two years I had a small 100W panel powering everything on my desk.”
That small panel was taken down to make room for the larger, more sophisticated system that now lives atop the 133-year-old building, which houses 35 members of the company’s 160-person staff.
Hill says that, while he hopes other startups are incorporating these kinds of green strategies into their operations, he understands they’re not all in a place to make these kinds of investments. “I think everybody’s doing what they can,” Hill said. “It’s not something we could have afforded to do when we were a two-year-old company.”
Besides the installation of the panels, the company has also eliminated those pesky K-cups to reduce waste, switched to LED lighting and installed energy efficient windows. The solar project even got a “badass” write-up on Philly.com.
Companies: WebLinc
People: Darren Hill
HealthVerity tripled its Center City office space and has big hiring plans for 2020
Here’s how 3 companies designed (and deal with) their open office layouts
The City is looking for private-sector tech proposals on how to reduce trash and waste
Building conference rooms for the future
Here’s your comprehensive 2020 guide to Philadelphia’s coworking spaces
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Trending: Email Marketing Gadgets Branding Small Business Growth
Facebook Fans and Friends Sold by the Million
Published: Aug 23, 2010 Last Updated: Mar 12, 2013 by Marie Hernan In Small Business Press Releases 0
New York (PRESS RELEASE – August 23, 2010) – With US companies estimated to spend over $1.3 billion in social media in 2010, one 25-year-old social media entrepreneur is taking advantage of the fact that online businesses are willing to invest large sums of cash to buy “friends” and fans on Facebook.
Leon Hill, founder of social media marketing company uSocial.net (http://usocial.net) has been selling targeted Facebook fans to celebrities, governments, small businesses and Fortune 500 companies since late 2009. And according to the young entrepreneur, the ability to buy potential customers on the site was something that people were certainly looking for.
“We simply couldn’t have estimated the response to this service if we’d tried,” said Hill when asked about the launch of the new Facebook marketing service. “It was simply overwhelming.” The service provided by uSocial allows anyone to buy packages of fans — or “likes” — on Facebook targeted to the specific interests or geographic location a client requires. The company then delivers these fans to a specific Facebook profile by advertising it on the site, and through a myriad of other profiles.
“When put simply, all we do is to advertise a customer’s Facebook account to relevant and possibly interested people within the site, which drives traffic to their profile,” said Hill. “From there it’s up to the user to decide whether they want to become a connect.” While one might question just how many companies would be interested in the practice of buying fans on Facebook, uSocial’s figures reveal a substantial number. The company says that they’ve so far delivered over 90 million Facebook friends and fans to customer accounts, which accounts for almost 20% of all users on the site. Further reinforcing just how popular this practice is becoming, an early estimate by uSocial puts global spend on buying Facebook fans at $30 million for 2011.
MediaMobz Enhances Embedding Experience for Video Publishing Pages
Paydunk Launches Its Mobile Payment App
In the Spotlight: Hablamos Today Translates Spanish Into the Perfect Business
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Tag Archives: Indiana Longhorns
Stanley wants confidence, consistency for Shenandoah Raiders baseball
February 22, 2019 stvkrh905 1 Comment
Confidence and consistency.
They are the foundation of the baseball program Bruce Stanley has built as head coach at Shenandoah High School in Middletown, Ind.
Taking a cue from Tug McGraw and Stanley’s last college coach, Rich Maloney, the Raiders carry the motto: Ya Gotta Believe!
“I’m big on consistency. Make the routine play. Throw strikes. It’s basic things of baseball like competing and believing in yourself,” says Stanley, who enters his fifth season as head coach in 2019. The 1993 Shenandoah graduate has also also served two stints as an assistant at his alma mater. “Everything you attack in life, you gotta believe you’re going to do it and do it well.”
Shenandoah (enrollment around 450) is a member of the Mid-Eastern Conference (with Blue River Valley, Cowan, Daleville, Eastern Hancock, Monroe Central, Randolph Southern, Union of Modoc and Wapahani).
MEC teams play each other one time to determine the conference champion. The Raiders joined the league in 2017-18. Stanley says plans call for conference games to be played on Tuesdays and Thursdays in 2021.
Among Shenandoah’s non-conference foes are Alexandra-Monroe, Anderson, Centerville, Frankton, Hagerstown, Jay County, Mt. Vernon (Fortville), Muncie Central, New Castle, Pendleton Heights, Richmond, Rushville and Wes-Del.
The Raiders are part of an IHSAA Class 2A sectional grouping with Frankton, Lapel, Monroe Central, Muncie Burris and Wapahani. Shenandoah has won 12 sectional titles — the last in 2006.
Stanley’s assistant coaches are Ryan Painter (varsity) and Rusty Conner (junior varsity). The Raiders normally have about 30 players in the program each spring.
Shenandoah plays home games on its campus at the Dale Green Field complex. In recent years, the facility has gotten new dugouts, a new backstop and fencing has been replaced. This spring will bring a new scoreboard.
The feeder system for the high school includes Little League and Babe Ruth program in Middletown and several travel baseball organizations, including the Indiana Bulls, Indiana Longhorns, Indiana Nitro, Indiana Premier, Indiana Prospects and Midwest Astros.
Stanley, who was chosen for the 1993 Indiana High School Baseball Coaches Association North/South All-Star Series, was selected three times in the Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft — 1993 by the Pittsburgh Pirates (41st round), 1996 by the Baltimore Orioles (11th round) and 1997 by the Kansas City Royals (18th round).
The right-handed pitcher says the first time he was drafted, he planned to go to college (he earned four letters at Ball State University). The second time the money wasn’t right and the third time he decided it was time to move on and start a family.
Bruce and Holly Stanley, who attended Shenandoah and Ball State together, have two children — Cy (18) and Meg (15). Cy Stanley is a freshman left-handed pitcher at Taylor University. Meg is a sophomore softball player at Shenandoah.
Other recent Raider player now in college baseball is shortstop-second baseman Max McKee (Indiana University Kokomo).
Current Shenandoah senior pitchers — left-hander Hadden Myers (Indiana Tech) and right-hander Gavin Patrick (Wabash College for baseball and football) — are also college-bound.
Pat Quinn was Ball State’s head coach when Stanley arrived in Muncie.
Stanley appreciates the way Quinn instilled work ethic and competitiveness.
“(Quinn) was a big influence,” says Stanley. “He showed me how to go about things in a professional way.
“He brought intensity to the game. It really helped me be successful.”
Stanley says Maloney was also intense and set expectations high.
“He was good at bringing about the family atmosphere,” says Stanley. “We were working for each other. He was a great mentor, leader and father figure.
“I’d have run through a wall for him repeatedly.”
Stanley has been a teacher for 20 years. He spent 14 years at South View Elementary in Muncie and is in his sixth year as a special education teacher at Shenandoah.
Bruce Stanley (left) coached his son at Shenandoah High School in Middleton, Ind. Cy Stanley (right) now plays for Taylor University.
Holly and Bruce Stanley both attended Shenandoah High School and Ball State University. The couple have two children — Cy and Meg. Bruce is head baseball coach and a special education teacher at Shenandoah.
AlexandriaAnderson High SchoolBall State UniversityBaltimore OriolesBlue River ValleyBruce StanleyCentervilleConfidenceConsistencyCowanCy StanleyDale Green FieldDalevilleEastern HancockFootballFranktonGavin PatrickHadden MyersHagerstownHolly StanleyIHSBCA North/South All-Star SeriesIndiana BullsIndiana High School Baseball Coaches AssociationIndiana LonghornsIndiana NitroIndiana PremierIndiana ProspectsIndiana TechIndiana University KokomoJay CountyKansas City RoyalsMax McKeeMeg StanleyMid-Eastern ConferenceMiddletownMidwest AstrosMLB DraftMonroe CentralMt. Vernon (Fortville)MuncieMuncie CentralNew CastlePat QuinnPendleton HeightsPittsburgh PiratesRandolph SouthernRich MaloneyRichmondRushvilleSectional championsShenandoahSoftballSouth View ElementarySpecial educationTaylor UniversityTug McGrawUnion (Modoc)Wabash CollegeWapahaniWes-DelYa Gotta Believe
Learning follows right-hander Lannoo wherever Terre Haute South Vigo, Cornell grad goes
May 30, 2018 stvkrh905 Leave a comment
Peter Lannoo has long embraced a love for learning.
The son of Michael Lannoo (Professor of Anatomy and Cell Biology at the Indiana University School of Medicine-Terre Haute on the campus of Indiana State University) and (biology researcher) Susan Lannoo, Peter entered math contests and studied Classic Greek and Latin while at Terre Haute South Vigo High School.
After graduating from South Vigo in 2013, Lannoo went to an Ivy League school — Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. — and began his path as a biology major with a concentration on Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and a business minor.
He has gained credentials in research and been part of published findings.
“My four years at Cornell definitely benefitted me,” says Lannoo. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”
Michael and Susan Lannoo’s only child went to college for academics. But he did not leave baseball behind.
After playing informal club ball his first year at Cornell (2013-14), Lannoo made the Big Red varsity as a pitcher, playing for coaches Bill Walkenbach, Tom Ford and Dan Pepicelli.
The 6-foot-6 right-hander appeared in 33 games (26 in relief) in 2015, 2016 and 2017, juggling his studies and baseball.
“It’s an exercise in time management,” says Lannoo. “It helps in baseball and life in general.
“Time is precious and has to be managed.”
After Lannoo earned all-Ivy League first-team honors with eight saves and a 3.86 ERA in 17 appearances as a senior, the San Francisco Giants were impressed enough to select Lannoo out of Cornell in the 28th round of the 2017 Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft.
The big righty made 14 appearances (nine in relief) at Short-Season Class-A Salem-Keizer in 2017 with a 1-3 record and one save, a 4.28 earned run average, 26 strikeouts and 12 walks in 40 innings.
After breaking spring training camp in 2018 with Low Class-A Augusta, spending one game at Double-A Richmond and returning to Augusta, Lannoo is now in the bullpen at High-A San Jose. He has combined for 14 appearances (all in relief) with a 2-3 record, 2.76 ERA, 29 strikeouts and seven walks in 28 innings.
“It’s quite a journey,” says Lannoo, 23. “I haven’t gotten to look back on it much. I keep prepping for what’s next.
“Everyday I need to do something above and beyond to get me to the next level.”
Lannoo does all the off-field things he needs to hone his craft and then goes onto the field with the idea of having fun.
“The actual work comes in weight room, eating right and in the bullpen,” says Lannoo. “You can’t worry too much about what happens in the game.”
He also puts an emphasis on mental toughness.
“The mental game really helps when I’m in a jam,” says Lannoo, who has studied how other pro athletes, including Tom Brady, have prepared themselves. “It helps me slow things down and take it one pitch at a time. It’s easy to get overwhelmed.”
“It’s that next pitch mentality. My college coaches really helped develop that in me.”
As far as developing his pitches, Lannoo is trying to strike a balance between his four-seam fastball, slider and change-up
“I’m working on throwing my off-speed pitches for strikes early in the count,” says Lannoo. “It’s about pitch mix and not being predictable. If you fall into patterns here, you get punished for it.”
And he’s always learning. During long bus rides or quiet time in the morning before he heads to the ballpark, Lannoo can often be found reading.
“It’s fun to learn stuff,” says Lannoo. “I read books and expand what I know.”
Lannoo was born in Muncie and moved with his parents to Terre Haute after his elementary school years.
Before the move, Michael Lannoo was a professor in the IU School of Medicine-Muncie on the Ball State University campus.
Peter played travel baseball with Muncie-based Indiana Longhorns then Babe Ruth baseball before spending the summers after his junior and senior years of high school with Terre Haute American Legion Post 346.
His head coach at Terre Haute South Vigo was Kyle Kraemer — a mentor he maintains contact with to this day.
“He was a great coach,” says Lannoo of Kraemer. “He taught me how to win. We had some really good seasons under him. We were (Metropolitan Interscholastic Conference) champions my senior year.
“He was really competitive. He brings out the best in his players.”
While at Cornell, Lannoo pitched in the summer for the Victor (N.Y.) RailRiders of the Perfect Game Collegiate Baseball League in 2015 and North Adams (Mass.) Steeple Cats of the New England Collegiate Baseball League in 2016.
Peter Lannoo, a graduate of Terre Haute South Vigo High School and Cornell University, is in his second season in the San Francisco Giants organization. (Augusta GreenJackets Photo)
Augusta GreenJacketsBall State UniversityBig RedBill WalkenbachBiologyClassic GreekCornell UniversityDan PepicelliEcologyIndiana LonghornsIndiana State UniversityIndiana University School of MedicineLatinMental gameMental Toughness TrainingMetropolitan Interscholastic ConferenceMichael LannooMLB DraftNew England Collegiate Baseball LeagueNorth Adams Steeple CatsPerfect Game Collegiate Baseball LeaguePeter LannooRichmond Flying SquirrelsSalem-Keizer VolcanoesSan Francisco GiantsSan Jose GiantsSusan LannooTerre Haute American Legion Post 346Terre Haute South VigoTom FordVictor RailRiders
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George’s Final Days
Posted on November 17, 2018 November 30, 2019 by rebeccadeniston
It’s Mr. Hudson!
Doris Day and Rock Hudson are a perennially favorite screen team. They only made three movies together, but they’re all memorable and fun. The last of them was 1964’s Send Me No Flowers, a tale of hypochondria, hysteria, and hilarity.
George (Rock Hudson) has it tough. He may live in a perfect house with a perfect wife, but his sinuses hurt. His tummy gives him trouble. He’s got pains in his chest. His medicine cabinet looks like the storeroom at a Walgreen’s. While he’s in the shower taking his temperature, his wife, Judy (Doris Day) gets locked out of the house in her nightgown, giving the kid who delivers the dry-cleaning a long ogle. To add insult to injury, she’s dropped all the nice health foods the milkman just delivered and then stepped in them.
Dr. Morrissey (Edward Andrews) says George has indigestion, and he’s not terribly concerned. He’s got a fishing trip coming up. Take a pill, George. You’re fine.
What’s up, Doc?
While he’s in the bathroom, George overhears the doctor getting a call about a bad cardiology report. The patient has a few weeks to live. George mistakenly believes the call is about him, and glumly rides the train home. He breaks the news to his best friend and next-door neighbor, Arnold (Tony Randall) and swears him to secrecy. Even so, he’s apprehensive. How is he going to tell Judy that he’s dying? How is he going to handle all the crying and wailing? George and Arnold make a beeline for the bar.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Judy is calmly sitting at the kitchen table putting sugar in George’s sleeping pills. She meets George at the train later to find him helping Arnold, who’s a little tipsy after one too many martinis.
How was your day, darling?
Like good neighbors, Judy and George help Arnold home, and then invite him to dinner, where George and Arnold secretly muse about what George should do next. George’s biggest worry is that Judy will get mixed up with some gold-digger after he’s gone. That night he dreams about Judy bebopping around the living room with the kid who delivers the dry-cleaning while they wait to collect his life insurance money. He wakes up from his nightmare and to his horror finds Judy doing the cha cha in her sleep.
First thing’s first, though, and before George can secure Judy a new husband he needs to secure himself a final resting place, and Green Hills promises to be a “home away from home.” Mr. Akins (Paul Lynde) treats the place like a resort or a luxury apartment, and tells him breezily about whole families coming in together to pick out burial plots. The kids have a ball, he says.
A grave with a view.
Feeling more than a little weirded out, George says he wants a plot for himself, Judy, and Judy’s future second husband so there’s no question where Judy will be buried. Mr. Akins is ever so slightly taken aback, but gives George a nice spot on a hill. It’s got a great view, he says. George forks over a thousand dollars. He doesn’t want Judy to know. Mr. Akins is overjoyed. “Well this will give her a real thrill. It makes a very thoughtful gift.”
Mmmkay. With that out of the way, it’s time to find Judy a new fella. George and Arnold mine their country club’s rolls for possible candidates. There’s Paul Pendergass, a good-looking guy with a great smile who plays a fine game of tennis. His only shortcoming is that he’s a klutz–a flying leap over a tennis court net ends up in a face plant. There’s Harry Henderson, who looks promising until Arnold spies him cheating at golf.
Fancy meeting you here.
Prince Charming enters on a charger, literally. Judy is playing golf by herself when the brakes fail on her golf cart and she goes careening down a hill. George and Arnold speed after her on their own golf cart, but Judy is saved by a ruggedly handsome stranger on horseback, who plucks her off the cart and brings her to a nice, gentle stop. The man surprises everyone by planting a big ol’ beso on Judy. Judy looks ready to deck this guy when she suddenly recognizes him: He’s Burt Power (Clint Walker), her college sweetheart. And whaddaya know, he’s still single. George insists Burt come to the country club dance that night.
Things are falling into place for George. He’s got a burial plot, and Judy’s next hubby is lined up. The only thing left to do is to tape a last message to Judy, which he does right before the dance, bringing tears to Arnold’s eyes.
It’s not what you think, dear.
At the dance, George zealously makes sure Judy and Burt still get along after their years apart. He pushes Judy towards Burt so much that she begins to suspect George is having an affair. Judy bolts for the parking lot to make a quick getaway.
