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Journal of Theoretical and Applied Information Technology 31st May 2008 | Vol. 4 No. 5
Title: STUDIES ON HUMAN X-CHROMOSOMAL DISORDER
Niranjan V, Mahmood, R Jayram Reddy, Arpit Saxena, Kamaljeet Kaur, Ritesh Raj Safi
Journal of Theoretical and Applied Information Technology 2008
Conditions caused by a change in the number or structure of chromosomes are known as chromosomal disorders. There are over 3000 chromosomal disorders which make a major contribution to human morbidity and mortality. A very high number of both Mendelian and other diseases (some of which are incurable, till today) have been found to have their origins on the X chromosome. Although there are numerous X-linked disorders, few very important diseases were considered to be analyzed using a bioinformatics approach. The discovery may throw some light on various findings which could be very useful in comprehending the mechanisms underlying the causes and occurrence of these diseases at genomic level. Allelic variants of 11 single gene disorders related to X- chromosome were collected from OMIM and their gene expression was obtained from GENE CARDS. The results were compiled and plotted on a pie chart. In X-linked dominant and recessive disorders genes were taken from OMIM, tissue specific expression of these genes and their locus points was obtained. In a total of 41 genes responsible for XLMR which are present on the X-Chromosome, 13 genes which are position specific, were found to cause mental retardation. These 41 genes were analyzed and sufficient information for causing XLMR was found in 39 genes. HEMA was found to have the highest number of allelic variants and expression of the genes causing X-chromosomal disorders were found to be maximum in brain. Mental retardation was found to be the major effect which could be attributed to significant genes present on the X-chromosome. We found that 14 loci were responsible for mental retardation, in which Xp11 coded for 22% genes responsible for it. �X� is the KEY for hereditary LOCK.
Title: PREDICTION OF CHATTER IN MILLING
M.M. RAVIKUMAR, A.BHASKAR
The machining industry has an increasing need for improved characterization of cutting tools for controlling vibration and chatter during the milling process. The chatter is a self excitation phenomenon occurring in machine tools, in which the cutting process tends to decrease the machine structural damping ending with an unstable behavior. The paper is organized as follows: In section 1, the differential equations describing the mechanical model, In section2, the experimental setup and finally, the conclusions are drawn in 3.
Title: PROBABILISTIC AND DETERMINISTIC CRYPTO ANALYSIS
M. Thiyagarajan, S. Samundeeswari
In Network Security various attacks have been identified at different stages of intrusion and attempts. Security measures are designed for overcoming individual attacks. These attacks are random in nature and an attempt is made to the multi scale autoregressive model to combine all attempts to attack a network and to measure the total damage done to the machine or network.
Title: Modeling and simulation of MEMS characteristics: A Numerical Integration Approach
M.Z.Shaikh, Dr.S.F.Kodad, Dr.B.C.Jinaga
The advent of precision three-dimensional micro machining technologies in the last couple of decades has seen the birth of an exciting and potentially revolutionary field called Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS). The complexity of Microsystems is steadily increasing due to the scaling of microelectronic devices.
Looking at the MEMS devices, the moment the moving elements touch the static part of the system will have a major influence on the overall performance of the device. Hence one definitely needs to consider the touchdown effect in the system behavior .This paper gives a numerical integration approach of capacitive MEMS characteristics modeling.
Title: Settlement Growth Prediction Using Neural Network and Cellular Automata
Nagaratna P Hegde, I V Muralikrishna, K V Chalapatirao
The significant objective of this paper is to describe how Cellular Automata (CA) can be used to predict land use land change in the settlement growth and show the advantage of integrating the Neural Network with CA. Cellular automata have been utilized as a prediction technique in the study of an impressively wide range of dynamic phenomena. A spatial simulation model comprises an assortment of processes performed on spatial data that will produce information, by and large in the form of a map. CA models exude superior performance in simulating land changes compared to conventional models .
CA are much simpler than complex mathematical equations and produce results that are more meaningful and useful. Temporal and spatial complexities of systems can be efficiently modelled by precise definition of transition rules in CA models. GIS is a technology that is employed to view and analyse data from a geographic perspective. In practice, grid cells covers the selected area of study. Consequently, specific ground surface attribute value of interest occurring at the centre of each cell point is recorded as the value for that cell.
Simulation is carried out using traditional CA and Neural Network based CA for the settlement growth for an artificial city and real city. A number of land use sprawl parameters, and different size and shape of neighborhood with some testing constraints are used in this simulation. The results reveal that neural network CA method is more appropriate than traditional CA for predicting the settlement growth.
Title: LAUGHTER INQUISITION IN AFFECT RECOGNITION
Nachamai. M, T.Santhanam
Laughter and humor are major ingredients of humanity but does not have any black and white authenticate. Laughter is a physiological process, which activates facial, respiratory and laryngeal muscles. Laughter may occur instinctively - in response to humor or to appropriate emotional or sociological stimuli and can also be elicited upon command � voluntary, contrived or faked laughter. Exploring the pattern of laughter is an intricate and arduous errand. Speech and laughter are quite disparate in the vocalization, duration and in regularity of its occurrence. This work is a convincing attempt to catalog the different types of laughter as positive laughter, negative laughter, laughed speech and vague category. Feature selection was done using Radial Basis Boltzmann Machine Network, categorization was done using an Ergodic- Hidden Markov Model. The corpus used for experimental study was the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) Meeting Corpus from which 30 meetings were taken as the data set. The technique used has yielded a persuasive result in categorizing the types of laughter.
Title: ENHANCING PERFORMANCE OF FACE RECOGNITION SYSTEM BY USING NEAR SET APPROACH FOR SELECTING FACIAL FEATURES
Shivani Gupta, K.S.Patnaik
The application of Support Vector Machines (SVMs) in face recognition is investigated in this paper. SVM is a classification algorithm recently developed by V. Vapnik and his team. We illustrate the potential of SVMs on the Cambridge ORL face database, which consists of 400 images of 40 individuals, containing quite a high degree of variability in expression, pose, and facial details. Our face recognition systems consist of two major phases. We present an automated facial feature extraction procedure and make use of Near set approach to choose the best feature among the considered one which significantly improves face recognition efficiency of SVM. Near Set approach was introduced by James Peters in 2006, as a result of generalization of rough set theory. One set X is near to another set Y to the extent that the description of at least one of the objects in set X matches the description of at least one of the objects in Y. Also we have shown that for face recognition in ORL face database using SVM with feature selection by near set approach has error rate 0.2% which is very less as compared to error rate obtained in the previous work done by other authors on the ORL face database.
Title: EFFECT OF GSM SYSTEM ON TEXT-INDEPENDENT SPEAKER RECOGNITION PERFORMANCE
Nemat. S. Abdel Kader
This paper introduces the influence of GSM encoder/decoder on text independent speaker recognition performance based on Vector Quantization (VQ) classifiers. A database consisting of 136 speakers is used to investigate the system performance. The speaker recognition is evaluated using the original database. The speech files are then passed through the GSM coder/decoder. The coded speech is finally used for training and testing the speaker recognition system. The effect of the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and Rayleigh fading channels on the system performance is also investigated.
Title: A SURVEY OF OPTIMAL POWER FLOW METHODS
K.S.Pandya, S.K.Joshi
The objective of an Optimal Power Flow (OPF) algorithm is to find steady state operation point which minimizes generation cost, loss etc. or maximizes social welfare, loadability etc. while maintaining an acceptable system performance in terms of limits on generators� real and reactive powers, line flow limits, output of various compensating devices etc. Traditionally, classical optimization methods were used to effectively solve OPF. But more recently due to incorporation of FACTS devices and deregulation of a power sector, the traditional concepts and practices of power systems are superimposed by an economic market management. So OPF have become complex. In recent years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods have been emerged which can solve highly complex OPF problems. The purpose of this paper is to present a comprehensive survey of various optimization methods used to solve OPF problems.
Title: DEVELOPMENT OF SEX SPECIFIC MOLECULAR MARKERS IN DIOECIOUS PIPER LONGUM.L PLANTS BY DIFFERENTIAL DISPLAY
P. Manoj, N. S. Banerjee, P. Ravichandran
In the absence of any genetic or sequence information of a closely related species or individuals, showing morphological similarity and limited difference, differential display becomes an important technique to look into their genetic similarity and differences. Plants showing difference like disease resistance and susceptibility can be screened by this technique and sequence homology search can be carried out. Once some potent cDNA fragments were identified, they can be sequenced for full length gene and also design specific primers to screen the particular trait. Using this technique we could identify male and female plants of Piper longum at a younger stage.
jatit.org
Publishing Policy Review Process Code of Ethics
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Year : 1997 | Volume : 14 | Issue : 2 | Page : 3-12
Cytological monitoring in women for early detection of carcinoma of uterine cervix
JS Misra1, K Das2, Chandrawati3
1 Cytologist, K.G. Medical College, Lucknow, India
2 Professor, K.G. Medical College, Lucknow, India
3 Professor and Head Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, K.G. Medical College, Lucknow, India
J S Misra
Cytologist, Dept, of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, K.G. Medical College, Lucknow
Cytological monitoring of cervical smears was undertaken in 15, 649 women attending Gynaecology Clinic of Queen Mary's Hospital, Lucknow, India (April 1971 - Nov. 1996). Cervical dysplasia was found in 6.7% and malignancy in 0.8% of the cases. The incidence of dysplasia and carcinoma of cervix was higher in women who revealed abnormalities of cervix on clinical examination than in subjects with healthy cervices (10.3% and 2.1% as against 4.2% and 0.02% respectively). The former group thus needs to be identified as high risk for harbouring early cervical cancer and be offered priority in a cytological surveillance study. Further 21.5% of the 132 cytologically diagnosed cases of carcinoma cervix were in younger women of 26-35 years. Hence yearly Pap smear testing is recommended for ail women irrespective of age and parity.
[PDF]*
Misra J S
Chandrawati
Cytological screening
Cervical cancer.
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Jeff Crank
"When they allow a talk show host to play them like a two-dollar banjo, they demonstrate what kind of backbone they'll bring to the job later on, if we elect them. After they get elected will they continue to allow Jeff Crank to put a nickel in them and wind them up every Saturday morning?"
Barry Noreen, former columnist, Colorado Springs Gazette
"There's a lot of talent there" - Shannon Fowler
"For a guy named Crank he's pretty affable" - Russ Latino
The Real Hope for America
By Range Rider
Much of what gets posted to blogs tends not to be uplifting. Get ready to sit tall in the saddle. Below is the essay I was asked to review for a young man I know who is applying to for Officer Candidate School. He has a college degree from a good school, is in his mid-20's, has work experience, and other choices he could pursue. I could not think of a single edit or improvement:
Why I Want To Be a US Army Officer
My experience with terrorism began not in 2001 with the attacks of September 11th, but in 1990 when I was issued a gas mask in anticipation of a missile attack. Not long after I received my mask I was awoken in the middle of the night by the piercing whine of an air raid siren. My family had done a few drills to prepare so I instinctively jumped out of bed and ran to my parents’ bedroom which had been sealed in advance. There my mother and father frantically helped me to strap on my mask before putting on their own.
We sat in the room staring at each other and listening to our own loud and rhythmic breathing until the television announced that Tel Aviv was no longer threatened. We repeated this process many times and luckily the Iraqi Scuds were relatively ineffective. But the idea that we had to fear a poison gas missile attack not despite, but rather because we were innocent civilians left an indelible impression on me.
I am thankful for the fact that I will always have that memory because it serves as a constant reminder of the forces against which Americans must battle. Whether organized as a government or as a federation of religious fanatics, there are aggressive, belligerent people who aim to do us harm. They dwell in the far reaches of the world and it is there that we must go to protect our nation. I, for one, feel unquestionable responsibility to fulfill that duty. To that end, it is my aim to lead men in combat in service to my country.
With that goal in mind I have taken it upon myself to refine my leadership ability, to improve my physical fitness, and to hone my language skills. Those are the conscious steps I have taken, and yet I feel as if I were born to serve my country. I have been blessed with a strong moral core and meticulous attention to detail. My parents put me on a path to the Army by instilling me with those traits, yet also helped me in unwitting ways. My father's heritage brought me to Tel Aviv. My mother's family, with a tradition of military service as old as this nation, instilled in me the patriotism and humble sense of duty that form the backbone of my life.
I am thankful for the opportunity to invest myself in a noble and necessary cause. It is not so much a matter of choice, as I could not, in good conscience, sit idly by while my countrymen fight. It would be a profound honor to serve that cause in the uniform of a United States Army officer.
Take heart... American values are alive and well in our young!
Posted by Range Rider at 6:55 PM
Companies to Sever Ties With
Here are the list of companies that severed ties with the National Rifle Association. Time to cut ties with them:
Hertz Rental Car
Avis Rental Car
Enterprise/Alamo/National Rental Car
Crank It Up Facebook Page
Tweets by @jeffcrank
Political Groups That May Deceive You
As ballots come to voters in the mail, below are a list of groups that I believe you should be cautious about. They have in the past, or are likely to, make untrue statements about candidates.
*Colorado Accountable Government Alliance Independent Expenditure Committee
* The Christian Coalition of Colorado
*Christian Family Alliance of Colorado
*"The Colorado TEA Party" (Beware of a TEA Party group of Colorado claiming to endorse candidates.)
Jeff Crank Show Links
KVOR
Complete Colorado - The best news site in Colorado
I Am Created Equal
Americans for Prosperity Colorado
Jimmie Butler Local Campaign Videos
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Shining Voice - Kelvin's BlogSpot
Dong Yi Shun, Kelana Jaya Food Review
So far in my entire life, I've only eaten China Muslim food once and that was back then during the road trip when the Almera was launched.
Knowing of such dish's existence, I intend to find one that would be phenomenal according to my taste. So I decided to try out Dong Yi Shun:
Dong Yi Shun is a simple and plain restaurant where it's interior has both Chinese and Muslim style influence in it's ambiance.
It's fruit juices are made from real fruits and the mango juice that I tasted is not too sweet but the sweetness tends to come from the mango itself.
This is the Golden Empress Fragrant Fish:
Fish is okay and I find it relies heavily on the sauce for taste which is sweet.
Spicy Chicken with Dried Chili:
The chicken is indeed spicy and the dried chili, hard and probably best to avoid eating as the spiciness screwed up my taste buds on tasting some dishes that was later produced.
Anyway, moving on is the Xiao Long Pao:
Disappointed on this one because it seems to have sit for too long. The skin of the Xiao Long Pao is rubbery and thick and overpowers the taste of the meat inside which is not much. A good Xiao Long Pao has it's juicy soup flowing out from the inside but this one had none at all.
Pan Fried Chicken Dumplings:
This is not bad. The minced chicken inside is flavorful and in whole nice to eat.
Golden Salted Pepper Prawns:
Prawns are not what I like to eat but I took a small one to try it out. It's full of interesting flavors in it and quite salty but then again, it's supposed to be salty hence the name. The one thing that I didn't like about this dish is that it's fried with the tail that contains the prawns' shell at the end of it. This was hidden due to the exterior and could provide an unpleasant experience when you unknowingly bite into the prawns shell.
Here is the Zi Ran (Cumin) Lamb:
This is the best dish that I've tasted in this restaurant. I like the taste of Cumin Lamb and it has always left me wanting more everytime. In this case, it also had me wanting more. The meat was nice and tender and the seasoning on the meat really is the highlight flavor: a little saltiness, a little spiciness where I could just eat it on it's own.
This is Spicy Sliced Potato:
By now, I'm sure you've figured out that most of the dishes tend to come with spiciness in it. If you're a person who can't take spicy, best to ask them to tone it down or none at all by preparing it another way when you order. Strangely, for this dish, I somehow tasted it to be gingery and couldn't taste the potato even though I took a mouthful of it. Maybe my taste buds were a little wack at this point.
This is the Dong Yi Shun Four Season Mixed:
Done in a clear manner, the vegetable tastes are apparent.
Mushroom Prawn Lamee:
The noodles that they have are all handmade in the kitchen so it ensures freshness and nicer to eat. The highlight of this dish is the noodles in itself, the soup and ingredients thrown in together were just so-so.
And finally, we tried the Hot & Sour Soup:
Despite having a nice taste to it, it's too spicy for my consumption on it's own and hence I'm only able to drink 3 spoonfuls of it.
Dong Yi Shun is at: C-G-06 Ground Floor, Dataran Glomac, Jalan SS 6/5B, Kelana Jaya, 47301.
It's open everyday 10am-10pm
Posted by Kelvin -KtheBlogger- Tan at 10:14 PM 2 comments
Labels: food, restaurant, review
McLaren Show Gallery Launched in Malaysia
Through it's aggressive expansion plan in Asia, McLaren has now made it into the shores of Malaysia and started with a bang by launching it's first showroom at Mutiara Damansara. The opening marks the 41st retail location in it's 25th global market within the span of 2 years.
When I first arrived at the showroom, I was greeted by the McLaren 12C beautifully displayed at the front of the showroom:
The iconic British brand of high performance sports car is represented by Sime Darby Auto Britannia Sdn Bhd in Malaysia which is a subsidiary of Sime Darby Motors. This is the 3rd collaboration between Sime Darby Motors and McLaren Automotive where the other 2 is at Hong Kong and Shanghai.
There were almost a handful of McLaren cars scattered around the front ground floor of the building showcasing at their allocated space of which one I had coffee with:
Besides coffee, there was one other refreshing drink that was served:
Among the invited guests gracing the official launch ceremony were senior representatives from McLaren Automotive including Sven J. Ritter, Sales Manager, McLaren Automotive Asia, globally acclaimed car designer and Design Director of McLaren Automotive, Frank Stephenson and Dennis Ho, Managing Director of Malaysia, Sime Darby Motors:
The launch ceremony also saw a very special 'guest' making an appearance and that is the McLaren P1, the hybrid supercar which is also the long-awaited successor to the legendary McLaren F1:
This super exclusive beautiful masterpiece is limited to only 375 units worldwide:
It's truly the ultimate expression of McLaren's engineering expertise and design.
Sven J. Ritter said, “Asia is the world’s largest and fastest growing auto market. McLaren Kuala Lumpur’s new showroom is another testament of McLaren Automotive’s drive to expand quickly yet prudently into this exciting marketplace. Our expansion is hinged on working with partners with a proven track record in performance and delivery.”
Sven also explained that McLaren Automotive aims to expand beyond Formula 1 racing and have its state-of-the-art high performance sports cars available to discerning enthusiasts.
“Asia, including Malaysia, has an ever-growing pool of high net worth individuals who are becoming more and more astute in the way they invest, especially in their passion, and this provides a fascinating opportunity for a brand like McLaren,” he added.
The showroom at the Ground Floor of Menara Mudajaya, Mutiara Damansara is supported by the McLaren Kuala Lumpur Service Centre in Temasya Industrial Park, Glenmarie. The Service Centre has a fully-equipped two-bay workshop where the employees have been professionally trained at the McLaren Technology Centre (MTC) in Woking, Surrey, UK. This means they have the capability and expertise to service and diagnose any McLaren sports cars with the highest of standards.
Besides the P1, the McLaren 12C Spider was also showcased at the launch:
The McLaren 12C was derived from McLaren's world championship-winning Formula 1 heritage and it's starting price is from RM2.036 million.
McLaren Kuala Lumpur also has a vehicle adoption policy that offers existing McLaren sports car owners in Malaysia the opportunity to maintain their cars with an authorised McLaren service centre.
For further information on McLaren cars, head on to www.kualalumpur.mclaren.com
Posted by Kelvin -KtheBlogger- Tan at 7:55 PM 0 comments
Labels: event, mclaren
Malaysian Ladies Polo Championships 2013
On a Saturday afternoon, I braved the heat and the scorching sun to make my way to unknown territory where I've never gone before, all that to go...........for a polo match.
Okay, it may sound unlike me since I know nothing much about polo but hey, there's always a first for everything, right? No? Okay. You'll know why I'm there later on. LOL.
The rain started to pour out of a sudden during my journey and as quickly as it came, it went away just as fast while I'm trying to locate where exactly I was.
Anyway, it's the Finals and the decision for the winner, 2nd place and 3rd and 4th place after earlier rounds during the weekdays. The playing teams were defending champion La Boheme, La Pampa - GTM, Jennzilla and Butterfly Twists:
The great lady polo players were playing for the honor of being champions and the world's leading luxury Scotch Whisky, Royal Salute.
And that's partially why I'm here for as well, to savor for the first time, the fine taste of the whisky in addition to kick back and relax while watching the ladies play their game.
I started off with some Chivas cocktails which is also available to chase the throat dryness away:
The concoction was named as Chivalry with some apple juice, lemon juice and soda water finishing with a slice of apple on top. Of course it also contains Chivas 12. Small subtle sweet flavors intermingle within the bottom of my glass
While the rain stopped after I made it to the Polo ground, the weather throughout the day was hit with sporadic rain rendering the playing condition challenging. Nonetheless, the valiant ladies polo players continued on despite the rain.
La Pampa - GTM consisting of players Fazila Filippi, Melissa Tiernan, Claire Donnelly and Sarah Wiseman manage to win the tournament against previous winner La Boheme with a 4½ - 4 scoreline while the 3rd place was captured by team Butterfly Twists as they defeated Jennzilla with a score of 6½ to 4.
With the match over and the bagpipes and drums performance doing their thing:
I settled down for a tasting session on the Royal Absolute with a person explaining the tasting notes to me:
We tasted the Royal Salute 21 and the Royal Salute 100 casks first neat then with water added:
When you take a whiff of the whisky, the 21 smells a little fruity while the 100 casks, in the words of the person explaining smells a little of detergent. Haha. I do agree as I did smell a little of detergent smell among other things. The 21 has a more milder, smoother taste as compared to the 100 casks also the oaky taste is less apparent. The 100 casks is spicier, bolder.
The Royal Salute 21 Year Old Blended Whisky was originally produced as a tribute to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II:
There are also 4 Royal Salute Diamond Jubilee bottles that were auctioned off where the proceeds went to the Yayasan Chow Kit and Haemophiliac Society of Malaysia.
The Malaysian Ladies Polo Tournament is an internationally recognised polo event,
part of the Women’s Championship Tournament of Polo, which is played in over 20
countries around the world.
Labels: event, royal salute
Prost! with Carlsberg Malaysia at Oktoberfest Finale
After being around the Peninsular Malaysia bringing the Bavarian festival of Oktoberfest with the many parties, Carlsberg Malaysia finally draws the merriment to a hearty conclusion at the Old Wing outdoor car park of 1 Utama Shopping Centre, Petaling Jaya.
First thing that I did there was scout out my food as it was dinnertime for me when I arrived there.
There were a buffet spread of food that was laid out by certain participating outlets including Ninja Joe:
But what I was searching for are the food that keeps the Bavarian theme and something to go well with my beer since I intended my beverage to be beer:
So I settled for some Bratwurst and Pork Neck to go with my Carlsberg:
It may seem little but it was enough for me for the time being. Later on when the night was late and the 1 Utama shoppers throng the tent, I had more food consumed.
On top of Carlsberg beer, there's also Erdinger, Franziskaner (one of my favorite) and Lowenbrau that were served icy cold in limited edition 'stein' mugs as well. That quenched the throat of the people that were present there:
There's even Jagermeister there. I quite like Jagermeister :)
Sorry for the blurry pic. My hands aren't as steady that day after a couple of beers.
So the celebration starts after the ceremonial keg was tapped by Carlsberg Malaysia's Managing Director, Henrik Andersen and they toasted their mugs to the party people:
The Oom-Pa-Pah band that were flown in from Germany which performed at all the selected Carlsberg Malaysia Oktoberfest celebration also performed at the finale:
They sang their traditional Germanic folk songs and some contemporary favorites. Also another thing that flew in from Germany was the Malaysian Book of Records 'Longest Carlsberg Malaysia Oktoberfest Long Horn':
And of course, no Oktoberfest party would be complete without the friendly Dirndl girls decked
in custom made Bavarian dirndl outfits and ever ready to top up dwindling steins of the revellers:
They were irresistible and soon had the braver, more spontaneous party goers there to participate in the 'chicken dance' with them and other fun activities:
Henrik said,"What a wonderful way to end this iconic Carlsberg Malaysia Oktoberfesst beer festival with a closing party of this size for our consumers. This is another great opportunity to share an experience as authentic as they come. After all, Oktoberfest is about bringing people together in the spirit of good cheer and good beer while enjoying good food and music."
Cheers to that, Henrik!
Labels: carlsberg, event, nightlife, party
D'Dream Cafe, SS2 Food Review
Sometimes, a food joint attracts patrons to their establishment by way of their theme.
I would say D'Dream Cafe is one such place.
From the exterior of the building that it's located at, it seems just like your normal, regular, business-as-usual place; but once you step inside the cafe, you'll immediately recognize the world that the owner transport you to.
It's the fantasy world of Doraemon - the blue robotic cat from the future that has grown to more than just being an icon in Japan.
As can be clearly seen around the whole cafe, the owner is a much avid fan of Doraemon ever since he was a child and has a very large collection of Doraemon items and memorabilia.
The items displayed around the shop are just a small portion of his entire collection which the rest are in his home.
Surrounded with Doraemon related things, we entered into a cozy room that feels like a bedroom atmosphere to savor the dishes in this place.
Taiwanese food is what is served here and our first dish was the only dish that we ate that has something that goes along with the Doraemon theme:
It's the Minced Pork Rice. On the dish where the minced pork is piled in the middle on top of the rice with vegetables making a circle around it also lies some Doraemon shaped Fish Cakes. The fish cakes may proved adorable to be decorated in the dish but in terms of taste provided zero influence. But then again, the main thing in this dish IS the minced pork since that is what it's named. It costs a mere RM5 for it.
We then tried the "Three Cup Phoenix" minus the rice:
No doubt, the chicken may be tender and nicely cooked, yet it still requires the dish to be consumed with rice. Else it will be too salty to be eaten on it's own. Of course, this is a portion of just the chicken for us to taste. It's usually served with rice or ramen in a dish with the price of RM7.50.
The next thing that we tried is the Red-Braised Beef with Ramen:
The beef is juicy and tender, not too chewy and has a little sweetness to it but lacks in taste in the middle. The soup is quite salty and provides a little spicy aftertaste to it while the noodles taste just like instant noodles.
Next, we tasted the Popcorn Chicken:
This is the type of chicken that I like to eat and is what I always order at one of the Taiwanese joint to go with my rice most of the time. It's basically fried chicken with curry powder(?) on top. For D'Dream Cafe's version, they seem to have sprinkled the curry powder after they plated it onto a bowl for us. That makes it unevenly seasoned with some chicken having too much of the curry powder which is very salty while others none at all. For the top ones, I tried to shake off the excess curry powder but it was futile as it stuck to the chicken like glue. I wish I hadn't finish my rice so soon so that I can eat along with this chicken to soften the salty taste. The fried chicken itself was okay, some were mildly hard which makes it too chewy partially due to the batter, I guess. Usually served with rice or ramen and costs RM7.50. Also can be ordered just as a side dish for the price of RM6 small or RM9 large.
Some Stewed Bean Curd were presented as well:
The tofu is cooked with some chewing needed and not the type where it's real soft till it melts in your mouth. From the picture above, you can see that it contains some minced meat on top and what looks like some oyster sauce. Eating on it's own is salty but eating it with rice would be just nice. The minced meat complements the flavor of the tofu.
Deep Fried Pork Ramen:
Pork chop was okay. Noodles proved to be too salty. I couldn't go more than 3 bites on it. Needs some veg to lessen the saltiness which unfortunately was missing in this plate. I believe, usually there will be a stalk or two of veg.
Next up was the Sweet Potato Fries with Sour Plum Powder:
When I imagine how it's gonna taste like, I didn't think it would be such a good combination. But when I tasted it, the sour plum powder actually complemented the sweet potato fries well. The sweet potato fries eaten on it's own is already quite nice but when you add the sour plum powder to it, it sweetens and strengthen it's taste further. Of course, too much of the sour plum powder and it's going to be too sweet but the powder is easier to shake off than the popcorn chicken. This is something unique that I've never had before.
Some Golden QQ Balls:
It's nice as dessert. Sweet, sticky on the inside with a harder exterior shell. Not bad. Costs around RM6.
We were also served 2 beverage as desserts too. 1 is the Herbal Jelly Milk:
Be sure to stir it well or else the sweetener/syrup will concentrate at the bottom always. A cup is equivalent to RM4.90
And 1 more beverage as dessert is the Fruit Tea:
We tasted the cold version of it and it's very refreshing. Although much lesser ingredients than a previous fruit tea that I've tried, yet the flavors of the fruit seems to be equally balanced.
D'Dream Cafe is located at SS2, same row as CIMB Bank and is on a 1st floor level.
The address is:
70A, 1st Floor, Jalan SS2/60, Petaling Jaya (North), 47300
Although you can walk in to eat here, it's better to make a reservation because if the restaurant is packed, they'll serve customers with reservation first before attending to walk in customers. Even with a reservation, the wait for the food may take awhile too if it's a lot or if there's a lot of customers. Best is to go off peak hours. LOL. You can take your time looking at the Doraemon displays instead while waiting. XD
Labels: cafe, food, restaurant, review
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For events invitation, food review, product review or anything at all, please email to me at: kelvintan3@hotmail.com
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Email us: info@liteworkevents.com
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Home / Follow the Lite / June 2017 #intheSPOTLite Series
June 2017 #intheSPOTLite Series
In honor of our June 10, 2017 SPOTLite Party, celebrating of Boston’s Young, Black and Social, we put #BlackBoston‘s urban socialites #intheSPOTLITE all week on Instagram! Click here to view a few of our SPOTLite features using the hashtag and see below for a few profiles:
In honor of TODAY'S celebration of Boston's Young, Black and Social, we've got a few more of #BlackBoston's urban socialites to capture #intheSPOTLITE! ••••• Dr. Christian Ayeni is originally from Dallas, TX. He attended college as an undergraduate at the University of California, Merced, where he studied bioengineering. After graduating with his bachelor's degree, he moved to Boston to pursue a doctoral degree at Harvard University, where he recently graduated with his Ph.D. in Virology. Shortly after arriving in Boston he became a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated. He has also been an active member of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE) and the Urban League. In addition to his love for science and community engagement, Dr. Ayeni also has an avid interest in photography. His photography page can be found here: @ajsophos. #followthelite
A post shared by LiteWork Events (@liteworkevents) on Jun 10, 2017 at 10:38am PDT
In honor of Saturday's celebration of Boston's Young, Black and Social, we're putting #BlackBoston's urban socialites #intheSPOTLITE all week! ••••• Daisy Fernandes is a leader, an accountant, a friend, and most importantly a mother. Hailing from Brockton, MA with roots in Cape Verde, she obtained her B.S. in Accountancy with a minor in Computer Information Systems from Bentley University. Defying the stats about teen parents, in undergrad Daisy served as President of Bentley's National Association of Black Accountants and ranked in the top 10% of her class. Today, Daisy works as a Tax Accountant at Ernst & Young (EY), serving Hedge Funds and Private Equity Clients. Following NABA's motto, "Lift as you Climb", Daisy has served as a mentor through City Year, actively participates in several recruiting activities within her firm and sits on a board seeking to promote diversity and inclusion. Outside of the office, Daisy is a lover of wine, golfing, and mac and cheese. Daisy is also a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. #FollowTheLite
A post shared by LiteWork Events (@liteworkevents) on Jun 8, 2017 at 9:59am PDT
Did you enjoy yesterday's posts? This week we'll continue putting #BlackBoston's urban socialites #intheSPOTLITE, so make sure you stay tuned! Next up ••••• Ben Ivey is a Southern gentleman through and through. He moved to Boston in August 2014 to work in Finance at Boston Public Schools. Ben started his career as an Investment Banker in Washington, D.C., and eventually founded a tech start-up in the Enterprise Management space. He's passionate about providing opportunities to minorities, both educational and professional, and does so via his influence at BPS and on various board seats. Ben is an avid reader, runner, golfer, and psuedo globetrotter. He'd love to stop working and travel the world. #followthelite
In honor of Saturday's celebration of Boston's Young, Black and Social, we're putting #BlackBoston's urban socialites #intheSPOTLITE all week! ••••• Paige Simmons, MBA, MPH is a Detroit native and received her B.A. in Human Biology from Brown University, where she played collegiate volleyball. Paige moved to Boston in 2014 to pursue her graduate studies at Boston University. She is now a Project Manager in Brigham and Women's Hospital's Radiation Oncology Department, where she manages regional and international engagements that increase cancer patients' access to quality care. Paige is also a music connoisseur that enjoys singing and playing the guitar in her downtime. Anyone that is interested in pursing an MBA or career in health administration can feel free to reach out to me. I am huge advocate of knowledge sharing among our community and always looking to build new, meaningful connections 🙂 #followthelite
A post shared by LiteWork Events (@liteworkevents) on Jun 6, 2017 at 1:30pm PDT
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#NYD2020 | 4th Annual New Year’s Day Party – Wednesday, January 1, 2020
After the ball has dropped, ring in New Year’s Day (#NYD2020) in style with Boston’s urban young p...
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Speaker Charles bows to pressure on tabling of AG’s report on CMU
Neymar negotiations not over between PSG and Barcelona, claims father
Loop Sports Created : 10 September 2019 Sport
PSG star Neymar has returned to action for Brazil.
Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) and Barcelona may yet seal a deal for Neymar as negotiations are not over, according to the forward's father and agent.
Neymar was strongly linked with a return to Camp Nou before the European transfer window closed this month.
The Brazil superstar was said to be keen to go back to Barca two years after controversially leaving for a world-record €222million.
PSG sporting director Leonardo confirmed Neymar wanted to leave the club and was available for transfer if the right offer was made.
But Barca and PSG were unable to come to an agreement, with LaLiga giants Real Madrid also reportedly seeing offers rejected.
Neymar, who has three years remaining on his PSG contract, has yet to play for the Ligue 1 champions this term.
PSG coach Thomas Tuchel said he would not select the 27-year-old until his future was resolved.
Neymar Sr, though, has cast fresh doubt on his son's long-term future in the French capital.
"The negotiations between clubs are not over," he said in an appearance at Edinburgh Sports Conference.
"A Brazilian just wants to be where he is happy and he was very happy at Barcelona. When his friends asked him if he want to go back, it upset him."
Barca reportedly made cash-plus-players bids to PSG in a bid to force a move through, with Ousmane Dembele and Ivan Rakitic among those said to have been offered.