The truth comes out, right before Judy drives away in someone else’s car, and she reacts just the way George predicted…lots of tears. She insists George use a wheelchair and makes plans to take George to the Mayo Clinic.
The good doctor looks a wee bit sunburned.
Predictably, though, Dr. Morrissey comes back from his fishing trip and brings George and Judy some of the fish he caught. Judy is incensed at him for leaving a dying patient, which leads to the real truth coming out. Judy’s reaction is, well, explosive, and she has a few choice words and gestures for Mr. Hypochondria.
According to TCM, Send Me No Flowers was when Rock Hudson started getting more comfortable with comedy, and it helps that he was ably supported by more seasoned comic players like Tony Randall. Sturdy dialogue did him plenty of favors, too.
Buh-bye, medicine cabinet.
Hudson as George is a treat. While he’s not the type to make lots of pratfalls like Red Skelton or big deer-in-headlights facial expressions like Cary Grant, his comic delivery is on point. I like that his character checks the hypochondria long enough to realize what he’s missing. Even the way a coffee table feels suddenly means something, and one gets the inkling that the stuffed medicine chest isn’t long for the world.
What’s nice about Send Me No Flowers is that it’s a great example of black humor presented in a classy way. Death isn’t exactly a light subject, and neither is disease, but it’s handled nicely in Flowers. When the cemetery manager is played by Uncle Arthur, nothing is going to be serious, like, at all. Plus, Doris Day and Hudson are so charming together that we can’t help but root for them, and screenwriter Julius Epstein’s script is very clever and fun. Norman Jewison’s direction is always effective, as he knows how to let a story play out. The only thing I would say is that it’s a wee bit paint-by-numbers, but I was having such a good time I didn’t care. This film is totally worth every minute.
Are we good, honey?
For more of the Rock Hudson Blogathon, please visit Crystal at In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood and Michaela at Love Letters To Old Hollywood. Thanks for hosting, ladies–it was fun as always! Thanks for reading, all, and I hope you’ll come back tomorrow, because a new post is on the way…
This film is available on DVD.
Posted in 1960s, 2018, Blogathons, MoviesTagged Doris Day, Julius Epstein, Movies, Norman Jewison, Rock Hudson, Send Me No Flowers, Tony Randall15 Comments
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15 thoughts on “George’s Final Days”
Patricia Nolan-Hall (@CaftanWoman) says:
Thank you so much. This is one of my all-time-favourite performances from Rock Hudson. He is just delightful in this role.
You’re welcome, Patricia–glad you enjoyed it! I’d never seen it before, so it was a treat.
Emily Kitsch says:
Wonderful review! I’m so glad I found your blog through the Rock Hudson Blogathon! 🙂 I love this movie and actually found myself getting choked up the first time I watched it, even though I knew it was a comedy! Rock Hudson and Doris Day were such a great team, it’s really too bad they only got to make three films together but I absolutely love the three they were able to make, they never fail to cheer me up when I’m feeling down in the dumps!
RIP, Rock. ❤
Thank you, Emily–that’s nice of you! And I agree. Rock and Doris were so cute together. They were obviously having a blast in those movies. 🙂
This is a predictable film but, like you said, who cares? It’s so much fun.
One thing that really impresses me about Rock Hudson in this film is that he’s not all “I’m the most handsome guy in the room”. Some actors seem to wink to the audience in this way, but not Hudson. He’s immersed in his scenes and doesn’t undercut his performance with self-knowing irony. Man, I have got to see this one again!
Yeah, that’s true–Rock really brought it. I think his earnestness is why it all works.
Pingback: THE ROCK HUDSON BLOGATHON HAS ARRIVED – In The Good Old Days Of Classic Hollywood.
Bob Johns 🎃 (@Mda4life) says:
Looks like another I need to add to my watch list!
Great–hope you like it! 🙂
palewriter2 says:
I loved reading this! I laughed so much at the little bits of humour you sprinkled throughout. Especially the bit where you said “Mmmmkay”. This sounds an absolute delight, will have to watch it sometime.
Thanks so much! Hope you like watching it. 🙂
First of all, your title cracked me up. Secondly, I’m so glad you enjoyed this film! Thirdly, this is a perfect example of why I love Rock. He was the perfect mixture of goofball and sex symbol, yet he was still modest and kind. Although Send Me No Flowers is my least favorite of his collaborations with Day (don’t get me wrong, they’re all great!), I think it might contain his best performance out of the three.
Thanks for contributing this fun review to our blogathon!
You’re very welcome, Michaela! It was fun. I’m going to have to see more Rock now. And thanks–glad you enjoyed it. 🙂
hamlettethedame says:
I NEED to see this. Wow. It sounds just exactly like something I would dig. Thanks for this fab review! Off to see if I can get my hands on a copy.
Thanks, and that’s great! Hope you enjoy it. 🙂
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Food Tales
Mighty Meaty
Chicken, Ducky & Turkey
Cooked with Vegetables
Superb Soups
Learn to Cook in 10 Weeks
Tasty Safari at CASA Veneracion
I Used to Travel With a dSLR. Not Anymore.
Picture Prompts and Inspired Travel Writing, Part 3: Associate the Image with Previous Experiences
Picture Prompts and Inspired Travel Writing, Part 2: Add Historical Context
Picture Prompts and Inspired Travel Writing, Part 1: How to Describe an Image
Connie Veneracion
My brother (and only sibling) and his family were over at our house for New Year’s Eve. Among the many topics we talked about was travel. Mostly, about how climbing up to some photo-worthy spot has become too much effort. In China, he said, he had no previous idea about the long climb to reach the Wall to walk on it, and he was carrying so much photo gear.
I sympathized and understood. That’s why I don’t bring a dSLR anymore when I travel. I’m 55, he’s a year younger, and it’s not like we’re gym buffs who train physically and mentally for trips like climbing Mount Everest. We’re just photography-obsessed tourists. And he has always been more serious about photography than I ever was. How we both ended up as lawyers, I’m still trying to comprehend.
There was a time when it wasn’t possible to take good quality photos without a big camera. Generations that grew up in the Age of Instagram probably won’t believe it, but we who had been taking photos long before mobile phones with good cameras became de rigueur used to travel with tons of photo equipment.
Pre-dSLR
When our daughters were much younger, summer vacations often meant going to the beach. I had a Pentax SLR which was rarely without a roll of film loaded in it. We also had a Sony video camera.
Photography back then was an expensive hobby. Not only was the equipment expensive, so was film processing. But when you’re a parent with young children, well, you want to capture every moment. We still have shelves and shelves of photo albums from those years. I ambitiously dreamed of scanning the photos once but, gee… Perhaps, when I’m too old to travel, I’ll get back to the scanning project. But not now. Not just yet.
The transition to digital photography
When the first affordable digital cameras hit the market, I was ecstatic. Finally, no more rolls of film and, more importantly, no more expensive film processing.
My first digital camera was not a dSLR. It was point-and-shoot Olympus. It was with that camera that I started a food blog toward the end of 2002.
A digital camera made learning photography guilt free. The subject (often, my girls and, occasionally, our meals) could be photographed from different angles and, unlike shooting with film, mistakes did not add to the cost. Bad photos could be deleted instantly and the experiment could be repeated until the perfect shot was taken.
Two point-and-shoot digital cameras later, food blogging was a career. My husband, Speedy, bought me my first dSLR, the Canon EOS 350D. Over the next five years, I upgraded to the EOS 40D and, finally, the 5D Mark II.
The dSLR addiction
Me and my daughter, Sam. Panay Island, 2008
I always brought my dSLR when I traveled. When I went on a cruise, I even brought two cameras: a dSLR and the smaller Canon Powershot G10.
Heavy, yes, but it had become a habit. By the time the girls were in high school, we were all photo junkies in the family. You probably won’t believe the amount of photo gear that we used to bring on trips. Each of us carried a camera bag with at least one extra lens, battery chargers, lens filters… On road trips and even on vacations that required plane rides.
(If you think that’s too much, you ought to hear about the equipment that my brother brings when he travels. He brings his tripod too.)
But early in 2014, Speedy and I drove to Baguio for a wedding and I purposely left the dSLR behind. It wasn’t an easy decision for me. A dSLR had always been a necessary component of every trip in the past. But wearing formal clothes and carrying a dSLR around at the party didn’t seem like a good idea. Besides, by that time, I had been using the G10 for a while and I was confident that it could take good enough photos even in low light. I wasn’t disappointed.
In the summer of the same year, girl friends and I flew to Bacolod and I did it again. No dSLR; just the G10. A few months later, I was off to Boracay with only the G10 in my bag.
It was like rehab and I was getting over my dSLR addiction. Slowly but surely, I learned to rely on the heavy camera less and less. In time, I was using the dSLR exclusively to shoot photos for the food blog. At home.
When I went to Hong Kong with girl friends, I went a step farther. I couldn’t find the G10 (my daughter borrowed it weeks earlier) so I left for the airport with only my mobile phone. A Sony Xperia with a kickass camera.
I realized that travel without a heavy dSLR camera was quite a liberating experience.
Today, I travel with a Canon EOS M100
Looking back, there are two things that made me decide a dSLR is not necessary for travel.
Traveling with a Canon EOS M100. Nara, Japan. 2018.
First, digital technology has progressed so much and so fast that many mobile phones today have truly remarkable cameras. And, for those of us who want more control than mobile phones can offer, there are compact mirrorless cameras with full manual control and interchangeable lenses that don’t weigh a ton. I bought a Canon EOS M100 and brought it to Japan. The M100 and iPhone were all I needed.
Second, and this is what really started this post… I’m 55. There are things that are easy for a 35-year-old mother of toddlers that aren’t so easy for a 55-year-old. Carrying a heavy bag of photo equipment is one of them. My dear brother should think about that.
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About Tasty Safari | Retirement With Purpose | Privacy & TOS | Get In Touch (I don't accept guest posts, I don't give free links and I don't do link exchanges. Exclude me from your round-ups too. Thank you.)
Except for public domain videos, stock images and screen grabs, all images and text © Connie Veneracion.
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Corporate Tax Solutions | Thomson Reuters
Lenovo, Inc. Integrates Transaction Tax Solutions Globally for the New World
Learn how Lenovo overcame the logistic and geographic challenges of consolidating corporate tax processes to achieve alignment of its tax strategies with business processes.
A global business with global challenges
Maintaining compliance with cross-border tax requirements and determining sales and use tax, goods and services taxes, and value-added taxes is challenging. Lenovo, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of personal computers, overcame these challenges by automating their processes with ONESOURCE™ Determination. When Lenovo acquired IBM’s personal computing division in 2005, it became a true global business, with strong consumer and emerging market leadership and an efficient supply chain. Today, the company’s sales order and manufacturing processes are distributed around the world, with principal operations in Morrisville, North Carolina, Beijing, Paris, and Singapore, and manufacturing facilities in China, India, Poland, and Mexico. Lenovo’s new global presence means new opportunities for growth, more agile manufacturing, and more complex taxes. The challenge was to streamline and integrate the company’s transaction tax processes with its finance applications on a global basis.
Integrating ONESOURCE Determination with SAP
Lenovo uses SAP as its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, but required a solution to automate the determination, calculation, and recording of U.S. sales and use tax and international VAT. Although SAP can calculate standard tax rates, there were other global tax compliance challenges, such as constantly changing tax rates and rules across multiple countries. “We were looking to extend the tax determination power of SAP,” says Dennis Culin, director of business transformation at Lenovo.
We wanted to use a simple system, a single set of rules that the tax department could control — not IT and not the end user — to make sure that our tax liability was accurate.
Lenovo selected ONESOURCE Determination, which interfaces with SAP to centralize tax determination and provide a single compliance database for U.S. and international transaction taxes.
We need to make sure our taxability is calculated correctly the first time, without having to recalculate or fix things on the back end,” says Culin.
“We also wanted to avoid or at least limit human intervention with the tax determination. The user should not have to make a determination on taxability by going through and picking a tax code. We needed a system that would make that determination based on predefined rules established by our tax department.”
Lenovo’s transactional and master data is always interfaced from SAP to ONESOURCE Determination, which means that tax decisions are made by ONESOURCE Determination, but the master data and related mapping tables remain within the ERP system. “We wanted all the source data to be in SAP, and then transmitted over,” explains Culin. “This way, the calculations can be made, stored in the audit database, and then the logistics records are sent back to SAP and stored there.”
The ONESOURCE integration for SAP interface supports tax calls from sales and distribution (SD), materials management (MM), and financial (FI) modules of SAP. “We use generic input and output tax codes that are not rate specific,” says Culin. “We use two tax codes — one for purchases and one for sales — and everything transfers over into ONESOURCE Determination, so we can make sure that the decision is always made there.”
ONESOURCE Determination holds all necessary tax rates and exemptions and automatically determines address jurisdiction for vendors, customers, cost centers, and plants. “We also link to SAP CRM to do our sales quotes and invoices,” says Culin.
“Whenever we take a quote or make an order, SAP CRM will make a tax call to ONESOURCE Determination to make sure we’ve put the correct value on the quote or order. In most of the countries where we do business, we’re also implementing complete ecommerce capabilities, and we’re doing sales quotes, orders, and invoices in that environment as well. And again, the call is being made to ONESOURCE Determination anytime a transaction is changed or saved.”
In addition to tracking input and output taxes, import and export, and revenue charges, Lenovo is using custom capabilities within ONESOURCE Determination to automatically determine transactional environmental handling fees required by customs authorities, saving additional administrative time.
The financially transformed Lenovo is now using ONESOURCE Determination at its operations in China, Singapore, India, and Canada, and is in the process of going live throughout the Asia/ Pacific region.
“The majority of activity in our tax work is controlled by our tax department within ONESOURCE Determination — it’s not controlled or touched by SAP,” Culin reiterates. Lenovo’s operational headquarters in Singapore served as the proving ground for the ONESOURCE Determination solution. “Now that we’ve completed what we call our global solution design, we’ve configured ONESOURCE Determination so that our transaction tax processes are extremely well defined. Going forward, deploying the solution to the rest of the countries in which we do business will be much easier, and we’ll be able to take more of a ‘cookie-cutter’ approach — only localizing as required.”
Lenovo will soon roll out ONESOURCE Determination to its manufacturing facilities in Mexico, Poland, and Brazil. “Then we’ll continue on our next steps and deploy in the Americas and EMEA,” says Culin. “Basically, we’re moving a $16 billion company onto its own business systems, and we’ve had to do that with limited downtime to make sure that our customer needs were being met while we were deploying our strategic software.”
New thinking for a new world
Lenovo’s slogan, “new world, new thinking,” is a perfect way to sum up the company’s approach to transaction taxes, says Culin.
We’re trying our best to bring new thinking to this new digital world, so we’re working with partners like Thomson Reuters to collaborate globally and to deliver value by combining the strengths of multiple cultures and embracing emerging markets.
Lenovo’s vision is to create personal devices more people are inspired to own, a culture more people aspire to join and an enduring, trusted business that is well respected around the world. This vision guides them in pursuit of their mission to become one of the world’s great personal technology companies. Visit lenovo.com for more information.
Learn more about ONESOURCE tax determination
Use our global tax determination software to calculate and record sales, use and excise tax, VAT, and GST.
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Historic Toronto
Information on Toronto's history
The Villages Within
Toronto murder mystery: “The Reluctant Virgin”
There Never Was A Better Time
Books about Toronto—Arse Over Teakettle
Category Archives: George Brown House Toronto
Toronto’s architectural gems–the George Brown home on Beverley Street.
The magnificent three-story house at 186 Beverley Street, a short distance north of Dundas Street, was the home of the George Brown, a father of Confederation. Born in Scotland in 1818, George Brown immigrated with his father, Peter Brown, to New York in 1837, the year of the rebellion in Upper Canada that was led by William Lyon Mackenzie.
In 1843, he and his father relocated to Toronto, where George became a liberal Reformer. In 1844 he founded the newspaper, “The Globe,” which gave him a powerful platform to promote his political views. The newspaper eventually amalgamated with “The Mail” to become “The Globe and Mail.” However, Brown’s personal influence exceeded that of his newspaper. He strongly advocated the dissolution of the the Act of Union that had become law three years before he arrived in Toronto. It joined Upper Canada (Ontario) and Lower Canada (Quebec) into a single province called The Canadas (Canada West and Canada East). He favoured a broader union that would encompass all the British American colonies. In 1851 he was elected to the Legislature and in the years ahead played a major role in Confederation, thus becoming one of our nation’s founding fathers. In 1880, a radical employee of “The Globe” shot George Brown in the leg. The wound became gangrenous and six weeks later he died in his home on Beverley Street.
His formal, red-brick home can be seen on Beverley Street today. Designed by William Irving and Edward F. Hutchins, it was constructed between the years 1874 and 1876. It has a Mansard roof and is a fine example of domestic Second-Empire style architecture. It contains 9000 square feet and has 15 fireplaces. The imposing solid stone entranceway seems more appropriate for a commercial building than that of a private residence. The stonework around the windows is equally impressive. Duncan Coulson and his family occupied the residence between the years 1889 and 1916. Then, its 3-storey space was a school for the blind. The home was used as a soldiers’ rehabilitation centre for the blind between the years 1919 to 1956. In the 1980s, a disastrous fire caused extensive damage to the house, its restoration carried out between 1987 and 1988. The house is now owned by the Ontario Heritage Foundation for office space and conferences. It contains 2000 of George Brown’s personal books.
The George Brown House with its wrought-iron fence.
The Mansard roof North facade of the home
To view the Home Page for this blog: https://tayloronhistory.wordpress.com/
For more information about the topics explored on this blog:
https://tayloronhistory.wordpress.com/2016/03/02/tayloronhistory-comcheck-it-out/
Books by the Blog’s Author
“Toronto’s Theatres and the Golden Age of the Silver Screen,” explores 50 of Toronto’s old theatres and contains over 80 archival photographs of the facades, marquees and interiors of the theatres. It relates anecdotes and stories by the author and others who experienced these grand old movie houses.
To place an order for this book, published by History Press:
https://www.historypress.net/catalogue/bookstore/books/Toronto-Theatres-and-the-Golden-Age-of-the-Silver-Screen/9781626194502 .
Book also available in most book stores such as Chapter/Indigo, the Bell Lightbox and AGO Book Shop. It can also be ordered by phoning University of Toronto Press, Distribution: 416-667-7791 (ISBN 978.1.62619.450.2)
Another book on theatres, published by Dundurn Press, is entitled, “Toronto’s Movie Theatres of Yesteryear—Brought Back to Thrill You Again.” It explores 81 theatres and contains over 125 archival photographs, with interesting anecdotes about these grand old theatres and their fascinating histories. Note: an article on this book was published in Toronto Life Magazine, October 2016 issue.
For a link to the article published by |Toronto Life Magazine: torontolife.com/…/photos-old-cinemas-doug–taylor–toronto-local-movie-theatres-of-y…
The book is available at local book stores throughout Toronto or for a link to order this book: https://www.dundurn.com/books/Torontos-Local-Movie-Theatres-Yesteryear
Another publication, “Toronto Then and Now,” published by Pavilion Press (London, England) explores 75 of the city’s heritage sites. It contains archival and modern photos that allow readers to compare scenes and discover how they have changed over the decades. Note: a review of this book was published in Spacing Magazine, October 2016. For a link to this review:
spacing.ca/toronto/2016/09/02/reading-list-toronto-then-and-now/
For further information on ordering this book, follow the link to Amazon.com here or contact the publisher directly by the link below:
http://www.ipgbook.com/toronto–then-and-now—products-9781910904077.php?page_id=21
Posted by Doug Taylor on July 5, 2012 in architecture toronto, Doug Taylor, Toronto history, George Brown House Toronto, historic Toronto, local history Toronto, tayloronhistory.com, Toronto, toronto architecture, Toronto cultural scene, Toronto history, toronto's heritage buildings
Tags: George Brown House Toronto
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Inverse theorems for sets and measures of polynomial growth
7 July, 2015 in math.CO, math.PR, paper | Tags: additive combinatorics, Gromov's theorem | by Terence Tao | 4 comments
I’ve just uploaded to the arXiv my paper “Inverse theorems for sets and measures of polynomial growth“. This paper was motivated by two related questions. The first question was to obtain a qualitatively precise description of the sets of polynomial growth that arise in Gromov’s theorem, in much the same way that Freiman’s theorem (and its generalisations) provide a qualitatively precise description of sets of small doubling. The other question was to obtain a non-abelian analogue of inverse Littlewood-Offord theory.
Let me discuss the former question first. Gromov’s theorem tells us that if a finite subset of a group exhibits polynomial growth in the sense that grows polynomially in , then the group generated by is virtually nilpotent (the converse direction also true, and is relatively easy to establish). This theorem has been strengthened a number of times over the years. For instance, a few years ago, I proved with Shalom that the condition that grew polynomially in could be replaced by for a single , as long as was sufficiently large depending on (in fact we gave a fairly explicit quantitative bound on how large needed to be). A little more recently, with Breuillard and Green, the condition was weakened to , that is to say it sufficed to have polynomial relative growth at a finite scale. In fact, the latter paper gave more information on in this case, roughly speaking it showed (at least in the case when was a symmetric neighbourhood of the identity) that was “commensurate” with a very structured object known as a coset nilprogression. This can then be used to establish further control on . For instance, it was recently shown by Breuillard and Tointon (again in the symmetric case) that if for a single that was sufficiently large depending on , then all the for have a doubling constant bounded by a bound depending only on , thus for all .
In this paper we are able to refine this analysis a bit further; under the same hypotheses, we can show an estimate of the form
for all and some piecewise linear, continuous, non-decreasing function with , where the error is bounded by a constant depending only on , and where has at most pieces, each of which has a slope that is a natural number of size . To put it another way, the function for behaves (up to multiplicative constants) like a piecewise polynomial function, where the degree of the function and number of pieces is bounded by a constant depending on .
One could ask whether the function has any convexity or concavity properties. It turns out that it can exhibit either convex or concave behaviour (or a combination of both). For instance, if is contained in a large finite group, then will eventually plateau to a constant, exhibiting concave behaviour. On the other hand, in nilpotent groups one can see convex behaviour; for instance, in the Heisenberg group , if one sets to be a set of matrices of the form for some large (abusing the notation somewhat), then grows cubically for but then grows quartically for .
To prove this proposition, it turns out (after using a somewhat difficult inverse theorem proven previously by Breuillard, Green, and myself) that one has to analyse the volume growth of nilprogressions . In the “infinitely proper” case where there are no unexpected relations between the generators of the nilprogression, one can lift everything to a simply connected Lie group (where one can take logarithms and exploit the Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff formula heavily), eventually describing with fair accuracy by a certain convex polytope with vertices depending polynomially on , which implies that depends polynomially on up to constants. If one is not in the “infinitely proper” case, then at some point the nilprogression develops a “collision”, but then one can use this collision to show (after some work) that the dimension of the “Lie model” of has dropped by at least one from the dimension of (the notion of a Lie model being developed in the previously mentioned paper of Breuillard, Greenm, and myself), so that this sort of collision can only occur a bounded number of times, with essentially polynomial volume growth behaviour between these collisions.
The arguments also give a precise description of the location of a set for which grows polynomially in . In the symmetric case, what ends up happening is that becomes commensurate to a “coset nilprogression” of bounded rank and nilpotency class, whilst is “virtually” contained in a scaled down version of that nilprogression. What “virtually” means is a little complicated; roughly speaking, it means that there is a set of bounded cardinality such that for all . Conversely, if is virtually contained in , then is commensurate to (and more generally, is commensurate to for any natural number ), giving quite a (qualitatively) precise description of in terms of coset nilprogressions.
The main tool used to prove these results is the structure theorem for approximate groups established by Breuillard, Green, and myself, which roughly speaking asserts that approximate groups are always commensurate with coset nilprogressions. A key additional trick is a pigeonholing argument of Sanders, which in this context is the assertion that if is comparable to , then there is an between and such that is very close in size to (up to a relative error of ). It is this fact, together with the comparability of to a coset nilprogression , that allows us (after some combinatorial argument) to virtually place inside .
Similar arguments apply when discussing iterated convolutions of (symmetric) probability measures on a (discrete) group , rather than combinatorial powers of a finite set. Here, the analogue of volume is given by the negative power of the norm of (thought of as a non-negative function on of total mass 1). One can also work with other norms here than , but this norm has some minor technical conveniences (and other measures of the “spread” of end up being more or less equivalent for our purposes). There is an analogous structure theorem that asserts that if spreads at most polynomially in , then is “commensurate” with the uniform probability distribution on a coset progression , and itself is largely concentrated near . The factor of here is the familiar scaling factor in random walks that arises for instance in the central limit theorem. The proof of (the precise version of) this statement proceeds similarly to the combinatorial case, using pigeonholing to locate a scale where has almost the same norm as .
A special case of this theory occurs when is the uniform probability measure on elements of and their inverses. The probability measure is then the distribution of a random product , where each is equal to one of or its inverse , selected at random with drawn uniformly from with replacement. This is very close to the Littlewood-Offord situation of random products where each is equal to or selected independently at random (thus is now fixed to equal rather than being randomly drawn from . In the case when is abelian, it turns out that a little bit of Fourier analysis shows that these two random walks have “comparable” distributions in a certain sense. As a consequence, the results in this paper can be used to recover an essentially optimal abelian inverse Littlewood-Offord theorem of Nguyen and Vu. In the nonabelian case, the only Littlewood-Offord theorem I am aware of is a recent result of Tiep and Vu for matrix groups, but in this case I do not know how to relate the above two random walks to each other, and so we can only obtain an analogue of the Tiep-Vu results for the symmetrised random walk instead of the ordered random walk .
254A, Notes 9: Applications of the structural theory of approximate groups
13 November, 2011 in 254A - Hilbert's fifth problem, math.GR, math.MG | Tags: approximate groups, Bishop-Gromov inequality, Gromov's theorem, Margulis lemma, nilpotent groups | by Terence Tao | 14 comments
In the last set of notes, we obtained the following structural theorem concerning approximate groups:
Theorem 1 Let be a finite -approximate group. Then there exists a coset nilprogression of rank and step contained in , such that is covered by left-translates of (and hence also by right-translates of ).
Remark 1 Under some mild additional hypotheses (e.g. if the dimensions of are sufficiently large, or if is placed in a certain “normal form”, details of which may be found in this paper), a coset nilprogression of rank and step will be an -approximate group, thus giving a partial converse to Theorem 1. (It is not quite a full converse though, even if one works qualitatively and forgets how the constants depend on : if is covered by a bounded number of left- and right-translates of , one needs the group elements to “approximately normalise” in some sense if one wants to then conclude that is an approximate group.) The mild hypotheses alluded to above can be enforced in the statement of the theorem, but we will not discuss this technicality here, and refer the reader to the above-mentioned paper for details.
By placing the coset nilprogression in a virtually nilpotent group, we have the following corollary in the global case:
Corollary 2 Let be a finite -approximate group in an ambient group . Then is covered by left cosets of a virtually nilpotent subgroup of .
In this final set of notes, we give some applications of the above results. The first application is to replace “ -approximate group” by “sets of bounded doubling”:
Proposition 3 Let be a finite non-empty subset of a (global) group such that . Then there exists a coset nilprogression of rank and step and cardinality such that can be covered by left-translates of , and also by right-translates of .
We will also establish (a strengthening of) a well-known theorem of Gromov on groups of polynomial growth, as promised back in Notes 0, as well as a variant result (of a type known as a “generalised Margulis lemma”) controlling the almost stabilisers of discrete actions of isometries.
The material here is largely drawn from my recent paper with Emmanuel Breuillard and Ben Green.
The structure of approximate groups
24 October, 2011 in math.CO, math.GR, math.MG, paper | Tags: approximate groups, Ben Green, Emmanuel Breuillard, Gromov's theorem, nilpotent groups, noncommutative Freiman theorem, nonstandard analysis | by Terence Tao | 24 comments
Emmanuel Breuillard, Ben Green, and I have just uploaded to the arXiv our paper “The structure of approximate groups“, submitted to Pub. IHES. We had announced the main results of this paper in various forums (including this blog) for a few months now, but it had taken some time to fully write up the paper and put in various refinements and applications.
As announced previously, the main result of this paper is what is a (virtually, qualitatively) complete description of finite approximate groups in an arbitrary (local or global) group . For simplicity let us work in the much more familiar setting of global groups, although our results also apply (but are a bit more technical to state) in the local group setting.
Recall that in a global group , a -approximate group is a symmetric subset of containing the origin, with the property that the product set is covered by left-translates of . Examples of -approximate groups include genuine groups, convex bodies in a bounded dimensional vector space, small balls in a bounded dimensional Lie group, large balls in a discrete nilpotent group of bounded rank or step, or generalised arithmetic progressions (or more generally, coset progressions) of bounded rank in an abelian group. Specialising now to finite approximate groups, a key example of such a group is what we call a coset nilprogression: a set of the form , where is a homomorphism with finite kernel from a subgroup of to a nilpotent group of bounded step, and is a nilprogression with a bounded number of generators in and some lengths , where consists of all the words involving at most copies of , copies of , and so forth up to copies of . One can show (by some nilpotent algebra) that all such coset nilprogressions are -approximate groups so long as the step and the rank are bounded (and if are sufficiently large).
Our main theorem (which was essentially conjectured independently by Helfgott and by Lindenstrauss) asserts, roughly speaking, that coset nilprogressions are essentially the only examples of approximate groups.
Theorem 1 Let be a -approximate group. Then contains a coset nilprogression of rank and step , such that can be covered by left-translates of .
In the torsion-free abelian case, this result is essentially Freiman’s theorem (with an alternate proof by Ruzsa); for general abelian case, it is due to Green and Ruzsa. Various partial results in this direction for some other groups (e.g. free groups, nilpotent groups, solvable groups, or simple groups of Lie type) are also known; see these previous blog posts for a summary of several of these results.
This result has a number of applications to geometric growth theory, and in particular to variants of Gromov’s theorem of groups of polynomial growth, which asserts that a finitely generated group is of polynomial growth if and only if it is virtually nilpotent. The connection lies in the fact that if the balls associated to a finite set of generators has polynomial growth, then some simple volume-packing arguments combined with the pigeonhole principle will show that will end up being a -approximate group for many radii . In fact, since our theorem only needs a single approximate group to obtain virtually nilpotent structure, we are able to obtain some new strengthenings of Gromov’s theorem. For instance, if is any -approximate group in a finitely generated group that contains for some set of generators and some that is sufficiently large depending on , our theorem implies that is virtually nilpotent, answering a question of Petrunin. Among other things, this gives an alternate proof of a recent result of Kapovitch and Wilking (see also this previous paper of Cheeger and Colding) that a compact manifold of bounded diameter and Ricci curvature at least necessarily has a virtually nilpotent fundamental group if is sufficiently small (depending only on dimension). The main point here is that no lower bound on the injectivity radius is required. Another application is a “Margulis-type lemma”, which asserts that if a metric space has “bounded packing” (in the sense that any ball of radius (say) is covered by a bounded number of balls of radius ), and is a group of isometries on that acts discretely (i.e. every orbit has only finitely many elements (counting multiplicity) in each bounded set), then the near-stabiliser of a point is virtually nilpotent if is small enough depending on the packing constant.
There are also some variants and refinements to the main theorem proved in the paper, such as an extension to local groups, and also an improvement on the bound on the rank and step from to (but at the cost of replacing in the theorem with ).
I’ll be discussing the proof of the main theorem in detail in the next few lecture notes of my current graduate course. The full proof is somewhat lengthy (occupying about 50 pages of the 90-page paper), but can be summarised in the following steps:
(Hrushovski) Take an arbitrary sequence of finite -approximate groups, and show that an appropriate limit of such groups can be “modeled” in some sense by an open bounded subset of a locally compact group. (The precise definition of “model” is technical, but “macroscopically faithful representation” is a good first approximation.) As discussed in the previous lecture notes, we use an ultralimit for this purpose; the paper of Hrushovski where this strategy was first employed also considered more sophisticated model-theoretic limits. To build a locally compact topology, Hrushovski used some tools from definability theory; in our paper, we instead use a combinatorial lemma of Sanders (closely related to a similar result of Croot and Sisask.)
(Gleason-Yamabe) The locally compact group can in turn be “modeled” by a Lie group (possibly after shrinking the group, and thus the ultralimit , slightly). (This result arose from the solution to Hilbert’s fifth problem, as discussed here. For our extension to local groups, we use a recent local version of the Gleason-Yamabe theorem, due to Goldbring.)
(Gleason) Using the escape properties of the Lie model, construct a norm (and thus a left-invariant metric ) on the ultralimit approximate group (and also on the finitary groups ) that obeys a number of good properties, such as a commutator estimate . (This is modeled on an analogous construction used in the theory of Hilbert’s fifth problem, as discussed in this previous set of lecture notes.) This norm is essentially an escape norm associated to (a slight modification) of or .
(Jordan-Bieberbach-Frobenius) We now take advantage of the finite nature of the by locating the non-trivial element of with minimal escape norm (but one has to first quotient out the elements of zero escape norm first). The commutator estimate mentioned previously ensures that this element is essentially “central” in . One can then quotient out a progression generated by this central element (reducing the dimension of the Lie model by one in the process) and iterates the process until the dimension of the model drops to zero. Reversing the process, this constructs a coset nilprogression inside . This argument is based on the classic proof of Jordan’s theorem due to Bieberbach and Frobenius, as discussed in this blog post.