"As an agent, you feel weak when there is no structure that allows you to come and go," added Neymar's father.
"There was no release clause in his contract and this makes things very difficult.
"We fought to find an agreement. We gave the best of ourselves for him."
Brazil 2-2 Colombia: PSG star Neymar scores on return
Rumour Has It: Neymar tells PSG he'll stay after failed Barca move
Neymar did everything possible to return to Barcelona - Suarez
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Mestival to return to Northumberland with more mud in 2017 - Mestival
Mestival to return to Northumberland with more mud in 2017
Details have been unveiled of the 2017 Mestival. The event, which made its debut last year, will once again challenge participants with obstacle courses in the grounds of historic Hesleyside Hall in Northumberland. The 10K race is returning and will be joined by a 5K option, ideal for people who want to try an obstacle run for the first time, and for family groups. Mestival will take place on Saturday 29 July and organisers have promised to test competitors with even more mud, and reward them with an adventure in a beautiful setting.
Organised by Events of the North in partnership with Hesleyside owners William and Anna Charlton, Mestival proved to be a big success in 2016. Hundreds of senior and junior competitors from all over the North East tackled the challenging obstacle runs, which followed routes that explored the Northumberland National Park land on the estate.
Participants included local MP Guy Opperman and scores of children from Mowden Hall School, who were all faced with a series of challenging obstacles, including pyramids of straw bales, a water and mud filled trench, a water filled tunnel, a reed swamp, muddy pit, rope climb, and the ‘Hesleyslide’. Among the many spectators on the day was Paul Collingwood, former Durham and England cricket star. Runners and other visitors were also able to enjoy locally sourced food and drink and entertainment, including live music from North East singer-songwriter and Fame Academy star Alastair Griffin, and other acts from the region.
Mestival is the brainchild of North East athletics legend Steve Cram, who developed the idea with Hesleyside’s owners William and Anna Charlton, and his son Marcus. The 2017 event will bring back the elements that made the first event so popular with participants, with race director Marcus Cram promising to throw in some new variations to the obstacles.
Steve Cram comments:
“Last year’s Mestival was a great first event. The feedback that we had from all those who took part was hugely positive and we’re going to make it even bigger and better in 2017. It’s a real privilege to be able to introduce stunning Hesleyside to new visitors, even if they have to work hard – and get very muddy – while exploring the estate. We have got some exciting plans to enhance the event this year, so participants can prepare for an even more exhilarating experience at Mestival in July.”
William Charlton comments:
“We thoroughly enjoyed hosting the first Mestival on Hesleyside Estate. It was a great opportunity for us to share Hesleyside’s beautiful parkland, ancient woodlands and scenic moorlands with the wider public. Running the 10K gave me a very new perspective and it was a thrilling – if exhausting – day. Adding a 5K event to the programme will give even more visitors the opportunity to experience the delights of an obstacle run and Anna and I are really looking forward to finding out what the Events of the North team has in store for everyone.”
Guy Opperman MP comments:
“I was delighted to support this fantastic new local event at Hesleyside. I may not have been the fittest, but I was certainly the most enthusiastic participant in the 10K obstacle run. It was excellent to see so many people from near and far spend time in this beautiful part of the world. I look forward to finding out what the Mestival team has in store for visitors this year.”
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Date of Web Publication 29-May-2019
Keywords: Hemoglobin E, malaria, Plasmodium falciparum
Purohit P, Mohanty PK, Panigrahi J, Patel S. Infection with Plasmodium falciparum malaria in a patient with homozygous hemoglobin E. Muller J Med Sci Res 2019;10:36-8
Purohit P, Mohanty PK, Panigrahi J, Patel S. Infection with Plasmodium falciparum malaria in a patient with homozygous hemoglobin E. Muller J Med Sci Res [serial online] 2019 [cited 2020 Jan 19];10:36-8. Available from: http://www.mjmsr.net/text.asp?2019/10/1/36/259250
Plasmodium falciparum malaria is a major public health problem in India with significant morbidity and mortality. The prevalence of many host genetic factors including hemoglobinopathies in malaria endemic regions provides a selective advantage against P. falciparum infection. Hemoglobin E (HbE), resulting from a single point mutation (Glutamic acid → Lysine) at 26th codon of the β-globin gene is found to be protective against severe malaria. We report a case of homozygous HbE (HbEE) with severe P. falciparum malaria in a malarial hyperendemic region of India.
A 22-year-old male patient admitted with a history of fever to the Department of Medicine of Veer Surendra Sai Institute of Medical Sciences and Research (VSSIMSAR), Burla was screened for malaria and different hemoglobin variants at Sickle Cell Institute. Under a research activity, cases admitted to this institution with a history of fever were screened for P. falciparum infection and presence of different hemoglobin variants. The patient under consideration here was found to be positive for P. falciparum infection which was confirmed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Hemoglobin fractions studied by cation exchange high-performance liquid chromatography by using the VARIANT-II hemoglobin testing system; (Bio-Rad Laboratories, Hercules, CA, USA), resulting a high peak HbA2 window (82.5%) with HbA0 and HbF level of 2.9% and 2.0%, respectively [Figure 1]. Such high peak in the HbA2 window suggests the presence of various hemoglobin variants such as HbE, HbD-Iran, Hb Osu Christiansborg, and Hb Tianshui. The presence of HbE was confirmed by PCR followed by restriction fragment length polymorphism using Mnl1 as a restriction enzyme.[1] The patient was found to be homozygous for HbE. Complete blood count was analyzed by Sysmex KX-21; Sysmex Corporation, Kobe, Japan. The total hemoglobin level was 9.6 g/dL with red blood cells of 4.7 million/μL and white blood cells of 6,800/μL of whole blood. The patient had microcytic (mean corpuscular volume, 62.1 fL) and hypochromic (mean corpuscular hemoglobin, 20.4 pg) red cells confirmed further by peripheral blood smear examination. Platelets count was 66,000/μL of whole blood. The liver function tests were in normal range whereas serum creatinine was elevated (3.1 mg/L). The raised creatinine in the patient implies the presence of acute renal failure as a phenotype of severe P. falciparum malaria. Alpha thalassemia was investigated by Gap-PCR and found to have a normal alpha globin genotype for both α−3.7 and α−4.2 deletion. Written informed consent was obtained from the case. This study was approved by Institutional Ethical Committee of VSSIMSAR.
Figure 1: High-performance liquid chromatogram of the study case showing a high percentage of hemoglobin A2
HbE has a wide distribution throughout the Mediterranean, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent.[2] In a multi-center study in India, the prevalence of HbE trait was found to be 3.63% with the majority were from North-Eastern Indian states such as Assam and West Bengal.[3] In the state of Odisha, there were few reports on the prevalence of HbE as HbE trait, HbE, and HbE/β-thalassemia.[4] The case presented here was a native of West Bengal and had come to western Odisha for job 2 years before attending to the hospital.
The state of Odisha is considered as a hyperendemic zone with low perennial transmission for malaria. It has been hypothesized that HbE retards intra-erythrocytic growth of P. falciparum and give protection against severe disease manifestation.[5] Worldwide, there are several studies on the association of HbE and severity of P. falciparum malaria suggesting conflicting results.[6],[7],[8],[9],[10] Although there are reports on the prevalence of HbE in India, no study has focused on its association with malaria. This is the first case in the state of Odisha presenting HbEE erythrocytes infected with P. falciparum malaria and is manifesting severe phenotypes of acute renal failure with moderate anemia and thrombocytopenia. The moderate anemia, in this case, might be due to the presence of HbEE because an individual with HbEE erythrocytes usually have a characterized mild anemia and microcytosis.[11] This case study is important because instead of providing possible protection, the patient with HbEE presented with severe phenotypes of P. falciparum malaria. This might be due to the defective host immune mechanism against parasites or invasion of varied strains of parasites present in patient's working area which needs further investigation. However, the presence of dehydration state in the patient cannot be ignored as he had a history of fever and may have taken drugs to reduce temperature before attending to the hospital.
Screening of different hemoglobin variants including HbE in malaria endemic area will fill-up the knowledge gap with respect to the possible associations between them. Further, it may explore the facts concerning HbE as a “balanced polymorphism” in a different population of the Indian subcontinent.
Department of Science and Technology, New Delhi, Government of India
Indian Council of Medical Research, New Delhi, Government of India.
Thein SL, Lynch JR, Old JM, Weatherall DJ. Direct detection of haemoglobin E with mnlI. J Med Genet 1987;24:110-1.
Hill AV. Molecular epidemiology of the thalassaemias (including haemoglobin E). Baillieres Clin Haematol 1992;5:209-38.
Mohanty D, Colah RB, Gorakshakar AC, Patel RZ, Master DC, Mahanta J, et al. Prevalence of β-thalassemia and other haemoglobinopathies in six cities in India: A multicentre study. J Community Genet 2013;4:33-42.
Balgir RS. Spectrum of hemoglobinopathies in the state of Orissa, India: A ten years cohort study. J Assoc Physicians India 2005;53:1021-6.
Nagel RL, Raventos-Suarez C, Fabry ME, Tanowitz H, Sicard D, Labie D, et al. Impairment of the growth of Plasmodium falciparum in HbEE erythrocytes. J Clin Invest 1981;68:303-5.
Santiyanont R, Wilairat P. Red cells containing hemoglobin E do not inhibit malaria parasite development in vitro. Am J Trop Med Hyg 1981;30:541-3.
Vernes AJ, Haynes JD, Tang DB, Dutoit E, Diggs CL. Decreased growth of Plasmodium falciparum in red cells containing haemoglobin E, a role for oxidative stress, and a sero-epidemiological correlation. Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg 1986;80:642-8.
Hutagalung R, Wilairatana P, Looareesuwan S, Brittenham GM, Aikawa M, Gordeuk VR, et al. Influence of hemoglobin E trait on the severity of falciparum malaria. J Infect Dis 1999;179:283-6.
Chotivanich K, Udomsangpetch R, Pattanapanyasat K, Chierakul W, Simpson J, Looareesuwan S, et al. Hemoglobin E: A balanced polymorphism protective against high parasitemias and thus severe P falciparum malaria. Blood 2002;100:1172-6.
Shannon KL, Ahmed S, Rahman H, Prue CS, Khyang J, Ram M, et al. Hemoglobin E and glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency and Plasmodium falciparum malaria in the Chittagong Hill districts of Bangladesh. Am J Trop Med Hyg 2015;93:281-6.
Vichinsky E. Hemoglobin E syndromes. Hematology Am Soc Hematol Educ Program 2007;2007:79 83.
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Q5: Mathe Okaba on #EffieAwardsSA & future-fit leadership [interview]
by Carey Finn (@carey_finn) Mathe Okaba, CEO of the Association for Communication and Advertising (ACA) of South Africa, chats about her role, the inaugural South African Effie Awards, and nurturing young talent.
Q5: Could you tell us a bit about your role? What does your task list look like?
Mathe Okaba: My role is to offer strategic oversight and guidance for the ACA. [I] ensure delivery of industry initiatives that shift the needle, such as ensuring the setup of the MAC Charter Council and driving true transformation within. My top three on my task list are: delivery on the MAC Charter Council, informing and shaping the Copyright and Performers Amendment Bill, and, most importantly, ensuring a happy and solid team that will support me in delivering all initiatives required of the ACA by its members.
Q5: Moving to the organisation itself, we know the inaugural South African edition of the Effie Awards will be taking place this year — could you tell us about those plans, and what else is on the ACA’s agenda for 2020?
MO: This is a very exciting project that the ACA is embarking on. Numerous brands and agencies have earned their peers’ well-deserved respect by winning an APEX Award and, while it may be the end of an era, it is the dawn of an exciting new period on the awards calendar in our industry and on the continent.
While it remains focused on effectiveness, the Effie Awards will look vastly different from the APEX Awards. The Effie Awards [is] known by advertisers and agencies globally as the pre-eminent awards [show] in the industry, and recognise[s] any and all forms of marketing that contribute to a brand’s success. Moving to Effie means that our industry will gain the recognition it richly deserves on the global stage — for the value it adds to business success — and claim its seat at the table alongside the world’s leading effective marketing campaigns. The ACA will be in a position to provide more information on the awards programme in due course. We promise to excite the industry, so please buckle up and enjoy the ride. [According to a December 2019 press release, “Effie South African finalists and winners will receive points towards the Global Effie Index, which ranks the most effective marketers, brands, holding companies, agency networks, agency offices and independent agencies globally. The Effie Index will also determine the local rankings.” — ed-at-large]
For 2020, we want to create an association that is accessible to all industry players, which is future-fit and agile. We aim to create more-interesting networking sessions, which are thought-engaging and contribute to knowledge creation.
Q5: Let’s talk about young people and the industry — besides bursaries, what can be done to support and nurture them?
MO: Young people in the industry are critical to the success of our sector. We need to develop leaders who are future-fit and are brave [enough] to take on future challenges. To integrate the younglings, we have developed a networking session of youthful peers called Future Ballers, which happens quarterly. Currently, the sessions are only held in Johannesburg but we intend rolling them out in Cape Town from 2020, too.
Q5: What can agencies do to position advertising and marketing as strong, rewarding career paths?
MO: As the ACA, we are currently working on a strategy, which was developed by the industry, that positions advertising and marketing as a viable career. Our aim is to create awareness of advertising as a career to school learners and their parents. We have realised that our career doesn’t have high levels of positive awareness and, as such, would like parents and potential employees to know that “creativity pays off”.
Q5: What interested you in this field when you were starting out?
MO: Back in the day, I didn’t want to conform; being a revolutionary was in my nature. I didn’t know any young black women in advertising. Most of my peers were running after being lawyers, doctors and chartered accountants. So, I chose the alternate: ADVERTISING. My mother was opposed to this but warmed up to it as time went on. Now I am here and joyfully here. Passion keeps me here.
Connect with Okaba on LinkedIn
Find out more about the South African Effies at effieawards.co.za, including social media handles and award entry workshop dates
2019 APEX Awards winners, name change announced
Carey Finn (@carey_finn) is a writer and editor with over decade and a half of industry experience, having covered everything from ethical sushi in Japan to the technicalities of roofing, agriculture, medical stuff and more. She’s also taught English and journalism, and dabbled in various other communications ventures along the way, including risk reporting. As a contributing writer to MarkLives.com, her regular column “Q5” hones in on strategic insights, analysis and data through punchy interviews with inspiring professionals in diversive fields.
— Sign up now for the MarkLives newsletter, including Ramify.biz headlines, emailed every Monday, Wednesday and Friday!
Adland, Columns, Featured, Q5 – Carey Finn
Q5: EQ will get you everywhere, says Khanyi Mpumlwana [interview]
Columns, Featured, Marketing, Q5 – Carey Finn
Q5: Beyond the hashtag with Ingrid Lotze & Gavin Moffat [interview]
Columns, Featured, Media, Press Pass – Carey Finn, Watch
Press Pass: Spotong — talking to township traders
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Mattsletters
My name is Matt Winick and I like to study history and social justice. Also I enjoy writing letters to people ranging from celebrities through public officials including judges who I find inspiring to me or how I believe that they make a great difference.
67th Attorney General Letitia “Tish” James of New York
Attorney General Letitia “Tish” James
c/o Office of the Attorney General
New York State Capitol Building
Between State Street and Washington Avenue
Albany, NY 1224-0341
Dear Attorney General James,
My name is Matt Winick from Ann Arbor, Michigan with a strong interest in learning history including social justice. In these subjects I like to learn the need to make civil rights stronger to reduce discrimination, protect the environment from pollution, have criminal justice reform to protect people’s rights while reduce crime, and have ethics reform to reduce corruption. Attorney General James, the main reason I’m writing you a letter is to explain how I find your work in public service and as current 67th Attorney General of New York to be very inspiring to me.
When you served as Member of the New York City Council from 35th district from 2004-2013, I liked on how you were a strong supporter of civil rights to help protect minorities, women, and people with disabilities from being discriminated in education including public places. Support expanding job training programs to help train youth including workers to develop work-skills to help prepare for the economy and push for the need to raise the minimum wage to help assist minimum wage workers afford to live is common sense to improve the economy. On the environment, I like on how you support funds for renewable energy resources to help reduce addiction to oil with gas, encourage businesses to use energy-efficient products to help reduce high energy cost while reduce pollution, and work with other city council members to expand funds to help clean parks including water resources to make them safe for people to use. In your role as 4th New York Public Advocate from 2014-2018, I like on how you supported the need for ethics investigation into NYPD to reduce corruption including misconduct, worked with the City of New York to help preserve along with protect historical sites including attractions to make learning a better tool while improve tourism, and heavily advocate for the need to combat against predatory lending along with better protection on people including people who are low-income from losing their homes due the rent control where they commit fraud. In January 2019, I was amazed on how you made history on becoming the first African American woman to become the 67th Attorney General of New York. In your current role as 67th Attorney General of New York, I truly appreciate on how you are a strong supporter of civil rights by advocating for people with disabilities’ rights, prosecuting people who commit hate-crime to help protect minorities including people who are different, and investigating public places that practice different forms of discrimination or violate civil rights legislation. Supporting drug treatment programs to help drug users get the care they need to reduce drug abuse, working with law enforcement to expand resources to help victims of domestic violence or victims of crime get help on dealing with their trauma, and expressing the need for more funds to improve DNA testing including forensic science to help solve cases efficiently while reduce sending an innocent person to jail is common sense for criminal justice reform. Another thing that I like about your work as current Attorney General of New York is how you went after public officials that are corrupt or accept illegal bribes to reduce corruption, prosecute financial institutions or insurance companies that are committing fraud, and go after industries that illegally pollute the environment including violate environmental protection laws to help protect public health.
Attorney General James, I have autism with a learning disability. Having a disability is hard for me because I have trouble comprehending on learning different advance subjects, sometimes I struggle to communicate my thoughts, and get teased. Your commitment to be a strong supporter of civil rights including people with disabilities’ rights really inspires me to work hard on my disability. Also on Youtube, I enjoy watching videos of you explaining some common sense ideas on criminal justice reform and the importance of improving social justice. Your role in public service and as current 67th Attorney General of New York gives me some motivation to continue to learn history including social justice. My future goal is to someday work in these areas to help emphasize the need to make civil rights stronger to reduce discrimination, protect the environment from pollution, have criminal justice reform to help protect people’s rights while reduce crime, and many others.
I strongly believe that you are making a great difference for society. I’m very proud on how you are working hard to support civil rights, push for criminal justice reform, advocate for social justice causes, and many others. You have inspired me to work hard on my disability, learn about your service in public service, and continue to learn history including social justice. Thanks for taking the time to read my letter, working hard to make a great difference, and inspiring me. I hope that we can meet when I visit NYC again. Please continue to advocate for common sense ideas to make society, criminal justice, and social justice a better place.
Matt Winick
Posted by Matt Michigander at 3:30 AM
Jacob W.
Matt Michigander
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Professor Noam Chomsky
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Proud Owners
wide magazine
MSRP (*excludes taxes, destination & vehicle preparation charges):
Test RideContact me
EVERYTHING ELSE IS THE PAST
Forget all you know: we created MGX-21 to make you feel today what others will only experience tomorrow. MGX, known as Moto Guzzi eXperimental; 21 makes reference to the year the first motorcycle came out of the Mandello del Lario factory. Or, if you prefer, 21 like the inches of its front lenticular carbon fibre wheel.
The torque from the Moto Guzzi Big Block engine shines through. Its 89 ft·lbs (121 Nm) push you forward with relentless grunt at revs which leave others standing. But at the same time, a state-of-the-art electronic management with ride-by-wire throttle, selectable power maps and evolved traction control keep everything in check, letting you bask in the comfort of Cruise Control.
MGX-21 will show you a future you didn’t know, will push you far beyond the city border and enable you to ride to a horizon of your choice, confident in its ability to take you anywhere you wish and carry all you require in the integrated side luggage. Alone or with a passenger, thanks to the removable pillion seat.
And we couldn’t choose a better model than MGX-21 for the debut of the Infotainment system which can be fully integrated with our Multimedia Platform MG-MP, because every trip deserves the right soundtrack.
THE SEDUCTIVE AND UNCONVENTIONAL CRUISER
The MGX-21 is the most unconventional and technological 1400cc grand cruiser built at Mandello del Lario. Moto Guzzi is one of the greatest brands in the motorcycling world and in almost a century of history has produced motorcycles that are often ahead of their time.
From the racing track to the streets of the world, the company has not compromised its Italian soul. Backed by universally recognised values, Moto Guzzi can now express the influences and stimuli of motorcycle culture in increasingly personal and exclusive style. The MGX-21 is the latest example of Moto Guzzi's originality and courage, a traditional part of its heritage since 1921.
The MGX-21 is dedicated to lovers of exclusive motorcycles, to people who know how to get excited even before they embark on a journey, simply by giving themselves over to the majesty of this prestigious Italian bike.
The MGX-21 seems to invite you to fasten your helmet and set off, heading wherever the road takes you. This Moto Guzzi offers a different and unique way of looking at a bike trip: it is not just the body that is transported, but it is the rider's soul that is involved in a beautiful and emotional experience made up of adventure, freedom and discovery.
The internal trembling and vibrations felt even before you climb on board, multiply when the 90° V-twin engine starts up: from the banks of the Lario to the borders of the world, your journey moves to the rhythm of the strokes of the huge big block pistons.
THE CRUISER THAT STANDS OUT FOR ITS DESIGN, BUILD QUALITY AND ATTENTION TO DETAIL
The immediately obvious appearance of the MGX-21 is exceptional: the technical and stylistic features of the prototype, which had surprised everyone at its first presentation, have been kept totally intact. However, in the case of the MGX-21 a detail has been added: MGX-21 has become a large touring bike, with a pair of rigid side panniers that in no way distort the purity of design that the prototype boasted. The 58-litre carrying capacity and the presence of convenient, removable internal bags guarantee space and practicality for world travellers.
The design of the MGX-21, like all Moto Guzzis, begins by showing of the engineering of the big 90° transverse V-twin engine with two large cylinders that seem to literally explode out of the petrol tank, helping to make the side view considerably lower and streamlined. The red paint of the aluminium head covers emphasise the power this engine is capable of expressing. Low in the back and raised at the front, MGX-21 tells you from the first glance that it is capable of eating up miles smoothly. It's certainly no wallflower, attracting people’s attention with its original shape and the mysterious nocturnal appearance created by the PADC (Piaggio Advanced Design Center) designers in California. Particular attention was given to the study and definition of the “batwing” design, the large top fairing that makes an essential contribution to the bike's futuristic look. Form and function once again come together in perfect balance: the careful fluid dynamics analysis with CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulations and the numerous test sessions in the wind tunnel have led to achieving optimum air protection capacity, delivering a quality a bike destined for long trips. The shapes at the back also stem from the same studies and they are enhanced by carbon profiles and the dual series built-in LED lights.
To celebrate such a personal, powerful and brave style, Moto Guzzi gave the MGX-21 the evocative soubriquet of Flying Fortress. The Flying Fortress also stands out for meticulous and obsessive attention to detail: the spectacular headlight cluster uses LED DRL lighting technology, whereas the electrical controls on the handlebar are finished with metal shells. While respecting the solid century-old tradition, the MGX-21 reaches out to the future by employing materials typically used in the most advanced sports motorcycles. In fact, numerous parts are made of precious carbon, such as the front mudguard, the fuel tank panels, the side pannier covers and the engine cover. The new Moto Guzzi shows off a large 21" alloy front wheel, now protected by lenticular carbon covers with small openings where the spokes intersect with the channel. This stylistic choice also brings the technical advantage of increased stability and ease of handling due to the passage of air from one side of the hub to the other while the bike is in motion.
MOTO GUZZI'S TECHNOLOGICAL FLAG
MGX-21 rises up as the Moto Guzzi technological banner. The new Italian cruiser boasts a complete electronics system package which, in accordance with the happy tradition Moto Guzzi adopted with the California 1400, is included as standard equipment. It is a riding accessories package that makes travelling safer and more comfortable. The refined electronic engine management includes the “full Ride-by-Wire” electronic accelerator that manages 3 different engine maps, easily selected from the handlebar controls to adapt power and torque distribution in any situation:
• VELOCE exploits all the available power and torque with an output that favours performance and response with every twist of the throttle. This is perfect for a dynamic ride and for getting the most of the chassis features for skilled riders;
• TURISMO provides a smoother power distribution for smoother riding on a long trip;
• PIOGGIA is the map suited for low grip conditions, decreasing the torque and engine brake management.
Moto Guzzi MGX-21 is also fitted with two-channel ABS and an advanced (and patented) traction control system that can be adjusted to three different settings (that can also be disabled).
The new cruise control from Moto Guzzi with multiple features makes its début on the MGX-21: this system allows the rider to maintain the selected speed without touching the throttle, as well as increasing or decreasing cruising speed using a toggle button on the left-hand handlebar control. The speed can be temporarily increased by twisting the throttle; once released, the bike returns to the cruising speed. The system disengages automatically, not only by braking or pressing the selector switch, but also by twisting the throttle in the opposite direction. Once disengaged, you can return the bike to the last cruising speed set simply by pressing the “resume” button.
The top fairing hides a highly refined instrument cluster with a monochromatic, dot matrix display with a wealth of information, also including the fuel level and engaged gear indicator, clock, average and instantaneous fuel consumption and air temperature indicator. The MGX-21 dashboard also provides a complete entertainment system that includes the stereo system, equipped with an AM/FM radio with a 25W per channel amplifier connected to a pair of loudspeakers and it manages the intercom system. A Bluetooth module, that can host up to 5 devices, and the USB socket guarantee complete interaction with external devices, including a smartphone that can be used as a music player or to manage the multimedia platform, also included as standard equipment. MG-MP is the Moto Guzzi system that lets you connect your smartphone to the vehicle to transform it into an exceptional source of useful trip information. MG-MP is also able to handle telephone calls (answering and hanging up through the handlebar buttons) and it can use the smartphone's voice recognition features to place calls or activate a playlist. Therefore, a bike that supports the rider with cutting-edge technologies so he can tackle his trip with complete peace of mind and get the most possible enjoyment from the riding experience in full safety and control.
STATE OF THE ART TECHNOLOGY FOR MAXIMUM RIDING PLEASURE
Moto Guzzi has developed a new steering geometry that ensures balance and ease of riding, admirably reconciling two qualities: the comfort and load capacity of a custom with the dynamism and performance of a cruiser. Also contributing to achieving this goal is the brand new (and patented) manoeuvring assistance system that reduces the tendency (connected to the size of the front wheel) of steering to “close” in low speed and high steering angle manoeuvres, counterbalancing the weight of the steering, thanks to a system of regressive springs and particular kinematics.
Another aspect of the MGX-21 that was given particular attention is the riding position. The two high semi-handlebars that lean toward the rider, along with the forward footrests and a very comfortable seating position just 740 mm from the ground, ensure a dominating posture in the saddle that is comfortable and extended for back comfort. This way the rider has total vehicle control, both at a standstill and in motion. Luxurious and dark, the flagship of Mandello can comfortably seat a passenger or be enjoyed alone. In the case of the latter, the portion of the saddle dedicated to the pillion can be easily removed so you can travel like a solitary knight in perfect harmony with your mount. In place of the passenger saddle, you can install a carbon fibre cover or the topcase mounting bracket, both available in the rich Moto Guzzi accessories catalogue dedicated to the MGX-21.
The new, closed double cradle tubular frame structure, stiffened thanks to new, larger diameter tubes in the front section and reinforcing plates in the rear part, uses the ingenious elastic-kinematic engine mounting system developed by Moto Guzzi to eliminate the vibrations transmitted to the rider. Nevertheless, at a standstill you will still feel those pulsations generated by the powerful action of the two 104 mm diameter pistons in the Moto Guzzi big block that excite even the most experienced biker, amplifying the “living” character of this motorcycle. The largest V-twin ever produced in Europe, which can deliver more than 120 Nm of torque with ease and precision from very low revs, has earned EU4 certification and a new exhaust unit with very long horizontal terminals. It is an ultra-modern powerplant, characterised by four valve per cylinder heads, driven by an overhead cam per bank through a system of rockers and rollers in order to reduce losses due to friction. The modern character of the engine is also demonstrated by dual ignition in order to guarantee perfect combustion, as well as by the double lambda sensor that creates a uniform mixture at the cylinders in any operating conditions, consequently improving consumption and harmful emissions.
All this verve is controlled by a benchmark braking system worthy of a sports motorcycle, comprising of a trio of large diameter discs and four-piston front callipers and radial connection that is painted red to highlight the MGX-21's exhibitionist personality. The suspension system also boasts quality elements: the powerful fork with 45 mm diameter stanchions works with a pair of rear shock absorbers that have an adjustable hydraulics extension and spring preload through the convenient remote hydraulic preload.
A WIDE RANGE OF ACCESSORIES
Only by using quality materials, such as aluminium and carbon and through the best processing procedures, Moto Guzzi has created a range of prestigious accessories with the goal of elevating, not only comfort and riding pleasure, but also the exclusivity of the MGX-21, creating a truly unique level of personalisation.
All of the parts have been conceived, designed and developed by Moto Guzzi and they are subjected to strict control test cycles just like any other original part on the bike in order to guarantee a quality and long-lasting product. Since they have been conceived and fine tuned by Moto Guzzi they are perfectly interchangeable with the factory parts, allowing you to easily revert your bike to its original configuration. They are also fully approved and therefore absolutely “street legal”.
Oversized top fairing: improves air protection, whilst at the same time accentuating the unmistakeable style of the MGX-21 Batwing.
Black aluminium mirrors: approved for street use and made from billet aluminium, they are the ideal complement for the MGX-21 aesthetics.
Black brake lever: made from billet aluminium, adjustable to 4 different positions.
Black clutch lever: like the brake lever, it is made from billet aluminium and the distance from the hand grip can be adjusted to 4 positions.
Brake and clutch master cylinder covers: made from billet aluminium with black anodizing. These are installed on top of the factory reservoir.
GPS/smartphone bracket: black anodized aluminium bracket. Allows easy installation of a Smartphone or GPS case.
Pair of LED lights: Energy saving LED lights, with their aluminium bodies and reduced dimensions, integrate perfectly on the bike and allow greater visibility and safety during night riding.
Carbon fuel tank cover: this makes the MGX-21 command centre even more precious and aggressive.
Carbon injector covers: lightweight and elegant. A touch of class.
Carbon side covers: lightweight and prestigious, they maintain the MGX-21 logo.
Side cylinder guards: made of billet aluminium with stainless steel brackets, they ensure protection and solidity in the event of a fall.
Cylinder heat guards: Made of stainless steel, they improve riding comfort and protect the rider from the engine heat.
Driver and passenger footrest cover: made of black anodized billet aluminium, give the bike an aggressive look and improve the riding feel.
Footboards: made black anodized billet aluminium, these completely transform the look of the bike and increase comfort and riding pleasure to maximum levels.
Rear brake lever cover: made from black anodized billet aluminium, this is easily installed on the flat boards lever.
Rear brake pedal cover: made from black anodized billet aluminium, this is easily installed in place of the factory rubber pad.
Gearshift lever cover: made from black anodized billet aluminium, this is easily installed on the flatboards lever.
Swingarm washers: made of billet aluminium, these are installed at the ends of the swing arm pin.
Rear brake fluid reservoir cover: made from billet aluminium with black anodizing finish, this personalises the look of the bike.
Exhaust wraps: black in colour, these cover the exhaust manifolds, highlighting the sporty character of the bike.
Leather tank bag: made of premium quality Italian leather with excellent capacity and fitted with pockets. It has practical carrying handles and a waterproof cover.
Leather top box: premium quality Italian leather with a popular and elegant design with aluminium buckles and embossed Moto Guzzi logo.
Carbon passenger seat cover: created specifically for "lone travellers", this is installed in place of the passenger saddle.
Carbon luggage rack: blending well with the aggressive lines of the bike, this is easily installed in place of the passenger saddle.
Rider comfort saddle: this takes on the shape of the original, but it has more comfortable padding. The covering in special material and the special label are also pleasantly attractive.
Passenger comfort saddle: this takes on the shape of the original, but it has more comfortable padding. The covering in Easy Touch material and the dedicated label ensure a superior aesthetic effect.
Indoor vehicle cover: made of a special elastic fabric, this adapts perfectly to the shape of the MGX-21 and its accessories.
(*) Prices listed are the Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Prices. MSRP excludes PDI (Pre Delivery Inspection), Taxes, Shipping Costs, Title, and Licensing Fees. All prices and specifications are subject to change. Dealer prices may vary.
© Piaggio & C spa - All rights reserved - VAT 01551260506
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terrainCanada (209)
Premier John Horgan (22)
CTV News Toronto (19)
Meghan Markle (18)
Prince Harry (17)
Rcmp (17)
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view_headlineTop Stories
Ontario family calls for inquest into suicide of Indigenous teen in government care
globalnews.ca 08 Dec 2019 at 14:25
The circumstances that allowed an Indigenous teenager to take his own life metres from his group home and go undiscovered for months can only be remedied by an inquest from the Ontario coroner , according to a request from the boy’s loved ones.
Devon Freeman’s grandmother and members of the southern Ontario First Nation where he was born said a communication breakdown resulted in a particularly horrifying death for the teen, who died by suicide while under the government’s care.
An official complaint filed to the regional supervising coroner in Hamilton said the 16-year-old was last seen alive in October 2017 near the Flamborough, Ont., group home where he had spent much of that year. Seven months later, in April 2018, his body was found in a wooded area roughly 35 metres from the home.
The complaint from Pamela Freeman and the Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation said communication breakdowns marred the case from beginning to end, with key players being kept in the dark about such crucial details as his mental health history and the length of time he was believed to be missing.
“It is important for his full story to be investigated and told to the public, in its entirety and in detail, through the vehicle of an inquest,” the letter reads. “…The public has an interest in being made aware of the many systemic gaps and problems in a child welfare system that ultimately failed Devon, contributed to his death, and puts other children in similar circumstances at risk – especially if those children share Devon’s Indigenous heritage.”
Ontario’s Office of the Chief Coroner will “duly consider the family’s request for an inquest review,” according to spokeswoman Cheryl Mahyr. She declined to offer further comment on the case.
The letter requesting a public inquiry outlines Devon’s long history of mental health struggles and suicidal ideation, dating back to his mother’s sudden death when he was six.
AFN Youth Council co-chair emotionally speaks about Indigenous youth suicides in push for action
The letter said the ensuing years were marked by escalating mental health challenges, increasingly erratic behaviour, and limited efforts to secure support and treatment.
Pamela Freeman remained Devon’s primary caregiver for much of his life, but he officially became a Crown ward months before he died, it said.
At that time, the letter said, he was living at the Lynwood Charlton Centre group home not far from Hamilton.
The letter said Devon tried to kill himself that spring, but was stopped by a friend. It said both group home staff and child protection officials learned of that attempt, but did not offer him meaningful supports at the time and did not share what they knew months later when Devon went missing for good.
The letter argued lack of information on his mental health history tainted the way Hamilton Police responded to his disappearance in October 2017, repeatedly characterizing him as a runaway rather than a teen at risk of self-harm.
Hannah Anderson, a spokeswoman for Ontario’s Associate Minister of Children and Women’s Issues, declined to comment on Devon’s case but called the death of injury of any child “unacceptable.” Hamilton police did not respond to request for comment.
The letter said Devon’s grandmother did not learn he had gone missing until three weeks after he was last seen, adding she was notified by police rather than group home staff.
The letter said that neither she nor members of the First Nation were told of his prior suicide attempt until after his body was found in the forested area on the Lynwood property.
Alberta takes creative approach to address suicide among Indigenous youth
Devon’s body was not found until fellow resident happened upon it by accident while chasing a ball into the woods, the letter said. It noted that evidence showed his body had been exposed to the elements, suggesting it had been there since he was first reported missing.
Devon’s case bares similarities to a dozen other files recently reviewed by the chief coroner’s office last year.
After a panel analyzed the deaths of 12 young people in the care of the province’s child welfare system, Dr. Dirk Huyer concluded poor communication between key players risked leaving kids without the care they need.
Two thirds of the children whose cases were reviewed were Indigenous, most died by suicide, and all contended with mental health struggles while living away from home.
Freeman and the First Nation said Devon’s death fits the same pattern, arguing an inquest is necessary to protect others from the same fate.
“Without an inquest, it will not be possible to fully understand the systemic issues that contributed to Devon’s death, how they threaten the safety of other children in care and what steps can be taken to ensure that what happened to Devon never happens again.”
Read more on globalnews.ca
Devon Freeman
Ontario First Nation
Pamela Freeman
Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation
Office of the Chief Coroner
Cheryl Mahyr
AFN Youth Council
Trending Stories Popular Videos Pamela Freeman
Lynwood Charlton Centre
Hamilton Police
Associate Minister of Children
First Nation
Dirk Huyer
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Judson Ogram Correctional Facility
Discovered using the Survivalism video. http://www.judsonogram.net/. Judson Ogram is a correctional institution, referring to it's inmate populous as "offenders". However, indications suggest that Judson Ogram does not differentiate between criminals and people with psychological dysfunction.
Examination of profiles at Judson Ogram indicates that antipsychotic substances are needlessly used on inmates, displaying no signs of elevated excitement, self harm or psychotic tendancies. Speculation would suggest that this is to make inmates so docile that they are willing to accept the mistreatment that goes on inside the facility - indeed, the staff page suggests that inmates are used as guinea pigs for the pharmaceutical outfit Cedocore, leading to the discovery that Cedocore's "Xerimax" product causes renal damange and pulmonary edema.
2 Inmate case reports
2.1 John Ferminger
2.1.1 Security Notice
2.2 Moira Waag
3 Text clues
4 Observations
The number located on the index page of Judson Ogram is 24.16.2.
Inmate case reports
A login form can be located at the bottom of the staff page.
John Ferminger
The first login for this staff page was found by visiting The Water Turned To Blood, wherein an inmate number was displayed for "John of Boston", as well as a potential password of "francesca" hidden in two blocks of text on the home page. This was used in combination with the name "Preston Gantry", read off of the staff badge of a psychiatrist displayed in the staff listing.
The combination lead us to the first report, that of John Ferminger, or "John of Boston".
User: Preston Gantry
Case number: 4382BX12
Password: francesca
John Ferminger (author of the The Water Turned To Blood website), is an individual who was caught in an accident on a bridge in Boston. The water below the bridge turned to blood, and the distraction this caused to drivers meant that an accident ensued, in which John's car was pushed off of the bridge and into the water. The result of this plunge is that John's daughter drowned. John escaped and exhibits some of the symptoms of being in contact with The Presence, however his psychological evaluation and interview do not allude to any direct contact.
John took the name of "John of Boston", indicating some biblical affiliation. He took to preaching the information divulged to him during his "baptism in blood" during the car crash. After gaining quite a following, he was arrested for preaching to a crowd in excess of legal limits without a permit and was transferred to Judson Ogram. His innocence is disregarded, as suggested by police notes on his transfer document, because they want to keep him out of the public eye.
John is put onto a high dose of an antipsychotic substance, and after refusing to sign a rebuttal of his comments and to make a public statement confirming this action, is executed.
At the bottom of the addendum is a link to Supplimental information. Clicking this link returns an error message that reads:
JUDSON OGRAM INTERNAL SECURITY
This evidence was harvested by 'tier 2' internal security measures.
Pursuant to material detailed herein, Dr. Gantry has been remanded to custody and scheduled for aggressive re-education.
JO internal - DO NOT FORWARD to police, next of kin, etc.
Moira Waag
On 15th March, group analysis of the sample "Survivalism Our End Trip.aif" ("our end trip" being an anagram for "put in order") found that if you arrange the left channel of the sample in such an order that the tones in the right channel are incremental, a voice reads "Case Number 6455DA04". This case number was found to refer to Moira Waag. The sample was obtained from the Survivalism GarageBand arrangement available for download from The Year Zero Website.
By combining them with Preston Gantry's login, we get...
Case number: 6455DA04
Moira is transferred to Judson Ogram after appearing in a hospital emergency room. Her arrest is made after use of Opal and mention of contact with "The Presence", as a preventative measure to ensure she does not engage in public oration regarding "The Presence".
Much like John Ferminger, Moira is prescribed a high dosage of an antipsychotic substance to be administered intramuscularily at an interval way over the recommended guidelines. This is totally contrary to the fact that she is not "excited" or displaying any psychotic tendandies, and is in moderately good health.
Moira has admitted used of recreational drugs, including methamphetamine sulphate, mescaline, and Opal (referred to as "black" in her interview transcript). The transcript mentions that drinking lots of water after taking "black" by solvent-aided skin absorption gives you more of a "push" (a greater effect). This may be a suggestion that Opal and Parepin are the same substance.
Moira's interview transcript ends by describing her experience being touched by "The Presence", and her resulting fear over the implications of her experience.
At the bottom of the interview transcript is a link to an addendum. Clicking this link returns an error message that reads:
Text clues
The following text was pieced together from images on the case file pages for John Ferminger: "[a]nd the probable course of natural select[ion]". An additional unplaced fragment reads "We shall best."
The text appears to be a snippet from The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, notably the passage:
We shall best understand the probable course of natural selection by taking the case of a country undergoing some physical change, for instance, of climate. The proportional numbers of its inhabitants would almost immediately undergo a change, and some species might become extinct.
The text found on Moira Waag's Psychological Evaluation belongs to Marx and Engels' "The Communist Manifesto". The passage reads:
A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of Communism. All the Powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.
Moira's interview transcript, however, features words from a different book--Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West By Gregory Maguire. Here's the passage:
The decades - Fiyero thought, in love with her or at least so frightened for her that he could mistake it for love -- the decades looked on and didn't see her passing. They stared from their fixed mounts across at each other and didn't see the revolution striding between them, on her way to destiny.
There are a number of guesses and beliefs that "Judson Ogram" might possibly be some sort of anagram, but this is yet to be confirmed. Possibilities include "Major sun god" and "Door jam guns".
"Judson Ogram" can be altered so that it reads "JUD sonogram." A sonogram is another word for a spectrogram. Spectrograms of various Year Zero materials have yielded numerous clues and hints. JUD can mean the Islamic organization Jama'at-ud-Da'wah. JUD is also an abbreviation signifying a Doctorate of Canon and Civil Law -- in otherwords, a Doctor of both governmental and church law. This points to the seeming unity of Church and State in the Year Zero world.
The newspaper clipping in Attachment #2 talks about recent flooding due to Hurricane Boaz. The hurricane's name begins with a 'B', indicating it is the second hurricane of the year, assuming the hurricane names are assigned by the same method in year 0000 as is currently in use. The event occurs in February, indicating that the hurricane season now stretches well across year boundaries in 0000.
In the conversation between Dr. Gantry and John, John turns Dr. Gantry's wrist over, and Dr. Gantry makes a comment about "Mark of the Beast." Given the recent nerochip developments, this hints that at least Dr. Gantry has a nerochip implanted in him which suggests that has committed a violent crime in the past and may be one reason he is so sympathetic towards John.
As clear as it might be to some, it is worth pointing out the similarities between John of Boston and John the Baptist. Recall that John the Baptist was the prophet that cleared the way for and spoke about the coming of Jesus. John of Boston has been serving a similar role, although more focused on the Presence instead of a human embodiment. Also, John the Baptist drew people to him and his message, much as John of Boston did with the inmates and the people. John the Baptist was, near the end of his life, imprisoned for his speaking out against the rulers of the time, and was eventually beheaded for that act. John of Boston met a similar end, except with a bullet to the head. As a final note, there is a sense of irony that the text hint derived from the background images is tied to Darwin's Origin of Species. More information about John the Baptist.
John Ferminger's psychological profile lists his inmate number as 4382BX12, and his inmate file number as 4382BX12. However, Moira Waag's inmate number is 6455DA04 and her file number is 4389LP76. It is unknown if this has any relevance, however, since the number does not function as a case number for Preston Gantry's login at the Judson Ogram staff portal.
Although subtle, John's last name appears to be another in the varied references to the research and the physical location Fermilab, an integral Particle Acceleration Lab in Particle, Time and Space research.
Retrieved from "http://www.nin.wiki/index.php?title=Judson_Ogram_Correctional_Facility&oldid=28524"
World of Year Zero
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Our Review: Scroll Down
GoldenEye 007 Review (N64)
Are those golden eyes wearing rose tinted specs?
Version Reviewed: European
review by Mark Reece Sat, 08 Oct 2011 21:00:00 +0100
Highly revered by countless N64 owners, GoldenEye 007 is often credited with kick-starting the first-person shooter craze on consoles. It not only showed that a good FPS could be crafted for a machine other than a high-spec PC, but arguably also created the multiplayer FPS phenomenon. In fact, if it weren't for GoldenEye, it's quite feasible that a franchise such as Call of Duty might never have experienced the ridiculous popularity it's grown accustomed to in the last few years.
However, the games industry evolves and moves along faster than that of perhaps any other entertainment medium and gamers, likewise, are more often than not a fickle bunch. Aside from certain titles that manage to cling onto what we like to refer to as "retro charm", a game that would have been cutting-edge in 1997 might not necessarily cut the mustard when placed side-by-side with today's games. So should you still bother with GoldenEye?
Visually, Rare's magnum opus of the 20th century is difficult to pigeon-hole, perched precariously between so-bad-it's-good and simply past-its-prime. Naturally its production values don't have a hope in Hell of impressing in this day and age: blurry textures, characters with permanently clenched cube-shaped fists and the lack of any speech — save for the odd grunt or groan — may have impressed in 1997, but their limitations are all too clear today.
GoldenEye, luckily, has more to offer than flashy graphics and Hollywood flair. The FPS genre has had many years to degrade into a series of linear shooting galleries in which players are spoon-fed objectives that are never off the beaten track anyway, so playing GoldenEye will be quite a shock to many younger gamers. Rare constructed a brilliantly balanced difficulty system that not only affected the amount of damage that the player and the AI enemies inflict, but also added extra mandatory objectives in each level, depending on the set difficulty. Thus, whether you're a FPS novice, veteran or sit somewhere in between, GoldenEye has a difficulty level that will suit you. This formula encourages players to improve their skills and gives them an incentive to run through the game multiple times, kicking things up a notch each playthrough. Indeed, you could go through GoldenEye's campaign three times and each playthrough would yield a sizeably different experience from the last.
Rare continued to utilise this unique take on difficulty settings in its subsequent FPS titles, Perfect Dark and Perfect Dark Zero, but the system went unused until the Wii revamp of GoldenEye 007 in 2010. While this is indeed a shame, GoldenEye nonetheless clings onto other, less favourable old-school gameplay mechanics. Holding the shoulder button for more precise aiming at the cost of having zero manoeuvrability — while an innovative addition that pre-dates "iron sights" aiming — feels slightly too archaic now. It could be argued that GoldenEye is a shooter that's supposed to be played at a more methodical pace than today's run-and-gun titles anyway, with many missions requiring the player to remain completely undetected. But doing so is a lot more laborious than it should be with this stop/start aiming system feeling somewhat counter-intuitive.
Of course, for many the above few paragraphs will consist almost entirely of moot points, because — as mentioned above — GoldenEye is most fondly remembered for its immensely enjoyable multiplayer suite. Those iffy visuals and the less-than-convenient aiming all fall by the wayside once you get three friends to join in the fun. GoldenEye multiplayer doesn't quite boast the dizzying array of options of its spiritual successors, but its five distinct modes and their team-based variations each bring with them a unique gameplay mechanic to keep things fresh for a long time. Normal is your standard deathmatch, while You Only Live Twice and Licence to Kill shakes things up slightly; the former sees players only possessing two lives before they're out of the game, while in the latter mode a single shot from any weapon is enough to kill you.
Additionally, The Living Daylights has players all scrambling to hold a flag for the longest time in order to win, but it's The Man With The Golden Gun that's by far the most interesting and frantic mode in the game. Only one Golden Gun — a weapon that kills with one shot — is available in a match, and once a player grabs it the only way for his/her opponents to gain possession of the fabled firearm is to kill them for it. This leads to some frenetic action in which fragile alliances might be forged in order to take down the holder of the Golden Gun, at which point all cooperation is thrown out the window as a three-way struggle for the gun ensues. When paired with a generous helping of arenas, a plethora of available weapons and an insane roster of characters from the Bond universe — spanning 35 years of Bond's history — GoldenEye's inspired variations on the standard idea of four people all trying to shoot each other in the face go a long way to keeping its multiplayer modes tremendously entertaining even now.
Let's be honest: GoldenEye 007's visuals have dated terribly, and the precision aiming mechanic is fiddly and ever so slightly impractical, but this is still inarguably a textbook example of how to put together a FPS that's built to last. It's also one that represents one of the very last instances of genuine innovation in a single-player FPS: going through the campaign presents players with pseudo open-world levels and objectives that alter depending on difficulty, two things that developers have for some reason discarded in favour of linear level design in which the only goal is to shoot everyone or maybe stop to press "X" and trigger a context sensitive event. GoldenEye definitely has certain aspects that haven't aged well, but as a history lesson in how things used to be done and as a split-screen multiplayer game, GoldenEye still delivers the goods where it counts.
Great 8/10
Sat 8th Oct 2011
BROSNAN WAS HERE
I'm not a fan of shooters, but I'm glad to see that this is still a good game. It's hard too imagine just how much the genre's changed over the years!
pntjr
0_0 It just got reviewed now?
I thought there was a review for a while.
Retro_on_theGo
Great review, not letting Nostalgia getting in the way. And even then it's still a good game!
I'm going to get this and some controllers and throw a Goldeneye party!
Mr_Reece
I'm currently on a retro reviews frenzy. This was missing and I got in there as soon as I noticed its absence.
hatty475
I like License to Kill mode the best. Good times.
blackknight77
I played through it recently. Its still awesome
ToneDeath
When compared to games of today, yes of course the graphics are inferior, and FPS controls have been streamlined.
But when considered in the context of the time it was actually released (and this isn't a remake or re-release being reviewed here) I wouldn't give it a score below 9/10.
How well do the graphics utilise the actual N64 hardware? Well we'd see better later on, but for a relatively early effort it was very ambitious and impressive.
How well does it utilise the actual N64 controller. I never had any complaints at the time, and there was always the aim-assist option for when things got too hectic to stop and pick your shot. I preferred the controls to Turok anyway.
As the review says though, what really holds up today and even puts the blockbusting FPS' to shame is the mission design, the range of weapons and things to do, and attention to little details (like shooting lights! Too many games don't bother anymore).
RantingThespian
For me, the only problem with playing it today is it really doesn't feel right unless you have an N64 controller. 9.5/10 for me
DarkLloyd
its a 10/10 to me as i dont have any problems with it
Chozo85
I don't think you can review Goldeneye objectively in 2011. When it was released it was probably the best FPS ever made, certainly the best on a games console and in many ways revolutionised the genre. Nowadays it feels very dated but the impact it had in 1997 shouldn't be underestimated. A true classic.
TheKingOfTown
I thought this was gonna have a 10/10
pikku
What Chozo85 said. It had a major impact on the gaming community and games to come when it released, but judging it by today's standards, especially given how expensive it is to buy the cartridge nowadays, it's really isn't worth it. there are plenty of better first person shooters available today for only a fraction of the cost.
SigourneyBeaver
I never really liked it. I much preferred Duke Nukem on the Saturn and Doom and Quake on the PC.
NESguy94
Goldeneye is the perfect FPS and set the bar for every FPS to come. The attention to detail, the graphics (for the time), level design and multi-player make this game a true masterpiece. It is an insult to give Goldeneye anything lower than a 9/10.
@Pik
This game goes for around $8 CIB on average.
@Atomic_3ds_Man, it should have gotten a 10/10
Played through this one again in Fall 2009 and was just as good as always!
TKOWL
What I like about this website is that you acknowledge that a game has aged, and actually dig down deep into the game and not go with the popular score.
Good review, it definitely deserves that 8.
Wheels2050
I never really 'got' the Goldeneye thing. I was used to FPS on the PC, and this didn't control as well or look as good.
However, the ease of getting a multiplayer match going compared to PCs at the time can't be overlooked, and that was, admittedly, a blast!
Sun 9th Oct 2011
..less than a 10 is madness.
Lowering the score because of dated graphics now (when they were great at its time of release) is just plain unnecessary. Also, unless you were playing with a controller other than the 64's, i don't get the fiddly/impractical issue you have.. The method for aiming was fine, it also encouraged stealth to a degree (you could sidestep/crouch while doing it for example).
This review's slightly blasphemous. Everything about the game was great actually.
warioswoods
It could be argued that GoldenEye is a shooter that's supposed to be played at a more methodical pace than today's run-and-gun titles anyway
True, and also in the multiplayer. One of the reasons I enjoyed this game's multiplayer yet still hate that of nearly every modern FPS is that it was slowed down a bit, particularly with the shoulder-button aim. I prefer that; now when I play an FPS against friends, it's just reduced to two incredibly boring things: (1) speeding around corners in dual-analog to see who is slightly faster at moving the cursor, and (2) a contest to be the bigger nerd who knows more about the weapons, locations, etc than the other players. Goldeneye was far more balanced, so that a newcomer could still figure out the mechanics and compete.
XyVoX
Typical Poncy Journalistic review 8/10 score. PLEASE
RudysaurusRex
Golden gun is my favorite mode.
savage_celery
i had never played through this game before until just recently. it is awsome. its probably some of the best graphics for N64. some place was selling this game for a cheap so i had to pick it up. i think it deserves 10/10.
Chrono_Cross
(2) a contest to be the bigger nerd who knows more about the weapons, locations, etc than the other players
This can be applied to nearly every genre of competitive multiplayer games. Take Mario Kart Wii: I know every short cut and how to use every weapon appropriately to gain the upper advantage nearly anytime throughout the race. Noobiez parish = I win. Same can be applied to Madden (Sports), Super Smash Bros. (Fighting), and Tenchu (Stealth genre). If you put more thought into it I'm sure you could come up with more.
Yes and no; it's an element of every game, but there are vast differences in its importance. Mario Kart's balancing is a good example; I hear fans complaining about the items in the recent games, but that's what makes it an enjoyable experience, where there's enough chaos to ensure that every single player has a chance to win at every point. You can know the shortcuts but they won't save you unless you keep alert and deal with the constant chaos of items, events, and other shifts. I've seen novices win against experts many times, and it wasn't just luck, it was a matter of playing with more focus, because MK is a game that punishes any pro who slacks off or flies on autopilot for even a moment.
With Madden, you're right, and I hate the Madden series. I keep hoping that someone will completely rethink the football gaming genre, because it's dead to me as is.
nintygaming
I'm thinking about purchasing the Wii version of Goldeneye 007 (the remake/reimaging) Can anyone tell me if its just as fun to play as the original?
(based on this review of the original, the newer Wii version should have much better mechanics/gameplay/control)
I'm not the best at CoD but I can take on experts when I'm in the zone. Which is relevant to what you said about Mario Kart. But when your great at a game and a noobie comes out of nowhere YOU are going to win. No matter what game it is even if it is GoldenEye. It's just how it is.
And as for Madden well... yeah I very much dislike the game. There's nothing really fun about it. Watching it is funner than playing the game yourself. And lets say someone got a new Wii or PS3: That would be the LAST game franchise I'd ever recommend to them.
Sh00kst3r
@nintygaming
It's very enjoyable. Although I personally prefer you use the Wiimote/Zapper. The Classic Controller Pro is HORRIBLE for GoldenEye Wii, ESPECIALLY on multiplayer. Dunno why, it just is.
On the other hand, I agree with ya'll. 8/10 is too low, sir. Even I, a mediumcore CoD gamer, think this deserves a full 10. There's something about the nostalgia that makes you want to weep happily while playing...
TheGreenSpiny
Nice review but it has a few factual errors. The controls you mentioned only pertained to the default settlings, and you could still strafe with the c buttons while using manual aim. There was also a Turok control setup, and not to mention dual analog. Dual analog required you to plug in two N64 controllers to play, and it ironically feels like holding a Wii Remote and Nunchuk.
I'm glad you mentioned GoldenEye's level designs because they have still yet to be beaten. Perfect Dark was a damn fine game but still not as good as this bad boy. The reason I hate almost any and all modern FPS is because they have become simple linear drivel. What happened to GoldenEye's open level structure? There are so many elements that modern FPS have yet to catch up on. Headshot are one thing, but variable body damage and animations for each hit are still only second to Perfect Dark.
@29 warioswoods: Mario Kart Wii suffers from the most horrible game imbalancing. The older games were designed so that even a noob could win but more skilled players would rake up more wins over time. The Wii just a matter of luck and getting raped by items.
@30 nintygaming: No. Nothing is as fun to play as the original. It's impossible to understate how groundbreaking and important this game was. I don't wish to knock Eurocom's game because they did a damn fine job, but other than better graphics and controls it still doesn't quite measure up to Rare's game. GoldenEye for the Wii is still a fantastic game and since it sells for as low as $20 new you have little to lose by picking it up.
NeoShinobi
Pretty good game. The multiplayer really never seemed all that impressive to me, but that's probably because I got into games like Conker before this one.
The singleplayer still holds up really well though.
BulbasaurusRex
I borrowed the Wii-make from my library, and I did have fun with the campaign despite some issues [you can't completely customize the controls; the deadzone can't be made completely dead (meaning absolutely no camera movement while inside); you can't shoot while the Wiimote points offscreen (which is usually what happens when I turn more than just a little bit); you have to aim down the sights to get any kind of decent accuracy; and there's too much of a focus on pokey stealth], but I couldn't get into the multiplayer after so much time playing Conduit 2, especially since the health is so low that pretty much whoever notices someone first is extremely likely to get the kill.
@TheDarkness
I don't agree; it's not just luck on the Wii game, it's a matter of chaos-management: those who can deal with the constant changing, attacking, exploding chaos around them will rack up more wins over time. That's far more fun than simply basing it on driving or drifting skill alone. It requires an incredibly alert and cautious mind, constantly looking out for the next attack to screw you over and finding ways to avoid trouble but stay ahead.
I don't see it as all that different from Double Dash, which is in fact my favorite in the series. MKWii is More chaotic than DD, sure, but not a radical departure.
Their probably isnt a number high enough to tally how many hours I put into this game both single player mode and multiplayer mode. So many good time spent on this games particularly multiplayer mode. I cant even remember how many times my friends and I would get together and end up in front of a TV lobbing grenades or zapping each other with the moonraker laser.
Great Review makes me want to track down a copy of this game and play it on my N64.
So even in single player mode (I only play by myself) the original is better?
That's hard to say; it depends on your experience with gaming and how you would approach it. For its time, Goldeneye's single-player was amazing, and many of us are old enough (or even older...) to remember how big a step forward it was for console gaming. We can see it in light of its era and accomplishments, but that's hard to do now if you weren't playing back then.
So, if you're not accustomed to those old games and the rules of the N64 era, you'd do better probably to pick up and enjoy the remake. It's an excellent game that offers a very cinematic single-player experience I'm sure you'll enjoy. I'd recommend buying it if you have any interest; I doubt you'd be disappointed.
Collinhall
This and Halo CE were the definitive shooters IMO
@32 - That's not a factual error. If you use the precision aiming - pressing the shoulder button - you cannot walk around. You can peak around corners and crouch, but not walk. I use the Turok style controls - on every N64 FPS, not just GoldenEye - and the precision aiming is included.
Haywired
I remember when this game was announced my friend was so excited about it. Even though I was a huge Rare fan, I wasn't particularly interested in Bond or FPSs, so I pretty much ignored it. Then gradually it seemed like every one in school was talking about, playing it, selling their PS1s to get N64s just for it. I couldn't really ignore it any longer. I went out to get it, but it was sold out everywhere, so I had to wait, but when it finally arrived I was totally blown away by it. Definately a classic.
One thing I think a lot of people seem to forget about GoldenEye, or maybe they never realized it in the first place, is that it has a dual analogue control option that makes it play pretty much like any current gen dual analogue game (using two N64 controllers that you hold by the center prongs). In some ways it actually feels better than current dual analogue controllers because both your hands can move freely and it actually feels like you are dual wielding two guns the way you hold the controllers. Now that was something way ahead of it's time.
There's also neat little touches that even most modern gen fps games fail to offer; like being able to shoot the guns and hats lying on floor and watch them bounce around the room. The fact that pretty much everything in the levels is destructible in one way or another. The area specific hit animations, like shooting a guy in the bum and actually seeing him grab his ass in pain. The whole stealth gameplay option in an fps game (only the recent GoldenEye Wii has really offered anything similar in an fps game since that), etc etc...
GoldenEye was a masterpiece, was genre defining and is a true classic that deserves any praise it gets.
A classic. It's a bit rough to go back to these days but it was something special when it was released.
i just played though it last week actually and its still a blast
I'd say the score is adequate, but even today, the multi-player can't compete, as far as I'm concerned. Perfect Dark is PERFECTION as far as multi-player goes, in my humble opinion, and what is not said here is that if you're isolated from friends, Goldeneye only has solo mode, which is not helping it against PD. The absence of bots in multiplayer is the thing that I miss most in this game.
Other than that, yes, it is still a good game, even by today's standards...
JimLad
@13 I agree.
Is it really worth judging these old games by todays standards? I think they deserve better than that, score it based on what the hardware was capable of at least.
@46 - Then an 8 is fair.
SKTTR
Todays shooters are hopelessly degenerated compared to GoldenEye's and Perfect Dark's ultrarealism.
Graphics and controls got much better over time and we have online now and so many GigaBytes to use, but there hasn't been a fps in 14 years that was as groundbreaking as that little 12MB GoldenEye catridge.
vegeta044
I wish they would revamp this for the 3DS. New graphics, weaponry, and etc. I loved this game so much especially with the cheat to make everyone's head huge and easy to shoot lol
Chunky_Droid
8? 9? 10?
It doesn't really matter what the score is, read the review. I've gone back and played it on my original N64 and I believe it hasn't held up well at all. It's horribly dated, albeit an almost perfect mission system that should still be applied in shooters today.
Going back and playing it today? I'd give it a 7 if I was reviewing it. An 8 if I was back in high school playing it
Mon 10th Oct 2011
@37 nintygaming: If you can get past the controls/graphics yes.
@38 warioswoods: There is no way to manage the chaos in MK Wii. The simple fact that you lose an item every time you get hit dooms you to failure. The inclusion of 12 racers verses 8 means more items to get owned by. Not to mention the over abundance of uberpowerful items like lightning, stars, bullet bill, super mushrooms, and that even more annoying than ever flying blue spiney guarantees that the games come down to luck.
daznsaz
@el-marko no matter how hard you try you cant take away peoples enjoyment of this game.
@48 Who cares if they're not groundbreaking? If the games are overall improved, no matter how little, then they're still better games, period. It's the same reason I don't approve of scoring a just-as-good or improved sequel on the same system worst than the original game just because it was a "lazy sequel" or "not innovative enough." Besides, as the video game industry (or even individual video game franchises) gets older, it gets harder and harder to innovate simply because there are fewer possibilities that haven't already been done.
leon_x
8?? Really?? "It is an insult to give Goldeneye anything lower than a 9/10"
@daznsaz - I'm not trying to "take away peoples' enjoyment". I looked at the game objectively: at how fun it is today, how well its aged, its options, its quirks, etc, and gave it the score I felt it deserved.
If you don't agree, that's fine, but if you look at the scoring policy page, you'll see that an 8 equates to "very good" and that "minor niggling factors" make it fall short of a 9. If you read the words above these comments, you'll see that I made reference to those "minor niggling factors" and scored the game accordingly.
Again, you're entitled to your opinion, but I've basically said that GoldenEye is very good. You can't say fairer than that, can you?
no thats fair enough.its down to each individuals experience anyway.i can see clearer now ive had a nicotine lozenge lol.
And we all lived happily ever after.
^good old british humour
Whilst Goldeneye wouldn't score highly in the graphics department, it is still one of the most enjoyable games I've played to date. I know of no movie-based game that delivers such awesome gameplay and it's charm is just fantastic. Whilst I may be lynched for this, I do think it is a shame that Activision, Rare/Microsoft and Nintendo didn't sort out some sort of deal for Xbox Live, and it is a shame that the remake on the Wii is a fairly average shooter, I would gladly pay full price for this game to be re-released on the Nintendo virtual console.
SPEtheridge
I spent countless hours on this game, ah game was so good still find it great to play today only thing that jars the experience is the frame rate drops pretty bad sometimes so wish this could come to VC would be great but ah well I'll just have to stick to my cart
sarbeb
Wed 2nd Nov 2011
This is still my fave N64 game!!! I played this for hours!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so much so i used to dream i was in the game! you no you,ve played it to death when u start dreamin your james bond!!!! lol!
Eddsnake
Sorry but I don't see the point in reviewing a game from 1997 and then applying today's graphical standards to it. A 10/10 through and through.
jonnymac
A few months ago there was an n64 console on sale with Goldeneye and MarioKart at my local pawnshop. No matter that every additional controller was €15, no matter the fact that my girlfriend threatened to leave me if I played it while she was in the house and certainly no matter buying the extra adaptor thingy needed to plug it in to a hi-tech television. I don't have another console and I couldn't care less about buying one. When I was younger I played on all sorts of consoles, today I'm not really the gaming type.
Actually if I'm going to be honest I bought the television because I found the console, I've never owned one before this. I wouldn't do the same for Crash Bandicoot, Ace Combat or Tomb Raider. Not only is Goldeneye part of my youth but it's just a damned good game that'll infuriate me until I pass every single level on every difficulty level and get every single cheat.
Thanks for posting this review.
Thu 1st Mar 2012
easily a 10, a game way ahead of its time. and one of the first titles to fully exploit the rumble pack - you'd get a different rumble effect depending on the type of gun - mindblowingly cool.
dislaimer - many a teenage hour 'wasted' here, unlocking all the cheats and going in on multiplayer. bunker with remote mines!!!
atariman
Sat 25th Aug 2012
The soundtrack in this game is just plane AWFUL! but the controls, and the fun is just worth playing! I'd give it a 7 or 8.
Schokobaer
Mon 1st Oct 2012
What blasphemy is this?!?!
BEST.GAME.EVER.
Got back into gaming on my old N64 recently and while I must admit the graphics aren't really comparable to what is seen as standard today (but who would seriously do that anyway) this game defined my passion for gaming!
Nintenjoe64
Tue 2nd Oct 2012
I'm with all the 10/10 people.
This game pretty much made 4 controller ports the standard for all future consoles. Not only was it the best FPS at the time but it was also the best ever officially licensed movie game and one of the only decent ones that wasn't based on a disney cartoon.
I hope the wii u's extra screen gives us the kind of multiplayer joy that the N64's quad controller ports did back then.
TonLoco
Thu 22nd Nov 2012
This game and ocarina of time were the reasons i wanted an N64 in the first place. Goldeneye was awesome to play alone and the funnest multiplayer game ever. Very fond memories.
supermario4ever
Sun 31st Mar 2013
Only 8? I counted at least 10.
Sun 22nd Sep 2013
This game gets a 10/10 in my book. The soundtrack was amazing considering the games cartridge size was a tiny 12 MB. The subtle shooting an enemies hat off or having a head shot be different than a body or limb shot. The humor of shooting a desk, chair, computer, or safe and having it explode was brilliant. This was created when RARE studios was at it's prime before they were acquired by Microsoft. For a game to get such wide praise from the gaming community at large even after nearly 16 years is pretty incredible.
Petriebird
Mon 27th May 2019
This game is still such brilliant fun to play. I still haven’t played a FPS that even comes close to this in terms of how fun it is to play. Nice tight level design with very distinctive areas so you actually know where you are on each level and don’t spend the whole time looking at the arrow guide in the corner of the screen to see which way to go next like you do when playing Call of Duty games. Also the AI is not too intelligent so it just somehow feels funner - modern FPS just overwhelm the crap out of me and quickly get really tedious.
Let me compare this game to Golden Eye Wii for a moment:
In Golden Eye Wii the levels are bigger and more open world which is a bad thing as I often feel disorientated. Often huge areas just look the same as other huge areas on the same level. For me Linear (but not too linear) = good. I don't want to think too hard about where to go next. Also, in Golden Eye Wii everything is so detailed and also quite dark and there is no clear contrast between enemy and surrounding environment so I often cant see the enemy till I'm way too close. For me graphics need to be tasteful but not detract from the gameplay. Many modern games overcook their graphics in an attempt to be realistic looking but in FPS this often adds to the feeling of disorientation - that is say: too much going on at anyone time!!!
To conclude this rather clunky rant I just want say Golden Eye N64 is 10/10 and no one has managed to replicate the magic and simplicity in a FPS for me since then. Splatoon has equaled it and more in terms of fun, simplicity, gameplay and level design but Splatoon is a third person shooter not first person.