One quirk of the argument is that it requires one to work in the category of local groups rather than global groups. (This is somewhat analogous to how, in the standard proofs of Freiman’s theorem, one needs to work with the category of Freiman homomorphisms, rather than group homomorphisms.) The reason for this arises when performing the quotienting step in the Jordan-Bieberbach-Frobenius leg of the argument. The obvious way to perform this step (and the thing that we tried first) would be to quotient out by the entire cyclic group generated by the element of minimal escape norm. However, it turns out that this doesn’t work too well, because the group quotiented out is so “large” that it can create a lot of torsion in the quotient. In particular, elements which used to have positive escape norm, can now become trapped in the quotient of , thus sending their escape norm to zero. This leads to an inferior conclusion (in which a coset nilprogression is replaced by a more complicated tower of alternating extensions between central progressions and finite groups, similar to the towers encountered in my previous paper on this topic). To prevent this unwanted creation of torsion, one has to truncate the cyclic group before it escapes , so that one quotients out by a geometric progression rather than the cyclic group. But the operation of quotienting out by a , which is a local group rather than a global one, cannot be formalised in the category of global groups, but only in the category of local groups. Because of this, we were forced to carry out the entire argument using the language of local groups. As it turns out, the arguments are ultimately more natural in this setting, although there is an initial investment of notation required, given that global group theory is much more familiar and well-developed than local group theory.
One interesting feature of the argument is that it does not use much of the existing theory of Freiman-type theorems, instead building the coset nilprogression directly from the geometric properties of the approximate group. In particular, our argument gives a new proof of Freiman’s theorem in the abelian case, which largely avoids Fourier analysis (except through the use of the theory of Hilbert’s fifth problem, which uses the Peter-Weyl theorem (or, in the abelian case, Pontryagin duality), which is basically a version of Fourier analysis).
254A, Notes 0: Hilbert’s fifth problem and related topics
27 August, 2011 in 254A - Hilbert's fifth problem, admin, math.CO, math.GR, math.LO, math.MG | Tags: approximate groups, Freiman's theorem, Gromov's theorem, Hilbert's fifth problem, nilpotent groups, polynomial growth | by Terence Tao | 30 comments
This fall (starting Monday, September 26), I will be teaching a graduate topics course which I have entitled “Hilbert’s fifth problem and related topics.” The course is going to focus on three related topics:
Hilbert’s fifth problem on the topological description of Lie groups, as well as the closely related (local) classification of locally compact groups (the Gleason-Yamabe theorem).
Approximate groups in nonabelian groups, and their classification via the Gleason-Yamabe theorem (this is very recent work of Emmanuel Breuillard, Ben Green, Tom Sanders, and myself, building upon earlier work of Hrushovski);
Gromov’s theorem on groups of polynomial growth, as proven via the classification of approximate groups (as well as some consequences to fundamental groups of Riemannian manifolds).
I have already blogged about these topics repeatedly in the past (particularly with regard to Hilbert’s fifth problem), and I intend to recycle some of that material in the lecture notes for this course.
The above three families of results exemplify two broad principles (part of what I like to call “the dichotomy between structure and randomness“):
(Rigidity) If a group-like object exhibits a weak amount of regularity, then it (or a large portion thereof) often automatically exhibits a strong amount of regularity as well;
(Structure) This strong regularity manifests itself either as Lie type structure (in continuous settings) or nilpotent type structure (in discrete settings). (In some cases, “nilpotent” should be replaced by sister properties such as “abelian“, “solvable“, or “polycyclic“.)
Let me illustrate what I mean by these two principles with two simple examples, one in the continuous setting and one in the discrete setting. We begin with a continuous example. Given an complex matrix , define the matrix exponential of by the formula
which can easily be verified to be an absolutely convergent series.
Exercise 1 Show that the map is a real analytic (and even complex analytic) map from to , and obeys the restricted homomorphism property
for all and .
Proposition 1 (Rigidity and structure of matrix homomorphisms) Let be a natural number. Let be the group of invertible complex matrices. Let be a map obeying two properties:
(Group-like object) is a homomorphism, thus for all .
(Weak regularity) The map is continuous.
(Strong regularity) The map is smooth (i.e. infinitely differentiable). In fact it is even real analytic.
(Lie-type structure) There exists a (unique) complex matrix such that for all .
Proof: Let be as above. Let be a small number (depending only on ). By the homomorphism property, (where we use here to denote the identity element of ), and so by continuity we may find a small such that for all (we use some arbitrary norm here on the space of matrices, and allow implied constants in the notation to depend on ).
The map is real analytic and (by the inverse function theorem) is a diffeomorphism near . Thus, by the inverse function theorem, we can (if is small enough) find a matrix of size such that . By the homomorphism property and (1), we thus have
On the other hand, by another application of the inverse function theorem we see that the squaring map is a diffeomorphism near in , and thus (if is small enough)
We may iterate this argument (for a fixed, but small, value of ) and conclude that
for all . By the homomorphism property and (1) we thus have
whenever is a dyadic rational, i.e. a rational of the form for some integer and natural number . By continuity we thus have
for all real . Setting we conclude that
for all real , which gives existence of the representation and also real analyticity and smoothness. Finally, uniqueness of the representation follows from the identity
Exercise 2 Generalise Proposition 1 by replacing the hypothesis that is continuous with the hypothesis that is Lebesgue measurable (Hint: use the Steinhaus theorem.). Show that the proposition fails (assuming the axiom of choice) if this hypothesis is omitted entirely.
Note how one needs both the group-like structure and the weak regularity in combination in order to ensure the strong regularity; neither is sufficient on its own. We will see variants of the above basic argument throughout the course. Here, the task of obtaining smooth (or real analytic structure) was relatively easy, because we could borrow the smooth (or real analytic) structure of the domain and range ; but, somewhat remarkably, we shall see that one can still build such smooth or analytic structures even when none of the original objects have any such structure to begin with.
Now we turn to a second illustration of the above principles, namely Jordan’s theorem, which uses a discreteness hypothesis to upgrade Lie type structure to nilpotent (and in this case, abelian) structure. We shall formulate Jordan’s theorem in a slightly stilted fashion in order to emphasise the adherence to the above-mentioned principles.
Theorem 2 (Jordan’s theorem) Let be an object with the following properties:
(Group-like object) is a group.
(Discreteness) is finite.
(Lie-type structure) is contained in (the group of unitary matrices) for some .
Then there is a subgroup of such that
( is close to ) The index of in is (i.e. bounded by for some quantity depending only on ).
(Nilpotent-type structure) is abelian.
A key observation in the proof of Jordan’s theorem is that if two unitary elements are close to the identity, then their commutator is even closer to the identity (in, say, the operator norm ). Indeed, since multiplication on the left or right by unitary elements does not affect the operator norm, we have
and so by the triangle inequality
Now we can prove Jordan’s theorem.
Proof: We induct on , the case being trivial. Suppose first that contains a central element which is not a multiple of the identity. Then, by definition, is contained in the centraliser of , which by the spectral theorem is isomorphic to a product of smaller unitary groups. Projecting to each of these factor groups and applying the induction hypothesis, we obtain the claim.
Thus we may assume that contains no central elements other than multiples of the identity. Now pick a small (one could take in fact) and consider the subgroup of generated by those elements of that are within of the identity (in the operator norm). By considering a maximal -net of we see that has index at most in . By arguing as before, we may assume that has no central elements other than multiples of the identity.
If consists only of multiples of the identity, then we are done. If not, take an element of that is not a multiple of the identity, and which is as close as possible to the identity (here is where we crucially use that is finite). By (2), we see that if is sufficiently small depending on , and if is one of the generators of , then lies in and is closer to the identity than , and is thus a multiple of the identity. On the other hand, has determinant . Given that it is so close to the identity, it must therefore be the identity (if is small enough). In other words, is central in , and is thus a multiple of the identity. But this contradicts the hypothesis that there are no central elements other than multiples of the identity, and we are done.
Commutator estimates such as (2) will play a fundamental role in many of the arguments we will see in this course; as we saw above, such estimates combine very well with a discreteness hypothesis, but will also be very useful in the continuous setting.
Exercise 3 Generalise Jordan’s theorem to the case when is a finite subgroup of rather than of . (Hint: The elements of are not necessarily unitary, and thus do not necessarily preserve the standard Hilbert inner product of . However, if one averages that inner product by the finite group , one obtains a new inner product on that is preserved by , which allows one to conjugate to a subgroup of . This averaging trick is (a small) part of Weyl’s unitary trick in representation theory.)
Exercise 4 (Inability to discretise nonabelian Lie groups) Show that if , then the orthogonal group cannot contain arbitrarily dense finite subgroups, in the sense that there exists an depending only on such that for every finite subgroup of , there exists a ball of radius in (with, say, the operator norm metric) that is disjoint from . What happens in the case?
Remark 1 More precise classifications of the finite subgroups of are known, particularly in low dimensions. For instance, one can show that the only finite subgroups of (which is a double cover of) are isomorphic to either a cyclic group, a dihedral group, or the symmetry group of one of the Platonic solids.
A proof of Gromov’s theorem
18 February, 2010 in expository, math.AP, math.GR | Tags: bruce kleiner, Gromov's theorem, harmonic functions, nilpotent groups, yehuda shalom | by Terence Tao | 33 comments
A celebrated theorem of Gromov reads:
Theorem 1 Every finitely generated group of polynomial growth is virtually nilpotent.
The original proof of Gromov’s theorem was quite non-elementary, using an infinitary limit and exploiting the work surrounding the solution to Hilbert’s fifth problem. More recently, Kleiner provided a proof which was more elementary (based in large part on an earlier paper of Colding and Minicozzi), though still not entirely so, relying in part on (a weak form of the) Tits alternative and also on an ultrafilter argument of Korevaar-Schoen and Mok. I discuss Kleiner’s argument more in this previous blog post.
Recently, Yehuda Shalom and I established a quantitative version of Gromov’s theorem by making every component of Kleiner’s argument finitary. Technically, this provides a fully elementary proof of Gromov’s theorem (we do use one infinitary limit to simplify the argument a little bit, but this is not truly necessary); however, because we were trying to quantify as much of the result as possible, the argument became quite lengthy.
In this note I want to record a short version of the argument of Yehuda and myself which is not quantitative, but gives a self-contained and largely elementary proof of Gromov’s theorem. The argument is not too far from the Kleiner argument, but has a number of simplifications at various places. In a number of places, there was a choice to take between a short argument that was “inefficient” in the sense that it did not lead to a good quantitative bound, and a lengthier argument which led to better quantitative bounds. I have opted for the former in all such cases.
Yehuda and I plan to write a short paper containing this argument as well as some additional material, but due to some interest in this particular proof, we are detailing it here on this blog in advance of our paper.
Note: this post will assume familiarity with the basic terminology of group theory, and will move somewhat quickly through the technical details.
A finitary version of Gromov’s polynomial growth theorem
23 October, 2009 in math.GR, math.MG, paper | Tags: bruce kleiner, Gromov's theorem, yehuda shalom | by Terence Tao | 8 comments
Yehuda Shalom and I have just uploaded to the arXiv our paper “A finitary version of Gromov’s polynomial growth theorem“, to be submitted to Geom. Func. Anal.. The purpose of this paper is to establish a quantitative version of Gromov’s polynomial growth theorem which, among other things, is meaningful for finite groups. Here is a statement of Gromov’s theorem:
Gromov’s theorem. Let be a group generated by a finite (symmetric) set , and suppose that one has the polynomial growth condition
for all sufficiently large and some fixed , where is the ball of radius generated by (i.e. the set of all words in of length at most , evaluated in ). Then is virtually nilpotent, i.e. it has a finite index subgroup which is nilpotent of some finite step .
As currently stated, Gromov’s theorem is qualitative rather than quantitative; it does not specify any relationship between the input data (the growth exponent and the range of scales for which one has (1)), and the output parameters (in particular, the index of the nilpotent subgroup of , and the step of that subgroup). However, a compactness argument (sketched in this previous blog post) shows that some such relationship must exist; indeed, if one has (1) for all for some sufficiently large , then one can ensure has index at most and step at most for some quantities , ; thus Gromov’s theorem is inherently a “local” result which only requires one to multiply the generator set a finite number of times before one sees the virtual nilpotency of the group. However, the compactness argument does not give an explicit value to the quantities , and the nature of Gromov’s proof (using, in particular, the deep Montgomery-Zippin-Yamabe theory on Hilbert’s fifth problem) does not easily allow such an explicit value to be extracted.
Another point is that the original formulation of Gromov’s theorem required the polynomial bound (1) at all sufficiently large scales . A later proof of this theorem by van den Dries and Wilkie relaxed this hypothesis to requiring (1) just for infinitely many scales ; the later proof by Kleiner (which I blogged about here) also has this relaxed hypothesis.
Our main result reduces the hypothesis (1) to a single large scale, and makes most of the qualitative dependencies in the theorem quantitative:
Theorem 1. If (1) holds for some for some sufficiently large absolute constant , then contains a finite index subgroup which is nilpotent of step at most .
The argument does in principle provide a bound on the index of in , but it is very poor (of Ackermann type). If instead one is willing to relax “nilpotent” to “polycyclic“, the bounds on the index are somewhat better (of tower exponential type), though still far from ideal.
There is a related finitary analogue of Gromov’s theorem by Makarychev and Lee, which asserts that any finite group of uniformly polynomial growth has a subgroup with a large abelianisation. The quantitative bounds in that result are quite strong, but on the other hand the hypothesis is also strong (it requires upper and lower bounds of the form (1) at all scales) and the conclusion is a bit weaker than virtual nilpotency. The argument is based on a modification of Kleiner’s proof.
Our argument also proceeds by modifying Kleiner’s proof of Gromov’s theorem (a significant fraction of which was already quantitative), and carefully removing all of the steps which require one to take an asymptotic limit. To ease this task, we look for the most elementary arguments available for each step of the proof (thus consciously avoiding powerful tools such as the Tits alternative). A key technical issue is that because there is only a single scale for which one has polynomial growth, one has to work at scales significantly less than in order to have any chance of keeping control of the various groups and other objects being generated.
Below the fold, I discuss a stripped down version of Kleiner’s argument, and then how we convert it to a fully finitary argument.
Kleiner’s proof of Gromov’s theorem
14 February, 2008 in math.CA, math.GR, talk | Tags: Cayley graphs, Gromov's theorem, harmonic functions, polynomial growth, virtually nilpotent, virtually solvable | by Terence Tao | 16 comments
This week there is a conference here at IPAM on expanders in pure and applied mathematics. I was an invited speaker, but I don’t actually work in expanders per se (though I am certainly interested in them). So I spoke instead about the recent simplified proof by Kleiner of the celebrated theorem of Gromov on groups of polynomial growth. (This proof does not directly mention expanders, but the argument nevertheless hinges on the absence of expansion in the Cayley graph of a group of polynomial growth, which is exhibited through the smoothness properties of harmonic functions on such graphs.)
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Talking Games and Diversity with Tanya DePass 0
Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with Tanya DePass, the founder and director of I Need Diverse Games. She was gracious enough to talk at length about diversity, feminism, and the unique intersection those have with tabletop gaming. It's a really fantastic conversation, so I hope you all enjoy hearing all of it!
A huge thank you to Tanya - you should all give her a follow on Twitter: @cypheroftyr
Dragonguard - Episode 23 - Farewells and Firmaments 0
The finale of Dragonguard has arrived! Nomsooni, Barphus, and Scratch make choices to determine the fate of their world and their own respective futures.
"Shadowlands 1 - Horizon" "Super Power Cool Dude" "Bittersweet" "Dreamer" "Furious Freak"
Learn more about Tabletop Appreciation Weekend!
Dragonguard - Episode 22 - Project Looking-Glass 0
Stepping through a portal to another world, Scratch, Nomsooni, and Barphus have the nature of their existence revealed and have the future of their universe placed into their hands.
"Furious Freak"
Episode 136 - Battle Chef Brigade (ft. Caitlin Galiz-Rowe) 0
In November 2017, Trinket Studios released a unique puzzle-fighting game onto PC and Nintendo Switch. The title, Battle Chef Brigade, had garnered a colossal amount of support following a successful Kickstarter campaign raised over $100,000 in 2014. The game focuses on Mina Han, an up and coming chef who leaves her rural home to make it as a member of the Battle Chef Brigade, an elite group of chefs who battle monsters and use the spoils to make the most delectable dishes in all the land. Battle Chef Brigade currently sits with a spotless rating of 10/10 on Steam and has earned itself a persistent cult following since release.
This week we are joined by game critic and noted Battle Chef Brigade evangelist Caitlin Galiz-Rowe to talk about the wild world of culinary contests. Is Battle Chef Brigade one of the best games of all-time?
Outro music: Fantasy Zone 'Opa and Over' by Rexy (http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR03954)
Follow Caitlin Galiz-Rowe on Twitter: @CGRRRRRRRR
Don't forget to sign up for Extra Life to help sick and injured kids in hospitals around the US and Canada by playing games! Learn more about Tabletop Appreciation Weekend!
Episode 135 - Fire Emblem Awakening (ft. Julian Rizzo-Smith) 0
Fire Emblem Awakening released in North America back in 2013. Intended to be the final swansong of the franchise, it instead found success on a magnitude it the series had never seen before. Critics and players alike praised its new focus on accessibility and the centrality of the support conversations between characters. These changes allowed everyone to experience a much wider swath of Fire Emblem Awakening's content and word of mouth managed to make the turn-based strategy title one of the most popular games for Nintendo's 3DS.
This week we are joined by Julian Rizzo-Smith to talk all things Fire Emblem and figure out if Fire Emblem Awakening is one of the best games of all-time!