CDSilb
Thu 11th Jul 2019
You shouldn't base your review on how this 1997 game looks and feels in 2011, but rather during its own time. If you did not play it at that time, then you should not have reviewed this game. Its the most influential FPS of its time for a reason. As one reviewer on Thrillist has put it: ""GoldenEye" set the table for the gaming industry to eat off that format ever since."
Younger friends of mine that did not grow up with GE often find it to be unplayable. I don't blame them. Games like this don't age well in comparison to those with simpler art styles and mechanics such as SMB3, Mega Man 2, or Super Metroid—all three of which they've been able to pick up and enjoy. That's why we have seen the pixel art gaming resurgence happen and not a blocky 3D resurgence instead.
Now, an 8 out of 10 is undoubtedly a good score, but its criminal for a game like GoldenEye 007. Aside from its influence on other games, its sheer popularity (I played this game at church when I was a kid) was a major help in lifting Nintendo out of a difficult period with the struggling N64. I would strongly consider removing this review and basing a new one on how the game felt during its time.
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'Secret Screen' Nintendo 64 Prototype Resurfaces More Than 20 Years Later
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Tel: 1-877-737-8511 E-mail: info@otcgh.com
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OTC GLOBAL HOLDINGS’ ION ENERGY GROUP LAUNCHES PHYSICAL LPG PRODUCT AND FREIGHT BROKERAGE DESK, WELCOMES FORMER TRADER PATRICK GORGUE TO LEAD EFFORT WHICH WILL FOCUS ON EUROPEAN AND ASIAN MARKETS
HOUSTON (December 26, 2019) – ION Energy Group, the largest natural gas options broker in the world and a portfolio company within leading independent interdealer broker OTC Global Holdings (OTCGH), today announced the establishment of a physical freight brokerage desk and the addition of former trader Patrick Gorgue as desk head.
“Patrick brings unparalleled experience to this new opportunity and comes to ION at an exciting time,” said Sid Perkins, founder and managing partner of ION Energy Group. “As we look to expand our footprint, we need to hire experienced individuals like this who can grow specific new areas of our business. We look forward to seeing Patrick replicate his previous successes in the physical global markets he’ll be focused on.”
Prior to joining ION Gorgue worked at Vitol for eight years and ran the firm’s LPG desk in their Houston office. In addition, he traded European LPG for Morgan Stanley in London and worked at Louis Dreyfus in Houston and Wilton, Conn.
“I am eager to get to work with Sid and my new colleagues to build out the product and freight brokerage desk focused on international LPG markets,” added Gorgue. “The tremendous growth of these markets lately is just the beginning, and they present incredible opportunities for an industry leader like ION.”
For more information about OTCGH and ION Energy Group visit www.otcgh.com. To contact Gorgue directly please use: gorgue.p@ionenergygroup.com / (713) 358-5450 / gorguep3 (ICE Chat).
About ION Energy Group
Founded in 2008 by Sid Perkins and based in New York, London and Houston, ION Energy is a portfolio company of OTC Global Holdings and a brokering group of EOX Holdings that offers clients brokering services and expertise in natural gas liquids (NGL), product options and the natural gas and crude markets.
Contact: Amy West
Pierpont Communications
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OTC GLOBAL HOLDINGS CLOSES OUT DECADE WITH CONTINUED INVESTMENTS IN GLOBAL TALENT, EXPANSION OF DATA SERVICES OFFERINGS INTO EUROPE
HOUSTON (December 16, 2019) – OTC Global Holdings (OTCGH), the leading independent commodities interdealer broker, concluded another milestone year marked by further investments in global talent and the expansion of its data services offering for clients across markets.
Talent has long been a key differentiator for the firm, and 2019 was no different as it invested in individuals across the globe who can drive market growth, including:
Daniel Porton joined OTCGH as Market Data Business Development Manager and Head of Sales for Europe and Asia. Porton has over 12 years of experience in multi-asset sales and relationship management working in financial markets and is based out of London.
Aaron Easterling, who brings more than 13 years of experience leading talent initiatives in global alternative investment management to the company, joined OTCGH as Vice President of Business Development. Easterling is responsible for helping the firm identify and recruit premier candidates to OTCGH’s nearly 20 independent brokerage shops across the globe.
Het Shah, who brings more than 15 years of experience in trading, research and product development to the firm, joined OTCGH’s ION Energy Group in New York as a head of research. Shah is helping further build out the company’s rapidly expanding research capabilities.
Thomas Blakeslee, a 25-year energy veteran, joined OTCGH’s Choice! Power desk in New York. He has two plus decades of experience in trading oil, power and gas, and most recently was Sales Manager at Nasdaq, where he oversaw the sales effort for power and gas trading, driving new competition to the energy futures industry.
OTCGH also announced the availability of its latest data product, European Natural Gas & Power (EUGP) Forward Curves powered by EOXLive. The EUGP product covers daily assessments of 40 fixed price locations and joins the continuously expanding suite of data resources from OTCGH, including existing European offerings like NGLs, Refined Products, and Crude Oil as the firm continues to expand its market data offerings into Europe and Asia.
In addition, the company expanded its EOD market data reports powered by EOXLive to be generated multiple times throughout the global business day to provide continuous coverage to clients across all continents. In addition to the EOD market data reports EOX already generated before 3:00 p.m. CT daily, the company began generating EOD market data reports for every asset class it marks five times daily.
Thanks to the continued support of OTCGH’s brokers, the company also saw continued growth of the client base for its EOXLive platform. This resulted in more trader-to-trader interaction and a record-setting volume total in August, brokering more than 40 percent of the total Natural Gas Options block market (ICE, CME and NFX).
Finally, the company was honored as the 2019 “Broker of the Year” by Energy Risk, an internationally recognized publication in the global trade and risk management industry. This is the fourth time in nine years the firm has received the recognition.
“This year has been a testament to OTC Global Holdings’ steadfast position in the global marketplace. We have made great investments in our people and products, which directly impact the level of service and intelligence we are able to provide our clients with,” said Javier Loya, OTCGH’s chairman and Co-CEO. “As the year comes to an end, we are looking forward to accomplishing even greater milestones in 2020 and the coming decade, including enhancing our technology and data offerings to diversifying our portfolio of services. However, continuing to provide the best client experience and service in the business will remain at the core of everything we do and that starts with having the best people.”
About OTC Global Holdings
Formed in 2007, OTC Global Holdings has become the world’s largest independent institutional broker of commodities, covering financial and physical instruments from offices in Chicago, Des Moines, Geneva, Houston, London, Louisville, New Jersey, New York and Singapore. The company is a leading liquidity provider on CBOT, ICE, NYMEX and NFX, ranking number one amongst its peers in numerous derivatives contracts across biofuels, emissions, commodity index products, crude oil, natural gas, natural gas liquids (NGLs), metals, petrochemicals and refined products, power, proppants, soft commodities, and weather derivatives. The company serves more than 450 institutional clients, including over 70 members of the Global Fortune 500, and transacts in hundreds of different commodity delivery points in Asia, Europe and the Americas. To learn more about the company, please visit www.otcgh.com or go to https://player.vimeo.com/video/146686709.
OTC GLOBAL HOLDINGS’ ION ENERGY GROUP BOLSTERS RESEARCH OFFERING WITH ADDITION OF SEASONED ENERGY MARKETS PROFESSIONAL HET SHAH
NEW YORK (December 9, 2019) – ION Energy Group, the largest natural gas options broker in the world and a portfolio company within leading independent interdealer broker OTC Global Holdings (OTCGH), today announced the addition of Het Shah as a head of research. Shah brings more than 15 years of experience in trading, research and product development to the firm and will help further build out its rapidly expanding research capabilities.
“While Ion has long been known as the natural gas market leader, we have seen our clients’ needs evolve in recent years and are continuously trying to grow with them,” said Sid Perkins, founder and managing partner at ION Energy Group. “Het brings tremendous experience to the table and his addition will allow us to continue down the path of trying to expand our research capability in a rapidly changing environment.”
Shah most recently developed a data analytics firm, analytix.ai, which used advanced big data modelling techniques to build more accurate, timely, and forward-looking natural gas fundamental data. He also played a part in developing and growing enelyst.com, a widely used professional messaging platform for energy market professionals.
Prior to this, Shah was head of natural gas at Bloomberg and developed all the components for their natural gas regional models, including daily regional production, consumption, storage activity and flows for 16 regions across the US and Canada. His data and analysis during this time was widely circulated amongst energy market traders and analysts.
In addition, Shah previously held research and analyst positions at BP, Platts and Constellation Energy.
“The opportunity to join an industry leader like ION and help further build out their research capabilities was something I immediately jumped at,” added Shah. “Not only has the firm continually emphasized staying ahead of the curve with its clients by investing in research and other emerging areas of the business, but thanks to their entrepreneurial approach I know I will have the resources to build something impactful.”
For more information about OTCGH and ION Energy Group visit www.otcgh.com.
OTC GLOBAL HOLDINGS’ CHOICE! PRODUCTS ADDS ENERGY VETERAN RALPH TAPIA AS DERIVATIVES BROKER
OTC GLOBAL HOLDINGS’ CHOICE! PRODUCTS
ADD ENERGY VETERSAN RALPH TAPIA AS DERIVATIVES BROKER
HOUSTON (October 21, 2019) – Choice! Products, part of leading independent interdealer broker in over-the-counter commodities OTC Global Holdings (OTCGH), today announced the addition of Ralph Tapia as a Derivatives Broker for their Refined Products Desk. Tapia’s focus will be Gulf Coast Physical Distillates, NYMEX Futures and other energy products.
“At OTCGH we understand that only by hiring top tier talent like Ralph will we be able to continue meeting shifting client demands in this evolving marketplace,” said Javier Loya. “His broad industry experience will be a tremendous resource for the Choice! team, their clients and our entire firm.”
Tapia brings more than 12 years of industry experience to the desk, ranging from tax accounting to refinery logistics, and distillate blending to banking. He earned his BBA in accounting and finance from the University of Texas at San Antonio.
“Choice! has a solid gasoline program in place, and there is huge potential to grow the distillate desk with our current team,” added Tapia. “I am very excited to join their Products Desk and know that OTCGH’s leadership will continue to position the firm for success in today and tomorrow’s marketplace.”
For more information about Choice! Products and OTC Global Holdings please visit www.otcgh.com.
About Choice! Products
Founded in 2013, Choice! Products is one of the leading brokerage groups in Refined Products.
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Home › Public sites▻Irish Inscribed Stones Project
Irish Inscribed Stones Project
Download scans
A corpus of Irish stone inscriptions
Outdoor cultural heritage monuments suffer greatly from the weathering process, and are at an ever-increasing risk of severe and permanent damage. This is especially so for monuments with carved inscriptions, since the inscriptions can be worn past recognition as a consequence of the weathering process and atmospheric pollution. For this reason the surviving records of Ireland’s past are constantly at risk.
The Irish Inscribed Stones Project draws on the technical expertise developed by the Foundations of Irish Culture Project based at NUI Galway by using the very latest, state-of-the art laser scanning technology to produce a corpus of all known Irish stone inscriptions in one single archive.
Clonmacnois project
Clonmacnois is the most important Early Christian site in Ireland — far more important than Armagh, and more impressive than all the others by virtue of its long history and the age and number of its surviving archaeological monuments.
Chief amongst these are the churches and the round towers, and best-known of all, the famous high-crosses. But equally important —and far less well known — are the hundreds of inscribed stones that have survived there (c. 750 in total).
It is nearly a hundred years since these stones were last surveyed and described, in R. A. S. Macalister’s pioneering monograph, The Memorial Slabs of Clonmacnois (Dublin 1909). That book is now impossible to find, and no comparable study has ever been undertaken since then that incorporates all the new stones that have been discovered
You can now download 3D scans for 300 stones.
Principal investigator: Prof. Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, History (School of Humanities), National University of Ireland, Galway
Researchers: Dr Thierry Daubos (post-doc), Doireann Dennehy, Sander Westerhout (PhD researchers)
External advisers: Dr Elisabeth Okasha, Dr Orla Murphy, University College Cork
Paul McMahon, OPW, Senior Architect
Patrick Heraghty, OPW, District Works Manager
John O'Brien, OPW, Architectural Technician
Tom Moore, Manager of Clonmacnoise Visitor Centre and his staff
Heather King, Dept of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government
Prof. Mike Redfern, NUI Galway
Documentary clip
Dr Thierry Daubos and Prof. Dáibhí Ó Cróinín of the National University of Ireland, Galway, carry out 3D scanning at the National Museum of Ireland. The high cross is a cast taken from the Cross of the Scriptures at Clonmacnois.
Part of this video was originally broadcast in RTÉ's "Secret of Stones" series. The soundtrack is Maria McCool singing "Ar Éirinn Ní Neosfainn Cé Hí".
(Watch on YouTube or see this longer extract.)
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ODBMS Industry Watch
Trends and Information on AI, Big Data, New Data Management Technologies, Data Science and Innovation.
On Big Data and Hadoop. Interview with Paul C. Zikopoulos. on June 10, 2013
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Roberto is Full Professor of Database and Information Systems at Frankfurt University. He was for over 15 years the representative of the OMG in Europe. Previously, Roberto served as associate professor at Politecnico di Milano, Italy; Visiting scientist at IBM Almaden Research Center, USA, the University of California at Berkeley, USA; Visiting professor at EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, the National University of Mexico City, Mexico and the Copenhagen Business School, Danemark.
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Heroes Among Heroes Review
Why did I take so long to write about Heroes Among Heroes? I should have whipped out this review a month ago! It could be that I left the screening a bit frustrated. Quick story: When I was rushing to get to the theater, I was parked less than a block away. What I didn’t take into account was that we would be getting the worst downpour of rain that night. I can suffer running through a storm but what I didn’t realize was that my iPhone would be caught in the rain and all of a sudden, have no audio when I tried to make a call! Quick Google searching later let me find out that if water gets near an iPhone’s headphone socket, it makes your phone think it is constantly connected in headphone mode. The Solution: Place your phone in a pack of rice overnight. Worked for me as it absorbed all the water out of that thing!
Regardless of being phoneless for a day, I had quite an enjoyable time watching a nice print of Heroes Among Heroes. It’s not the best Yuen-Woo Ping film, but it was good to see my faith in Yuen still last after a disappointing screening of True Legend. The story cribs a bit from other popular Hong Kong films of the era such as the Once Upon a Time in China series, but 1993 was a year of excess when it came to those kinds of films film. How much excess? There were over five Hong Kong films revolving around the Wong Fei Hong character! Not only that, but at least three of them were worked on by Yuen-Woo Ping. Talk about milking it! Imagine if next year there were five Robin Hood films and they were all directed or produced by Ridley Scott. Madness!
How did Yuen-Woo Ping not die of exhaustion? The Hong Kong Film Archive and Hong Kong Cinemagic websites state he was not alone in directing these, as Chan Chin-Chung is also credited as a director. Who the hell is he though? This seems to Chan’s only film credit. Joining him in a one-time only role is Yuk Wong who co-starring alongside Donnie Yen as the role of Wong Fei Hong himself. Then much like Chan: nothing ever again! It doesn’t really matter as it’s Donnie Yen as Beggar So who is the real star of the film. In fact, I think even Ng Man Tat (lots of “wasn’t that the coach from Shaolin Soccer?” after the screening) and Sheila Chan take up a large amount of the screentime. Sheila has some embarrassing prosthetic teeth in this film…people gasped in the audience when they first saw her pearly whites.
Prepare to see these chompers quite a bit when sitting down to Heroes Among Heroes
Both Sheila and Ng Man Tat both have a good amount of screen time for their comedy scenes. If you aren’t a fan of the comedy relief in Yuen Woo-Ping’s other films, this won’t change your mind. Personally, I found it forgettable outside the visual memory of her teeth.
Regardless of how you feel about the comedy, you have to appreciate a film that has a subtitle that attempts to explain the play-on-words as shown below
Ng-Man Tat says this during the film…apparently!
Despite a confusing production history and joke-explaining subtitles, Heroes Among Heroes is an entertaining if lesser picture from Yuen Woo-Ping. The anti-drug PSA themed opium tale is not nearly as memorable as the more popular Iron Monkey also from 1993. On the other hand, we get the bonus of not having any child actors which is a definite downside to Iron Monkey for me. Kids ruin everything.
Many of the action scenes during the first half of Heroes Among Heroes are far too short. By the time you’ve asked yourself “was that it?” the characters are already on to their location. The later action scenes, are more extended and extravagant. These scenes include Donnie Yen fighting a member of the Red Lotus group which involves Donnie dodging the rivals long hair used as a fighting extension. Another strong action scene involves Chan Chin-Chung who sits at a dinner table and has a seated kung-fu battle…with his fist on fire! Perhaps he burnt his bad so badly that he didn’t want to do another film again?
What any man would do when they light their hand on fire.
If the above sounded interesting, I’m unhappy to report that Heroes Among Heroes has not been treated kindly on home video. Two Region 1 DVDs of the film have been released with one under the title Fist of the Red Dragon which is only available in an English dub. I’m feeling especially lucky now to have caught an actual film print. In comparison to much of Hong Kong’s modern day output, this film feels a lot stronger than it probably ever did in 1993. If you need something that has the Iron Monkey and Fong Sai Yuk kind of flavor, you might just find it in Heroes Among Heroes…that is if you aren’t bored about another tale of Wong Fei Hong.
2 Comments | 1990s, donnie yen, hong kong, yuen woo-ping | Tagged: heroes among heroes | Permalink
Ottawa Cinema – July
Want to know why there was no post about Ottawa Cinema for June?There simply was not that much good stuff coming out, so yeah, hope you stayed at home. I am happy to report that there are at least two films that I’m excited to see this month. Before revealing what they are, you must prepare to answer the question “What’s better than one Yuen-Woo Ping film?” The answer of course, is two of his films and one isn’t the cut-up Iron Monkey print! Rejoice!
Note: Both films are not covered in thick mist as posters suggest.
After months of discussing and possibly dreading it, True Legend finally debuts in Ottawa. I’ve heard so much mixed reviews on this one but the trailers have me hooked, especially after seeing it on the big screen. As a nice bonus, on July 29th, I’m blessed enough to witness Yuen Woo-Ping’s 1993 film Heroes Among Heroes aka Beggar So aka Fist of the Red Dragon. This is Donnie Yen in his prime and how often do you get the chance to see classic early 90s martial arts films on the big screen? I’m there!
Before I go on, a big thanks to the The Heroic Sisterhood on Facebook for digging up the Heroes Among Heroes poster. In return, I’ve included some more Yuen-Woo Ping posters here for your viewing pleasure. Use tables, plants, and fans as your weapons and feast your eyes on some classic and not-so-classic Yuen-Woo Ping joints.
Drunken Master (1978)
Directed by Yuen-Woo Ping and starring a very young Jackie Chan: Drunken Master is one of the most popular films of either stars. This poster is one of my favourites as the pictured dragons diet is something you should really see close-up. Despite my impression that the dragon appears to have a giant worm lodged between his eyes, this is great poster art.
As for the film, some prefer the 1990s follow-up, Drunken Master II as this seventies film is not as fast paced, but i’d still recommend as the first stop in investigating both Jackie’s and Yuen-Woo Ping’s output from the 1970s.
Magnificent Butcher (1979?)
The history of this film confuses me. Sammo Hung and Yuen-Woo Ping are credited as the directors on the IMDb, but the Hong Kong Film Archives (HKFA) refer to only Yuen as the director. The release date is also troubling as IMDb says 1980, but the Hong Kong Film Archives say it was released on December 12, 1979.
Regardless of production history, Magnificent Butcher is a blast despite it’s low budget. I’ll let the trailer speak for itself. The film’s so tight that I assume Slayer are purposely making direct reference to it in their thrash classic “Angel of Death”.
Eastern Condors (1987)
Directed by Sammo Hung and starring fricking everyone. Even people who aren’t actors. Sammo’s Vietnam war film doesn’t really get as heavy as Woo’s Bullet in the Head, but this is a completely different kind of film boasting a star-studded cast. How star-studded? Even action directors Corey Yuen and Yuen-Woo Ping are popping in to say hello in smaller roles.
To mix it up, I’ve included the bizarre French poster for Eastern Condors. Sammo is actually as thin as he is represented here, but the choice of colors and drawing style make this poster resemble an old Atari game package to me. WEIRD.
Black Mask 2 (2002)
Eugh. Do I have to tell you this is bad? Black Mask 2 is a career low for…everyone involved. Well maybe not everyone, Traci Lords is in this, and I guess she can flip a coin to figure out what her career low can really be. This film had people nearly writing off director Tsui Hark and even Yuen Woo Ping’s action choreography can’t save it here. Some of the WORST CGI you’ll ever see on film.
I’m struggling for words here, but I mean…did you see this poster? What on earth would make you want to sit through this?
That’s enough posters. Yuen-Woo Ping’s career was thankfully not in a slump after Black Mask 2 as he was busy making every other filmmaker in both Hollywood and Hong Kong look like masters of action choreography. With some of his better films mentioned above, I suggest you investigate both of Yuen’s whether or not you can make it to these screenings as Yuen Woo-Ping’s name needs to be spread!
2 Comments | donnie yen, film posters, ottawa, sammo hung, true legend, yuen woo-ping | Permalink
Three Theatrical Hong Kong Films in 2011
Three Hong Kong action films are receiving a theatrical distribution in North America this year. I’m surprised they are pushing these titles over some others (cough cough Reign of Assassins) but I suppose someone thinks these have some potential to make a buck. The films in question are The Butcher, the Chef, and the Swordsmen, Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen, and Yuen Woo-Ping’s True Legend. First let’s look at Legend of the Fist.
I’m sold! I hope it attracts some attention outside the already converted Hong Kong fan base. I’m giving brownie points to oddly named distributor (Well Go USA) for promoting the film as uncut and undubbed as well. They aren’t pulling a Weinstein or Miramax on us.
This lack of cuts could hurt the film’s reception however as if it’s anything like the other Chen Zhen films, then it will come off as insanely nationalistic. The xenophobic nature towards the Japanese in these films can only leave a bad taste in my mouth considering. These goes double considering the tsunami and power plant disasters in Japan. I’ll see how much I can stomach in this one. The trailer promotes itself as being from the director of Infernal Affairs but I think it should also mention the Andrew Lau’s other credentials.
Way more accurate. Politics aside, I’m still a sucker for how the whole thing looks. Having Donnie Yen and Anthony Wong doing their thing doesn’t hurt either. I’ll be paying top dollar for it when/if it swings into my town. Next is The Butcher, the Chef, and the Swordsmen which is coming out tomorrow! It hasn’t even been released in Hong Kong yet!
There’s not a lot of hype about this movie. It’s an anthology film partially funded by Fox making it a Chinese-Hong-Kong-US production. If three production countries aren’t enough for you, it has five screenwriters! Multiple-writers syndrome usually ruins a film for me, as it often becomes a pretzel-based plot that’s unsure of it’s own direction and tone. The only multi-writer exceptions I can think of are Children of Men and 48 Hrs. which make it through several writers without a scratch of confusion.
I’m baffled by the poster’s statement on Doug Liman presenting this film. I had to look him up as I was drawing blanks on why his name would mean anything on the poster would mean anything to anyone. Turns out he made Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Jumper and that Bourne film that wasn’t made by Paul Greengrass.
I guess he had his hand in the release of this? Liman has little to no following and it’s almost as jarring as reading critical acclaim from Brett Rhatner on my Jackie Chan DVDs. Let’s hope the gamble pays to release this pays off. Film Business Asia gave the film a good review, but also seemed to praise something described as “a whorehouse rap number”. Hmm. Unless this comes to a theater near me, I’ll pass.
Lastly, we have True Legend. It does not have an American trailer yet, but it’s got Yuen Woo-Ping directing and features Michelle Yeoh. Woo-Ping hasn’t directed a film since 1996 as he’s been busy making everyone else look good in The Matrix, Kill Bill, and Kung Fu Hustle. Why the huge break? I guess doing action scenes for top directors pays more than doing you own films but you’d think he’d get the directing bug again sooner. Speaking of AWOL directors, what’s been keeping Ringo Lam busy these days? Did Ringo give up everything after overdosing on Van Damme or was working on Triangle with Johnnie To and Tsui Hark the only work he could get?
Either way, it’ll be great to see something that says “Directed by Yuen Woo-Ping” on the screen again, so I’m ready for it. Let’s see how it’s being promoted. There’s tons of angles to approach this at, so what have you got for me poster?
Aw, c’mon. What a weak teaser. This is typical “no faith in the film” poster making where the production company even hides the fact that it’s an Asian film. They could at least boast something about his American work but here there is nothing! Instead, we have a fist which is…leaking on a wall? I’m lost. That’s clearly black ink splashed around it but the fist is cracking the wall. Lamest graffiti inspired poster ever! Let’s hope that when it’s get closer to it’s premiere we’ll have something nicer to look at.
2 Comments | 2010s, andrew lau, anthony wong, china, donnie yen, film posters, hong kong, the butcher the chef and the swordsman, trailers, true legend, yuen woo-ping | Permalink
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"[Those] who won our independence believed ... the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies." — Justice Brandeis
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Man who revealed tattoo of a mosque being blown up during EDL march is arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred k
by Sam Webb
http://www.legal-project.org/4174/man-who-revealed-tattoo-of-a-mosque-being-blown
Man who revealed tattoo of a mosque being blown up during EDL march is arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred
Sean Reah arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred
He was reportedly pictured displaying tattoo of a mosque being blown up
Sean Reah, of South Shields, South Tyneside, has been arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred in connection with this image
A man who allegedly revealed his tattoo of a mosque being blown up at an English Defence League rally in Birmingham has been arrested.
Sean Reah, of South Shields, South Tyneside, has been arrested on suspicion of inciting racial hatred.
The 39-year-old was reportedly recently pictured lifting up his T-shirt to reveal an image of a Muslim place of worship with 'BOOM!' displayed across it.
The picture was taken during a demonstration organised by the English Defense League in Birmingham city centre on Saturday, July 20.
A spokesman for West Midlands police said: 'A 39-year-old man has been arrested in South Tyneside on behalf of West Midlands Police on suspicion of using words or behavior, or displaying written material with intent to stir up racial hatred.'
The image sparked outrage after it was posted online.
It was taken at a demonstration in Birmingham, according to The Sun, where police made 20 arrests after officers came under attack on Saturday.
A 20-year-old woman has been charged with violent disorder and was due to appear in court earlier this week.
Two men were also charged with offences connected to the EDL rally and a counter-protest in Birmingham city centre.
Officers made a total of 20 arrests, mainly for public order breaches, after being pelted with cans, bottles, stones and other missiles during sporadic disorder.
Two men aged 26 and 22 have been bailed to appear before Walsall Magistrates' Court on August 9 charged with possessing offensive weapons.
A police spokesman said: 'Police enquiries are ongoing to see whether any other offences were committed during the demonstrations.
Who is the man with the mosque bomb tattoo? 'EDL member' poses brazenly with inking depicting explosion at Muslim place of worship
EDL leaders arrested as they planned to visit scene where Drummer Lee Rigby was killed
'The wealth of exceptional quality CCTV within the area is likely to provide significant investigative opportunities to bring a large number of offenders to justice for what, at times, appeared to be serious offences.
'There were a total of three hospital admissions for minor injuries, one of which was a police officer who received head injuries after being hit by bricks.
'He was treated at hospital and later discharged.'
Officers made a total of 20 arrests, mainly for public order breaches, after being pelted with cans, bottles, stones and other missiles during sporadic disorder at the demonstration in Birmingham
Police have said there were three people taken to hospital for minor injuries, including a police officer who received head injuries
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2381507/Man-revealed-tattoo-mosque-blown-EDL-march-arrested-suspicion-inciting-racial-hatred.html#ixzz2b7Seywy4
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the beast of hollow mountain
What I Learned from Bad Movies
This week I have been watching a lot of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 with my husband Tee Morris. He was very surprised I had never actually watched this show before, but I explained to him it never made it to New Zealand. We didn’t get everything after all. Now after a massively successful Kickstarter campaign, it is available on Netflix, as we decided to dive in.
If you’ve never watched MST3K, it is a cute show where a host and a bunch of robot puppets watch, and make hilarious commentary on a variety of bad movies. It’s kind of like spending an evening with your witty friends, where you don’t care so much about watching the movie. It’s OK, they are so bad the riffing is the best part.
So I mostly avoided watching bad movies when I was growing up…though I did accidentally view a few (I’m looking at you Dungeons and Dragons—I’ll never forgive you for what you did.)
So while watching MST3K I had my eyes opened to the truly bad movies out there. Manos: The Hands of Fate was a particular horror. Seriously it is consistantly on the top worst movies of all time lists and for good reason. Poor Torgo, he was supposed to be a satyr but the only clue was his strange metal rigging under his pants. Also the word satyr was never even mentioned. It was certainly not apparent…even with these dodgy eyebrows.
However after I had recovered from watching a bunch of these, I began to realize that bad movies do have something to offer to writers. Sometimes you need to see what not to do to, to point you in the right direction.
To illustrate this, I’m going to use the 1956 weird west classic The Beast of Hollow of Hollow Mountain that I had the dubious pleasure of watching last night. It has a stampede, a dodgy love interest, terrible racist stereotypes, and eventually…an allosaurus. But about that last part
Get to it
If your show is called the Beast of the Hollow Mountain, then don’t wait until the last twenty minutes before showing that the title wasn’t just a joke. Honestly, you have a beast, but you spend 3/4ths of this movie only the boring stuff. Viewers and readers will only get restless if you don’t get to the point. While watching I couldn’t help complaining ‘where’s that damn beast already?’ I just wanted it to show up and stamp the crap out of everyone. I had to wait a long…long…long time…
Yes there is something called building tension, but there is also the point where you will start losing readers. Honestly if I hadn’t been watching this hot mess in the structure of MST3K I would have bailed out ten minutes in. Don’t let that happen to your readers. You don’t have to show everything straight away, but give them a little something so that you know that you’re not just stringing them along. If there is a beast, then prove that to them!
Characters are more than one thing
When creating characters, make them more than just one or two motivations and character traits. Jimmy in The Beast of Hollow Mountain wanted to build his cattle ranch and be successful, and…ahhhhh…yeah that was pretty much it. Still he did better than every other character in the movie. His love interest Sarita wanted to…well she didn’t have any goal for herself. Even the villain seemed only there to try and foil Jimmy. They were as empty as a cracked open egg.
So please for your readers sake, make your characters complex. The ones in The Beast of Hollow Mountain were so flat, I was rooting for the beast to just eat them all.
Falling back on sloppy stereotype—just don’t
Pancho was painful to watch. The stereotype of a drunken foolish Mexican father was cringeworthy, so for the sake of all that is holy, don’t do it. He was supposed to be funny, but I don’t know what sort of moron would find that amusing. Probably some racist from the 1950s I suppose.
Instead do something the audience doesn’t expect, expand their minds by showing some of the variety of humans in race, gender, sexuality. Break stereotypes instead of perpetuating them.
His young son Panchito managed to overcome his terrible name, and had probably the most real character in the whole movie. As MST3K said ‘Panchito is a real baller’)
Plot holes…OMG the plot holes
The Beast of Hollow Mountain must have been a first draft. It had to be. The plot holes were ridiculous. I mean there is suspension of disbelief, and then there is so much of a stretch the whole concept breaks.
The idea that an Allosaurus could live in a swamp, and no one see him for years. Too much. The fact that said dinosaur could exist in this swamp, and not know how to navigate it without being sucked to his death. Far too much.
Connect the dots, and make it reasonable. I would have happily believed the beast had just escaped from the zoo rather than it had been living there for years.
Write your first draft, but for goodness sake don’t stop there. Go back, look it over, and be critical. No one in this movie was being critical.
Don’t be a damn lazy writer.
There was a part of the movie where rancher Jimmy, found one of his herd had become trapped in the swamp’s deadly quicksand and died. Rather than the obvious conclusion, it had wandered in there, Jimmy said ‘well it was obviously shoved in there by Rios’. The writer wanted to set up bad blood between our ‘hero’ and Rios, but was so lazy didn’t even give Jimmy reason to think that.
Thus the character looks like an idiot and the writer looks lazy. Seriously don’t make your characters look like chumps. No one is going to root for a chump.
Poor Jimmy had a chance to do some real detective work, and instead he looked like an utter numbnut.
It’s OK to have a character make mistakes, they are human after all, but don’t make them so stupid that the readers are hoping for the beast to come swallow them up.
Filed Under: The Writing Art Tagged With: Avalanche, bad movies, mst3k, mystery science theater 3000, terrible movies, the beast of hollow mountain
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HOME > News > Industry Information > Data show that from 2020 to 2023, 130 million electric bicycles will be sold worldwide, and the number of electric vehicles will be rolled.
Data show that from 2020 to 2023, 130 million electric bicycles will be sold worldwide, and the number of electric vehicles will be rolled.
pxid 2019-12-25 50 times
Battery-powered will redefine the transportation revolution in the next ten years, and the vehicles leading this trend will not be Tesla Model 3 or Tesla Pickup Cybertruck, but electric bicycles.
For many years, electric bikes have been a huge breach in most countries. From 2006 to 2012, electric bicycles accounted for less than 1% of all annual bicycle sales. In 2013, only 1.8 million electric bicycles were sold throughout Europe, while customers in the United States purchased 185,000 electric bicycles.
Deloitte: Sales of electric bikes will surge in the next few years. However, this situation is beginning to change: improvements in lithium battery technology and the shift of the city's center of gravity from gasoline-powered cars to zero-emission cars. Today, analysts say they expect sales of electric bikes to grow at an alarming rate over the next few years.
Deloitte released its annual technical, media and telecommunications forecasts last week. Deloitte said it expects to sell 130 million electric bikes worldwide between 2020 and 2023. It also states that "by the end of next year, the number of electric bicycles on the road will easily exceed that of other electric vehicles."
The International Energy Agency's "Global Electric Vehicle Outlook 2019" states that by 2025, only 12 million electric vehicles (cars and trucks) are expected to be sold.
The sharp increase in sales of electric bikes seems to herald a huge change in the way people travel.
In fact, Deloitte predicts that the proportion of people going to work by bike will increase by 1 percentage point from 2019 to 2022. It may not seem like much on the surface, but because of the low base, the difference between the two will be amazing.