Outro music: Super Smash Bros. Melee 'Together, We Fly' by PRYZM (https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR03202)
Follow Julian Rizzo-Smith on Twitter: @GayWeebDisaster
Let's Talk About Cadence of Hyrule 0
There's a lot of bad stuff going on in the world. A lot of things we all have to struggle with on a daily basis. Cadence of Hyrule is really great and puts some measure of joy into the world that nothing can take away. It's unabashedly itself. It's good. Anyway, here are some thoughts about the game and the things it makes me think about.
Outro music: Mega Man X 'Red Shifting Drift' by Gario (https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR03790)
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The Church at Miller, Glenn
Daily Projections, 6-4-2019: Miquette et sa mère (1950)
On June 6, 2019 By EricIn Daily Projections, UncategorizedLeave a comment
Title: Miquette et sa mère
Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot
Screening format: Blu-ray
Setting: home
First viewing? yes
A film Clouzot apparently had little interest in making and greeted with equal disinterest by critics and audiences alike, though still very funny if you ask me. Two timid lovebirds (Miquette and Urbain) kept apart by a scheming uncle-Marquis who has designs of his own on Miquette as she strives to make it as an actress in order to make jealous the lover she believes has jilted her. The humor is broadly farcical, blend of irony and slapstick, not unlike Preston Sturges, though considerably more French and likely to have scandalized American audiences of the time (e.g. a particular ancestor is well regarded for having had the Sun King). The very best scenes are played between Danièle Delorme (Miquette) and Bourvil (Urbain). The latter a gifted physical comedian who plays the bumbling idiot well and the former with a gift for portraying the coquettish ingenue. Something in the way Delorme glides through the film, even in the comedic moments, the way she dodges an aspiring lover’s advances while never seeming to notice them, is almost balletic. There is an air about her performance which recalls…someone, though I can’t say for sure who. Perhaps Sidney Fox in Once In A Lifetime. Miquette et sa mère gets a bad rap for some reason, though you won’t hear it from me.
Daily Projections, 5-22-2019: Miracle In The Rain (1956)
On May 22, 2019 By EricIn UncategorizedLeave a comment
Title: Miracle In The Rain
Director: Rudolph Maté
Screening format: TV (TCM)
Aired following Minnelli’s The Clock. Recorded for later viewing because people on Twitter kept going on about how good it was. Miracle In The Rain begins like a standard wartime romance. A soldier (Van Johnson) in the city on a pass meets a girl (Jane Wyman) and wriggles his way into her life (sounds a lot like The Clock so far), they fall in love and promise to get married after the war. Miracle In The Rain continues to play like standard romance until midway through the picture Van Johnson is killed in action. From which point, Ruth (Wyman) becomes despondent and fixated on a statue of St. Andrew in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It’s different, certainly. Van Johnson is Van Johnson, but the more impressive performance is turned in by Wyman (only a few years before the oldish maiden aunt in Pollyanna) as an always demuring Ruth finally allowing herself a bit of happiness only to have it dashed away. If anything, Miracle In The Rain (novella, story and script by Ben Hecht) is proof that Hecht could make the occasional foray away from biting cynicism, though he never really seems at home in this melodrama. Or does he? Ruth’s fixation on St. Andrew eventually leads to her becoming dangerously ill. And yet, St. Andrew is, among other things, the patron saint of protection against sore throats…and fever.
Daily Projections, 5-21-2019: The Devil Doll (1936)
Title: The Devil Doll
Director: Tod Browning
A wrongly convicted prison escapee takes advantage of a deceased acquaintance’s technology enabling him to shrink human beings down to doll size and control them with his mind. He sets up shop, disguised as an old woman, in Paris and uses his dolls to exact revenge on the people who framed him and to clear his name so his daughter (Maureen O’Sullivan) and mother may live without shame. It sounds like a Tod Browning movie because it is, made perhaps even more Tod Browning-y by cowriter Erich von Stroheim. Somehow, the “wrongly convicted” aspect of The Devil Doll makes the idea of the ever-grandfatherly Lionel Barrymore roaming around Paris killing people moderately more palatable, though there is still the element of Barrymore in drag to contend with. Maureen O’Sullivan is charming enough in her role as Barrymore’s estranged daughter, though somehow she doesn’t make nearly the impression of her fiancé Toto (played by Frank Lawton). Interesting moral concepts arise at multiple points during the film, issues like guilt and shame and revenge. Barrymore’s Lavond frequently shows signs of guilt over his actions – in an “it took prison to turn me into a criminal” kind of way – though any sense of guilt is ultimately trumped by a sense of responsibility to his remaining family.
Daily Projections, 5-21-2019: Soak The Rich (1936)
Title: Soak The Rich
Director: Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur
Screening format: 16mm on DVD
Produced, directed, and of course written by two of the finest screenwriters of the Studio era, Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. Walter Connolly plays an absurdly wealthy many (during the Depression, no less) convinced that Communists and FDR are out to get him. An irreverent look at just about every facet of American politics and higher education in the 1930s, like any good MacArthur and Hecht film, everyone is relentlessly skewered and pilloried through witty dialog and nearly absurdist irony. And everyone, from the FBI and the wealthy, to aspiring student radicals and a single rogue anarchist come across as complete fools. Soak The Rich proves that even in 1936, college students thought everyone who disagreed with them was Hitler (“We don’t wanna hear anything you have to say. Who does your father think he is? Hitler?!” is an actual line spoken in this film.) If Hecht and MacArthur could see us now…Well, for one thing, they would almost certainly make this film all over again (then they’d be run out of town because comedy is dead in Hollywood and Ben Hecht also happened to be an advocate for the Jewish State). As it stands, Soak The Rich is a film every modern politician and college student would likely consider hate speech and also gloriously funny (and would be even funnier if the lines were delivered quicker).
Daily Projections, 5-20-2019: Bugsy Malone (1976)
Title: Bugsy Malone
Director: Alan Parker
Country of Origin: USA / UK
Screening format: Streaming
A musical comedy about 1920s gangsters starring a cast of literal children. An interesting concept to say the least. Parker cleverly eschews the immensely disturbing image of children mowing each other down with Tommy guns by making the “Splurge Gun” (which fires whipped cream) the weapon of choice for these babyfaced racketeers. Performances from a very young Scott Baio and Taxi Driver era Jodie Foster are the obvious highlights of this juvenile production, though first (and last) timer Florrie Dugger handles the slang laden adult dialog admirably. While some of Paul Williams’ score plays true to the time period (namely the showgirl numbers taking place in Fat Sam’s Speakeasy – mostly), others veer more in the direction of the pop songs he was and is best known for (“Just An Old Fashioned Love Song”). Of the latter, the hypnotic softshoe rhythms of “Tomorrow” are a particular highlight. There’s a lot to love about the genuinely funny Bugsy Malone, from the remarkably mature performances from Baio and Foster, who are in a class of their own here, to the beautifully realistic looking pedal cars the characters “drive” around town. The only real complaint I have (one shared by the director) is the choice to dub the kids’ singing with adult singing voices. It’s blatantly obvious, looks beyond bizarre, and is puzzling to the point of distraction.
Daily Projections, 5-17-2019: Linnaisten Vihreä Kamari (1945)
Title: Linnaisten Vihreä Kamari
Director: Valentin Vaala
Country of Origin: Finland
Screening format: DVD
First viewing? no
Linnaisten Vihreä Kamari is the anti-Vaala film in some ways. Vaala, who so often imbues his films with light (even the ones that take place at night, e.g. Ihmiset Suviyössä, are set in the summer when it is basically never dark), instead let’s the darkness play around a bit here. A little bit horror, a little bit romance, almost every bit gothic. What’s in a name? To the Littow family, quite a bit apparently, even though it may not even be there’s to begin with. Snooty relatives and con artists all vying for a piece of the action when it comes to the beautiful Littow girls and their even more beautiful inheritance. Regina Linnanheimo plays the perpetually heartbroken yet surprisingly understated elder sister Anna while Rauli Tuomi portrays the commoner-cum-nobleman architect. Vaala’s historical melodrama (based on a novel by Zachris Topelius) is, at times, dripping with so much “old dark house” atmosphere one half expects to find Catherine Morland reading by the fireside and yet the daytime scenes are lighthearted and playful. Linnaisten Vihreä Kamari can turn on a dime. And boy does it turn often. Every time one plot point seems to be tied up, a new one emerges. It’s the gift that keeps on giving—or the story that never ends—depending on your personal outlook on Finnish melodrama (I tend toward the former).
Daily Projections, 4-19-2019: L’Arbre, le Maire, et la Médiathèque (1993)
Title: L’Arbre, le maire, et la médiathèque
Director: Eric Rohmer
Of the 16 Rohmer films I’ve seen so far, this is probably the closest he gets to a manifesto (Rohmer was a royalist and dedicated environmentalist who claimed to have never driven a car or ridden in a taxi). Ostensibly about a socialist small-town mayor determined to build a multidisciplinary library and cultural center encountering plenty of political snags along the way. In reality, the story is really only half of the film. About 30 minutes in the middle of the film all but abandon the plot entirely while a freelance journalist interviews villagers about farming and local economics and their entertainment habits before finally reaching local schoolteacher M. Rossignol (played by Rohmer veteran Fabrice Luchini) who gives probably the most memorable (and typically Rohmerian) speech in opposition to the proposed médiathèque of the film. Rohmer is really reaching for something beyond simple environmental conservation here. He’s looking for a conservation of “the old ways”, hence discussions of changes in farming techniques and the aesthetics of modern architecture and the ethics of erecting a new building in an old village. “Did it never occur to you to have a space that serves no purpose? That’s the problem with modern architecture, it’s too functional.
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Home / African American News / Televangelist Joyce Meyers former Body Guard, Christopher Coleman, jailed for the murder of his wife and two sons
Televangelist Joyce Meyers former Body Guard, Christopher Coleman, jailed for the murder of his wife and two sons
Televangelist Joyce Meyer taped her trial testimony in cooperation with prosecutors preparing to try Meyer’s former bodyguard, Christopher Coleman, for the murder of his wife and two sons.
Meyer and her son, Dan, answered lawyers’ questions on Wednesday in a taped evidentiary deposition at the Monroe County Courthouse in Illinois. The head of Joyce Meyer Ministries participated in the hearing because she would not be available to testify in person at the April 25 trial. Her ministry website reveals that she is scheduled to appear in a conference tour though Texas and Virginia this entire month.
The deposition was closed to the public; but she offered some words to the media. Meyer spoke briefly with The Associated Press about her hearing. “The state’s attorney asked me to testify and I just did,” she said. “I answered the questions honestly and truthfully and I’ve cooperation fully all the way through.”
Myer also said she is praying for Coleman.
Coleman, 34, is currently being jailed without bond on first-degree murder charges in the 2009 strangulation deaths of his wife, Sheri Coleman, and their two sons, Gavin , 9, and Garrett, 11. Authorities believe that he was trying to escape his marriage so he could be with his Florida girlfriend, Tara Lintz. Coleman was reportedly earning six figures to travel around the country as Meyer’s security chief. The ministry’s no-divorce policy meant that Coleman would lose his job if he divorced his wife.
Prosecutors allege that he staged the crime scene to appear as if the killings were the work of a deranged enemy of Meyer’s ministry. Investigators accuse Coleman of writing and sending himself threatening letters and emails to support his story. They also allege he spray-painted the messages “punished” and “I saw you leave, (obscenity) you, I am always watching” onto the walls of his home after the murder.
The family of the slain mother of two filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Coleman and Joyce Meyer Ministries as a “respondent in discovery,” alleging that the slayings would not have occurred if the ministry had followed its own policy and taken action. They also asserted that Meyer’s son, the ministry’s chief executive in the U.S., traveled with Coleman and his mistress Lintz, and knew of the affair.
Family attorney Jack Carey said the lawsuit has been temporarily dropped until Coleman’s murder trial is completed. He said he plans to name Joyce Meyer Ministries as a co-defendant in the future case.
At the time of the May 5, 2009, slayings, Meyer was there to comfort Coleman and his remaining family. Since Coleman’s affair and potential involvement in murder deaths have come to light, Joyce Meyer Ministries has tried to cooperate. The ministry turned over 400 pages of documents related to the case.
“We have nothing to hide,” said Michael King, the attorney for the Illinois-based ministry.
King also responded to the wrongful death lawsuit saying, “Joyce Meyer Ministries had no knowledge prior to these tragic deaths of an extramarital affair involving Chris Coleman. Neither did the ministry have prior knowledge that Chris Coleman allegedly was the source of threats against his family.”
Meyer’s taped testimony will be played for jurors during the murder trial.
Sources: Examiner.com
Related Itemsblack christian newsblack church newschris colemanchurchchurch issueschurch scandalschurch workjoyce meyersjoyce meyers and chris colemanjoyce meyers ministriesmega church pastorstelevangelist
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Kanye West Popup at New Birth drew Thousands
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WuKa
Suggest an Artist
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Adam Brandon
Art Direction Graphic design Styleframes October 11, 2017 October 10, 2017
Adam Brandon is a multidisciplinary artist and Art Director from the UK currently based in New York. He has worked for studios like The Mill, We are Seventeen and is now working as an Art Director at Gretel.
(All artists have to answer the same 10 questions.)
1. First and Last Name
2. Where are you from? And where are you currently living?
Originally from Blackburn, in the North-West of England. Now living and working in New York.
3. What’s your main influences?
Anything at the intersection of Art / Design / Fashion / Architecture /Technology… but I guess everyone says that, right?
4. How was your path until this moment? How did you start?
I’ve taken a fairly indirect route to get to where I am now. I started out by studying ‘Design and Art Direction’ in Manchester, UK, for three years. The course was fairly loose in how it defined graphic design and so we were allowed to explore our own practice. It was here that I discovered my strengths for typography and moving image, which in turn lead to opportunities that defined my career. I was lucky enough to have access to some amazing guest lecturers and mentors such as Ian Anderson (tDR) and Johnny Hardstaff (RSA) who always answered my questions, critiqued my work, and kept me both grounded and inspired in equal measure.
After a few internships and false starts, I found myself in London working for The Mill.
After a few internships and false starts I found myself in London working for The Mill. It was a huge learning curve and a great experience applying my graphic design skills to big-budget commercial and VFX work. 3 years at the Mill was followed by another 3 years at Weareseventeen where I furthered my skills in 3D and design direction, and discovered that I was awful at table tennis.
After 6 years in London, I was feeling restricted by the opportunities on offer in the UK, and accepted a job as Art Director at Gretel in NYC, where I lead brand identity systems, and run black-box projects for a cupertino-based tech company.
5. Where do you see yourself next?
I honestly have no idea. I’d like to direct more, but I feel there is a paradigm shift happening in design right now and it’s hard to predict where it’s all going. ‘Motion Design’ as a pure discipline appears to be cannibalising itself, which also means that there are a lot of exciting opportunities opening up on the peripheries of the industry.
I feel there is a paradigm shift happening in design right now and it’s hard to predict where it’s all going.
6. Knowing what you know now, what would be your advice for people in the same area?
Do less with more.
Pick your battles.
Have a plan (but be prepared to deviate from it.)
Learn to articulate your ideas; both verbally and written.
7. Is there something you are terrible at :)?
Taking my own advice.
Keeping to routines.
Answering questionnaires in a concise and timely manner.
8. Tell us 3 things you like
Clients who ‘get it’.
Re-runs of ‘Frasier’.
My 3-legged cat.
9. And 3 things you don’t
Graphic design ego’s.
When people call me Brandon.
Pedestrians in the cycle path on 2nd avenue.
10. Last question, what are you listening at the moment (band, specific music or album)
I’m on a Sunn O))) and These New Puritans kick right now.
Follow more of Adam’s work at:
Adam-brandon.com “although it’s in desperate need for an update.”
Arnaud Peron
In 3D, Art Direction, Motion Graphics
Margarida Lemos
In Art Direction, Illustration
Ariel Palanzone
In 3D, Art Direction, Graphic design, Illustration
Elin Eriksson
Kirsten Stowers
All images and projects are copyrighted to the respective artists.
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Scientists Worry Scott Pruitt's New EPA Change Will Harm Life-Saving Research
By Justin Worland
Michelle Bell’s 2004 study linking short-term exposure to air pollution to increased risk of death was a breakthrough. Previous research had shown how the pollutant ozone damages human health, but Bell’s was the first to show persuasively how damaging even a short exposure can be to the respiratory and cardiovascular systems.
What made Bell’s study possible — and distinguished it from previous research — was the ability to analyze huge amounts of health data from people in 95 urban areas across the country. “We need this data to do the research and we need the research to make the most effective decisions,” she says.
Since publication, the work has been cited more than 1,000 times and, a decade later, informed the Clean Power Plan, a central Obama-era regulation aimed at fighting climate change.
But a study’s like Bell’s could soon disappear from the toolbox of policymakers at the Environmental Protection Agency if Scott Pruitt, the agency’s top official, follows through on a plan to require more public disclosure of data used for research. Pruitt, who made his remarks in an interview with the conservative outlet The Daily Caller last week, says that data used in research that informs EPA policy should be available for the public to review.
Fossil Fuel Companies Reckon With Climate Change
Archival Photos Reveal the Unlikely Beauty of Sewer Systems
“We need to make sure their data and methodology are published as part of the record,” Pruitt told The Daily Caller. “Otherwise, it’s not transparent. It’s not objectively measured, and that’s important.”
But scientists say that policy would actually end up stymying essential research. Environmental and public health researchers rely on health and medical data from subjects who were promised privacy in exchange for details about their health histories. Those large data sets are often kept confidential and can be viewed only by a select set of researchers on a given project.
“My research deals with real world populations, it’s not looking at data in a lab or looking at cell culture,” says Bell. “We’re effe at birth defect records from actual babies, we’re looking at birth records, we’re looking at Medicare records.”
Surrendering the ability to access that data would mean that the EPA would lose vital information used to craft regulations aimed at protecting human health. The EPA has used health data like Bell’s study to protect Americans from everything from air pollution to the chemicals found in household products.
The details of Pruitt’s proposed policy on undisclosed data — called “secret science” by some Republicans —remain unclear. An EPA spokesperson referred a request for information to The Daily Caller.
But past conservative efforts to reform how the EPA uses science offers hints about about what the policy might entail. For years, a group of Republicans on Capitol Hill, led by House Science Committee Chair Lamar Smith, have sought to restrict science that relies on data unavailable to the public. The House passed legislation in 2015 that would have required that the science used to justify EPA regulations be “publicly available online in a manner that is sufficient for independent analysis and substantial reproduction of research results.”
Get our Politics Newsletter. Sign up to receive the day's most important political stories from Washington and beyond.
The bill died in the Senate, but transparency remains a favorite cause for many conservatives who argue the EPA has overreached with regulation in recent years. In an interview with TIME last fall, Pruitt cited transparency as a central reason the agency wants to review EPA climate regulations. “The American people deserve an open transparent honest discussion about this issue,” he said.
The effects of a transparency rule would likely extend far beyond climate change to public health concerns that affect Americans here and now. “It could be honestly be anything the EPA does: pesticides, any potential fracking regulation, any other movement on air regulations,” says Yogin Kothari, a Washington representative at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Scientists who work in environmental and public health say they will continue their work as they watch what Pruitt does, but the dismissal of their work from the federal government is disheartening.
“This leaves me and many of my colleagues puzzled about what to do,” says Jonathan Levy, a professor of environmental health at Boston University. “How you can genuinely affect public health and decision-making if the decision makers do not wish to use science?”
Write to Justin Worland at justin.worland@time.com.
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FULL CIRCLE Trademark Information
SeaLink Technologies SL
Innovative technology solutions to address water purification systems for aquaculture and aquafarms; Environmental, ocean, and marine conservation technology and services in the furtherance and promotion of a sustainable economic model, namely, a circular economy; Research services relating to environmental conservation, the environment and ecological sustainability all in the furtherance and promotion of a sustainable economic model, namely, ...
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Write a review about a product or service associated with this FULL CIRCLE trademark. Or, contact the owner SeaLink Technologies SL of the FULL CIRCLE trademark by filing a request to communicate with the Legal Correspondent for licensing, use, and/or questions related to the FULL CIRCLE trademark.
On Wednesday, March 13, 2019, a U.S. federal trademark registration was filed for FULL CIRCLE. The USPTO has given the FULL CIRCLE trademark serial number of 88338966. The current federal status of this trademark filing is FINAL REFUSAL, PRIOR ISSUES NOT COMPLTELY RESOLVED. The correspondent listed for FULL CIRCLE is NICHOLAS D. MYERS of THE MYERS LAW GROUP, 4695 MACARTHUR COURT, SUITE 200, NEWPORT BEACH CA 92660 . The FULL CIRCLE trademark is filed in the category of Computer & Software Services & Scientific Services . The description provided to the USPTO for FULL CIRCLE is Innovative technology solutions to address water purification systems for aquaculture and aquafarms; Environmental, ocean, and marine conservation technology and services in the furtherance and promotion of a sustainable economic model, namely, a circular economy; Research services relating to environmental conservation, the environment and ecological sustainability all in the furtherance and promotion of a sustainable economic model, namely, a circular economy; Information, advisory and consultancy services relating to environmental conservation, the environment and ecological sustainability including the provision of information online from computer databases or via the Internet all in the furtherance and promotion of a sustainable economic model, namely, a circular economy.
FINAL REFUSAL, PRIOR ISSUES NOT COMPLTELY RESOLVED
Estimated Response Deadline: 5/12/2020
See Trademark response services
Goods and Services: Innovative technology solutions to address water purification systems for aquaculture and aquafarms; Environmental, ocean, and marine conservation technology and services in the furtherance and promotion of a sustainable economic model, namely, a circular economy; Research services relating to environmental conservation, the environment and ecological sustainability all in the furtherance and promotion of a sustainable economic model, namely, a circular economy; Information, advisory and consultancy services relating to environmental conservation, the environment and ecological sustainability including the provision of information online from computer databases or via the Internet all in the furtherance and promotion of a sustainable economic model, namely, a circular economy
Published For Opposition Date: N/A
Last Applicant/Owner: SeaLink Technologies SL
Getxo, Vizcaya 48992
NICHOLAS D. MYERS
THE MYERS LAW GROUP
4695 MACARTHUR COURT, SUITE 200
NEWPORT BEACH CA 92660
Trademarkia-Network law firms can help you incorporate a business around your FULL CIRCLE trademark in less than 5 minutes. Trademarkia makes the process easy and convenient, so start now!
NICHOLAS D. MYERS is a correspondent of FULL CIRCLE trademark.
Please Rate and Review for FULL CIRCLE
FULL CIRCLE is providing Innovative technology solutions to address water purification systems for aquaculture and aquafarms; Environmental, ocean, and marine conservation technology and services in the furtherance and promotion of a sustainable economic model, namely, a circular economy; Research services relating to environmental conservation, the environment and ecological sustainability all in the furtherance and promotion of a sustainable economic model, namely, a circular economy; Information, advisory and cons....
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Special Classroom Wing for High School, Aalen, Germany
Stadt Aalen
10,763 ft²/1,000 m²
Liebel Architekten
Ohligschläger & Ribarek
Jelli & Burkhard
The new extension of the Schubart-Gymnasium in Aalen, was designed as a zero-energy house. This means that based on a primary energy balance the new building will generate, at least, as much energy locally and renewably as the building uses in the course of a year. The balance sheet not only includes the building operations for heating, ventilation and lighting, but also the energy demands for user electricity.
Another special feature of this project is the holistic view of the exterior skin design. Detailed simulations have shown that the energy saving potential of additional insulation is relatively small, but the additional cost is very high. Therefore, no passive house standard has been realized. Furthermore, during the planning process the objective has changed from an initial passive house to an active house.
The developed climate concept includes a hybrid ventilation system that combines a mechanically supported ventilation with natural ventilation via operable windows. The amount of air supplied via a displacement ventilation in the classrooms is considered the basic requirement which is supported by opening the windows during breaks. The combination of the two strategies ensures an excellent air quality.
To optimize the ambient temperature in summer, the mechanical supply air is pre-conditioned passively via an earth duct. Effective night flushing via operable ventilation elements is also part of the climate concept. Upstairs skylights are provided, which are utilized for night ventilation and also bring daylight into the classrooms.
A cogeneration unit in a subsidiary building provides heat for the new extension wing. The photovoltaic system on the roof generates enough renewable electricity to achieve the objective of a zero-energy building.
more < Liebel Architekten & TRANSSOLAR
Comparison primary energy
Overall energy concept
Study skylights
Energy concept
Total energy demand
Special Classroom Wing for High School
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By rabyam on January 21, 2016 • ( 4 Comments )
Chess forbidden in Islam, rules Saudi mufti, but issue not black and white
Zia H Shah, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times: “If the Mufti can endorse the killing of innocents in Yemen; he should be able to allow anything on our planet earth.”
Source: The Guardian
By Kareem Shaheen in Beirut
Game likely to take on status of minor vices such as music after Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Sheikh says it encourages gambling
Saudi Arabia’s grand mufti has ruled that chess is forbidden in Islam, saying it encourages gambling and is a waste of time.
Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Sheikh was answering a question on a television show in which he issues fatwas in response to viewers’ queries on everyday religious matters.
He said chess was “included under gambling” and was “a waste of time and money and a cause for hatred and enmity between players”.
Sheikh justified the ruling by referring to the verse in the Qur’an banning “intoxicants, gambling, idolatry and divination”. It is not clear when the fatwa was delivered.
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s supreme Shia religious authority, has previously issued rulings forbidding chess.
After the 1979 Islamic revolution, playing chess was banned in public in Iran and declared haram, or forbidden, by senior clerics because it was associated with gambling. But in 1988, Iran’s then supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, lifted the ban and said it was permissible as long as it was not a means of gambling. Iran now has an active confederation for playing chess and sends players to international games.
Moves to suppress chess are likely to have come as a surprise to the seventh-century Muslims who conquered Persia and adopted the game before exporting it to Europe.
Muslim scholars tend to place chess, a skill-based game, in a different category from games of chance, such as dice, but frown upon it if it distracts a person from performing the five daily prayers. Placing bets under any circumstances is forbidden.
Nigel Short, the British chess grandmaster, told the BBC that forbidding chess in Saudi Arabia would be a “great tragedy”. “I don’t consider chess to be a threat to society. It is not something that is so depraved as to corrupt morals,” he said. “Even Ayatollah Khomeini came to the conclusion that he’d gone too far and repealed his own ban.”
The region’s clerical establishment figures are no strangers to seemingly strange fatwas, or edicts. In the early 2000s, Saudi and other clerics issued a fatwa against the popular Pokémon franchise, and during football’s 2010 World Cup in South Africa, religious scholars in the United Arab Emirates said that using the widely reviled vuvuzela instrument was forbidden if the sound produced was above 100 decibels.
Categories: Islam, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Secularism, Separation of Church and State, Shariah Law, Sports, The Muslim Times
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Ali hidayah says:
Islam was born in Saudi Arabia. thousands Muslim go to Meccah for pilgrims every year.
Most Muslim and non Muslim around the world, what ever FATWA of Muslim scholars from Saudi Arabia believe as Syariah laws. or true Islam. Even not written in Al Quran,
Saudi Arabia’s grand mufti has ruled that chess is forbidden in Islam.
This mufti uses the name of Islam..
He claims that chess is forbidden in Islam.–Music also is forbidden–women is forbidden to sing—women is forbidden to use perfume–etc
Does Muslim Ahmadiyah support this fatwa?
Was Salam
Zia H Shah says:
If the Mufti can endorse the killing of innocents in Yemen; he should be able to allow anything on our planet earth.
I say paying attention to this Mufti is forbidden in Islam, but, “it is not black and white.”
henna says:
To claim chess is forbidden in Islam is completely absurd – its a game and does not involve things such as gambling so im pretty sure that its not haram or anything like that.
However music is pretty much forbidden in Islam – but to be honest with you the music of today is really disgusting – most objectify women and degrade them and also teach people bad manners through the use of vulgur language.
I dont really know much about the other two things mentioned but i believe their are some restrictions on the last thing mentioned
Most of Muslim and non Muslim around the world have been deceived by Muslim Scholars from Saudi Arabia
They think that whatever that come from Saudi Arabia is Islamic —-actually not.
Leave a Reply to henna Cancel reply
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Home » Phones » Google Pixel XL
Phones, Reviews
Google Pixel XL smartphone was launched in October 2016. The phone comes with a 5.50-inch touchscreen display with a resolution of 1440 pixels by 2560 pixels at a PPI of 534 pixels per inch. Google Pixel XL price in India starts from Rs. 39,999.
The Google Pixel XL is powered by 1.6GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor and it comes with 4GB of RAM. The phone packs 32GB of internal storage that cannot be expanded. As far as the cameras are concerned, the Google Pixel XL packs a 12.3-megapixel primary camera on the rear and a 8-megapixel front shooter for selfies.
The Google Pixel XL runs Android 7.1 and is powered by a 3450mAh non removable battery. It measures 154.70 x 75.70 x 8.50 (height x width x thickness) and weigh 168.00 grams.
The Google Pixel XL is a single SIM (GSM) smartphone that accepts a Nano-SIM. Connectivity options include Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth, NFC, USB OTG, 3G and 4G (with support for Band 40 used by some LTE networks in India). Sensors on the phone include Compass Magnetometer, Proximity sensor, Accelerometer, Ambient light sensor, Gyroscope and Barometer.
Google Pixel XL detailed specifications
Release date October 2016
Colours Very Silver, Quite Black, Really Blue
SAR value 0.46
Resolution 1440×2560 pixels
Processor 1.6GHz quad-core
Processor make Qualcomm Snapdragon 821
Expandable storage No
Rear camera 12.3-megapixel
Operating System Android 7.1
Skin Pixel Launcher
Wi-Fi standards supported 802.11 g/n/ac
USB OTG Yes
SIM Type Nano-SIM
Supports 4G in India (Band 40) Yes
Brilliant low-light photography
Fast modern processor
Great battery life
Google Assistant with localisations for India
Not very stylish or eye-catching
No storage expansion
Google is an American company specializing in Internet-related services and products. These include online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, software, and hardware. The company owns the Android operating system, which is the world’s most popular smartphone OS. Google’s impressive portfolio of services includes Gmail, YouTube, and Google Search, making it one of the biggest Internet companies in the world.
Google, Google Pixel XL, Phone
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Farmer Applies Brown Act as Water Torture
February 11, 2019 By Eric Caine 12 Comments
Bob Frobose
Most public officials would probably rather step on a nail than see someone like rice farmer Bob Frobose show up at a public meeting. Depending on your point of view, Frobose can be seen as a crank, activist, watch dog, concerned citizen, public advocate, and most everything in between and beyond.
With a persistence that rockets past intensity into obsession, Frobose differs from most civic critics in his ability to process abstruse legal arguments and mountains of detail.
Those who would dismiss him as a public nuisance do so at their own peril. As one of the principals of the Oakdale Groundwater Association (OGA), Frobose is fresh off a court victory over the Oakdale Irrigation District (OID) and OID water attorney Tim O’Laughlin. OGA not only won the court decision, the judge ordered OID to reimburse its legal fees.
Frobose’s latest project is a deep dive into the San Joaquin Tributaries Authority (SJTA), a group including the City and County of San Francisco, Modesto Irrigation District (MID), Turlock Irrigation District, Oakdale Irrigation District, and South San Joaquin Irrigation District. His interest was piqued when Larry Byrd, Modesto Irrigation District’s (MID) representative to the group, was replaced by fellow MID Board member John Mensinger.
Described by Mensinger as “routine,” the change angered Byrd and alarmed Frobose. Like many local farmers, Frobose is an avid follower of any and all water issues. But he’s doubly attentive to issues involving Tim O’Laughlin because he and O’Laughlin have been at odds for years; their recent court battle is only the latest of many contentious encounters, most of them during OID board meetings. O’Laughlin is also lead water attorney for SJTA.
Among Frobose’s major concerns is the effect of water transfers on local groundwater basins. The recent state-imposed Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) requires local governments and water agencies, “to halt overdraft and bring groundwater basins into balanced levels of pumping and recharge.” Nonetheless, OID depends on out-of-district water sales to finance below cost of delivery water to district farmers.
It appears that Frobose may fear O’Laughlin and the SJTA are prepared to recommend water sales as one way around the state’s new water plans. It was because of its failure to evaluate the effects of water sales on declining groundwater basins that OID lost its court battle with the Oakdale Groundwater Association.
Frobose made his presence felt at SJTA almost immediately. As soon as he learned SJTA as a public entity is bound by the Brown Act and other strictures, he reminded the board clerk that SJTA had failed to give the required 72 hour notice for its next board meeting, scheduled for Monday, February 11. The meeting was cancelled almost immediately.
Larry Byrd said on February 10 that he had probably irritated O’Laughlin by asking that his bill be itemized a couple of years ago. “I don’t remember exactly when it was,” said Byrd, “but it was such a large amount I wanted it itemized so we could see where the money was going.” O’Laughlin is thought by many to be the de facto chief executive of SJTA, in part because there is no formally appointed director.
Robert Frobose and attorney Osha Meserve
Byrd also said that in the past several members of the group wanted to hire an executive director, but others didn’t. “Some of us thought we needed a watchdog, but we couldn’t all agree. That’s why Merced Irrigation District dropped out of the group,” said Byrd, “their representative was doing all the work and it became too much.”
Given it’s funded by public money, there are some interesting omissions on the SJTA website, beginning with the lack of minutes and agendas. Almost immediately upon noticing the omissions, Frobose filed a public documents request for those minutes and agendas. He’s also asking for copies of all attorney fees.
Whatever the case, it’s almost certain Frobose will be showing up at future SJTA meetings, especially now that they’re going to be posted in compliance with the Brown Act. And whether he’s perceived as a crank or a concerned citizen, most everyone would agree with him that the people have right to know. Now they will.
Filed Under: Politics Tagged With: Bob Frobose, Oakdale Groundwater Association, San Joaquin Tributaries Authority, Tim O'Laughlin
Damon Woods says
Keep up the good work, Bob Frobose.