Tens of billion more bike rides each year mean fewer car trips and lower emissions, and help improve traffic congestion and urban air quality.
"E-bike is the best-selling electric travel tool!"
Jeff Loucks, executive director of Deloitte Technology, Media and Telecommunications Center, said that sales of electric bikes across the United States will not increase simultaneously. He predicts that cities have the highest utilization rates.
Loucks told me: "We are seeing more and more people entering the heart of the city in the United States." "If no one chooses electric bikes, this will place a huge burden on roads and public transportation systems."
Deloitte is not the only organization predicting the electric bike revolution. Guidehouse (formerly Navigant) analyst Ryan Citron told me he expects 113 million electric bikes to be sold between 2020 and 2023. Although his number is slightly lower than Deloitte, he still foresees a surge in sales. "Yes, electric bikes are the best-selling electric vehicle on the planet!" Citron added in an email to The Verge.
Sales of electric bikes have grown steadily over the years, but still account for only a small portion of the overall bicycle market in the United States.
According to data from the market research company NPD Group, from 2016 to 2017, sales of electric bicycles have achieved an astonishing 91% increase, and then from 2017 to 2018, they have increased 72% to an astonishing $ 143.4 million. Since 2014, sales of electric bikes in the United States have increased more than eightfold.
However, Matt Powell of NPD believes that Deloitte and other companies may slightly overestimate sales of electric bikes. Powell said Deloitte's forecast "seems to be very high" because his company only predicts 100,000 e-bike sales in the United States in 2020. He also said that he disagrees with the view that sales of electric bikes will exceed electric cars in the next few years. NPD still acknowledges that the fastest growing segment of the bicycle market is electric bicycles.
Electric bikes have some clear advantages over electric cars-they are cheaper, easier to charge, and don't require significant investment in supporting infrastructure-but sometimes electric cars can sell more than electric bikes.
But if cities make the necessary changes to encourage more people to ride bicycles-such as establishing a network of protected bike lanes, restricting car use in certain areas, and providing safe places to lock and store bicycles-this is electric Why bicycles can keep their top spot in the electric transport system.
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Sustainable Use of Insects to Improve Livestock Production and Food Security in Smallholder Farms in West Africa (IFWA)
Insects are a natural food source of poultry and fish and are rich in protein and other valuable nutrients. This project works with the hypothesis that fly larvae and termites are an economically, socially and environmentally viable source of protein for poultry and fish feed in smallholder farms in West Africa.
About the project
In West Africa, smallholder poultry and fish farmers suffer from the increasing cost of feed. Many of them do not have access to feed protein sources, resulting in quantitative and qualitative feed shortages affecting production of meat, eggs and fish, and reducing family income. A solution to develop sustainable household poultry farming and aquaculture systems is the use of untapped local, easily available and cheap protein sources. Insects, which are a natural food source of poultry and fish, are one such source. Insects are rich in protein as well as other valuable nutrient, and can be mass produced locally and on-farm. Fly larvae have the advantage to many other insects of feeding on organic waste material. The most promising and commonly used species for feed are the house fly and the black soldier fly. Termites are another type of insects that can be used for animal feed. Although the use of fly larvae and termites for poultry and fish nutrition is promising, several issues have to be solved before the methods become widely adopted by smallholder farmers. In particular: on-farm fly larvae production and termite collection systems need to be optimised; the nutritional suitability of the insects for poultry and fish needs to be further assessed; the safety of insect rearing systems and insect-based feed needs to be evaluated for animal and human health; the capacity of fly larvae to recycle waste in smallholder farms and the value of residues from on-farm rearing systems need to be considered; the impacts on household nutrition, income and livelihoods needs to be assessed; the acceptability of eating animals fed with insects may have to be improved; the use of insects as animal feed needs to be promoted within the context of national policies.
The project will test whether fly larvae and termites are an economically, socially and environmentally viable source of protein for poultry and fish feed on smallholder farms in West Africa. The concrete objectives will be:
To develop appropriate methods for fly larvae and termite production and utilisation in smallholder farming systems in Benin, Ghana and Burkina Faso, based on waste material;
To understand and ensure the social, economic and environmental sustainability of the proposed innovations;
To validate and implement the innovations with the beneficiaries, and disseminate the project’s findings to the stakeholders, general public, scientific community and policy makers.
Poultry and fish are an important source of food and protein for smallholder families in West Africa, making a substantial contribution to food and nutritional security. They are also an important source of income. However, smallholder production of scavenging chickens and fish is constrained by the animals’ diet, which is of very low quality and, specifically, deficient in protein.
Providing a new, inexpensive, locally produced protein source such as insects for poultry and fish has the potential to improve production of these animals by smallholder farmers in West Africa and, ultimately, contribute to improved family nutrition, food security and income. FAO now strongly recommends the use of insects for animal feed as a tool for poverty alleviation. However, while using insects as feed and food has a long history, the science around the topic is still in its infancy.
Highlights and most important results
In the first three years of the project, the following key results were achieved:
Surveys were made among poultry farmers in the three countries to assess the present use of termites and fly larvae as poultry feed and to gather knowledge on traditional production techniques. Between 47% and 92% of the farmers use termites to feed their poultry and 5-8% produce house fly larvae at least occasionally.
Various BSF and house fly larvae production systems have been developed for smallholder farmers and micro-enterprises. An extensive substrate testing programme showed that many substrates of animal and plant origin are suitable and available for fly larvae production, but their availability is highly variable between regions and seasons.
Techniques to harvest and trap termites vary tremendously in the three countries. Farmers collect termites by destroying mounds or by trapping them with organic wastes. Various trapping techniques have been tested and show high variations in yield. Thus, there is a strong potential for improving the systems and disseminating the best trapping techniques to replace destructive methods.
Residues from the transformation of animal manure and agri-food waste by fly larvae provide high quality composts that can significantly increase cereal and vegetable yields.
Several nutrition tests are being carried out with various animal species. Results so far showed that adding fly larvae in the diet significantly enhances local chicken growth performances and egg production. Similarly, poultry fed with termites show performances that are similar to those fed with fish meal. Similar tests are presently being done with other poultry species and fish.
Health and environmental risks related to the use of fly larvae and termites in animal feed are presently being studied. Risks for livestock, consumers and producers are being considered. Economic studies have been performed to assess farm production systems and income related to poultry farming in the target regions. They will serve as baseline against which project interventions and their direct economic implications will be compared. Studies in Benin also showed that more than 80% of the farmers are interested in the production of fly larvae for animal feed and many are willing to pay for larvae.
Participatory rural appraisals have been conducted, community implementation groups have been set up and pilot farms have been established in the three countries to engage with local communities and to assess community social structures, gender roles and production systems. A team of socio-anthropologists have started to observe the research, innovation and development processes, conducting in-depth interviews with the different stakeholders in order to understand the social perceptions heterogenous actors have of the technologies currently under construction.
At the end of the first three years, 10 African PhD students and more than 20 MSc and BSc students have started of completed their thesis. More than 15 publications will be published or submitted. IFWA has also allowed the development of a Master programme in Benin entitled: “Integrated systems in Agricultural production”.
Research consortium
Marc Kenis, CABI, Switzerland
Marion Fresia, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland
Christophe Chrysostome, University of Abomey-Calavi, Benin
Guy Apollinaire Mensah, Centre de Recherche Agricole (CRA) Agonkanm, Benin
Victor Clottey, CABI West Africa, Ghana
Emmanuel Nkegbe, CSIR - Animal Research Institute, Ghana
Gabriel Koko, Fish For Africa, Ghana
Salimata Sonde Pousga, Université Polytechnique de Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso
Fernand Sankara, Université Polytechnique de Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso
Alexandre Aebi, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland
PROTEINSECT, EU FP7 project: http://www.proteinsect.eu/
N'Golopé Koné, IER, Mali
Songhai Farm, Benin
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How do you take care of something that practically no one has ever even seen alive before?
As this ScienCentral News video reports, ocean scientists are finding it’s not easy, but it can be done.
Wonders of the Deep
One might think that we have extensive knowledge about the animals of Earth. But ongoing studies of the deep ocean show that we still have a lot to learn about the creatures of our planet—and how to care for them.
At the “Mysteries of the Deep” exhibit in the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, California, marine researchers—and the public—get to see some very unusual creatures. Ed Sidel, associate curator of the aquarium, says creating this display has been "a very difficult endeavor. We were keeping alive creatures that no one had ever seen alive before!” he says.
For example, two breeds of rockfish that are practically identical to the untrained eye—the long and the short spine thornyheads—responded quite differently when brought up from 1,200 feet deep. One lived; the other died. They discovered that a pressure-sensitive enzyme in the short spine thornyhead didn’t function at surface pressures as shallow as an exhibit tank. So how did they find a way to exhibit them? It turns out that because food is scarce at great depths, these fish have to swim to the surface to feed and grow while young. So if the aquarium caught these fish at this young stage, they survived in the exhibit.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s collection of deep sea creatures is the largest in the world. One reason for that is the aquarium is fortunate enough to have a deep sea canyon right in its own backyard, one of the few in the world to have such convenient access to this habitat. Second, it has spent over a decade learning the biology, care and collection of deep sea animals. Lastly, the aquarium’s sister organization, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), contributes the technology and leading scientists necessary to study and collect these deep sea animals.
Veronica Franklin, senior aquarist at Monterey Bay Aquarium, tends some of the strange creatures from the deep sea. “At depth, there is low light,” she says. “There’s high pressure, cold temperatures, low oxygen levels.” But in the aquarium the conditions are different—and possibly deadly to the animals. So the researchers had to do more studying.
They found that many unusual creatures from the deep—like ratfish, predatory tunicates, catsharks, and eelpouts—could survive the change in pressure that results from bringing the animals to the surface. But many of the creatures needed to be coddled in other ways.
“We have to chill the water to 43 degrees. It’s very cold!” says Franklin. They also must slowly introduce the animals to light and limit the time that they spend in it. Franklin says light can promote the growth of diatoms. "Diatoms are small microscopic plants that actually will grow on the tissues of the animals," she says. That growth could be dangerous.
Franklin says that for some of the animals, like the predatory tunicates, “too much oxygen is toxic." So they reduce the amount of oxygen in the tanks by introducing nitrogen. “The nitrogen grabs ahold of the oxygen, pulls some of the oxygen out of the water, and it produces an environment that the tunicates can survive in,” she says.
From the size of holes that lobsters live in to the feeding habits of the predatory tunicates, the marine researchers at the aquarium and MBARI have had to learn the habits and needs of the animals in order to keep them healthy and alive.
“And if we can replicate those here, then we can actually have the animals in an environment where we can observe them on a daily basis," says Franklin. "With those daily observations, you’re always learning something new about the animals. And the more we can observe the animals in some of their natural behaviors, the more we can gather information from those animals and be able to piece the puzzle together.”
Research at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and the MBARI is funded by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation.
by Donna Vaughan
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South Carolina Appleseed’s Statement on Finalized Public Charge Rule (August 2019)
August 12, 2019 / Joe James
Posted in Children, Hunger, Immigration
The Administration’s New Public Charge Rule: Forcing Families to Choose Between Separation or Hunger
Today the Trump administration announced that it will publish a final public charge rule, making it nearly impossible for low-income, elderly, or disabled people to legally immigrate to the Unites States, despite receiving nearly 200,000 comments opposing the cruel changes.
Appleseed stands proudly with hundreds of state, local, and national organizations and individuals across the country to oppose this cruel change. “This rule will penalize lawfully present immigrants for seeking help their families need, and essentially limit legal immigration options to the rich,” according to Appleseed Immigration Policy Attorney, Louise Pocock.
What is public charge?
Public charge is a long-standing immigration rule that allows an immigration officer to deny permanent residency or entry to the country if they believe the person is likely, in the future, to become “primarily dependent” on the government for support. This test was only applied to immigrants receiving cash assistance or long-term institutional care paid for by the government.
Public charge ONLY applies to
People entering the country on student, employment, or family-based visas
People seeking to adjust to lawful permanent resident status from student, employment, or family-based visas and
Lawful permanent residents (“LPRs” AKJA “green card holders”) seeking to reenter the United States after being out of the country for six months or more.
Humanitarian categories of immigration, such as refugees, victims of trafficking, asylees and others, are exempt from the public charge test under statute.
What is the new public charge rule?
The final rule is over 800 pages long and we are working closely with our national partners to understand all the changes. Generally, it dramatically expands who could be a considered a public charge by adding several new factors to the public charge definition. The final rule expands the list of benefits that will trigger a public charge assessment to include programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP AKA food stamps), housing and rental assistance such as Section 8, and most types of Medicaid.
The rule also increases the family or sponsor income required to overcome a public charge assessment, and will require immigrant determined to be a public charge to post a bond before being allowed entry. Humanitarian categories of immigrants and LPRs who are in the United States remain exempt from public charge under the new rule, per statute.
How will the new public charge rule hurt South Carolina?
Though the actual number of people subject to the new public charge test in South Carolina will be small, the impact of the “chilling effect” of this rule on other eligible people receiving benefits could be disastrous.
Providers, such a Dr. Julie Linton, a pediatrician in Greenville and co-chair of its Immigrant Health Special Interest Group of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) have already seen families decide to forgo food or health assistance they are their families need because it might hurt their ability to stay in this country with their kids. Not only will families suffer without food and medical care they need, the potential economic impact of this chilling effect could cost the state millions.
Appleseed is creating resources for impacted community members and organizations serving impacted communities that explain the new public charge rule, who it applies to, and where families can go for help if they think public charge might impact them. The National Immigration Law Council announced that it will sue, with partners, to stop the rule from being implemented, and we will do whatever we can to support the national litigation efforts. Prior to the rule becoming final, Appleseed will create resources for impacted families explaining what the new rule is and who is exempt from it.
← South Carolina Appleseed’s Statement on Mississippi Workplace Raids
What Bird Poop, Faulty Drug Tests And A College Quarterback Can Teach Us About Collateral Consequences →
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Shropshire Caravan and Camping
Special Offers and Discounts.
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About Shropshire
The Ginger and Spice Festival
Get Directions to Shropshire
Shropshire Diamond Jubilee event is still on despite wet conditions
Despite weeks of rain, The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee pageant at RAF Cosford is still going ahead as planned today(Thursday 12 July 2012).
People should be dressed appropriately for the wet conditions underfoot, and drivers are being advised to be prepared for the potential of difficult parking conditions depending on the weather.
The majority of parking areas are on grass which has become quite soggy after the recent rain, so people are being asked to car share if possible as car parking capacity could be reduced depending on the state of the airfield.
The Queen and Duke of Edinburgh are due to attend as part of their Diamond Jubilee Tour, and the event will feature singing, music and a colourful procession over half a mile long, made up of 5,000 schoolchildren.
More than 35,000 people registered for free tickets, and motorists are being warned to expect some traffic congestion on the roads around RAF Cosford during the morning.
Gates will open at 8am, and people can enter the site at any time, with activities due to start at 9am and the “Reignbow” procession taking place at 1.40pm.
The free event is being organised by a team led by the Lord Lieutenant of Shropshire, involving Shropshire Council, Telford & Wrekin Council, RAF Cosford and the RAF Cosford Museum.
The Lord Lieutenant of Shropshire, Mr Algernon Heber-Percy, said:
“We are all looking forward to the day immensely and a huge amount of work has gone into making the event enjoyable for everyone. The rain has made some of the car parks really rather wet so we will be monitoring the state of the airfield closely during the morning. The safety of everyone is our absolute priority, so it is possible that we will need to reduce car parking capacity to ensure the really soggy areas are not used.
“We hope the ground will dry out enough so we can accommodate all the vehicles we need to. That said, we are asking that if you can share cars with family and friends please do, as it would be really helpful both to cut down on car parking space and reduce congestion on the roads.”
A traffic management plan has been put in place for the day, based on previous experience from major events at RAF Cosford, but people are advised to be prepared for some queuing on the roads surrounding the site.
Drivers should use Junction 3 on the M54, following signs for “car parking” and ignoring the signs with coloured squares which are for school coach drivers.
Motorists should tune into local radio during Thursday morning for traffic updates, and live information will be posted on the event’s Twitter feed @ShropshireDJP using the hashtag #jubileeshrops. There is also a Facebook page at www.facebook.com/ShropshireDJP where people can share pictures and videos on the day.
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http://www.smbc-comics.com/smbcforum/
http://www.smbc-comics.com/smbcforum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=2269
Re: I read the news today, oh boy
by Astrogirl
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/mor ... ?tid=sm_tw
Australia: Wife crashes her own funeral, horrifying her husband, who had paid to have her killed
by Kaharz
The most conservative US Supreme Court Justice, Scalia, died. He was a strict constructionist, which means he believes the constitution should be interpreted exactly as written. He was basically the legal equivalent of a fundamentalist, young earth creationalist. What's more, another justice, Thomas, basically just voted however Scalia did and never made any public arguments. He barely even spoke during hearings, just letting Scalia do the talking.
So now there is a big brouhaha. Obama has just shy of a year left in office and it is his prerogative to appoint a new justice. But the Republican held Senate has to confirm the appointment and they can hold that up. The longest a supreme court confirmation has been delayed is about four to five months. But there is already talk of delaying this one until they next election in case a republican candidate becomes president and they also maintain control of the Senate. It is going to be annoying.
Into someone is appointed the liberals now have a slim margin of control in the court. Before it was split pretty evenly with the chief justice, Roberts, often casting the tie breaking vote. While Roberts is considered conservative and was a Bush2 appointee, he sometimes sides with the liberal judges as long as the scope of the decision is fairly narrow.
by Lethal Interjection
Kaharz wrote: But there is already talk of delaying this one until they next election in case a republican candidate becomes president and they also maintain control of the Senate. It is going to be annoying.
Annoying is putting it lightly. Talk of delay before presidential candidates are even chosen? Do they think an election year in America is an anarchic society without a leader?
I mean I know that anything done in the White House takes a distant 3rd in political news every 8 years* but to presume that this decision should be left for 11 months? That's just willfully ignoring the political system.
* In re-election years, it seems to be a 50/50 split, from what I've seen. Opposition selecting a leader, and the White House pushing agenda healthy for re-election.
Australia has scienced enough, fires scientists http://ind.pn/1TapDLI
by Liriodendron_fagotti
Usually it's been Kennedy casting the swing vote, but yeah - Roberts was pivotal for upholding the ACA and striking down gay marriage laws. I've come to kinda like Roberts. I think he's probably quite glad of the life tenure so he can rotate back to center. He's only a few years behind widespread cultural views, as opposed to Scalia who was a good century or two behind.
As for the Senate Republicans trying to delay, they'll do there darnedest, even if Obama nominates an uncontroversial moderate. There are a number of options that the senate has already confirmed by nearly unanimous vote for positions on circuit courts. I imagine it can only backfire for them if they try to block one of those.
by Kimra
Astrogirl wrote: Australia has scienced enough, fires scientists http://ind.pn/1TapDLI
I thought at first we were getting rid of Fire Scientists. Which I thought was ridiculous because we need them, for sure. But this is also ridiculous just not as immediately ridiculous.
Also Australia is the driest country on Earth? This seems so unlikely to me. You think someone would have mentioned this to me before now.
by Edminster
Kimra wrote: I thought at first we were getting rid of Fire Scientists. Which I thought was ridiculous because we need them, for sure.
Especially since it turns out Australian birds are pyromaniacs.
Kimra wrote: Also Australia is the driest country on Earth? This seems so unlikely to me. You think someone would have mentioned this to me before now.
Aren't you like 80% desert? Very very big deserts that get to be as far away from the ocean/rainfall as the North-South or West-East measurements of Europe or at least in the same order? African countries with desert are often only half in the desert or if the not-desert part is small they got supermuch rain or river water there and occasionally even in the desert, too, like once a year or every few years. Countries like Saudi Arabia that are mostly desert still never get as superfar away from the ocean and rainfall as large parts of Australia.
Yeah, you're correct Astro. Australia has one of the oldest rainforests on earth, but the dry center is so dry and large that it makes up for it.
Don't get me wrong, I knew it was dry. You don't go a single day without hearing about a the droughts happening wherever they want to happen that year (decade), or seeing photos of farm animals wasting away, or seeing stories about the farmers donating feed and water to the far off farmers who are doing it hard that week (year/decade). But I just didn't think it was the driest.
Kimra wrote:
Astrogirl wrote: Also Australia is the driest country on Earth? This seems so unlikely to me. You think someone would have mentioned this to me before now.
Despite the massive desert in the middle, it seemed unlikely to me as well. Australia gets way more rainfall than many places and has a greater percentage of of arable land than many of those places as well. It looks like Egypt may be a prime candidate since it is usually near the bottom of average rainfall and is almost completely desert. It really only rains along the north coast. Libya is another very dry country.
I'm guessing they either just made that up, used a crappy source, or have some weird definition of driest, like nearest acess to water. By that definition Egypt wouldn't be very dry since there is a big river running down the eastern third, but Australia would be. Although Libya would be too.
I think all those places have extremely dry cities (also that desert in Chili), but maybe by some metric Australia comes out as overall driest. I've heard it on a number of nature documentaries.
Oh! After research, Australia came out as the driest inhabited continent, which I find a lot more believable. So if some pop article replaces "continent" with "place", it's not hard for someone else to make the jump from "place" to "country".
Ah okay. That makes sense.
Kaharz wrote: Despite the massive desert in the middle, it seemed unlikely to me as well. Australia gets way more rainfall than many places and has a greater percentage of of arable land than many of those places as well. It looks like Egypt may be a prime candidate since it is usually near the bottom of average rainfall and is almost completely desert. It really only rains along the north coast. Libya is another very dry country.
I like this, because you said what I was too lazy to articulate well or look up further details on. Thanks for that.
Liriodendron_fagotti wrote: Oh! After research, Australia came out as the driest inhabited continent, which I find a lot more believable. So if some pop article replaces "continent" with "place", it's not hard for someone else to make the jump from "place" to "country".
It appears it is the continent that isn't Antarctica with the least average rainfall, and by a good bit. The evaporative loss is almost as much as the rainfall. Thanks for not filling up the oceans Australia.
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About SustainaFest
Student Sustainability Lab
Tiny House Projects
Annual Festival
Tiny House Build
Indian Creek School
June 15th – July 17th
Follow the build blog
Student Sustainability Lab Tiny House Projects
Students are mentored by construction professionals and work with veterans, educators, volunteers and SustainaFest staff as they take a journey of exploration and discovery to plan, design and build a house. Lead builder and military veteran, Rogers Belch, explains, “Having students work together to build this house with their own hands ensures that they acquire construction know-how and critical teamwork and planning skills while also learning about the impact that lifestyle choices have on our communities.” Jonathan Oglesbee, Head of Middle School, Sandy Spring Friends, notes, “This one-of-a-kind experience is not about suggesting that people need to live in tiny houses. We’re educating students to understand sustainable options and make better choices in meeting society’s needs.”
The effort is part of SustainaFest’s Student Sustainability Lab, a groundbreaking educational program that provides students an opportunity to understand human-environment interactions, sustainable living and our connectedness with ecosystems, economic systems, and one another. The goal of the Lab is to provide students with an age-appropriate and engaging introduction to the complexities of today’s world and the tools needed to address 21st century challenges. “The Lab seeks to complement traditional Pre K-12 educational disciplines by combining art, humanities, social sciences, and the physical and life sciences in a way that excites students to explore alternatives and create a more sustainable future for themselves,” explains George Chmael II, SustainaFest’s Board Chairman. SustainaFest is currently in discussions with several schools and organizations that have expressed interest in building tiny houses in the future.
"This might be a tiny house but this tiny house represents a big, big movement."
− Martin O'Malley, Governor, State of Maryland
"This has been one of the two most powerful learning experiences I have been a part of in my career."
− Sarah Judd, 27-year Educator & Learning Specialist, The Key School
"Middle schoolers in Annapolis are building a house of the future"
− Jessica Kartalija, News Anchorwoman, CBS WJZ-13
"I can do this. I just built a tiny house with a group of people. What else can I do? The sky's the limit."
− Cameron Salvon-Harman, Middle School Student, The Key School
2014 SustainaFest Tiny House Project
Presented by Standard Solar
In July 2014, 50+ middle and high school students from Annapolis, Baltimore and surrounding areas joined forces with military veterans, building experts, educators and the sustainability leaders from SustainaFest to take on the unique and exciting challenge of building a mobile hi-tech, hyper-efficient and sustainable “Tiny House”. This Minim model is a 210 square foot, off-grid construction marvel demonstrates the latest in sustainable building materials and green technology including solar electricity, rainwater filtration and innovative interior design to maximize space and efficiency. The project took place over three weeks at The Key School in Annapolis as part of their Summer Camp program. The house will be brought to schools, festivals and other events to showcase sustainable shelter and promote SustainaFest’s Student Sustainability Lab program.
Follow our Progress, Find Photo Galleries and See More Details on our blog
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SustainaFest is a 501(c)(3) Maryland nonprofit organization whose mission is to educate and engage people of all ages and interests to take action in their everyday lives to strengthen our community, improve our environment, and support our local economy. We leverage the power of cutting-edge film, awe-inspiring music, visionary speakers, social entrepreneurs and seasoned educators to spark dialogue, spotlight innovations, and catalyze new solutions.
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Website by Mint Media Agency
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Author: Broadbiz Web Services Ltd.
Swinfen link helps outpatient clinic
22nd January 2016 17th May 2017 Broadbiz Web Services Ltd.
A new link was set up today to help an outpatient clinic in a research field station in Gambia.
They have 3 doctors, 2 midwives and 10 nurses on site with 2 observatory beds, a midwife unit (for uncomplicated deliveries only) and a supplement center for malnourished children. They have a ECG machine and access to basic lab tests and have basic primary care drugs available.
This clinic supplies FREE medical care and treatment for all. Swinfen Telemedicine welcomes them to our system and look forward to doing all we can to help.
Hard Times in Nepal
15th January 2016 16th May 2017 Broadbiz Web Services Ltd.
The undeclared blockade by India has indeed put lives in hardships. The prices of everyday essential goods are artificially increasing. The fuels are being black marketed. Electricity off 12-13 hrs a day make really frustrating.
It is very cold now and people who were affected by the two earthquakes live in temporary houses and tents and are going through unimaginable hardships. The elderly and young are the ones who suffer most due to cold.
News from Niger Delta
“We are now opening two very remote clinics in the inner creeks of the Delta. They are made from read mud, have no water, no power and can only be accessible by canoe. Internet and communications remain a real problem for us with our satellite dish stolen and the solar system barley working with perpetual rain and cloud. A container of beds and equipment from hospitals around the Cambridge area (UK) has been shipped over and are now on site. They have trained staff ready to serve their communities.
We do appreciate your amazing work and innovative service, and pray 2016 will be blessed and beneficial for all who support and indeed use your services.” – The referring doctor
Swinfen Telemedicine has offered links to help these clinics.
An Invitation to join our Network
“On behalf of the Gairloch Mlozi Partnership (Malawi) – thank you for taking this step. It brings the possibility of improved medical assistance to the children and families associated with our partner school in Mlozi closer. 500 Miles and Positive Steps are also now helping families in that community directly and I look forward to other initiatives that will assist them. The school is only around 25km from Nkhomo and yet is partially off their radar. Bringing that community to the awareness of the health professionals in Nkhomo is a very important step. The partnership clearly underlines the benefits of basic health provision to the development of education and positive future life outcomes for the children in the school” – Head Teacher.
New Link in Ghana
St Nicolas Prep School Ghana
St. Nicholas School offers pre-school education to disadvantaged children living in the surrounding shanty town, who are taught English, reading, writing and other classroom skills. The children are provided with a school uniform, school books and writing material and are given breakfast and a healthy lunch. They also receive treatment for any medical needs. Families pay only a nominal registration fee and all other costs are borne by the school.
The school’s mission is to improve the lives of disadvantaged children. Swinfen Trust has set up a Telemedical link to help them achieve this.
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Home » Blog » Positive Client: The Poke
Positive and the Poke: The Serious Service of Hosting Hilarity
"Positive Internet have done a great job for us -
smoothly handling frequent and unplanned surges of viral traffic
and also helping us plan for solid hosting strategies for the future"
- James - Co Founder of The Poke
A nice treat those of us who work in managed-hosting enjoy is the glorious range of eclectic organisations we encounter. One minute, we’re attending a meeting to discuss an exciting arts project with the world’s largest broadcaster; the next minute, we’re helping a charity launch their world-changing campaign; and before teatime, we’ve secured an innovative new banking platform upon which millions of credit-card users will rely. For nearly two decades, our team has taken this rich variety in its stride; we thought it might be interesting to share some of the varied clients with whom we work.
Let’s introduce you to one of them today. The UK has a rich tradition of satirical publications, sometimes ribald, sometimes wry, sometimes scurrilous but always richly woven into the tapestry of irony that exemplifies so much of Britain’s humour: from the scandalous political cartoons of the 18th century, through Punch, to Private Eye and even Viz. So it comes as no surprise that this venerable tradition has wended its wily way online.
One of the most popular and successful examples of British online humour is The Poke. It is the biggest humour site in the UK, with over 5 Million unique users viewing up to 10 Million videos, stories and pictures per month. It happily infects social media with daily comedy viruses, and its features are every bit as deeply silly and yet profoundly revealing as anything Gillray penned. We’re tickled to have hosted their site and managed their platform for many years.
The Poke are a good example of how we go beyond being “A Web Host” in that most banal of 1990s senses. A site as popular as theirs, where a meme can expand from a few lunchtime titters into a tweetstorm in less than a minute, requires special attention. The classic, plodding way to respond to such spiky, voluminous traffic is just to throw ever more metal at it, or to have a panoply of cloud instances waiting in the wings, to buoy the site on the cresting wave of traffic.
At Positive, the pride in eking every last bit of capability from a platform demands something a little less plodding! We work very closely with The Poke’s developers to make sure that the site can cache itself as well as possible. We install the most sophisticated systems to lessen the burden of a deluge of hits on the platform, so that it can cope with a sudden twitter frenzy without meltdown, and without having to scale histrionically into the stratosphere. This requires tinkering, tuning and detailed honing that even most in-house teams would find onerous. And yet our team meld their ways into understanding the business, the logic, the platform and the technology of each client, individually. Professions like the law demand simultaneously broad but deep mental “context switching”, as the professional moves from one client to the next. Whole universes of knowledge, culture and context have to be assimilated quickly into the workflow without a hiccup; it’s interesting to note that companies like ours now demand this of our technical team just as stringently.
Our detailed, painstaking work, allows a relatively lean, trim platform to slurp through staggering quantities of traffic. Indeed, people who see what we can achieve with such a platform are frequently astonished, wondering where they might find the “man behind the curtain” who actually makes something this popular tick. There is no man behind the curtain. Instead, there’s a team who thrive on not simply chucking a few more VMs into the fire, but in tuning the platform so “alchemically” well that it performs to degrees that begin to look supernatural. Many technical commentators wistfully assume this level of “clever hacking” disappeared in the days of 8 and 16-bit computing, with the careful marshalling of resources that was required in those environments. Our team carries the torch today for such well-honed craftsmanship.
So next time you click on a tweet from The Poke that makes you guffaw, titter or even tut, you might ponder that getting comedy to scale the heights of modern media is a surprisingly serious business.
Positive turns 20!
The Positive Internet Company is 20 years old
By: tom
20 years ago today, The Positive Internet Company Limited was founded to champion Free Software and provide the very best in GNU/Linux hosting and network services. What began in a modest bedroom in north-west London today runs from offices in "both" of the Soho/SoHos (London and NYC), our own flagship green-energy datacentre in Cambridge, UK, and myriad points of presence across the globe. Our founding motto, 'we're good', continues to run through everything we do where other similar-vintage companies' claims of virtue are unconvincing. (Google was founded a few weeks before us, for example!)
In our 20 years, we have been privileged to work with wonderful customers, fantastic suppliers, and a phenomenal team who have shared in our success. We are particularly proud of how many of our staff have been with us for more than half of our 20 years: testament to the mutual loyalty and bonds which underpin our everyday work.
We are excited for the next phase of the company's development. Here's to the next 20 years and thank you, all!
Linux sysadmin vacancies
Sysadmins / Senior Sysadmin roles at The Positive Internet Company
Positive focuses on GNU/Linux and Free Software like very few other organisations do. From the company’s desktop machines through to complex computing clusters, as well as in significant parts of our networking stacks, our deep commitment to free and open source software shines through. Can we interest you in a rare opportunity to work for a company with that dedication?
Positive Internet has been providing managed services and hosting based on Free/Open Software for nearly 20 years. We have positions available in our lively and friendly team providing support for a range of GNU/Linux systems running secure networked services for a diverse range of clients including some of the globe’s biggest brands.
The roles
We have several positions open at this time and welcome applications from candidates ranging from enthusiastic amateurs to seasoned sysadmins.
Initial salaries range from c.£22000 for trainees to c.£65000 p/a for more experienced candidates. The starting salary will depend on experience and location as we have positions available in London and Cambridgeshire; Positive offers excellent prospects for career development.
All applicants should have experience in some aspects of GNU/Linux sysadmin, tuning the LAMP stack - including configuring and maintaining MySQL and/or MariaDB, shell scripting, DevOps methodologies, configuring HA hardware, software and storage clusters. Experience with Debian is especially welcome.
Candidates for senior positions should have significant experience of high-availability platforms in heterogeneous environments, including configuring and maintaining private cloud stacks based on Xen and KVM virtualisation technologies and, ideally, hybrid AWS platforms, deploying with tools like Ansible and Puppet, configuring caching technologies like Varnish, and some experience in deep-configuration and securing of popular open application stacks, including Magento, WordPress and so forth. Ideally, senior candidates will also have experience of attaining and maintaining secure systems up to PCI Level 1 and ISO27001 standards.
Reporting to the Technical Team Manager and benefitting from the support of a small, lively, and talented team, we nonetheless expect you to work autonomously on a number of projects for the company and its clients, ranging from providing support and troubleshooting through configuring and tuning new private clouds to coordinating technical relationships with our key clients.
We can offer these positions in one of two locations: either working from our offices in Soho, the very heart of London’s West End (5 minutes’ walk from Oxford Circus and Piccadilly Circus tube stations) or in the NOC of our wholly-owned data centre in Cambridgeshire (by train, 14 minutes from Peterborough, 30 minutes from Cambridge).
Whilst you will generally work either in the London offices or Cambridgeshire data centre, we do offer some home-working opportunities. You will join the Technical Team on-call rota which involves occasional weekend working remunerated separately.