It’s a shame we can’t trust our public appointed officials with our precious resource, but at least we have a local farmer keeping an eye out for all of us. Thank you for all the hard work.
Bruce Frohman says
Please add my name to the list of citizens appreciating the efforts of Robert Frobose. Those who govern tend to operate in the grey area of legality when the public is not watching. If ignored long enough, they will cross into the red area of illegality and corruption. Watchdogs are usually valuable and important parts of the political process. Our government would work a lot better for everyone if there were more involved citizens like Mr. Frobose–whether you agree with him or not.
michael tozzi says
If I had the economic wherewith-all to do what Bob and Lou have been doing, I would do exactly what they are doing. That’s what it takes to do a good, productive battle with hard nosed bureaucrats and the hear no and say no evil, follow the leader board members.
This battle is a long time coming and a long lasting battle. Thanks to Bob, etc., for representing the unrepresented.
jt says
Well done, Eric. Cheers to Robert and his efforts.
Eric Caine says
Thank you JT. More to come.
I trust Larry Byrd. He is an honest man. I do not trust lawyers nor anyone representing Frisco or LA.
John Mensinger is crooked. He pursued his pawns (Campbell, Gilman) to cancel an internal investigation into his own behavior. Guilty conscience? Mensinger has a personal agenda and it’s obvious. He also thinks he is an attorney, which is comical. Keep the pressure on MID and SJTA.
We have never seen any evidence that Mr. Mensinger is “crooked.”
I appreciate your objective view. Keep digging and you will. Mensinger will be his own demise. He can’t sit back and wait things out, he jumps and acts without stepping back to see that his true colors shine through his behavior. Mensinger will reap what he sows. You heard it here first. Or maybe not, but either way you heard it.
Tue colors are starting to expose themselves.
https://eyeonmodesto.com/2019/02/20/john-mensinger-gets-himself-and-mid-sued-for-harassment-and-more/#jp-carousel-5460
More true colors
https://www.modbee.com/latest-news/article226522390.html
Leave a Reply to Frank Cancel reply
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ESPN Fantasy AppESPN Fantasy App
Darius Garland among top fantasy basketball free-agent finds
6dJim McCormick
After a slow start to his rookie campaign, Darius Garland has been picking up steam this month, averaging 16.7 PPG and 5.8 APG. Brian Babineau/NBAE via Getty Images
Jim McCormickSpecial to ESPN.com
Jim McCormick is a fantasy football and fantasy basketball analyst for ESPN.com.
Working the waiver wire is pivotal to succeeding in fantasy basketball. With so many games, injuries and endless shifts in rotations throughout the marathon campaign, we'll need to source stats from free agency to maximize rosters.
A willingness to entertain competition for the last few spots on your fantasy hoops roster can prove rewarding. When curating this fluid collective of statistical contributors, it helps to consider your end-of-bench players in direct competition with the talent floating in free agency.
The goal of this weekly series is to identify players available in at least half of ESPN leagues at each position. Some nominations are specialists capable of helping in one or two categories, while others deliver more diverse and important statistical offerings. In the breakdowns below, I've ordered players at each position with the priority of acquisition in mind, rather than roster percentage in ESPN leagues.
Darius Garland, Cleveland Cavaliers (Rostered in 29.2% of ESPN leagues): With at least a dozen points in eight straight games while slashing for 16.3 PPG, 5.3 APG, 1.1 SPG, and 2.3 3PG during this stretch, this gifted rookie has emerged as a helpful fantasy option midway through his first professional campaign.
Aaron Holiday, Indiana Pacers (15.5%): A lingering injury has sidelined Malcolm Brogdon, creating a significant creation role for Holiday to serve in the interim. Jrue's baby bro has averaged 14.1 PPG and 5.1 dimes per game during his past 15 games, nine of them starts in Brogdon's place.
Bruce Brown, Detroit Pistons (13.4%): As John Cregan deftly details in a recent column, ignoring scoring production as a key statistical element can prove rewarding in that you can then appreciate the full breadth of statistical contributions a given player might offer. Brown is a solid example of this ideology in action; he's averaged just 10.8 PPG during the past nine games, but also 4.7 RPG, 4.7 APG, and 2.5 stocks (combined steals and blocks) during this sample. Look past the modest scoring and instead focus on the unique creation role afforded to Brown with both Luke Kennard and Blake Griffin sidelined for Detroit.
Marcus Smart, Boston Celtics (37.3%): Only Fred VanVleet and James Harden average as many steals, 3-pointers and assists per game as Smart has this season. A defensive savant with underrated offensive contributions, Smart is a savvy addition to consider at a shallow shooting guard position.
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Damion Lee, Golden State Warriors (21.5%): With the team having exhausted all of the games available for his two-way contract, Lee is ineligible to play until the team finalizes a long-term deal. However, they opened a roster spot by waiving Marquese Chriss, so that could happen sooner than later. Alec Burks (29.0%) is a strong addition for as long as he's on the Warriors' roster, but it appears Lee could be the more enduring value given an eventual full-time roster spot and an expected surge in usage if, as expected, Burks is dealt before the deadline in February. Lee, after all, averaged 15.2 PPG in more than 30 MPG during his past 11 appearances for Golden State, all starts.
Jordan McRae, Washington Wizards (28.7%): With several key rotation pieces back on the floor for the Wizards, the days of McRae leading the team in shots are probably in the past, but he still could provide some utility as a scoring microwave for a team that relies heavily on bench production.
OG Anunoby, Toronto Raptors (44.0%): One of just seven players this season averaging at least 1.4 3PG, 1.1 SPG, and 0.7 BPG, Anunoby's uniquely versatile production merits more attention from fantasy investors despite a lack of scoring prowess.
Dillon Brooks, Memphis Grizzlies (33.5%): The market finally realized Brooks' awesome offensive production, as he's among the most-added players via free agency in ESPN leagues the past two weeks. Sunday's weak showing marked just the first game in his past seven that Brooks didn't post at least 15 points, as he's still averaging 19 PPG during this stretch, even with Sunday's seven-point outing.
Trevor Ariza, Sacramento Kings (10.0%): Mounting injuries to Bogdan Bogdanovic has vaulted Ariza into an important role for the Kings of late, and the veteran wing has responded with 14.7 PPG with awesome shooting and steal rates during his past three games.
Taurean Prince, Brooklyn Nets (35.3%): Thriving from beyond the arc lately and with solid defensive rates to complement his hot hand, Prince is afforded rare freedom to space the floor for the Nets' fantasy-friendly scheme.
Dorian Finney-Smith, Dallas Mavericks (9.7%): Another example of a player who is productive past a modest scoring clip, DFS plays a busy role as a sizable wing on a Dallas roster that proves uniquely needy for his size and athleticism from both forward spots.
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Christian Wood, Detroit Pistons (9.7%): This past Saturday saw Wood produce an awesome double-double with rich defensive contributions. While not every appearance will prove so fun, Wood is in a solid spot to provide value with Blake Griffin indefinitely sidelined with a knee injury.
Jerami Grant, Denver Nuggets (14.5%): A bruised knee has sidelined Paul Millsap for the past few games, opening a starting role for Grant, who has responded with some solid defensive performances. The rare 3-and-D power forward, Grant is a fun addition with Millsap ailing.
Maxi Kleber, Dallas Mavericks (8.5%): A top-10 ranking on the Player Rater among power forwards during the past week for Kleber has been fueled by the absence of Kristaps Porzingis, as this German forward has capably provided energy on the glass and on defense for Dallas.
Dwight Powell, Dallas Mavericks (48.0%): Keeping with the value provided by Porzingis' absence, Powell has enjoyed a surge in usage (14.5 PPG the past week) and rebounding opportunities that proves worthy of more attention from the fantasy market.
Jaxson Hayes, New Orleans Pelicans (19.6%): This athletic young rim-running center has proved productive on the glass whenever Derrick Favors is sidelined, which is a somewhat common occurrence. After all, Hayes leads the Pels in rebounding percentage whenever Favors is out of the lineup.
Alex Len, Atlanta Hawks (14.6%): With double figures in scoring in six of his past seven and double-digit rebounding games in three of his past seven appearances for Atlanta's thin frontcourt, Len can overcome a lack of playing time with efficient work on the glass.
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The Best of the Decade
TVLine's Decade in Review: The 13 Worst Series Finales, From Entourage and Dexter to House of Cards
By Team TVLine / July 18 2019, 7:17 AM PDT
There’s a lot on the line when any TV series airs its final episode ever. Make a few questionable creative choices, or dare to leave those characters without some closure on their storylines, and the social media pitchforks come out with alarming speed. READ MORE & VIEW PHOTOS
The 15 Worst Series Finales of All Time — House of Cards, Pretty Little Liars, Seinfeld, Gossip Girl and More
By Team TVLine / May 26 2019, 12:00 PM PDT
Sometimes good series not only go bad, they do so at the worst of all possible times — as in, right when they’re coming to an end. As a result READ MORE & VIEW PHOTOS
TV's Hottest Triangles: True Blood — Were You Team Bill or Team Eric?
By Andy Swift / June 27 2018, 12:00 PM PDT
From vampires to werewolves to faeries, Sookie Stackhouse’s dating history reads like a who’s who — or a who’s what — of the supernatural world. And for that, we thank her. READ MORE & VOTE
Nelsan Ellis Remembered: True Blood Co-Stars, Author and EP Pay Tribute
By Ryan Schwartz / July 8 2017, 1:36 PM PDT
True Blood‘s Nelsan Ellis, who died at the age of 39, is being remembered by friends and former co-stars. READ MORE
Report: True Blood to Become Musical
By Kimberly Roots / July 2 2016, 1:22 PM PDT
Goodbye, Bon Temps. Hello, Broadway?
HBO’s now-cancelled vampire drama True Blood is in the very early stages of becoming a musical READ MORE
Castle, Revenge, Glee and 17 Other Shows That Simply Ran Too Long
By Team TVLine / June 15 2016, 1:45 PM PDT
“It was still a good show, but I wish it had ended a season or two earlier. ”
If you’ve ever uttered a sentence like that READ MORE & VIEW PHOTOS
March BADness Tourney: Fangs Come Out in Our All-Vampire Showdowns!
By Michael Slezak / March 15 2016, 2:27 PM PDT
TV, TV, on the wall… who’s the baddest of them all?
That’s the question at the heart of TVLine’s March BADness Bracket Tournament, READ MORE & VOTE
Top TV Werewolves From Teen Wolf, True Blood, Vampire Diaries and More
By Andy Swift / October 10 2015, 9:00 AM PDT
Following last weekend’s ferocious fang-off (congrats to Buffy‘s Spike!), TVLine is continuing its month-long salute to small screen spookies with a tribute to the 13 top werewolves. READ MORE & VIEW PHOTOS
Top TV Vampires From Buffy, TVD, Moonlight, True Blood and More
By Andy Swift / October 3 2015, 9:00 AM PDT
Get ready to sink your teeth into 50 years of hedonistic history.
Because we at TVLine have always felt that Halloween should be a month-long affair, we’re spending every Saturday in October READ MORE & VIEW PHOTOS
Memories From the Set
Ballers' Arielle Kebbel Talks Gigs on True Blood, UnREAL, TVD and More
By Kimberly Roots / August 20 2015, 1:02 PM PDT
A recurring feature in which we ask your favorite stars to reminisce about past gigs
Let’s put this in terms Ballers sports reporter Tracy Legette would appreciate: A few of the high points of Arielle Kebbel‘s professional life have been complete hail marys. READ MORE & VIEW PHOTOS
3Confederate Officially Axed: HBO Confirms Controversial Slavery Drama…59
4Mindhunter Cast Released From Contracts as Season 3 Is Put on…49
5'Crisis on Infinite Earths': Where Was Reverse-Flash? And Iris? Who…47
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Union des Associations Internationales
UIA: Union of International Associations
Encyclopedia of World Problems - Archived Information
You are currently in UIA's online document archive. These pages are no longer maintained. To search the full archive click here.
The Encyclopedia is currently undergoing redevelopment !
12.12 Magic, miracles and image-building
Such are the dimensions of the crises faced by humanity and the planet that it is not uncommon to hear that "a miracle is required". Indeed, faced with the demonstrated incompetence and impotence of political leaders and their academic advisors, miracles seem just as likely to offer a way forward as conventional policy-making. At the same time, occasionally people experience gatherings which seem to offer hope because of the "magical" way they work --without it being possible to identify how this happened. As a result some would say that "we need more magic".
Magic of course has a very bad press. Worse than that of poetry. Both are aspects of culture which the sciences have done their best to marginalize and ridicule -- and religion before them. Ironically, given the subtitle of this paper, even the Walt Disney movie Beauty and the Beast has been labelled dangerously evil by Christian fundamentalists -- together with fantasy games such as Dungeons and Dragons (Christian Broadcasting Network, 1993).
But the sciences and religions are now on the defensive. They have proven incapable of responding to the problems that they have helped to engender. In a sense they have provided a wealth of new tools to build a better house, but are incapable of using those tools to construct a house that it is a delight to live in. The qualitative keystone is lacking. Soulless "utility" dwellings and architectural monstrosities best describe the capacity of the sciences in metaphorical terms. And how are religions contributing to our current problems and our capacity to survive them?
1. Magic as an interface between poetry and policy-making
Poetry of course has a long association with "magic". The best poetry is "magical" in its effects. Kenneth Slessor states: "Poetry is the result not of reason, not of intellect. It is the flow of magic." But what of the discipline of magic whose deep influence on the poet Yeats has been so frequently studied? Science and medicine have finally had to admit that there was some merit in traditional techniques and remedies (acupuncture, herbs, etc). Is it possible that there are truths buried in the clutter and superstition surrounding magic? Is it possible that these truths might provide clues to the interface between the "effects" of poetry and the "effects" of policy-making? From a cognitive perspective, of greatest significance is the declared purpose of magic to manipulate images and understanding. This is clearly a concern of poetry. But in doing so magic also aims to "effect" some kind of transformation.
2. Image-building, policy-making and science
Effecting a "transformation" is clearly a central concern of policy-making -- itself increasingly dependent on moulding the image of that policy in the media and even of creating a policy which has an appropriate image. Ironically policy-making has become heavily image-dependent -- just like poetry. Image-building, as practised by public relations, could be considered as a "sanitized" version of magic. Guided fantasy, a technique increasingly used in organizational development, is another variant.
The sciences are also increasingly sensitive to their neglect of the role of images in understanding the evolution of knowledge and communication (Holton, 1978; Miller, 1986; Barlow, 1990; Pickover, 1991). The importance of "creativity" in research laboratories that have to make a profit has tended to brushed aside any persisting doubts concerning the importance to such insight of a subjective process such as "imagination".
3. How is magic to be understood?
Magic, according to both scholars such as Daniel O'Keefe (1982) and practitioners such as R J Stewart (1987, 1988), is a set of methods for arranging awareness according to patterns; it is not a truth or a religion. Nor is it even a philosophy, in the strict sense of the word, although there are echoes of profound philosophy in most magical traditions. It is basically an artistic science in which the practitioner controls and develops imagination to cause changes in the outer world. The serious application of magical methods leads to transformation and it is the transformation which is of value and not the methods themselves. All magic derives from controlled work with the imagination.
In a major study by sociologist Daniel O'Keefe (1982) he explores 12 postulates concerning magic of which the first four indicate dimensions relevant to poetry-making and policy-making: Magic is a form of social action; Magic social action consists of symbolic performances -- and linguistic symbolism is central to magic; Magic symbolic action is rigidly scripted; Magic scripts achieve their social effects largely by pre-existing or prefigured agreements.
Magic (like advertising and poetry) does not "work" because its propositions are essentially real or true; it works because practitioners become imaginatively involved in these propositions. Thus for controlled periods of time under non-habitual circumstances, they behave as if they were true. It is not a question of becoming habituated to falsehood but rather of the magician growing through the patterns, whether true or not, and emerging beyond them into a clarity of awareness that was not possible before the experience of transition and transformation.
4. Sharing metaphors towards transformation
From the perspective of a magician, the propensity of people for engaging daily in activities which they know are fruitless or harmful, sustained by a pattern of values and habits, achieves its apparent coherence through a form of fantasy-sharing that holds the illusion together collectively and individually. This same propensity is used by magic to motivate inner transformation rather than outer identifications. When the awareness of values changes (in contrast to changes of values) the externally perceived world may be transformed by magical means.
This possibility is facilitated when the symbols used are those of the culture with which the practitioners are familiar. Once the perception of the external world can be transformed by such means, magic then enables changes within the individual through which further methods applicable to the transformed consciousness may be inwardly apprehended. Magic thus attempts to relate human consciousness to divine consciousness through patterns inherent in each. This is known as the Great Work.
5. Worldviews and transformations
A major premise of magic is that access may be obtained to many worlds or worldviews. The transformations which occur within the magician enable access to such innerworlds of consciousness in ways which transcend the limitations of purely intellectual endeavour or the inspirations of folklore. Images are deliberately evoked and cultivated as part of this process:
Initially magic alters the focus or area of attention, drawing the vital; energies together with the discipline of a tradition and its restricting vessel or matrix.
In a second stage the energies are redirected and gradually amplified through attuning to richer, more complex and more encompassing patterns. These integrative patterns have a resonant effect on the psyche. They may take the form of simple symbols, or may be imaginatively recreated as complex scenes, beings or patterns. They may be used to focus and direct a wide spectrum of personal and group energies on many levels of awareness.
In a third stage, the awareness having been attuned to various patterns normally inaccessible to everyday consciousness, begins to operate in other worlds or dimensions through the effect of the magical patterns and key symbols.
Finally the practitioner is projected into the alternative worlds of experience, often with considerable energy.
The increasing ability to change worldviews follows from a reassembly and redirection of the practitioner's energies. Such changes enable the practitioner to gain a more accurate understanding of the shared world. The value of such transitions to other world realities is that they contribute to the overall liberation from the particular illusion of the coagulated consensual worldview. They also ensure fruitful exchanges between such distinct realities and the entities that inhabit them.
The intent is therefore not to escape this world but rather to transform it. The transformation begins within new directions ofawareness sought in early training. It finally permeates the practitioner through to the physical body. Whereas religions seek to save the world, the magical disciplines affirm a subtle aspect of this insight, namely the possibility of transforming all worlds.
6. Magical arts
There are five fundamental magical arts: concentration, meditation, visualization, ritual pattern making, mediation. Although each of these disciplines of consciousness may be developed separately from the others, they are in fact harmoniously interwoven in any well balanced magical work. These all lead consciousness to change its direction, moving inwards rather than fixating outwards as it does in daily habitual life.
Through the practice of these arts during magical development, the individual progressively learns to balance the reality-worlds within individual consciousness through ritual and planned activity by which life becomes attuned and rhythmic rather than random and chaotic. At the same time the individual endeavours to energize the imaginative constructs and the contacts established through transformative rituals and powerful mediation. The spiritual power of the practitioner is directed outwards towards material ends, flowing through the psychic body complex, transforming the awareness of the practitioner before it reaches any other defined goal. These two processes may be integrated in one harmonious living pattern, a magical life of enlightenment, in which the practitioner seeks a continual interaction between the individual and the worlds occupied by his awareness.
Magic makes extensive use of the body as a set of metaphors to which the individual has ready access. This is not irrelevant to policy-making as classic Taoist guides to governance of a society indicate (Cleary, 1990). The eminent social scientist and author of "Image" (1961), Kenneth Boulding (1978) teasingly remarks: "Our consciousness of the unity of self in the middle of a vast complexity of images or material structures is at least a suitable metaphor for the unity of a group, organization, department, discipline, or science. If personification is only a metaphor, let us not despise metaphors --we might be one ourselves." (p. 345).
7. Spell-casting
Charismatic leaders have been studied as "spellbinders" by A R Willner (1984). Like it or not, spells as an aspect of magic seem to be closely associated with this overlap between poetry and policy. Concern is expressed at continuing popular interest in spells and the related persistent practices in many countries. But commercial advertising may be seen as using many of the techniques previously confined to spell-casting. There is a lot of "magic" in public relations and in what the "spin doctors" of political campaigns endeavour to achieve (Maltese, 1992).
Janet and Stewart Farrar (1990) indicate: "A spell can be as simple or as complicated as the occasion demands. But be it simple or complex, three factors are essential: precise visualization of intent, concentration and will-power" (p. 31). Many of the spells and incantations to which they refer take poetic form, including two embodied in the Kalevala, the Finnish national epic. Many are of course designed to "solve problems".
8. Guided visualization
As one of the five basic arts of magic, visualization is used to contact and develop subtler levels of consciousness. This discipline should be distinguished from recent initiatives in mental therapy to use relaxing guided fantasies in some forms of therapy. For more challenging experiences, several conditions should be fulfilled: the symbolism needs to be coherent and related to a specific tradition; no attempt should be made to complete the visualization or render it all-inclusive since this inhibits imaginative participation; the sequence of symbols should include challenging and even disturbing phases, and not be simply supportive and comforting; opportunities should be made for silent meditation to explore any insights that are triggered by the sequence; traditional symbols are more effective than those from popular culture; the visualization should bear some structural relationship to magical pattern-making. Visualizations should be characterized by intellectual, psychological, topological and cosmological clarity through which related realms of consciousness merge, dissolve and re-emerge in a master pattern. A complex visualization moves through several levels of consciousness or magical worlds.
9. Ritual pattern-making
A ritual of any kind sets up specific conditions (or a specific context) in both the operator and the "real" world as it is intended that it should be perceived. The main function of ritual in the magical tradition is to set up some particular state of emotion or awareness. Pattern-making through ritual is one of the five magical arts. The pattern acts as a matrix for energies arising within the consciousness of participants. Under specific conditions it can involve the bio-electrical energies of the body and psyche. The consciousness which merges with and consists of such energies is both individual and collective. It is expressed as a sequence of integrative insights shared by the group within its imagination. One interpretation is that traditional rituals of speech, movements, consecration conjure spirits and thereby bring about beneficial magical results - exorcism, healing, knowledge, prosperity.
Contrary to a widespread assumption, powerful rituals may be quite simple in form and language, even though they have complex effects and relationships upon awareness. Mystique, romanticism and pseudo-learning are unnecessary, especially when deliberately designed to obscure and impress in lengthy, repetitive rituals. But curious words, chants, vocal tones and other verbal symbols may be used when these have significance for all participants. Magical operations generally employ a combination of expressed modes of communication: words, music, dance, formal movement, scents, colours, sounds, objective symbols and implements. These are only of value when complementary, enhancing a pattern which captures the imagination. Hours of complex ritual may often be more effectively replaced by a simple ceremony or a basic meditation.
10. Magical perversions
Advertising "magic" can be misused as can the skills of the political "spin doctors" (Maltese, 1992) and the expertise in disinformation and negative image-building.
The term magic is frequently abused and separated from a spiritual foundation. In any historical period, as with religion, magical arts are taken up in fashionable and often bizarre forms, by various groups and movements, as continues to occur at this time. The enduring magical tradition is derived from perennial philosophy, sustained by myth, legend, visionary cosmology and poetic insight. In some cultures many perverted forms of magic continue to be practised for ignorant or selfish ends. Trivial, resource-consuming, or ultimately sinister practices are degraded forms of the enduring tradition that can lead to dangerous forms of imbalance.
In early magical training there is an extended period of confusion in which personal weaknesses and problems (especially self-inflation), become highly amplified before they are destroyed and the energies in question are absorbed into a balanced inner pattern. Magic is frequently associated with the occult as the preoccupation of secret cults in pursuit of secret powers in order to manipulate others. As with other disciplines, it can attract self-centred individuals of extremely dubious motivation. Through their efforts to draw attention to themselves, wider understanding of magic as a discipline is distorted. The potent powers to which magic offers access are the common energies and properties of humankind and are not the monopoly of any conspiracies that may endeavour to exploit them.
Magic has frequently been considered evil, especially by organized religion and as a result of the actions of those who exploit the gullible. As a neutral set of artistic and scientific techniques for controlling the imagination, magic (as with any set of methods), may indeed be employed by those who are imbalanced to enhance their own image of themselves. Evil may then be considered as associated with that imbalance, but not with the principles, however they are abused. Many modern religions, especially Christianity, make use of magical practices identical in principle to those of the pagan religions they displaced. Such religions also exhibit special concern at the evocation of gods and goddesses as being a completely regressive spiritual tendency. However this reservation should now be seen in the light of the insights of archetypal psychology in which the imaginative value of such symbols for the psyche is recognized as one way of facilitating individuation. Just as some religions make specific use of icons and other images as an aid to prayer, magical traditions use specific images of deities to gain specific results with the imagination and its effects upon the outer world.
‹ 12.11 Inventing reality through configured imagery up 12.13 Future role of computer audio-visual technology ›
World Problems and Global Issues
Human Potential and Development
Integrative Knowledge
Patterns and Metaphors
Transformative Approaches to Social Organization
Transformative approaches project - index to notes and commentaries
Interactive database use
Discontinuity
Envisioning conferencing
Configuring strategic dilemmas in intersectoral dialogue
Poetry-making and policy-making
12.1 Prospects for an arranged marriage
12.2 Overtures of the Beast
12.3 Overtures of Beauty
12.4. Voice of the Matchmaker
12.5 Poetic configuration of policy guidelines
12.6 Enhancement of policy through key poetic insights
12.7 Vision of a poetic policy project
12.8 Envisioning the policy-making experience of the future
12.9 Policy discourse through metaphor
12.10 Cultivating new conceptual languages
12.11 Inventing reality through configured imagery
12.13 Future role of computer audio-visual technology
Human Values and Wisdom
Global Strategies and Solutions
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Any amount is appreciated!
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Приєднався 7 липня 2012
Сторінка користувача Обговорення
Групи користувача
User language
hr-N
Ovaj suradnik govori hrvatski kao materinski jezik.
de-N
Dieser Benutzer spricht Deutsch als Muttersprache.
This user has professional knowledge of English.
Овај корисник разуме српски / srpski језик на напредном нивоу.
bs-3
Ovaj korisnik ima napredno znanje bosanskog jezika.
Ovaj korisnik zna srpskohrvatski na naprednoj razini.
fr-1
Cet utilisateur dispose de connaissances de base en français.
uz-0
Bu foydalanuvchi oʻzbek tilini umuman bilmaydi.
Users by language
For a slightly more international version, check out my Wikidata user page, where you can switch the display language.
I used to have a second user account while I was working at Wikimedia Deutschland: User:Denny Vrandečić (WMDE). I am not using that one anymore.
Local user pages
Wikipedia in Deutsch
Hrvatska Wikipedija
General bio
I am Croatian (my parents are from Brač, the most beautiful place in the world). I went to the Geschwister-Scholl-Gymnasium, studied computer science and philosophy at the University of Stuttgart, got my PhD at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, where my research area have been Ontologies and the Semantic Web. I have been doing research at the Laboratory of Applied Ontology at the CNR and at the Information Sciences Institute at USC. After that I joined Wikimedia Deutschland to start the Wikidata project. Today I work at Google.
I also have written texts for the German fantasy role playing game Das Schwarze Auge.
I lived on the island of Brač, in Stuttgart, Rome, Karlsruhe, Los Angeles, Berlin, and now San Francisco.
Wikimedia bio
The following text was part of a first draft for my candidacy statement for the Board of Trustees elections. So please bear with me that it sounds a bit self-aggrandizing.
I am a Wikipedian since 2003. In 2004, I became the first administrator and bureaucrat of the Croatian Wikipedia, when there was no community yet. At the first Wikimania in 2005, my colleagues and I presented the idea of including structured data in Wikipedia. In the following, Markus Krötzsch and I created the Semantic MediaWiki extension to demonstrate the power of the idea. Semantic MediaWiki became one of the most versatile extensions, and remains a unique advantage enabling many use cases in organizations as diverse as Stanford, NASA, the UN, WHO, FSF’s Free Software Directory, translatewiki.net, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or on a kids’ wiki about Yu-Gi-Oh!
I gained my PhD at KIT from 2004-2010, for which I did research, among other things, on the Wikimedia projects. In 2008 I was co-chair of the research track of Wikimania. In 2009/2010 I co-wrote the proposal for the EU project RENDER (total budget 4.4 Million Euro), the first EU research project in which Wikimedia Deutschland participated.
In 2010/11, I wrote the Wikidata proposal with input from numerous community members, the Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Deutschland, and external advisors. In the following, I secured more than 2 Million USD in donations to fund the development of Wikidata, and for Wikimedia Deutschland, hired and led the team which would start in 2012 with the development and eventual deployment of Wikidata. Wikidata has become the single biggest sustainable contributor of new members to the Wikimedia communities in the past decade, and is today the fourth largest Wikimedia project community. It is also easily the most impactful technical change in many years, and yet it was introduced with an unusual small amount of backlash and on-wiki discussions. Wikidata has removed more than 400 Million lines of Wikitext so far - content, that has not to be maintained anymore, without loss of quality or coverage.
I joined Google in 2013, and since then I have helped with the release of several datasets from Google under a CC0 license, and most importantly supported the ongoing shutdown of Freebase and the release of Freebase’s data for the benefit of the Wikidata project. In 2015, I hosted a Wikidata editor at Google to make sure that as much data as possible is being offered to Wikidata.
I was an elected member of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees in 2015 and 2016.
Те, що Ви бачите на цій сторінці, було скопійоване з https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Denny.
Отримано з https://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/Користувач:Denny
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Home Programs Neil James Westra
Neil James Westra
Abuse, Scattered Siblings
Neil James Westra survived a horrifying childhood that included hunger, abuse, fear and even polio, yet he became a source of joy and hope for others. Don't miss the dramatization of how that happened, another true testimony on UNSHACKLED!
Sandy Boyd Pt 1 – PG
Abuse, Addiction, Witchcraft
Sandy Boyd fought a cycle of abuse and addiction in her family from a young age. With her parents' belief in the occult, Sandy felt a darkness surrounding her that she did not know how to escape on her own, until one day, light found her. Don't miss her story on UNSHACKLED!
Abuse, Divorce, Occult
Sandy's childhood consisted of horrors no child should experience, including demonic worship, abuse, and drug addiction. But God found her just as she was ready to end her life. How did it turn out? We'll tell you in the finale of her thrilling story all on the next UNSHACKLED!
“Ellie McBride”
Abuse, Depression, Eating Disorder
Ellie McBride came of age in a family culture of abuse and neglect. The lovelessness she experienced in childhood seemed to dictate her future until she was introduced a new kind of unconditional love. Don't miss her true story on the next UNSHACKLED!
Tracey Griffin Classic -PG
Abuse, Rape
Surrendered by a teen mom and brutally abused by her foster family, a young girl gave up hope of finding love. Would she continue the destructive cycle, or rise above her tragic past? Hear the answer as we bring you the classic true story of Tracey Griffin, soon, on UNSHACKLED!
Nellie Sealy Pt 1
Abuse, Addiction, Suicide
After falling into a destructive cycle of abuse and addiction, Nellie wondered if there was anything worth living for. Though she was a loving mother, she felt unqualified and unsure. When the love of God is extended through her family, Nellie is given a second chance. Don't miss her true story on UNSHACKLED!
Johnny Garcia Classic
Addiction, Anger, Child Abuse
A young man became a boxer to fight the abuse in his life, but he needed something stronger than fists to fight his greatest opponent. Don't miss the exciting classic story of Johnny Garcia on the next UNSHACKLED!
We love and thank God for your show. We are grateful for the stories and we are very encouraged as Christians We love God so much and will pray for you always. Thank you♡ and we will continue to tell others about your ministry.
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Google Workers Fired Amidst Attempt to Organize 2019-Dec-Sat Google fired four employees who were critical of the company’s practices and were engaged in labor organizing. The workers contest the claims made by Google that they were fired for https://us.politsturm.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2019/12/Google.png America, Capitalism, class struggle, Exploitation, news, union, USA, Workers ,News, US News politsturm.com - USA politsturm@gmail.com politsturm.com - USA
2019-Dec-Sat
Google Workers Fired Amidst Attempt to Organize
Google fired four employees who were critical of the company’s practices and were engaged in labor organizing. The workers contest the claims made by Google that they were fired for leaking sensitive documents to the press.
In their criticism of the company, the workers cited Google’s cooperation with Customs and Border Protection, the development of drone technology with the Department of Defense, the unfair treatment of temporary workers and contractors, among other grievances.
The workers are adamant that their termination was a result of their work to lawfully organize Google employees.
The workers have stated that they are going to be filing an Unfair Labor Practice with the National Labor Relations Board to see if Google acted unlawfully.
In this instance, we can see the clear divergence of interests between Google and its employees. The workers attempt to organize were swiftly opposed by Google and the organizers were fired. While the workers attempt to organize Googles employees is admirable and commendable, it is necessary to organize using Marixst-Leninst principles and theory to achieve success.
Google has demonstrated that it will act swiftly and forcibly to protect its class interests, and the workers must do the same.
Sources: 1 ,2
America Capitalism class struggle Exploitation news union USA Workers
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Martin Shkreli: Inglorious end of the bourgeois “Pharma Bro”
American Workers Drowning in Debt 2017-Nov-Wed “The average American household carries $137,063 in debt, according to the Federal Reserve’s latest numbers. Yet the U.S. Census Bureau reports that the median household income was just $59,039 last https://us.politsturm.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/11/American-Workers-Drowning-in-Debt.png Capitalism, Debts, Poverty, USA ,International, News, US News politsturm.com - USA politsturm@gmail.com politsturm.com - USA
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Las Vegas Casino Workers Authorize First Strike In Decades 2018-May-Fri About 25,000 casino workers voted to authorize a strike after failing to come to an agreement after intense contract negotiations. The unionized workers eligible to strike represent about half of https://us.politsturm.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2018/05/las_vegas_strike_lol.jpg Capitalism, casino, International, USA ,International politsturm.com - USA politsturm@gmail.com politsturm.com - USA
Las Vegas Casino Workers Authorize First Strike In Decades
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