Positive gives a good holiday allowance (25 days + bank holidays + goodwill days around Christmas/New Year), lots of training opportunities, funding to attend free software conferences such as FOSDEM and other technical training/conferences, company mobile phone, and the chance to work with some of the best free software experts in the business.
This position should interest anyone with a passion for working in a Linux-only environment with a team that shares your commitment to Free and Open software and technical solutions.
If you would like to work in a completely Windows-free zone, please send an email and CV (PDF only, please) to jobs@positive-internet.com.
Please ensure the subject line of your email includes *either* the job title “Junior Sysadmin application” or “Senior Sysadmin application”.
A Tribute to Ian Murdock
RIP, Ian Murdock, the father of Debian
By: nickm
Ian Murdock has died. You may not have heard of him, and the circumstances of his death are not yet clear. Whatever the context of this specific tragedy turn out to reveal, the general legacy of Murdock's pioneering work is unambiguous.
As founder of the Debian project, Murdock helped to create something that prefigured the very notion of Open Source; that offered a distributed "app store" decades before it was the twinkle in any proprietary eye; and, most importantly, helped to found the world's first properly universal, free, open, operating-system distribution upon which we at Positive base everything we do. His legacy lives on in the very name of the project he began, a portmanteau of his and his then partner's names: Debian. Positive has relied on Debian almost since our birth, and we have put our money where our mouth is to support it, as the founding sponsor of its "Long Term Support" project.
It is sometimes easy for those outside of technical communities to belittle such technological developments and progress as merely technocratic: at best, perhaps, they're seen as a layer of new soil into which those perceived as more "creative" might plant their more "worthy" crop. The technocrats themselves are not given the benefit of any inherent cultural or progressive doubt. People like Ian show how shallow is this conception. The notion of the geek merely concerned with the alignment of their train-set does a disservice to the philosophically and politically engaged men and women whose visions, again and again, shape the societies in which we live.
Until Debian, operating systems and collections of software (whether proprietary or Free) were packaged, distributed and maintained by separate individuals or companies. The organisation in question would select the software it decided should be a part of its offering and they would then take on the responsibility of patching, securing and updating that collection of software. The traditional Unix distributions did this. Microsoft did this from DOS onwards. So did Apple. But in each case, the disadvantages of relying on a single organisation to take on such a burden became obvious. Not only did the schedule and scope of any fixes, updates and enhancements rely on the haphazard commercial priorities of the organisation, but the scope of the distribution was necessarily limited to the small collection of applications and services to which that organisation had a right.
Whilst an upgrade to a newer version of Windows might bring you some new services, what about the whole collection of software "islands" that you'd installed previously on top of the older version of the operating system? Many of these islands would now be rendered inaccessible by newer libraries, newer security requirements and so forth. Your only option in this case would be to abandon those "islands" or to seek individual updates, which may or may not be available, for each separate app under the aegis of each separate software fiefdom. To an extent, the proprietary realm made this all but inevitable. Each app relied on a different proprietary licence, based upon a different business model and the specific commercial needs of its creator. To upgrade and update everything as a seamless whole was not therefore merely technically improbable, it was commercially impossible and legally forbidden! Even today, with all the app stores in the world, each app remains a grudging passenger on your system rather than a coherent participant in its "society".
Of course, the world of Free Software, with its liberal licences and its encouragement to share and agglomerate software, removes the legal impediment to a more coherent organisation of collections of such software; but early efforts in the GNU/Linux world to distribute such software generally aped the traditional proprietary schemes. It took someone with the forethought of Ian Murdock to realise that the legal and political opportunities opened up by Free Software could extend beyond the individual apps that enjoyed these freedoms.
Crucially, Murdock envisioned freedom as not merely a property of an individual app, but as a fundamental character of a wider ecosystem. And this vision is where he leapfrogged the walled-garden "App Store" even before any such thing existed. As such, Murdock's realisation was not some mere technological suggestion. It was, indeed, a cultural vision lucidly set out in the Debian Manifesto.
The Manifesto was no mere technocrat's white paper. It was a moral proclamation. It rightly railed against "unacceptable behaviour being rewarded" and instead hoped for a distribution "based on the needs and wants of the users rather than the needs and wants of the constructor". To service this vision, a whole collection of technical innovations gushed out: the ".deb" packages, the Debian Package Manager, the Debian Policy guide, the eventual emergence of the "apt-get" systematic update program and all the social and political tools necessary to allow discrete, individual package managers nevertheless to be able to servce the collective coherently.
The exhortation to collectivisation is, of course, both exquisitely political and historically fraught. Ian was thus one of the very rare individuals whose visions of collective endeavour did not end in tragedy or worse. He had a nuanced understanding of how to balance the rights and expectations of the users, the developers and the maintainers. His modest "separation of powers" remains the bulwark against any aspect of the Debian project toppling any other. He envisioned an accommodation subtle enough to ensure that individual interests did not poison the stability of the collective, however much heat might be released by the inevitable creative friction. The historical rareness of crafting such collective stability, again, cannot be overstated (hence jokes about anarcho-syndicalist communes and so forth). But Ian did it.
Today, the Debian Project is a byword for reliability and stability, of interoperable components and flexibility that has taken it to watches, banks and the Space Station. And it has provided the base for derivatives like Ubuntu. Certainly, Debian has had its arguments and its flame wars, its controversies and its eternal grumblers, but it remains one of the few top-flight GNU/Linux distributions in the world. It is, indeed, a testament to the vitality of the GNU/Linux universe that it has allowed two economically and philosophically distinct distributions to thrive: Red Hat, a multi-billion dollar traditional commercial venture, on the one hand, and Debian, a non-centralised radical collective on the other. Both are considered the essential targets for any software produced for the GNU/Linux platform.
In paying tribute to Ian's life and his most important work, it's essential that we move beyond seeing Debian as a "mere" technological endeavour; the project deserves recognition from journalists, scholars, and other "opinion-makers" for the full, astonishing scope of that endeavour. Certainly, Debian marks at least as radical a social experiment as Wikipedia (and, indeed, Wikipedia runs upon it), but you won't find an NPR or BBC Radio Four documentary about it any day soon. But Ian Murdock's astonishing creation will live on: a small glimmer in our present of the post-scarcity "Star Trek" economy of our future. And for that, the future will remember Ian fondly indeed.
Client Spotlight: The Poke
Ashley Madison's Lessons: Security as Culture
The Ashley Madison hack: lessons beyond moralising or hysteria
The Ashley Madison hack has inflamed media attention to a frenzy. And of course it would. The site offered aspiring philanderers the opportunity to encounter like-minded people. The cheaters’ paradise turned out to be less of a niche-proposition than one might imagine, with an estimated 37 million users. A group of crackers took it upon themselves to break in and reveal the names and details of the privacy-coveting members of the service.
The fallout of the leak has been, of course, costly and embarrassing. The tale’s clash of ancient-morality-tale and 21st-century digital-paranoia makes it a tsunami of a story. On the one hand, it’s a veritable Elizabethan plot of conniving philanderers and cuckolds, and the devious but peculiarly puritanical blackmailers who would unmask them. Its themes could have flown from Christopher Marlowe’s quill. On the other hand, the story encapsulates a shiny Gibson-esque dystopian nightmare. It paints a picture of a world where no secret nor confidence can finally be protected from the marauding swarm of digital predators.
Much media attention has focussed on the dark depths of the human condition the story plumbs. Plenty of smart pieces have been written about Ashley Madison, but there have been disappointingly few attempts to shine some rational light on what systematic steps we can take to prevent such tragedies from happening. Whatever else the story reveals, it confirms that “tragedy” is not too strong a word to use. Online security has now become a matter of life-and-death. We always knew that about military secrets and the like. Now we are forced to acknowledge that there are no “trivial” exceptions. As in the aerospace industry, though, we need respond to disasters not with hand-wringing emotionalism, but with calm reflection on what we can put into place to limit the severity of such attacks, if not prevent them. So let us see what lessons might actually be learned from the Ashley Madison furore.
The primary lesson involves no specific techniques nor one-stop-solutions to thwart Black Hats. Instead, it involves ethos. One might think this a little namby-pamby compared with getting the latest shiny IDS (Intrusion Detection System) installed, or in trundling through a PCI Compliance (the credit-card industry’s gold-standard of audited security policy) document; however, rooting the culture of your project deeply in security’s soil makes a difference between digital Security Theatre, and actually having some chance of thwarting the bad guys. The distinction between performative “showbiz” security and the actual culture one needs to have in place to keep everyone safe is one that we at Positive have felt keenly from our very beginning. Security is not a “layer”. It’s not some protective faerie dust you sprinkle on your system. It’s not an amulet you hang at the doorway of your data-centre. Crucially, security cannot be treated as that annoying dweeb who’s there to buzzkill your startup’s launch party. If you have “prioritized public relations over robust security” then it should be no surprise when such priorities eventually destroy your business.
Sadly, treating security as an annoying adjunct to the fun is the biggest mistake entrepreneurs have always made, and continue to make. They beguile themselves with the spit and polish of a well-marketed lobby, and pay little time or money to securing the foundations that hold up the building. Splurging on logos, PR campaigns, apps and even SEO is sexy. It’s new media. It’s Silicon Valley glitz. Apportioning funds from the start to a pallid team of geeks who give a damn that you’ve used Pass1234 as the password that gives full access to all your servers, is not sexy. But it’s annoyingly vital. Getting an in-house security team, or a managed service like we provide at Positive, or engaging serious consultants who wag their fingers at you when you try to ignore that one little thing that’ll end up destroying your venture, is not an optional extra. It’s the sine qua non of establishing a service on the public Internet.
Another lesson involves continuity. It’s at this stage that one would usually engage cliches about eternally repainting the Forth Bridge in Scotland. Consider them duly engaged! Even those who’ve paid a modicum of attention and money for the initial security of a site-build then distressingly often chuck the thing onto some cheap slag-heap of an unmanaged hosting package, or perhaps float it up upon a lazily-drifting public cloud, pop open the champagne and then never bother themselves with the underpinnings of their venture again. Of course, just because the ship’s crew never peek under the hull doesn’t mean that the black-hatted buccaneers don’t. As every week passes, new holes pop open. With nobody there perspicaciously to patch them, your stout ship becomes quietly keelhauled. Eventually, it sinks.
But before it actually takes on water, why spend ongoing money on a bunch of stalwart geeks to maintain the vessel when it’s so much more fun to splash out on parties in its ball-room? A lesson from the Ashley Madison attack is not that the hull-breach was “very sophisticated”, as some have claimed. Quite the contrary, as the attackers made clear, the vessel was trivially open to plunder and, unforgivably, “nobody was watching”. Make sure you always have someone to watch over you, as the song goes, and keep that crow’s nest staffed.
This focus on systemic continuity is why we at Positive make such a distinction between a managed service and mere “hosting”. A team of conscientious geeks who darn and patch security holes as they inevitably pop open provide no guarantee of incorrigible security. Such attention does, however, shut “water-tight doors” against the severity of any attack that might succeed. If you discover a hole in your web application, make sure you have engaged a team empowered to patch that application without breaking it. Where any hole remains, limit those who have administrative access to the bowels of the application to the minimum trusted pool.
If that hole nevertheless does allow nefarious external access, make sure that the server’s operating system is sufficiently buttressed so that no “root” compromise can be achieved. If a root compromise somehow still succeeds, make sure that sensitive data is properly encrypted and that logs have already been shunted elsewhere, secure from tampering. Again, effective security is not installing a branded VPN in front of a leaky hulk and partying on, but is instead a systemic imagining of best and worst case scenarios, and putting a panoply in place against them.
A final lesson to be learned is that verifiable trust is crucial. You need a team whose provenance is proven, using software, systems and even procedures which allow full and transparent auditing. This is one of the reasons why we give tours to prospective clients of our datacentres, where the prospective client can go through full due-diligence prodding of every aspect of our operation. It’s why we encourage face-to-face meetings with our team. It’s why we not only take the time to learn how the applications entrusted into our care work, but also why we make a priority of getting to know the people and business behind the application. This is why we at Positive Internet are trusted by many of the world’s largest banks and insurance companies to look after some of their most precious data assets.
Crucially, verifiable trust is why we have focussed, for nearly two decades, on Free and Open Source software. As with peer-reviewed science or democracy, the transparency that Open Source promises is no panacea for security. But whilst Linus’s Law is not infallible, it throws into relief the least-worst method of software production we have. And, unlike security-through-obscurity proprietary systems, Free and Open Source platforms at least guarantee that the winner of a “game” between the black-hats and the white-hats should depend on skill and wisdom rather than a hopelessly skewed playing field. Whilst Ashley Madison used these technologies, it is notable that they used them in conjunction with proprietary plugins and services that seem to have been the gateway to the crack.
To suggest any magic-bullet response to the Ashley Madison hack would be dangerous hubris. No single piece of technology, no individual vulnerability scan, and no wizard with a compliance manual will guarantee against such break-ins. However, we should take very seriously the mortal differences that a project’s culture, ethos and priorities can make to its eventual vulnerability to such calamities. We should neither fall victim to a counsel of despair, nor to any silicon snake-oil vendor who assures us blithely that their special tonic will let you party on without a care. That might sound portentious, but it can be heeded simply by making the best use of open, transparent solutions and deep, trusted relationships with your technology providers. It is perhaps ironic that in its exhortation of blithe affairs, this is the one trusted relationship which Ashley Madison should have taken care to nurture.
Happy Birthday Debian!
The Debian Project: how freedom works
Yesterday, the Debian Project turned 19 years old. Positive Internet raises a glass to this miracle of human cooperation. More than an unassuming technical project, it has profound implications on what humans can achieve with unencumbered networks.
Operating systems don't lead to much heated enthusiasm in the saloons and hostelries of the nation; less so the different ways of distributing and putting together those operating systems. Talking about operating-system distributions seem a very definition of arcane. But bear with me: by examining one operating system's distribution in particular, we can find fascinating sociological, economical and philosophical insights.
The distribution I'm talking about is 'Debian'. But let's first backtrack a bit: what is a 'distribution'? When you buy Windows, or MacOS, in its shiny box or from a glinting app-store, you understand that you're getting something that makes your computer run, provides the windows and menus, and includes some basic software, like notepads and wordprocessors. In a sense, then, you could call those proprietary operating systems "distributions", I suppose. But because what gets put on the DVD or in the download is strictly regulated by the company who produces the operating system, there is usually just one distribution of such operating systems. Well, to be precise, there are some small variations: Microsoft, for example, allows you to purchase cheaper, more restricted versions of Windows for low-powered netbooks, and throws in an extra bucket or two of bells and whistles for their enterprise versions. But, because of their tight, proscriptive control of what goes into these sub-versions, it seems more appropriate to call them "editions" than completely different distributions.
Operating systems based on the Linux kernel tend to have less onerous licencing restrictions; however, the organisations that put together the distributions of the free software packages that run on top of the Linux kernel - the web servers, the databases, the desktop clients and so on - are often competent but otherwise uninspiring. RedHat, for example, for all the good work it does, is "just another" company, that employs technicians to put together and test these packages under its corporate roof, and sells support and management services. Certainly, it receives help from its community via the Fedora project, but it still acts as the central, commercial clearinghouse that is well understood and oft-immitated.
Debian is different: it has no centre, no hub, no commercial core, no large team of employees. Debian is an agreement, a coherent social structure, an arrangement between free agents - but it is not a corporation in the traditional understanding of that term. It is a group of individuals and organisations who, for manifold reasons, tend their own particular corner of a garden that matters to them. The interesting bit happens through an alchemy of the network effect, free software and combined, intermeshing self-interest. So long as the individual maintainer follows certain rules and conventions, their specific package, documentation or meta-infrastructure is included into the project as a whole. The benefit to the maintainer is that their work is given a supported place within a larger, useful infrastructure. And the benefit to the project is that it gains an additional useful component. The networked world, and the universe of Free and Open Source software, allows startlingly novel structures of production that nevertheless somehow speak right to the interest-matrices of our hunter-gatherer roots. Debian is the prime, working example of such novelty based on ancient cooperative instincts. No centre, no core, and yet somehow out of the chaos emerges a stable distribution of thousands of individual software packages produced by hundreds of different individuals in dozens of countries. And it all works meticulously. In a sense, Debian has had a universal, networked, liberated "app store" for more than a decade before the proprietary people caught on.
More recently, producers of proprietary operating systems have include "app stores", where people can distribute their software, and the operating-system owner, as gatekeeper to the walled garden, takes a cut for each application sold. People are treating the coherent, easily-updated app store as a novel development; in fact, projects like Debian have provided huge repositories of coherently distributed and updated applications from the beginning, but with one key difference. Debian provides these applications not as part of a "walled garden", but though a cooperative agreement on how applications should be installed and updated in its environment. Because the great majority of Debian's applications are under Free Software licences, the coherence and scope of the "app store" goes well beyond those offered in the proprietary realm.
Because Debian focuses itself profoundly on Free and Open software, the social contract of those who produce its thousands of packages reflects the contract's principles both in philosophy and engineering. There are guidelines for creating and maintaining individual software components, but no compulsion, no specific carrots and no hefty sticks. One would assume, then, that this peculiarly libertarian but cooperative environment would lead to chaos and instability. In fact, Debian is renowned as one of the most stable - perhaps even conservatively so - distributions available, and has been so for longer than companies like Google, Facebook and even Apple (in its revitalised form) have existed.
We at Positive Internet have used Debian almost since our inception, and have systems with many years of uptime on it. We take for granted the abilities it gives us to keep systems secure and reliable, and yet replete with a rich collection of important applications for running the latest web-services for our clients. The huge variety of tasks we have demanded from the distribution is testament to its flexibility: from small firewalls to massive bank-grade clusters, we don't give a second thought that Debian will be up to the job. And where it needs tweaking, or some special package demands particular tending, we know that a universe of maintainers and developers will be there with us in that task.
So, for 19 years, the Debian project has modestly, unassumingly, engineered myriad human minds, with myriad separate requirements and motivations, to deliver, e pluribus, unum. This project of massively heterogeneous conception, emerges as one unified, elegant body of work. It is a pity that so many political theorists, economists and philosophers are technophobes: would that they weren't, they would have a case-study of of two decades of cooperative productivity in the networked age that is uniquely captures our species' capabilities in a liberated networked world.
Debian has spent nearly 20 years proving conclusively that a well-tended garden needn't be walled. And for that, they deserve a toast or two.
Records - not eggs - broken!
Positive involved in another World Record event
Anyone visiting London in the last few months will probably have noticed that large eggs have appeared throughout the city. These intricately decorated pieces of public art played their part in promoting an auction - both online and at Sotheby's - in aid of the magnificent charities Action for Children and The Elephant Family.
We at Positive Internet were asked to supply the hosting infrastructure for the live online auction, for which we provisioned a special managed failover cluster in our flagship Positive Park datacentre. We took the responsibility seriously: the thought of the final moments of such an important live event's ruination by a server crash or network glitch is the stuff of bitter nightmares. We prefer sweet dreams - so we put our best team on it, who kept a close eye on these systems throughout the Easter Monday bidding.
In the end, the hard work paid off, because the online and Sotheby's auctions netted over a million pounds for the worthy causes, with Positive's managed cluster never missing a beat. Alan Newman of Sensible Development coordinated the whole project between Positive, the charity and creative agencies. Alan was kind enough to offer the following comment:
"We have worked with Positive Internet for many years: they understood exactly what was required for this high-profile project, and tailored the cluster so it'd cope with bursts of extremely popularity.
As part of the VIP managed service, Positive engineers offered live support throughout the auctions. They made sure everything went without a hitch. Positive is a partner rather than a simply a 'provider': everyone from the directors through to the oncall engineers is a pleasure to work with. It's clear they care about our projects as much as we do".
Such kind validation of our team really helps our egg-os. Of course, we work egg-stremely hard to ensure our managed service always entails this level of attention to detail; however, when we muse on the work that Action for Children egg-sel at, it's egg-straordinarily gratifying to know that our service has played a part in allowing them continue doing it so egg-selently. This evening, we're egg-suberant to find out that this is the second project in which we've been involved that's won a Guinness World Record! Indeed, it's won two. Frankly, we're oeuf-er the moon. (sorry - we'll egg-ress now)
Podcasting: now remarkably unremarkable
Podcasting is fast becoming the default way people broadcast and listen
Positive Internet and our Jellycast venture are veterans at podcast hosting and distribution. Indeed, since we won the Guinness World Record with Ricky Gervais for his podcast, we have hosted a gratifying number of top-rated global media extravaganzas for people like Stephen Fry, and for organisations like the British Council. The most recent in our stable to gain the coveted iTunes top podcast status is Iain Lee's Pocket Radio Show. From an idea Iain and we discussed to a global sensation in mere weeks, this is just another of those unremarkably remarkable success stories that hosted services like we provide have made possible.
Iain, a well-known television and radio personality, has decided to devote his proven talents to podcasting. This is podcasting 2.0: professional, interactive, with the sophistication of a radio programme but with the immediacy of new media. All the finesse one would expect from a professionally produced programme is there: phone-ins, interviews, jingles - the signifiers of "proper" speech broadcasting that just a few years ago would have demanded the backing of a huge established media-organisation to marshal, but today require little more than a microphone, a laptop and an affordable mediacasting account with Positive Internet or Jellycast.
Iain's podcast represents an increasing trend in online audio. In the early days, podcasting was considered either an amateur's game, or a gimmicky adjunct to a "proper" broadcaster's output. As the medium has evolved, an increasing number of professional people are focusing on podcasting as their primary or even sole means of communicating with the public. The freedom that podcasting gives creative people has been an obvious lure from the start; as audiences have proven themselves loyal downloaders, an increasing number of popular podcasters are finding that they are able to sustain themselves financially through cultivating this audience, by obtaining sponsors and through democratic patronage from their followers. Podcasters control their own media destiny in ways unimaginable under the old broadcasting hierarchies. This freedom is intoxicating. Listeners enjoy the closer relationship they have with the broadcaster, without the alienation of intrusive middle-men.
In a sense, then, what is remarkable about podcasting is how unremarkable it has become. We take for granted the ability to select and download audio programmes at will. Commutes, flights, jogs and even hospital-stays now seem unimaginable without our favourite stash of comforting audio-accompaniment. And popular podcasts, like Iain's, are garnering tens of thousands of loyal listeners. Just a decade or two ago, the notion of getting radio-sized audiences by recording something in one's front-room and uploading it to a service like Positive Internet's would have seemed absurd science fiction. Now becoming a radio star is simply another in the range of services we offer. We work hard to ensure that our mediacasting bandwidth, reliability, support and speed is second to none, so that we can fade into the background and allow our hundreds of media champions to shine, and some to propel themselves all the way to the top of the charts. Just like Iain has done over the last few weeks.
We're such dab-handed veterans at this now that it's sometimes easy to forget how subtly revolutionary the services we provide can be. It's no longer grandiose theory to proclaim that anyone with an idea and with the talent to communicate it can do so without hindrance - to the whole planet. And that's surely something worth remarking on.
Rest easy: we have it covered
Excuses, excuses! We have been rather busy this last year establishing our new PosiCloud product, gliding more and more clients over the PCI compliance mountain and, as ever, helping some of the most popular sites and services on the web tick along merrily.
Almost inevitably, updating the PosiBlog took rather a backseat to this, but our New Year's resolution is to remedy the paucity of posts here! We hope to provide interesting tidbits on this blog more frequently, and look forward to hearing from everyone about topics you think we should cover. Feel free to mail us at good@positive-internet.com with feedback and ideas, or throw us a tweet on Twitter - we're @posipeople
In the meantime, we wish all our clients, customers, suppliers and staff a very restful Christmas and a wonderfully fruitful New Year. Naturally, we remain on duty throughout the festive period, so should any of our managed clients need help at midnight on Christmas Eve, or a quick chat at 3am on New Year's day, we'll be around, bushy-eyed and bright-tailed. Our flagship Positive Park datacentre will remain securely staffed at all times. With perhaps just a little more tinsel than usual.
Daddy, What Did You Do?
How GoDaddy lets our whole industry down
The only thing more amazing than the Internet is how we take it for granted. In fact, we can actually slip into holding it in slight contempt. It remains the butt of many a radio panel-show's tedious jokes ("haha, Wikipedia is not always reliable. haha, the Internet contains pornography" and so forth). You'd have thought that nearly 20 years of the Internet's absorption into public consciousness would have dampened such fatuous punchlines. But no, the audience titters still, as if in eternal sympathetic vibration with the 90s collective memory of "it's just a geeky CB radio fad".
Recently, the director Steven Soderbergh discussed his latest film on a radio review programme. The movie makes fun of blogging, which he terms as no better than "graffiti on a bathroom wall". His leading man even wore prosthetic buck-teeth so he could be the "typical blogger". Quelle dérision! Soderbergh mused, happily, that in his test-screenings, the audience gained almost orgasmic pleasure every time the Internet was attacked. They couldn't get enough of Net bashing, which they enjoyed more than the rest of the film put together. The film-reviewers interviewers chuckled along, in amiable agreement. That they then immediately promoted the Internet podcast in which this interview was being promulgated didn't seem to phase them.
Such cognitive dissonance abounds. Even while they giggle nervously, most of the technophobic titterers would rather have a limb extricated than their smartphone. They would sooner cancel the whole postal service than one Email account. However they sneer at wikipedia, they would whimper if ordered to visit the public library every time they needed to look up a footling fact or all-encompassing concept instead of using this astonishing online resource.
In this season of Goodwill to all Men, we should pause to consider what an astonishingly lucky species we are to have managed to coalesce about us something as miraculous as the Internet. A miracle can be defined in a number of ways. One definition that captures its essence without having to rely on playing supernatural games is to term a miracle any happenstance that was somewhat unlikely, and did not necessarily follow the predicted contextual logic of the times. Such a miracle emerges as a delicate butterfly from a cocoon of capricious chaos. Such a miracle might be seen as something delicate, something as fragile as a growing crystal, however ubiquitous and sturdy its eventual shape. Its formation was mercurial and unlikely and, were we to reverse time and reset the experiment, so to speak, would likely not follow the same path again.
And when you start taking such a miracle for granted, you can put it on a neglectful path to destruction. You forget how lucky you are to enjoy its benefits. You forget how delicately inchoate was its formation. You assume that its features are part of a solidly inevitable march of historical progress. And your hubris bloats to the level where you even enjoy a little contempt for its stale ubiquity. Haha, that wikipedia. Hoho, those blogs. And you forget that the whole complex collection of services and social conventions that make up the Internet is predicated on a fundamental notion of liberty. And you forget that all liberty comes at the price of an eternal vigilance. And you allow the desperate, malign or merely opportunistic to take advantage of this amnesia and eviscerate the miracle. And then you walk despondently amidst the shards of the shattered crystal, wondered what went wrong. But no cyber-equivalent of humming "Where Have all the Flowers Gone" will bring it back.
Early in the New Year, the American government aims to help Big Media to eviscerate the Internet, to destroy the miracle and shatter its crystalline delicacy. As ever, Big Media is blaming "piracy" as its excuse to stamp its jackboot repeatedly on the face of our online lives, and is bundling this repression into a horrible proposal entitled SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). That there are plenty of more engaging and fruitful ways to fund creative endeavours is ignored. It seems we must all be coerced into accepting that a failing business-model from the last millennium deserves no less than full might of the State to bolster its clumsy missteps. Suffice to say, it is sadly not hyperbole to claim that the provisions of this act would help to destroy the Internet. It is technically inevitable. And it would give to the American government the same arbitrary rights of censorship now enjoyed by such places as North Korea and Saudi Arabia.
Fortunately, a large constituency of the online world refuses to join Soderbergh's titterers. It is taking action, writing to Congress and fighting against the dying of the enlightened Internet. Happily, this panoply against the disembowling of the Internet includes a wide range of organisations and individuals, many of whom can be found bickering in other circumstances, including Google and Microsoft. You might assume that the fightback would also include the Internet hosting providers of the world. And you would be correct. With one glaring and shameful exception: GoDaddy. We do not make a habit of dissing or even merely discussing our competitors. It is unprofessional and usually seems peevish at best; however, in this case, when the whole industry is standing up against the forces of darkness, we wish to join our ethically-sound competitors in drawing to attention such obnoxious behaviour. This is not the first time that GoDaddy has courted controversy. But this time, it doesn't seem merely happy to exterminate the odd pachyderm: it is eager to help to destroy the Internet that gives it profit. Such behaviour brings the whole hosting industry into disrepute, and we join our honourable competitors in countering this crawlingly tawdry display.
A large campaign has formed to urge people move their domains from GoDaddy in protest at their behaviour. It might be self-serving of us to support such a campaign. After all, capitalism enjoys nothing more than the opportunity to kick a competitor when it is down. This really does go beyond that for us, though. We have always revelled in the miracle of the open Internet, and feel an existential shudder in our core whenever someone attacks it. Thus, if you have domains with GoDaddy, our hostmistress will be happy to advise how to transfer them to someone more ethical. Whilst we would, of course, be delighted to take the domains under our own wing, we will also be happy to advise on how to transfer your domains to any competitor of ours more ethically sound than GoDaddy. This means so much to us that we would prefer to take the hit in time and effort to give business to a reputable competitor than to see GoDaddy remain unscathed by their wilful defilement of the miracle that sustains us all.
Update: After a flurry of bad publicity, GoDaddy have just announced that they will no longer support SOPA after all, although apparently they still support its principles.
Looking for something older? Visit the archives.
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Practical Autism Resources
Gallery and Tips
Free Printables!
About P.A.R.
Practical Autism Resources was established by Kathryn Whitaker, Linda Mulley and Chris Knippenberg in 2009 in order to provide services and resources to the dedicated individuals who work with children with autism.
Center on Disability and Inclusion
Materials and Fun
OZMO Fun Toys for Autism and OCD "Created by parents of an adult with autism and OCD to encourage easy, safe, wonderful fun with autistic toys, books,
puzzles, sensory and special interest items." Great for sensory integration, educational, motivational and special interest toys.
Autism Information and Advocacy
Autism Speaks Family oriented autism advocacy and information. Creators of an excellent kit, the First 100 Days Kit - that is designed to assist families in getting the critical information they need in the first 100 days after an autism diagnosis.
Autism advocacy website that features up-to-date news, a calendar of events, resources and information.
Autism Society of Vermont
Autism Society of Massachusetts
Autism Society of New Hampshire
"The mission of the Autism Society of Vermont is to provide information and support to Vermonters with Autism Spectrum Disorder, their families, service providers and other interested citizens, and to advocate for the right of each person with Autism and their families to a fulfilling life within the community
Vermont Autism Task Force
The mission of the Vermont Autism Task Force is "to coordinate the efforts of interested parties who serve individuals with autism spectrum disorders and their families, and to promote the implementation of best practices throughout the state of Vermont." Includes the Vermont Autism White Paper and a toolkit of excellent resources.
Asperger Association of New England
New Hampshire Chapter
Rhode Island Chapter
Western Massachusetts Chapter
Provides advocacy and support to individuals with Asperger Syndrome/"High Functioning Autism" and their families. Includes support groups, training opportunities, online support groups, employment assistance; legislative advocacy and family grants.
Autism Votes -
This site is dedicated to tracking and disseminating information on legislative action on autism spectrum disorder issues. Particularly geared toward insurance coverage initiatives on the state and national levels.
Understanding Asperger's Syndrome: A Professor's Guide For college bound individuals with autism spectrum disorders. This site includes a 12-minute presentation from Organization for Autism Research's (OAR), is designed to help college-bound students with autism spectrum disorder (particularly Asperger Syndrome or HFA) by familiarizing professors and other college personnel with the unique traits of the learner.
Vermont Family Network
Vermont Department of Education Parent Resource Page Links for legal resources, alternate assessment, IEP decision making process, parent rights, and special education guide.
Wrightslaw - Special Education Law & Advocacy - Information on special education law and advocacy. At this site you may sign up for a newsletter on special education law which is easy to understand for the lay person. Much of their materials is written from the perspective of the parent. Some nice publications, including From Emotions to Advocacy are available for download from this site.
Center on Disability and Inclusion A University of Vermont division whose mission is "to improve the lives of individuals with disabilities and their families through research, training, and community services"
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August 28, 2016 by Thomas Wictor
Finally, we have irrefutable proof that the Arab League is using adjustable weapons. The men who fire these missiles set them to either stun humans, disable weapon systems, or atomize the target. So far the cameras have captured only one missile switched to the “Atomize” setting. A Turkish M60 Patton tank was on the receiving end of that munition.
These new, adjustable missiles have binary fuel-air explosive (FAE) warheads. The explosive vapor and the catalyst are in two separate chambers.
Therefore the missile gunner controls the intensity of the explosion. A time fuse detonates the explosive vapor at predetermined stages of blending. Below, the blue dye represents the catalyst, while the water is the explosive vapor.
The more uniform the blending of catalyst and vapor, the more powerful the explosion.
Adjustable gases
In the 1990s, Israel experimented with explosive gases that would send payloads into space using a giant cannon. The 1997 book Ram Accelerators: Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Ram, edited by Kazuyoshi Takayama and Akihiro Sasoh (Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer Verlag, 1997), reported this on page 167.
“Rom” is Professor Josef Rom, Department of Aerospace Engineering, Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa.
These gases are also used in FAE. Israeli FAE are the most powerful ever invented.
Another name for fuel-air explosives is “thermobaric” munitions. The average “weapons expert” knows nothing about them.
Not if the missile gunner is able to choose how deadly to make his ordnance.
Adjustable to “stun”
As an illustration of non-lethal thermobaric weapons, we have the antitank guided missile (ATGM) below. Although the Levant Conquest Front claims to have fired the ATGM, there’s no way that any Syrian rebels have such advanced technology.
The tail of the missile has two flares, also called “beacons.”
Each beacon emits a light of a different wavelength. As a result, the accuracy is doubled. The guidance system is called “semi-automatic command to line of sight” or SACLOS. After the gunner launches the missile, he keeps a cross hair on the target.
A sensor inside the launcher sight watches the flares on the tail of the missile and guides the munition to where the gunner has aimed the cross hair.
Here is the signature of the new Israeli Arab League ATGMs with binary fuel-air explosive warheads.
The missile directs the force of the explosion downward. A proximity fuse in the warhead automatically detonates the missile over the target. Although the force of the explosion goes downward, the fireball and smoke rise.
Both men in the “technical” survived. They lifted their heads and moved their arms.
Their comrades dragged them to safety.
Adjustable non-fragmentation munitions
These missiles do not create a storm of razor-sharp fragments. The casing of the munition is not metal. Below is an American AGM-114 Hellfire missile with a “fragmentation sleeve.”
A laser scored the add-on metal jacket so that it would break into diamond-shaped fragments.
For the first time in human history, war is waged on military objects, not people.
Adjustable to “wreck”
Next we have a new ATGM disabling an Assad regime T-72 main battle tank. The Russian ATGM launcher seen in the video is for the 9M113 Konkurs or 9K111 Fagot. However, the man firing is an actor. The munition is a new Israeli Arab League ATGM that no Syrian rebel possesses.
As before, the missile directed the explosive force straight down.
Then the fireball and smoke tower rose.
The missile exploded over the tank’s engine compartment. As a result, the tank will never run again.
It’s likely that cavitation is the reason that these weapons are so powerful. The shock wave actually displaces atmospheric air, creating an empty bubble over the target. When the bubble collapses, and atmospheric air rushes in to fill the void, a huge amount of energy is released.
That’s the only way I can explain the video below.
Adjustable to “atomize”
Arab League strategic special operators blast a Turkish M60 Patton tank into powder.
When the missile strikes, there’s no explosion of a warhead that penetrates the armor. Instead, the entire tank blows up as is if it’s made of dynamite.
Therefore you’re seeing completely new military technology. The missile used neither kinetic energy nor high explosives. It has to be cavitation. The fuel-air explosive created a void in the atmospheric air around the tank. When this “bubble” collapsed, it was like a small nuclear explosion. The tank simply disintegrated. I’ve never seen that before.
Here is what usually happens when a tank explodes.
The turret and other big chunks fly off. In the case of the Turkish M60, we didn’t see that. It was as though the M60 vanished. Also, there were six secondary explosions.
It’s very unusual for the ammunition to take so long to “cook off.” Generally speaking, tank ammunition burns quickly instead of exploding. The tanks below are remote-control. They have no crews.
In addition, the diesel fuel of the Turkish M60 spilled out on the ground and burned for a very long time. This indicates that the missile warhead released relatively little heat.
Adjustable smasher
If in fact the new missiles use cavitation, they’d be making Earth’s atmosphere to do their work for them. Shockwave and Cavitation Bubble Dynamics of Atmospheric Air seems to show that the concept is viable. Air is a fluid.
Apparently not one scientist outside of Israel and certain Arab League nations has ever considered whether or not the shock wave from a missile warhead could create atmospheric cavitation.
I’m in good company.
NASA also mentions atmospheric cavitation.
If an Iranian rocket can cause it, so can an Israeli-designed antitank guided missile. The warheads detonate with incredible violence. Don’t worry: Syrian rebels didn’t fire the ATGM below.
Two beacons.
And again, the explosive vapor is projected downward.
I learned the very hard and discouraging way to never ask “experts” for their opinions. For this reason I don’t contact others to ask what they think about my ideas.
And I learned that even though 46,000 people read my blog every day, only a few dozen think that I deserve some financial help in running this Website.
So to the handful who donated, thank you. I’ll figure out a way to keep blogging. As I said, this is just a rough spot. In two years it won’t be a burden.
To everyone else, it’s good to know where we stand. I always prefer the truth.
Destroying military objects instead of people is how to win wars
Hidebound is another word that everyone should know
Rebel groups in Syria are phantoms. We now have the proof
Days of miracle and wonder ensure that the future is very bright
OPSEC is what keeps soldiers alive on the battlefield
This article viewed 49781 times.
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RHDR 90th anniversary
ODMRS exhibition 150117
DFR gala 2716
SDR 1960s weekend 30 May 2016
SDR 1960s weekend 25/05/15
SDR 1960s weekend 24/05/2014
GDSF 2013
Train à Vapeur des Cévennes 4/08/13
SVR 16/07/13
Mallard 75 15/07/13
Truckfest 06/07/13
Great Little Trains of Wales June-July
Wythall Operating day 15/06/13
time travel on the GWSR 11/06/13
EVLR steam gala 8/06/13
Brecon Mountain Railway 2/11/12
SVR Autumn Gala 22/09/12
Gwili Classic Transport Show 22/07/12
DSR Heritage Festival 8-9/06/12
NRM Railfest 7/06/12
SDR Diamond Jubilee Gala 3-5/06/12
Mid Hants Railway Autumn Gala 28/10/11
Gwili Railway 30/08/11
St Davids Lifeboat open day 2011
Les Train de Mouettes 1/08/11
Littlebrook Valley Railway
You are here: Home > Latest Reports> 2011> Les Train de Mouettes
Posted on: 8th August 2011
Updated on: 5th August 2012
A rare trip to see some French steam action brought Totally-transport.co.uk to the 'train of the gulls' in the Charente Maritime department to ride behind the oldest operational standard gauge steam locomotive in France. The experience was something quite different to your average preserved line in the UK, as you shall see if you care to read on!
From Les Train Des Mouettes - 1/07/11
Video (5:47,HD)
Locomotives:
No:51 100 (diesel)
No:2503 of 1891
Prices return (EUROS):
Adult 13euro
child -(4-11) 6.50euro
family 36euro
(Above: Schneider 0-6-0T No:2503 'Progres' simmers at Saujon on 1st August 2011)
Continental Quirks
Having never really visited any preserved lines outside the UK, we assumed that things would generally be similar to how British heritage lines operate, with quite frequent trains, almost all steam hauled with, if you wish, a small guide book or similar to explain what you see through the carriage window. We were quite wrong! This being France, the home of leisurely lunches, Les Train Des Mouettes offered just two round trips, one in the morning, leaving Saujon at 10:00am and another in the late afternoon at 3:15pm! (Right: No:51 100 prepares to run around at La Tremblade)
A Journey Described
We joined the train at Saujon, where before we were allowed to
board the train, comprised of 'carriages', in fact converted closed vans with wooden bench like seats and perspex windows at either end and open, glass less, windows at the side, we were given a brief talk (in French) by the guard over the system of speakers in each coach. Afterwards the friendly guard also chatted to us in English and we learnt that he was an honoury life member of the Ffestiniog Railway. His English was very good indeed - it is doubtful that if you went to a British heritage line you'd get this kind of service if your first language wasn't English!
The train was diesel hauled for the first leg and we were treated to an informative guided tour of sorts with the guard explaining what we could see and pointing out items of interest in English and French. The line passes though some interesting and varied scenery, punctuated by numerous level crossings, each one requiring a lengthy blast on the horn! A good amount of wildlife could be seen from the train including stalks and herons. At each station the guard hopped out and swapped to a different carriage, because of the non corridor stock, to continue the tour.
In contrast to some preserved lines in Britain the station buildings were of the distinctly basic pre fabricated type rather than originals and the fencing was of the modern variety.
(Left: the station buildings, platform and fencing at Saujon)
At Chaillevette we got a look at Schneider built 0-6-0T 'Progres' of 1891 and the station yard which provided a stabling point for an interesting selection of diesels. Somewhat disapointingly at La Tremblade the line terminates rather abruptly in, well, a car park with a platform and run around loop and not much else to tempt people off the train.
Consequently, unlike some UK lines, the turn around was quite quick and we were soon on the move once more. When we returned to Chaillevette the locomotives swapped around and 'Progres' was coupled to the head of the train. This arangement meant that both
round trips would have the steam engine for at least part of the run. According to the guard, at one time the railway had attempted to run an entirely steam hauled service but had found that it placed too much strain on the volunteers.
Les Train Des Mouettes is home to two steam locomotives, one of which is operational the other, only recently aquired is currently undergoing overhaul. 'Progres' was built by Schneider in 1891 as part of a batch of 4 locos and spent its working life on the network of lines between the Rhone and Loire until 1960 when it was withdrawn and preserved. It is now the oldest operational standard gauge locomotive in France.
(Right: Schneider 0-6-0T No:2503 'Progres' has just backed onto its train at Chaillevette)
About the railway
The line was built in 1875, and, although it carried some passengers,
its main income was from carrying goods such as salt, vingar and oysters. Eventually in 1980 SNCF, the French state railways, closed the line as it was uneconomical. Four years later the preservationists took over and restored the line to what you see today.
Overall, Les Train Des Mouettes provides a most interesting and unusual experience to those more used to British heritage lines. It's fares are attractive, it passes through some interesting scenery and the running commentary was very informative. Les Train Des Mouettes should be very proud of it's friendly, accomdating volunteers and I would like to take this opportunity to thank them. If there is one minor niggle it is that the train was not steam hauled for the whole journey and the frequency of services could be improved - I might have stayed and done some linesiding if I did not have to wait so long for the next train - but that is just me trying to find fault!
Les Train Des Mouettes - 1/07/11
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Pagan Event Reviews
Daughters of The Moon: Running With The Crones
Between the Worlds and Sacred Space Conference 2015
St. Louis Pagan Picnic 2015
Sacred Space Conference
Free Spirit Gathering 2013: Many Paths
Houston Pagan Conference 2013
Between the Worlds: An Interfaith Esoteric Conference
Spring Mysteries Festival XXVII
Mabon with Blackberry Circle
Salem, Oregon Celebrates Its First Pagan Pride Day (2012)
NorthWest Fall Equinox Festival (NWFEF) 2012 (Review)
Sacred Space Celebrates Twenty-one Years!
Celebration of the Divine Feminine and Religious Freedom
St. Louis Pagan Picnic
Free Spirit Gathering
Summerfest 2010 (Festival Review)
The Sacred Space Conference and Winterfest Banquet
Magickel Hibernation
4th of July Pagan Religious Rights Rally and Ritual and Chesapeake Pagan Community Summer Gathering
Sirius Rising 2007: Making Connections
Starwood 2007
Louisville Pagan Pride Day
Southeast Women's Herbal Conference
Canadian National Pagan Conference
Sirius Rising 2006
Chesapeake Pagan Community Gathering: Dancing with Devas 2006
Brazilian Mabon Celebration in S�o Paulo
Hellfire Caves Ritual
Beltaine 2006: A Pagan Odyssey
Tara Summer Solstice 2005
Starwood XXV: Feelin' the Love
Sirius Rising 2005: Restoring the Balance
Inner Mysteries Intensive with Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone
Between the Worlds: A Grand Magickal Congress
Starfest 2004
Pagan Pride: San Francisco
Third Annual Witches Meeting
Texas Religious Freedom Circle
CMA Beltaine 2002 Festival
Beltaine in the Lone STAR State
Sirius Rising 2002 (3)
SouthEastern Spirit Gathering 2001
PhoenixPhyre Gathering 2001
Free Spirit Gathering 2000
PhoenixPhyre Gathering 2000 (1)
Heartland 2000
Phoenixphyre '99
Ancient Ways Gathering 99
AutumnMeet 1999 (1)
Autumnmeet 1998
Author: Diotima Mantineia [a WitchVox Sponsor]
An inside look at what goes on behind the scenes at a Pagan Gathering
Review by Diotima Mantineia
Merry Meet!
About 20 people were sprawled over sofas and on the floor of the old, pre-Civil War house, fondly dubbed "The White House" by Gathering staff. Situated at the entrance of the 200+ acre campground that has hosted FSG for 14 years, it's the perfect place to house the staff, and its comfortable front porch becomes the hub of the many activities needed to keep over 800 souls fed, housed and having fun for 5 days.
Now, at 9:00 p.m. Tuesday, questions and answers bounce back and forth across the room at the staff meeting. Recycling? It's already set up. What happened with that last-minute hole in the security staff? There's another well-qualified volunteer willing to do the job. Is there enough wood for the Fire Circle? There will be by tomorrow night.
An early-arriving merchant wanders in, and the meeting breaks for a few minutes while we focus on helping him get oriented. He offers to help if he can stay the night at the camp. Hey, no problem! Put him to work! Well, OK, we'll let him set up camp first...
That settled, Hjartafinn, this year's Gathering coordinator, drags everyone's attention back to the organizational matters at hand. The Duck, an Assistant Coordinator and FSA's president, presents his plan for organizing volunteers. Duck looks, in his top hat, like an escapee from Alice's Wonderland. But his plan has nothing of the Mad Hatter about it -- in fact, it is very well thought out -- and he gets estimates from the various departments of how many people they are likely to need, and when.
The volunteers are sent to places named with typical Pagan whimsy: The Troll Booth at the entrance, where registration is set up; the Tin Can, a large, plain, utilitarian structure that is transformed each night into a magical place of music and dancing; and the Healer's Hut, marked with a large green pentagram -- no infirmaries or red crosses here.
Radio Free FSG
Next morning, the crackle of radios becomes a constant background noise for the staff as we finish preparations and begin registration. With over 200 acres to cover, good radios are a necessity; especially if we want to have enough energy left at night to make a trip to the Fire Circle for drumming and dancing. One person's sole assignment is to keep track of and maintain all the radios.
The Sweat Circle area, so far away that we sometimes lose them on radio, is still being stocked with cords of wood, truckloads of rocks, and many gallons of water. The sweat staff is offering an unprecedented 21 sweats this year -- a challenging number, given how labor intensive they are. Tyrtle, the talented and dedicated pourer who is the backbone of FSG's sweat program, has been blessed by an equally talented and dedicated staff who give freely of their time to work in service to the spirits of the land and to those who come to commune with Spirit in a sweat.
Back on the porch of the White House, radios crackle, and a couple more people are dispatched to the sweat area to "chop wood, carry water".
Up at the Troll Booth, the earliest arrivals have just gotten to our first check-in point -- the 2 hour work shift sign-up sheets. It takes a lot of work and organization to put on a festival of this size, and we need help, so we ask everyone to pitch in. All the FSG staff is volunteer, and we know helping out is one of the best ways to meet people at a festival, so we look on the work shift as sharing the fun. ;-)
By early afternoon, the merchant's booths have sprung up along Merchant's Row, a path leading into the camp lined by tall, stately white pines which are perfectly spaced for the merchant's tents. The array of crafts and other goodies is dazzling, but the staff won't get much of a chance to look today -- there's too much to do on opening day.
Eve, our other Assistant Coordinator, can be seen walking purposefully through camp, while being accosted at regular intervals by people needing answers or solutions and talking with someone on the radio at the same time.
Up at the White House Albion, the Registrar, peers intently at the screen of a laptop computer, ironing out last-minute registrations and cabin assignments. He can keep in touch with Giani, the On-Site Registrar at the Troll Booth, through radio.
Kalabran, our resident Boy Scout, is putting up his ingenious hand-washing stations outside the portable toilets that are strategically placed throughout the camp. As Assistant Security Coordinator, he'll spend most of the festival walking around camp.
Chrystalheart, the Workshop Coordinator, has created large, waterproof schedule boards which she is putting up at the Kiosk to help people keep track of workshop additions and changes. There have already been one or two schedule changes since the program was printed due to the changed travel plans of the presenters.
Like Eve, Hjartafinn and Duck are multi-tasking, almost managing to be two places at once through the magic of radio.
Jen, the incredibly efficient, talented and tireless Entertainment Coordinator, is busy getting the musicians settled in Harper Hall, while making sure the stage in the Tin Can is set for the Kiva concert tonight.
By evening, the campground is transformed by colorful tents, flags, banners and altars. The smell of incense wafts on the breeze, and everywhere people are greeting old friends and making new ones. Eve and Duck prepare for the opening ritual at 7:00.
When the opening ritual ends most people head for the Tin Can for a welcome party, potluck and dance featuring Kiva. By now, the energy of the Gathering has begun to weave its magic, and the mundane world seems far away. The dancing moves from the Tin Can to the Fire Circle by the pond, and goes on until early the next morning, despite the occasional drizzle. Hjartafinn ends the evening by getting his car to make sure someone on crutches did not have to walk back to his cabin in the rain.
So Many Workshops, So Little Time...
By Thursday morning, thanks to the volunteers, most of the staff has figured out how to get enough free time to fit in the workshops, sweat circles and concerts they want to go to. It's hard enough to choose which workshops to take even if you aren't staff! There are usually 4 or 5 going on at any given time, and inevitably there are some hard choices to make. The Pagan community is blessed by some truly inspired and knowledgeable teachers who give generously of their time to pass knowledge along. The variety of workshops offered is astounding; dancing, deep ecology, shamanism, pathworking, crafting ritual, healing and magic are only some of the subjects we have to choose from.
And more people keep coming in....
Registration is holding up well, processing everyone in as quickly and efficiently as possible while maintaining a safe and secure Gathering. We have managed to find enough lifeguards to keep the pools open, and the sweats are going well. Brian, the Security Coordinator (who is walking around with "Sheriff" writ large in body paint on his chest), assures us that nothing is out of the ordinary. We are all feeling a bit more relaxed.
This year, we have daytime open-air concerts, and the booth where drums are sold is the scene of several impromptu drum jams every day. More music can usually be found near Harper's Hall, where at least one person is almost always playing some instrument or another. (We've discovered that if you put a lot of musicians together in a small area, they seem to have this compulsion to make music. We like music. Having discovered this scientific fact about musician's behavior, we got smart and created Harper's Hall).
By Friday, there's a lot of maintenance being done. Emptying trash and recycling bins, refilling water jugs at handwashing stations, making sure the floor in the Tin Can is swept. Parking and Registration are preparing for an afternoon rush, as the weekend-only attendees begin to arrive. The dump truck pulls in with more rocks for the Sweat Circles; he'll dump the load at the dining hall -- from there it's up to us to haul them up to the fire. Hey, how are we doing for volunteers???
Our medical staff responds quickly to a couple of minor medical emergencies. Good thing Jeff, who's in charge of first aid and safety, was insistent that even if there were only two volunteers available at any given time, he would get them both. He was right -- and we were prepared.
We certainly don't lack for healers here, and by now many of the staff are taking full advantage of the various modalities available. We can choose from massage, cranio-sacral therapy, Reiki, auric healing, and even a student of Michael Harner's who offers shamanic healing.
Early evening, and instruments are being loaded into the Tin Can for tonight's concert, people are putting on their evening finery, and volunteers are sent to build the fire for the Fire Circle later on. Almost 800 people are here now, and the healing, transformative energy is reflected in the love and laughter that are everywhere apparent.
Saturday is the last full day, and the pace in camp seems to pick up, as people try to fit in all the visits, rituals, workshops and events they had planned. The pool is a popular place today, too. The main ritual in the afternoon draws a cast of hundreds as Elspeth and Nybor help us turn the wheel again and greet the start of the dark half of the year.
The evening concert, featuring Shaman, is fantastic, and the drumming at the Fire Circle goes on until dawn.
Merry Part
Sunday morning comes, and the clean-up begins. The sweat team breaks down the lodges, and does their best to return the area to a natural state. Signs come down, floors are swept, the fire pit is filled in, recycling is removed. Hugs are exchanged, a few tears are shed, and the cars load up and drive off. Now, only the staff and a few hardy volunteers are left to finish the clean-up amid an almost empty campground. We'll be back in the fall, for our Fall Retreat event, but FSG is over for 1999. Where did the days go?!
Hey, only 357 days 'til FSG 2000!!
And Merry Meet Again!
Associate Editor - The Witches' Voice
(photo above) is of Ron and Arianna from this years Free Spirit.
Section: festivals
Diotima Mantineia
Location: Hendersonville, North Carolina
Author's Profile: To learn more about Diotima Mantineia - Click HERE
Other Articles: Diotima Mantineia has posted 16 additional articles- View them?
Email Diotima Mantineia... (No, I have NOT opted to receive Pagan Invites! Please do NOT send me anonymous invites to groups, sales and events.)
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Federal Executive Council approves 9 new private Universities
The Federal Executive Council has approved the establishment of nine new private universities across the country.
This was disclosed by the Minister of Aviation, Mr Osita Chidoka, who was among the ministers that briefed newsmen after the council meeting.
The universities approved are: Augustine University Iloran, Lagos State; Chrisland University, Owode, Ogun State; Christopher University, Mowe, Ogun State; Hallmark University, Ijebu Itele, Ogun State; Kings University, Odeomu, Osun State; Micheal and Cecilia Ibru University, Orode in Delta State; Mountain Top University, Makogi Oba in Ogun State; Ritman University, Ikot Ekpene, in Akwa Ibom State; Summit University Offa in Kwara State.
Also approved are loan facilities to the tune of over 4oo million dollars for various development projects in Lagos, Osun, Ogun, Rivers State and community development across the 36 states of the federation.
The Minister of State for Finance, Bashir Yiguda, told journalists that the approval of the loan facilities were part of the Goodluck Jonathan administration’s commitment to better the lives of Nigerians in line with the Transformation Agenda.
Also approved is the award of contract for consultancy services and construction works of the head office complex and ancillary facilities of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board in Yenegoa, Bayelsa, in the sum of 27.1 billion naira.
Credit: Channels
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Pangolin Haka Rose Gold Ring
PATRICK MAVROS
* Approximate price, subject to change
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The little-known pangolin, a distinctive mammal covered from head to foot in scales, is the subject of Patrick Mavros’ jewellery collection. Found across Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, they are the world’s most trafficked animal, and poachers have killed more than one million of them in the last decade. Today, many species are threatened with extinction - a plight that has been close to Mavros’ heart since his father was entrusted to look after a number of these beautiful creatures. This inspired him to team up with photographer and filmmaker Adrian Steirn to help raise funds for the Tikki Hywood Trust, which rescues, rehabilitates and releases the species of pangolin indigenous to Zimbabwe. Alongside Steirn’s moving images of rare pangolins and the people that work to protect them, Mavros created a beautiful collection of jewels that feature this scaly anteater’s distinctive armour in silver, yellow gold and rose gold, with 10% of sales going directly the Tikki Hywood Trust.
READ OUR ARTICLE: The plight of the pangolin
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The plight of the pangolin
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The Ottawa Star
Sexy Pages
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Ottawa Book Expo 2020 – Authors, Publishers look forward to a top-notch Canadian book fair
9 Unique Things To Do In Ottawa If You’re Tired Of Going For Downtown Drinks
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Ottawa’s New Illuminated City Sign Is Basically Just Like The Toronto One
Home›News›Ottawa mayor asks feds for cash to tackle rising pressure on emergency shelters
Ottawa mayor asks feds for cash to tackle rising pressure on emergency shelters
After appealing for help last summer, Mayor Jim Watson has once again asked the federal government to transfer extra funding to the City of Ottawa so it can tackle rising pressures on its emergency shelter system, saying the municipality doesn’t have the resources it needs to meet housing requests from “vulnerable families,” including refugees and refugee claimants
A major reason for this is a “significant and sustained increase” in the number of families experiencing homelessness in Ottawa since 2016, according to a letter Watson wrote to Jean-Yves Duclos, federal minister of families, children and social development.
Notably, families who left the United States and crossed the border into Canada are adding to the growing demand for limited shelter space, claimed the letter, which is dated Dec. 20, 2018.
“The City of Ottawa is unable to meet the demands of vulnerable families in our community for safe, adequate emergency shelter services,” said the letter, co-signed by Somerset Coun. Catherine McKenney, who serves as city council’s special liaison for housing and homelessness.
More families are experiencing chronic homelessness in Ottawa and are staying in the city’s shelters for longer periods of time, Watson and McKenney wrote.
In 2017, the number of chronically homeless families recorded jumped to 236 from 87 in 2016 — an increase of 171 per cent — they said. The letter also claimed that as of Dec. 10, 2018, the city was housing 53 per cent more families in its emergency shelter facilities than at the same point in 2017 — 260 families, up from 170.
As of Nov. 30, 2018, the city had received 584 placement requests from refugee claimants who crossed the Canada-U.S. border alone, 405 of them from families.
City expects costs related to refugees, refugee claimants to rise
Responding to the needs of families who crossed the border into Canada from the U.S. took the City of Ottawa $5.7 million over budget in 2017, the mayor’s letter said, and the city expects that deficit to rise to $6.2 million for 2018.
To address this and other financial and capacity issues plaguing the city’s emergency shelter system, Watson and McKenney are asking the federal government for a cash injection.
WATCH: Bill Blair — Federal government has directed $11 million to alleviate asylum seeker housing crisis
While they didn’t request a specific amount, the two municipal leaders asked the governing Liberals to “provide the same type of assistance for shelters to the City of Ottawa as was provided to the City of Toronto.” Toronto received $11 million in federal dollars to help with the city’s housing issues in August.
“The City of Ottawa has not received any federal funding to date, even though a significant part of the pressure on our shelter system and social supports as (sic) a direct result of the same influx of U.S. refugee claimants,” Watson and McKenney’s letter claimed.
Lisa MacLeod, provincial minister for children, community and social services, formally requested $200 million from the federal government last year to address asylum seekers from the U.S. living in Ontario, asking for $12 million of that amount to be allocated to the City of Ottawa.
City would use funds to boost shelter capacity, housing allowances: letter
The letter said the city would use any funds received to expand its family shelter capacity and increase its portable housing subsidy for families for a limited time so that vulnerable families could seek lodging in the private market.
The City of Ottawa owns and operates one family shelter on Carling Avenue and contracts with two community organizations, including the YMCA, to provide emergency housing for families. When there’s no vacancy in those facilities — and those in need cannot stay with relatives or friends — families are placed in a motel or hotel contracted by the city.
The recent closure of the city’s second family shelter in Mechanicsville has “compounded” the pressures on the emergency housing system, the letter admitted, as well as Ottawa’s tight and expensive rental market.
The city would use any federal dollars to add up to 40 rooms at the Carling Family Shelter and to help the YMCA convert two to three floors of office space into residential rooms to host families, Watson and McKenney wrote.
In a statement sent to Global News on Wednesday morning, a spokesperson for Duclos’s office confirmed the minister received Watson’s letter and that his team is “in the process of producing an official response.”
“Our government believes that all Canadians deserve safe, affordable, accessible housing, and we recognize that when one person is forced to live on the streets, all of us are diminished,” the statement said. “We’ll continue to work with our partners at all levels of government to make sure that we’re responding to the housing and homelessness crisis in the most effective way possible.”
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Title: The Perfect Catch
Series: Texas Playmakers #1
Author: Joanne Rock
Publisher: Tule Publishing
He didn’t think coming home would mean falling in love
Outfielder Calvin Ramsey returns to his Texas farm home after being released from his team, an unexpected surprise sure to tarnish the family baseball legacy. But when he finds a sexy stranger acting as the temporary caretaker for his childhood home, all thoughts of baseball disappear.
She won’t fall for another player
After losing her savings to a swindler ex-boyfriend, Josie Vance moves to Last Stand to start fresh where no one knows her unhappy past or the con that bankrupted her. But her peaceful healing time evaporates when the homeowner’s son arrives and throws himself into life on the farm—and charming Josie. She can’t risk an affair that draws attention to her or her past. Especially not when the public’s fascination with the baseball-playing Ramsey clan is at an all-time high. Can she keep her secrets, her low profile, and her heart too?
Josie listened to the farm stand cashier explain.
“Clint, went into baseball and then, all of his grandsons went into baseball and the granddaughter… well, she left Last Stand long ago. Cal’s been in the majors the longest, and I like, never see him around here even though I’ve worked here since last fall.”
So Cal had been keeping secrets from her—of sorts. Or had he assumed she knew about his family full of athletes? His job explained the expensive car and clothes, the body toned like a machine, maybe even the wariness that dogged him. She imagined pro players were hounded by hangers-on who wanted to be a part of their world for selfish reasons.
But not her. She’d prefer to put ten paces between herself and anyone who was remotely famous. She needed to avoid the spotlight at all costs until the trouble at home died down.
The phone vibrated three more times and the girl burst into laughter. “Sorry!” she apologized to Josie. “I knew Darlene would go nuts when she heard.” She picked up the phone and flipped it over, eyes scanning fast. “She wants a picture? Oh God, how can I get a picture?”
Josie figured she’d lost her audience, but since the coast was clear, she couldn’t resist asking one more question.
“You said he got cut this season?” she asked, wanting to be sure she’d understood. “As in, lost his spot on the team?”
The clerk nodded. “It was so awful--”
“Josie, let’s go.” Cal’s voice startled them both as he came through a back door on the opposite end of the store.
She scrambled back from the counter while the teen dropped her phone. Josie hurried past the blueberries and melons to the archway where Cal now stood, his expression stony.
Had he overheard her question? Guilt swamped her even as she kicked herself for not being more careful.
“Ready,” she announced brightly, peering past him into the greenhouse that connected the barn to the farm stand.
“Are you certain?” His voice was low, just for her ears, before he took her hand and tugged her into the greenhouse behind him.
A fan whirred overhead, conditioning the air that smelled like potting soil and growing things. He tipped a metal door closed behind them. A door that closed silently and reminded her how thoroughly he’d startled her when he re-entered the store.
“Absolutely.” She wanted to say it with conviction. To move on and see the bee hives. But her heart was beating too fast with him holding her hand.
And standing too close to her.
His green eyes probed hers, his nearness making her recall his very intriguing male physique. Was it really her fault to feel a flare of feminine interest when he was a professional athlete and had the body that went with it?
“Make sure you know what you’re in for, Josie, before you say yes.” His voice lacked the geniality that she’d heard him use with the young baseball fan. It was all gritty edged and hard now.
And did something wicked to her insides. Something she couldn’t allow herself to feel so soon after another man had deceived her.
Nerves made her blurt the first thing that came to mind.
“I signed on for bee hives.” She’d been very clear about that from the outset, hadn’t she?
Cal released her hand, but he didn’t back away. “Except now you’ve broken our truce by asking questions. So in return, I’ve got a few questions of my own.”
Four-time RITA nominee Joanne Rock has never met a romance sub-genre she didn't like. The author of over eighty books enjoys writing a wide range of stories, most recently focusing on sexy contemporaries and small town family sagas. An optimist by nature and perpetual seeker of silver linings, Joanne finds romance fits her life outlook perfectly--love is worth fighting for. A frequent speaker at regional and national writing conferences she enjoys giving back to the writing community that nurtured and inspired her early career. She has a Masters degree in Literature from the University of Louisville but credits her fiction writing skills to her intensive study with friend and fellow author Catherine Mann. When she's not writing, Joanne enjoys travel, especially to see her favorite sports teams play with her former sports editor husband and three athletic-minded sons.
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Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Publishers
History | Submissions | Works in WWEnd | Authors | Images
Founded by: David Angus and George Robertson
Location: Lvl 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
PO Box A565, NSW, 1235
Titles/Circulation:
http://www.harpercollins.com.au
HarperCollins occupies a unique place in Australian and New Zealand publishing. In both nations we are the oldest publisher – with a heritage dating back to the bush ballads and school books of the late nineteenth century – and the most forward thinking in terms of our transition to the global digital world of today.
Through the decades, our publishing has been distinguished by a commitment to quality and creativity plus an innate understanding of what Australians and New Zealanders want to read and how. Authors and their work have always been at the heart of our company – without authors there would be no HarperCollins. Publishing is a highly collaborative business: everyone in the company contributes in some way to maximising our author’s work.
Our company has an equally long heritage globally and indeed today we are able to work more closely than ever before with colleagues around the world to ensure that our local titles are exploited internationally. The modern-day HarperCollins Publishers was founded in 1989 by the amalgamation of three proud publishing houses – Harper & Row (founded in New York in 1817), William Collins (founded in Glasgow in 1819) and Angus & Robertson (founded in Sydney in the 1880s).
The Australian story began in 1882 when a sickly young Scotsman, David Mackenzie Angus, arrived in Sydney in the hope that the climate would improve his health. By 1884, he had saved £50 working as a bookseller and was able to open his own secondhand bookshop, where he was joined by a fellow Scotsman George Robertson. Angus & Robertson the bookshop branched into publishing in 1888 with the release of a slim collection of poetry A Crown of Wattle by H. Peden Steele. In 1890, with business booming, it moved to bigger premises at 89 Castlereagh Street, and these offices became a vital part of Australia’s literary life. The first bestseller was A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson’s The Man From Snowy River, which sold 5000 copies in its first four months in 1895 and is still in print (and recited often, sometimes drunkenly, by Australians today).
David Angus and George Robertson’s spirit and flair for publishing Australian books for the Australian market saw them discover and promote the most famous names in Australian literature and proved that our writers did not need to go overseas, or get the imprimatur of publishers in London or New York, to make their name.
In May 2009, HarperCollins took over the responsibility for the ABC Books business, which brought us into close partnership with the national broadcaster. The ABC imprint, publishing non-fiction and children’s books, has a distinct identity in line with the broadcaster’s mission to inform, educate and entertain.
In New Zealand, the first publishing foray began in the late 1880s when the Glasgow-based company William Collins decided to start manufacturing school books in the local market instead of shipping them across the world. In 1889, orders for the top seven titles totalled over 91,000 copies – the equivalent of one Collins book for every school child in the tiny education-focused nation. By 1908, with business booming, the company built eight-storey premises in Wyndham Street, Auckland – the tallest building in the city at the time. Between 1904 and 1924, sales increased by an amazing 60 per cent as school book and stationery sales were overtaken by fiction and nonfiction after World War I and bestselling international crime writers were signed to William Collins in the UK. Local editions were printed in Dunedin to feed this early publishing phenomenon, while regular visits from the personable company patriarch ‘Billy’ Collins kept links with the home company alive. During World War II Collins launched its first truly New Zealand titles.
HarperCollins today
Today HarperCollins produces print and e-books, generally simultaneously, and was one of the first Australian publishers to turn much of the deep backlist into e-books to broaden the life of a book. Short-run digital printing and print on demand technology are used to keep books available in print, while the Harper 360 program exports print editions directly into the US and the UK. Our rights manager sells translation rights to our authors’ books in countries as diverse as Germany, Brazil, Poland and Korea; our books are regularly recognised in literary, design and production awards.
We are currently accepting unsolicited manuscripts through our Wednesday Post portal. Every Wednesday, we will accept submissions through the website. Submissions must be sent through this portal and should meet all the guidelines outlined below. Please note that submissions sent by post or email will NOT be considered for publication.
HarperCollins Publishers is willing to consider material submitted by literary agents. For more information, please see our section on getting published.
Works in the WWEnd Database
GUARDIAN OF EMPIRE
Kylie Chan
SCALES OF EMPIRE
LADY HELEN AND THE DARK DAYS PACT
Alison Goodman
A SHATTERED EMPIRE
Mitchell Hogan
LADY HELEN AND THE DARK DAYS CLUB
Keith Stevenson
BLOOD OF INNOCENTS
Alan Baxter
THE SCRIVENER'S TALE
Fiona McIntosh
Will Elliott
THE DEVIL'S DIADEM
Sara Douglass
THE INFINITY GATE
THE PILGRIMS
MAGIC IN THE SHADOWS
Devon Monk
THE FIFTH STAR IN THE SOUTHERN CROSS
Margo Lanagan
THE TWISTED CITADEL
THE SERPENT BRIDE
DRUID'S SWORD
THE DEVOURED EARTH
Shane Dix
ROSA AND THE VEIL OF GOLD
Kim Wilkins
THE BLOOD DEBT
THE HANGING MOUNTAINS
DARKWITCH RISING
GODS' CONCUBINE
GIANTS OF THE FROST
THE CROOKED LETTER
HEIRS OF EARTH
ORPHANS OF EARTH
THE AUTUMN CASTLE
THE LAMPLIGHTER
Anthony O'Neill
ECHOES OF EARTH
THE SKY WARDEN & THE SUN
THE STORM WEAVER & THE SAND
THE CRIPPLED ANGEL
Simon Brown
FIRE AND SWORD
THE WOUNDED HAWK
THE STONE MAGE & THE SEA
THE DARK IMBALANCE
ANGEL OF RUIN
THE DIAMOND PIT
THE DYING LIGHT
THE NAMELESS DAY
THE PRODIGAL SUN
Rory Barnes
DEADLY SISTER LOVE
P. Scot-Bernard
SINGING THE DOGSTAR BLUES
THE DANCING FLOOR
Cherry Wilder
DREAMING DOWN-UNDER
Janeen Webb
THE RESURRECTED MAN
METAL FATIGUE
LOVE IN VEIN
Poppy Z. Brite
Authors Published
• Sara Warneke • Sean Williams • Shane Dix • Kim Wilkins • Alison Goodman • Simon Brown • Jack Dann • Will Elliott • Alan Baxter • Keith Barnes • Damien Broderick • Mitchell Hogan • Kylie Chan • Melissa Brite • Margo Lanagan • Garth Nix • Devon Monk • Martin Greenberg • Anthony O'Neill • Cherry Grimm • P. Scot-Bernard • Keith Stevenson • Janeen Webb • Fiona McIntosh
No images currently exist for this publisher. Be the first to add one.
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Bernie Madoff, winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize
Have you noticed how overtly anti-Semitic many of the comments on the insolvency of the Madoff investment funds, even those from 'respectable' sources, have been? It's as if everybody has been waiting for their chance to let loose with what they weren't allowed to say about the Jews as recently as a few months ago. Of course, this politeness was to be understood as a commitment to anti-racism, when really it was, as always, deference to power. The US depression has suddenly revealed that the Jewish billionaire emperors aren't wearing any clothes, so suddenly their serfs start saying what they have been thinking all along, but never dared whisper.
There are two aspects of Jewish supremacism - a concept that is suddenly fashionable - involved in the Madoff case, one relatively benign, and one quite evil. The relatively benign one is the propensity of ethnic groups to stick together. Con men from all ethnic groups have always used this: 'the outsiders have got it in for us, but I have this great deal for you, my blood brother'. Madoff was this nice, friendly 'Haimische' Jewish man. The con, in essence, was to create this illusion that he didn't really want your business, a con which only increased the desire of the rubes to throw their money at him, and increased the concept of group solidarity once he deigned to take your money. The Jewishness made it all quite clubby and sociable, while making his victims comfortable with him.
Note how absolutely wrong John Mearsheimer gets it (quoted at Mondoweiss; my emphasis in red):
"There is an angle to this affair that should be dear to your heart, but which nobody is talking about: assimilation. The fact that Jews are: 1) so thoroughly assimilated into American culture, 2) so successful, and 3) and faced with philo-Semitism, not anti-Semitism, has caused a significant weakening of tribal solidarity, which caused Madoff not to care much about shafting his fellow Jews and caused those shafted to let down their guard."
This is, quite frankly, silly. There have always been con-men within minority ethnic groups. Assimilation or no assimilation, they have always used the illusion of tribal solidarity to work their cons. We'll see later the real reason why those shafted let down their guards.
There is also a side issue which helped the Madoff con. Wall Street insiders have known that Madoff was a crook for decades. So how did all these sophisticated investors fall for it? Part of the con - and it is usual for cons to be structured to provide what appears to be money for nothing - was for Madoff to provide an end run around their normal advisers - the guys who would have told them to stay away. You could invest with Madoff by handing him an envelope at a charity banquet without having to pay the percentage that these advisers would charge. Madoff made a big show of his charity work, so you could slip a few million his way, save the normal vigorish charged by your Wall Street guy, and feel that you were actually helping the community! This again reflects the essential clubbiness of being a rich American Jew, looking out for your own, an opportunity given to you solely by virtue of your belonging to the Jewish 'club' (a con reinforced by Madoff's seeming reluctance to take money from anybody but the 'right people'), while screwing the outsiders.
The evil aspect of Jewish supremacism is where we hit the Schadenfreude. Madoff's investors are sophisticated people. How did they believe that it was possible to make double digit returns for decades? It was because he was a Jew. Jews are superior to gentiles - who really are just animals - and the superior being could produce superior returns. The investors allowed their supremacist fantasies to interfere with their lives in the real world, which is usually how supremacists get into trouble.
Madoff donated a lot of money to Zionist causes, which is to say a lot of money to assist in the ethnic cleansing of the Middle East. Have you noticed how everything is falling apart for the Jewish Billionaires? Their money came from outright crookedness, or at the very least from the exploitation of human weakness (there was a lot of gambling money involved), and this sinful money went to fund the ultimate sin of genocide, all based on Jewish tribal supremacism. Madoff's insolvency has destroyed much of the Zionist charitable infrastructure. Bernie Madoff is a most deserving candidate for a Nobel Peace Prize. I'm serious. By destroying American Zionist 'charities', he has done more to advance the cause of Middle East peace than any other man.
Shakespeare the greatest human charater genius concluded: "Fiend a kind of Devil. Certainly, the Jew is the very Devil incarnation".
Who is foolish to argue against the Bard??
Habitual offender
Making peace impossible
Falk and food
Charles Winters?
Merry Christmas, or whatever
Just a list
Supremacist, much?
An excellent exercise for architecture students
A series of crises
Why Rick Warren is so dangerous
Connell and Vance, wellstoned?
My weekend at Bernie's
Oh, come on!
Progressive bigotry
More on Robert Fowler
Bernie Madoff, winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Priz...
Money making with the UN
They don't kill you, but . . .
Barackmail?
Shades of Spitzer
Yippee, more Holocaust movies
Too close to the truth
Bad day at Rideau Hall
Down with the PMO
More on the coalition
King-Byng?
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The Caribbean or Bagua
© 2019 by Michael Auld
If you intend to visit, have been to, are from the Caribbean, or are just curious, or not just interested in sun, sand and sea, this blog is for you. Are you aware of our area's 6,000 years of human history?
Although the area still retains some original natural beauty, in terms of flora and fauna, it is but a shell of itself of 500 years ago [See extinct Cuban/Jamaican Macaw (a Taino word) below the map].
The Amerindian areas in the Caribbean Islands.
Watercolor painting by Jacques Barraband, ca. 1800. The Cuban macaw (two Taino words) or Cuban red macaw (Ara tricolor) was a species of macaw native to the main island of Cuba and (a similar red specie was found in Jamaica) the nearby Isla de la Juventud that became extinct in the late 19th century. As many as 13 now-extinct species of macaw have variously been suggested to have lived on the Caribbean islands. Macaws are known to have been transported between the Caribbean islands and from mainland South America to the Caribbean both in [earliest times by Amerindians] and [post-Colombian] times by Europeans [and others].-Wikipedia
WHAT IS THE CARIBBEAN? and HOW DID IT COME INTO EXISTENCE?
Caribbean (Kare’-bee-an, or Ka-rib’-yan)
1. From the Taíno word Cariba (Strong Men), Caribe, for the Kalinago or Island Carib, the most feared warrior inhabitants of the Antilles. 2. Partially enclosed body of water in the Western Hemisphere called Bagua by the Taínos, 3. The name of the sea and arc of islands which begin off the coast of Venezuela and end off the coast of Florida. 4. A western extension of the Atlantic Ocean which borders on Venezuela, Columbia (South America); Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico (Central America); and the islands of the West Indies. (5) considered by some as part of North America.
THE CARIBBEAN CREATION STORY:
According to the Taíno
In the Taíno Creation Story, one of the earliest acts to be accomplished was the birth of the ocean and all the animals therein. One story tells of the exploits of Deminan, son of Itiba Cahubaba, and one of the Four Father's of Humankind, as the principal ancestor among the four Sky-Walking Brothers.
Above: "FOUR TWINS"; In the process of a cesarean birth. Deminan Caracaracoal, the eldest, and his three Sky-Walking brothers are seated in the womb/cave of their mother, Itiba Cahubaba (Fifth Earth Mother. "The Blodied One"). Together, they are the Four Fathers of humankind. Demenan, the oldest, is the father of the Taíno. The petroglyph painting in the background is a composition of the symbols such as iguana-el, representing the sun. His serrated tail and back is a reflection of the sun's rays. Iguanas love to sun themselves for the absorption of warming ultraviolet rays, and therefore represent that celestial body. Along with boina-el, the black snake cloud, and as Iguanaboina they symbolize the source of life.--Silkscreen print by the author.
Deminan's mischief caused a deluge. The story begins with a god named Yaya whose disrespectful son Yaya-el was exiled for wanting to kill his father. After some time went by, Yaya-el disobeyed his father and decided to return home. Yaya slew his son. According to Taino tradition, Yaya hung his son's bones in an urn in the house. The bones turned into fishes. Yaya-el's disobedient return is interpreted by Antonio Stevens-Arroyo (1988) author of Cave of the Jagua (a book on Comparative Religion by examining Taino culture), he analyzed this myth as a cautionary tale. Forced to leave the Orinoco River Basin because of overpopulation, the ancestors of the Taíno were warned to move on and not to return "upon the pain of death".
Deminan sneaked into the the Supreme Being, Yaya's house while he was away, took the urn (or gourd) down and hung it up badly. The urn fell, gushing out water and spilling out many fish and creatures that came to earth. This is a Great Flood story about the origin of the sea or Bagua. The Taíno’s sentiment about this body of water can be summed up in the following manner. Yucahuguama Bagua Maorocoti, (Below) was the positive and creative force who became the God of the Bagua. His title meant “yuca giver-sea-provider-of woman born without grandfathers”, making him the result of a virgin birth. His mother, Atabey or Ataberia (from the Arawakan Atte, mother.) is the goddess of childbirth and fresh water.
Stone petroglyph of Atabey, at Caguana Ceremonial Park, Puerto Rico. She is one of many stone structures that surround a ceremonial ball-court.
Symbolism: Her legs are frog-like, representing fertility; The bird's head is from a myth associated with a woodpecker who created a vagina for female creatures without genitals, provided to the men after their wives had been seduced during the Guahayona ("Our Pride") Epic, and taken to Matinino, the legendary Island of .Women. Also, as the goddess of childbirth, her ribs are symbols of fresh water running down the mountainside. Her earrings are moon icons.
Yuca or Cassava root-like Yucahuguama Bagua Maorocoti in the form of a three-pointed stone cemi. Cemis or zemis are religious icons similar to those objects in other religions.
(Below: Some of the products from the Taíno staff of life.)
The Caribbean Sea...
Occupies a geographic area of the Americas and is 971,400 sq mi (1,562,983 sq km) in size. [Approximately the size of Europe]. Its greatest depth (7,000 m or 23,009 f ) is Bartlett Deep in the Cayman (Taino word for crocodile) Trench between Cuba, Cayman and Jamaica. The sea floor is made up of a complex system of ocean ridges, trenches, and basins. The floor of the sea is composed of tan to brown muds which contain coarse organic and inorganic materials. Surface water seasonal temperatures vary little from the air above which, in Winter can be 81 deg F (27 deg C) in the day and 70-75 deg F (21-24 deg C) during the night. Torrential rains fall during June, July, and August after the dry months of February and March. There are comparatively long periods of fair weather but from July to October hurricanes (huracan) develop.
Above: Illustration fashioned after a ceramic pot's image of Guabancex, Angry Woman Goddess of the Huracan/Hurricane, Rider of the Winds superimposed over hurricane Katrina. --Photoshoped by the author.
Background image: Sattelite photography. Contemporary meteorologists call the head of Guabancex, an "eye". Taíno women drew the huracan as an "S" shaped form of a flailing woman viewed from above.
The combined land area of all of the islands is 91,000 sq mi (236,000 sq km) with the highest mountain, Pico Duatre, Dominican Republic, rising to 10,417 ft/ 3,175 m. The isles of the Caribbean are also called the West Indies and are comprised of over 1,000 islands and many cays (from the Taíno "cayo"). They are composed of the Bahamas, the Greater and the Lesser Antilles which range in size from Cuba (42,827 sq mi/110,922 sq km, the size of Texas) to Saba (5 sq mi/13 sq km). The Greater Antilles are mountainous and mainly sedimentary in composition. The Lesser Antilles are composed of the Leeward and Windward Islands, many of which are volcanic in origin. Temperatures vary from cool temperate mountains to warm sunny beaches to thorn bush and cacti covered savannas (from the Taino "sabana", meaning flat land). Northeasterly Trade Winds determine rainfall quantities and matching topographic descriptions. Many of the Caribbean islands were lush, tree-covered tropical forests at the Colombian arrival in 1492.
Over six thousand years ago is considered as the Caribbean's Pristine Era. After human arrival some early animals like the sloth became extinct. Each sduccesive wave of human arrivals weighed hevily on the Caribbean only to accelerate during the modern era. Some flora and fauna (like the Cuban bumblebee-sized hummingbird below) were found indigenous to only some islands. For hours passing flocks of parrots and doves blotted out the sun while a school of snappers could darken the sea. The dazzling array of aquatic animals was the hallmark of Caribbean bounty. From turtles to seals, dolphins to revered manatees (Taíno for “Big Woman Goddess) and whales swam its waters
Another concept associated with the geographic area was that the Caribbean consisted of a bagua (sea) with “a bracelet of islands”. In another of their Origin Story arietos (saga songs) the lyrics told that the islands were formed after Deminan was smitten on the back from a glob of cohoba (tobacco snuff inhaled into the nostrils that mixed with snot) discharged from the nostril by the god, Baymanaco on to the mischievous Deminan’s back.
"A swollen hump formed on his back and he loses strength. Lying down on a sliver of sandy beach, in the middle of the vast ocean, Deminan takes deadly sick. Using a coral knife, one of his brothers lances the swollen hump. Out of his back comes one and other turtles. [Turtle Mother lives with the brothers and help to produce the human race]. Out of his back, slide out longer reptiles that swim out to sea. [Reminiscent of the biblical Eve being formed from Adam's rib.] When they surface from under the waters, the heat of the sun petrifies them, forming the islands, big and small, mountain ranges all over our Taino sea. Thus were our lands created." —Taíno informant.
Below (R and L): Bifricated cohoba inhalers for inducing trances. Often used only by shamen and cacikes (chiefs) to cross over into the spirit world. There is a recorded story from Cuba told to the Spanish upon their arrival. "Before the arrival of the Spanish, a past cacike, in a cohoba trance, told of the destruction of their civilization by outsiders. The Taino believed that these outsiders were the Carib. But we found out it is the Spanish."
"The corresponding ceremony using cohoba-laced tobacco is transliterated as cojibá. This corresponds culturally to the practice of drug-induced "astral traveling" so common to the Americas and elsewhere"- Wikipedia.
Wooden and Manatee bone bifricated inhalers
Left and Right: Taino inhalers that some believe was called Tabacu
The word was mistakenly applied to the tobacco leaf, then called kohiba..
In the Bagua, shellfish cruised or burrowed along its shores. On land, snakes, lizards, hutias ( a nocturnal rabbit-sized rodent - still found in Jamaica as Indian "Coney," an Old English word for rabbit.) crawled through its underbrush and trees. Crocodiles (called cayman by the Taíno) trekked the swamps and brackish mangrove (from Taíno manglé) waters. Bats, as Taino souls, glided through firefly-lit nights. Different ethnic Amerindian groups later populated the opulent Caribbean islands.
The earliest human inhabitants to have survived into the "historic era" are thought to be the Guanahatabeys of eastern Cuba. Although linked to the Yucatan, they also shared cultural similarities with Florida inhabitants. They were present in 1492 and spoke a different language than the more populous Taíno and Kalinago or Island Caribs.
Casimiroid People from the Central American (Yucatan) peninsular, at around 4,000 BC, entered Cuba and continued into Hispaniola (Haiti/The Dominican Republic). They brought with them flaked stone tools (some beautifully designed and decorated) and lived off indigenous crocodiles, sea turtles, manatees, whales, a variety of shellfish, fruits (pineapples/anona, guava/guayaba), vegetables (probably amaranth or "callaloo") and a local tuber called guayiga.
Above: Key -(1) Scientific illustration of the guava/guyaba. (2) and (3) Stone carvings of Maquetauri Guayaba, god of the Afterlife who lived on one of twin islands. His was Coaybey, Island of the Afterlife or "Those Who Were Absent". (4) Opiel Guabirang, the hunting Dog of the Afterlife, who hunts down wayward souls (opias) at night to return them to Coaybey (twin island of Soraya or "Sunset", an unreachable place) before sunrise when they would be turned into stone.-- Carved conch shell with superimposed guava seed irises.(5) Sweet commercial Guava Jelly. (6) Guava cheese or paste. Delicious with cream-cheese squares, secured with a toothpick as an Hors d'voeuvre. (7) Bat vomiting stick from a manatee bone, used to empty the stomach before going into a cojoba trance. Fruit bats were spirits, who, at night searched for guava berries that represented the "Sweetness of Life".
Above, Contemporary book illustration of Maquetauri Guayaba from my book "Ticky-Ticky's QUEST" (Below).
Go to http://anansistories.com/Ticky_Ticky.html to see more about the book.
OTHER WAVES OF PEOPLE
Around 2,000 BC, Ortonoid peoples came by canoa/canoe into the Caribbean by way of the South American coast into Trinidad and continued north to a frontier in Puerto Rico. Around 1,000 BC, the Ortonoid of Puerto Rico faced the Casimiroid people of Hispaniola across the Mona Passage. The next group to follow into the Caribbean were the Saladoid circa 1,000 BC.
These Taíno people... continued west into Haiti (Hispaniola), Cuba and Jamaica and north into the Bahamas until they may have eventually reached Florida. Later, Kalinago/Callinago/Island Caribs expanded from mainland South America into the Caribbean. Later, they made trading trips (by sail-rigged canoe) back down to South America.
Kalinago or Island Carib
The people for whom the Caribbean was named were called Carib (Strong Men) by the Taíno or, as they called themselves, Kaliago. They were called Island Carib by ethnohistorians to distinguish them from their cousins, the mainland Caribs of South America. Their territory in 1492, through the conquest of the Taíno men (and intermarrying with the women) stretched above Trinidad up to Guadeloupe with extensive influence further north. Their ancestors continued to live side by side on the mainland with the Arawaks.
Their language, like Taíno , belonged to Arawakan. The men persevered the use of pidgin Cariban, employed in the communication between the mainland Caribs and Arawaks. Not much is known about the culture of precolumbian Island Caribs. Records of their language and culture were taken after their numbers were swelled by Taíno refugees escaping Spanish oppression in the northern Caribbean. They joined in alliances with the Taínos to fight Spanish incursion into the Caribbean. Although they shared many cultural practices with the Taínos they had some distinctive differences. Linguistic differences from Taino may have been because of a Carib amalgamation with the Igneri, the people who preceded them in the islands. The Island Carib, it is believed, settled among the Igneri (also Eyeri or Ieri) and adopted their language. Their reputation as un-swaying warriors caused them to endure. They have the only Amerindian reservation in the Caribbean on the island of Dominica (Dommi’-nee-ka, not to be confused with the Do’-mini-can Republic).
For survival, they successfully fought the Spanish, French, Dutch, and British. In Colonial Williamsburg, the British who were very fearful of the Carib warriors, passed a law to hang any "Carib" brought to the Colony. In Dominica, the Caribs are dignified and industrious farmers who continue to manufacture many of their traditional crafts. Steadily regaining their culture, they are the principal producers of Dominican bananas, coconuts (copra), and passion fruit on the 3,700 acres Carib Reserve.
Above: Chief Irvince Auguiste (1992) of the Carib Reserve, Dominica (Pronounced: Domi-nee-ka as opposed to Do-min-nican Republic the country that shares Hispaniola with Haiti.To see a 1992 interview with the chief, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFnDZSToAW4&t=193s
Above: Herminie (1992) a 7th grade Kalinago girl of Domnica.
Above: Traditional Kalinago basket-maker, Felix Francis,
Above: Traditional Kalinago canoe-maker, Napoleon Sandford. Dominica.
SOME CARIBBEAN CURIOS THAT SURVIVED
A Taíno batu player. (Illustrated by the author) Playing the solid, heavy, bouncing rubber-ball game on batey, a clay field. The ball could break bones. Each village had a batey. When the Spanish arrivals saw the ball bounce, they thought that it was witchcraft. The world's first team sport originated among the Olmec of Mexico's Yucatan. Played by all the major Central American civilizations from the Olmecs to the Aztecs, was also found in Arizona.Invented by the Olmec (Olmec = "People of the Rubber Country"), who first invented Latex Rubber and later, the Ball Game from the Preclassical Period (2500-100 BCE). Made from the sap of the Rubber tree (Castilla elastica) mixed with the sap of the Night Shade in different quantities, made bouncing balls or hard rubber for sandals and pliable waterproof capes.
All rubber-ball games played on a court came from the Olmec invention. Two teams face off together, one North and the other South. The heavy ball is kept airborne by the hips. Among the Maya stone hoops were placed on the East and West walls of the stadium (like basketball).Hitting the ball through the hoop won the game. Among the Aztec the ballplayers were warriors prepared to die by sacrifice to become messengers to the gods.The airborne ball represented the sun and each team may represent positive or negative forces. The game was a form of divination. Among the Aztec more ball-courts were built during times of strife.Betting was true in the Caribbean and Mesoamerica. Lords lost or won kingdoms there. In the Caribbean both women (using a bat) and men played separate games that were more social. Beautifully carved stone belts and elbo protectors were worn. Agility was premium. The Ball Game survives in Mexico among the Maya.
Above: Sixteenth century manuscript illustration of demonstrations of the first Taino ball-game played in King Philip of Spain's court. Illustrated by the Dutch Ambassador. Forefront: A carved Taíno protective batu stone belt
The world's tiniest bird and smallest hummingbird, the Bumblebee or Bee hummer. Endemic to and found only in Cuba. When the photographer first stalked it, he ignored the bird at first, thinking that it was a bumblebee
The Taíno's Aji, also called pepper, Scotch bonnet, or Habañero
Jamaican Rock Iguana (a Taíno word), thought to be extinct until 1991 when one was chased out of the bushes on Hellshire Hills, by a wild pig hunting dog.
Posted by Mike Auld at 6:11 PM
LOST IN THE TERRESTRIAL PARADISE
When the Spanish seamen arrived in the Caribbean in 1492, their description of my homeland caused the clergy and the lettered to proclaim that Columbus had arrived in the Terrestrial Paradise!
Terrestrial Paradise: n. 1. a painting by Netherlandish artist Hieronymus Bosch, dating from around 1490. 2. where the remaining sins of the saved were washed away. The Fountain of Life stands on top of the hill. 3. the Caribbean, as believed by the arriving Spanish in 1492. 4. the pristine Indies and its people, flora and fauna inspired the idea of "Paradise". Also, the reported nudity and youthfulness of the Caribbean's Taino people was reminiscent of Bosch's painting
Unfortunately, I was not taught this point of view by the British educational curriculum by our Colonial government. Jamaica got its independence in 1962 when I was 19, headed for Howard University in Washington, DC. Jamaicans were also taught that they were mainly an African people with a mixed population of bi- and tri-racial "Brown Men", Indian (Hindu), European, Lebanese, Chinese, Sephardi Jew, Portuguese, et al minorities, all subjects in a more important British Empire. In the Empire the curriculum was standardized British. The brainwash was so pervasive that even in the movie theaters, before the film began, we stood to the playing of "God Save The Queen." Nothing was mentioned about the Amerindian Taino civilization (the "Terrestrial Paradise") on which the island was built. After marrying a Native American on campus, my eyes became opened to the realities of the Amerindian hemisphere in which I was born.
ALTERNATIVE AESTHETICS
Colonial education in the English-speaking Caribbean included very little about Jamaican history or culture. So, most Jamaicans knew almost nothing about where we were, geographically. Since the majority of islanders were of African descent, my self discovery as an artist began with our African retentions.
During my African period, I used welded metal, inlaid with etched Plexiglass to make some pieces. Themes were Obatala, the Yoruba father figure; Olokun, the Yoruba god of the sea; a protective triptych with figures of Ast (Isis), Marcus Garvey and Harriet Tubman, as an installation to protect the children who were being killed by the Apartheid South African Government. Each figure was an icon based on an Ethiopian image of a guardian angel.
Above Left: "Ogun" the Yoruba God of Metallurgy was also homage to the material that I chose.. [Wall sculpture from welded steel, beaten metal and bicycle rims).
Center: Sword with the cutout of a dog, Ogun's symbol.
Right: Brass crown, topped by a lost wax casting of a bumblebee.
Above: Metal and inlaid etched Plexiglass examples from an Egyptian inspired Horus piece titled "Sun's Sons". A tribute to father and son to compliment the traditional "Mother and Child" artworks. This sculpture was a part of my Egyptian inspired pieces.(Metal. Made from the front forks of bicycles")
AMERINDIAN AESTHETICS: An Artist's Re-education
When Columbus arrived in my part of the world that he believed was a Terrestrial Paradise, there was a lost opportunity to discover where he actually was. Blinded by an ethnocentrism and a search for gold, he was not capable of understanding where he had arrived. He had come to an alien Amerindian hemisphere steeped in the beauty of ingenious, ancient, and diverse cultures.
Successive myopic Europeans, Africans, Middle Easterners, and Asians arrived with shared blinders. As an artist, born in Jamaica, this non-Indigenous myopia was not good enough for me. I belatedly had to discover geographically where I had been born and may die. I was neither in Europe or Africa. For an artist, this self-ignorance can be devastating.
My dilemma was that a major part of my cultural puzzle was missing. The solution was self-education. I began to research my Northern Caribbean Taíno and our Eastern Caribbean Kalinago (Island Carib) cultures. After all, those nostalgic things that I identified as "Jamaican ", were actually Taíno. I was convinced that my artwork should reflect the culture on which I was weaned. Steeped in a Eurocentric Colonial education, I began research in African folklore and West African aesthetics. My sculptures were based on "Objects of Power".
For a couple of years prior to 1992, I began to research Taíno and Central American designs and sculptural aesthetics. My theory was that if the Columbian Encounter did not occur then Central American artistic aesthetics would have spread into to the Caribbean. There was already indications of Yamaye (Jamaican) Taino interaction along the island's South Coast, just across from the Maya of Mexico's Yucatan. Cortez had come across a Yamaye woman when he arrived in Mexico. In terms of stylistic borrowing, Mesoamerica would have stylistically been The Egypt of the Americas. So, I mixed Mesoamerican sculptural aesthetics with the Taíno sense of design. (This experiment can be seen below with the “Itiba Cahubaba” and the birth of the “Four Father’s of Humankind” sculpture.)
I began to research Taíno artistic, cultural, aesthetics and mythology. So, in 1991, at the advent of the Columbian Encounter, I applied for a Cafritz Foundation Grant to research indigenous retentions in Jamaica (Taino), Puerto Rico (Taino), Antigua (Arawak?), and Dominica (Island Carib),.
AMERINDIAN GALLERY
Below: “Iguanaboina”, the source of life. Iguana=the Sun, along with, Boina (the Black Raincloud), together they represent the source of life. (Welded steel, carved Plexiglass and inlay, 9' tall).
Above: "Lightening Eel: Sea
God of the Caribs". (Carved
from a 9' tall pine tree.)
Below: “Guabancex" the Huracan/Hurtricane.(wall sculpture). Taino women made Guababcex, the Angry Woman Goddess and Rider of the Winds, in the shape of later satellite images of the hurricanes.(See image on the right palm of the sculpture.) To the ceramicists, the "eye" of the hurakan was the face of Guabancex. [Clay, wood, vines]
Below: “Itiba Cahubaba”, the Fifth Earth Mother” and the “Four Fathers of Humankind” (Middle pix) in the womb/birth-cave). She dies in the cesarian births.
Left: Detail; "The Four Fathers of Humankind" representing the four human races. They are emerging from the primordial womb/cave painted with Taino pictographs. Itiba Cahubaba is styled after Mesoamerican sculptures and her sons by cesarean birth, are from Taino aesthetics..
Bottom: The epic of “Guahayona” (Three views) the First Shaman and his “Travels to the Island of Women (Matanino) and the Island of Gold” (Guanin). This story inspired the Spanish novel with the island of "La California" (the naming of the state), and the naming of the Amazon. (Wooden slats, conch shell, paint, vines, & red and blue macaw feathers.) The canoe is in the form of the solitary fish, a barracuda (Kalinago/Island Carib word, meaning "He who stays alone".)
Below: “Matanino”, the "Island of Women” from the "Travels of Guahayona". Right: Detail of head (A tri-Pointed stone cemi. Two fertility breasts, one a turtle (Childbirth), the other a frog, also associated with childbirth.
Print: with Guahayona in his canoa (canoe)
and images from Puerto Rico
of Atabey, the virgin Mother of
Yucahu, main Taino god of the yuca
and of the sea, without
grandfathers."
Left: "Guanin" (The Island of Gold). (Cherry wood). A symbol of gold, to the Taino the hummingbird or Colibri's shimmering feathers represents that metal,
Right: A silkscreen print of Guaha-yona's travel to Matinino (meaning "No Fathers"), is the Island of Women.
Guahayona said to the women, "Leave your children and come away with me and I will give you much gueyo." (Guahayona means "Our Pride", while gueyo is a green chewing tobacco mixed with a salty ashes of an algae. That gives a buzz. He then takes the women to Matinino where he falsely promises to return for them. The moral to women? "Be aware of pride."
Below: Accompanying silkscreen print titled, "Guanin". Guanin is 14k gold and the Guahayona Epic, he leaves Matinino for Guanin. This story was recorded on Hispaniola (Ayti Bohio or Kiskeya) by Fr. Ramon Pane, transported to Spain and influenced Spanish novelist Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo who was a Castilian author who published “Sergas de Esplandián”. California takes its name from de Montalvo’s novel and the ruler of the mythological Island’s Queen Calafia, who was the “black”, virginal Amazon ruler of La California.--http://yamaye-mike.blogspot.com/2018/12/influence-of-taino-carib.html
Enlargement of: "Guanin" (cherry wood,
Mother of Perl inlays, Gold-leaf)
Right: "Guanahani", (meaning: Island of the Iguana) on which Columbus first arrived in the Bahamas. (carved Limestone). Columbus promptly changed the name to "San Salvador".
Guahayona's Epic: "Travel to Guanin", (Silkscreen print on hand-made paper.) The central image is the incorporation of a Spanish woodcut from the period. It captures "panning" for gold, an original Taino method of gold-mining alluvial gold powder near streams in "Hispaniola" (Ayti Bohio or Kiskeya,)
Top: Installation of “Anacaona on her Dujo (stool/throne) in her Bohio (Roundhouse)”. The Bohio is composed of iguanas (upright) and Boinas (roof) symbols of life. Anacaona means Golden Flower. She was the "Kacike/Cacika (queen/ruler) of Jaragua". She governed over 100 Kackies in today's Haiti (Ayte Bohio). She was assassinated in 1503 by the Spanish governor Nicolas de Ovando (for whom she had set up a reception) as part of the Taino genocide.
Left: Anacaona; made from cherry wood, Amazon parrot wings and conch shell earrings..
Above:: Video; “He Who Does Not Blink”, the Origin Story. The Watchman at the entrance of the cave/womb from which the Taíno entered the world.
Installation: "Bohuti Mucaro" (Shaman Owl) with maracas (Taino) and a sacred cigar (Taino) is a life-sized sculpture of a shaman shape-shifting into a bird ("He Who Does Not Blink") --Wood, bark, tree gourds (calabash/higuera).
Enlargement: "Gifts to the World". The gourds surrounding the sculpture contains just a few items from the Taino culture that entered world cultures after 1492.
400 Years of African-American History
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Read The People vs. Alex Cross Online
Authors: James Patterson
The People vs. Alex Cross
BOOK: The People vs. Alex Cross
Also by James Patterson
Part One: Platinum Damages the Brain
Part Two: A Killer’s Son
Part Three: The Prosecution of Alex Cross
Part Four: In Defense of Alex Cross
Part Five: All Blondes must Die
THE CHARGES: EXPLOSIVE
Alex Cross has never been on the wrong side of the law – until now. Charged with gunning down followers of his nemesis Gary Soneji in cold blood, Cross is being turned into the poster child for trigger-happy cops who think they’re above the law. Cross knows it was self-defence. But will a jury see it that way?
THE EVIDENCE: SHOCKING
As Cross fights for his freedom, his former partner John Sampson brings him a gruesome video tied to the mysterious disappearances of several young girls. Despite his suspension from the department, Cross can’t say no to Sampson. The illicit investigation leads them to the darkest corners of the Internet, where murder is just another form of entertainment.
THE PEOPLE VS. ALEX CROSS: THE TRIAL OF THE CENTURY
As the prosecution presents its case, and the nation watches, even those closest to Cross begin to doubt his innocence. If he can’t convince his own family, how can he hope to persuade a jury? Although he has everything on the line, Cross will do whatever it takes to stop a dangerous criminal … even if he can’t save himself.
is one of the best-known and biggest-selling writers of all time. His books have sold in excess of 350 million copies worldwide. He is the author of some of the most popular series of the past two decades – the Alex Cross, Women’s Murder Club, Detective Michael Bennett and Private novels – and he has written many other number one bestsellers including romance novels and stand-alone thrillers.
James is passionate about encouraging children to read. Inspired by his own son who was a reluctant reader, he also writes a range of books for young readers including the Middle School, I Funny, Treasure Hunters, House of Robots, Confessions, and Maximum Ride series. James has donated millions in grants to independent bookshops and has been the most borrowed author in UK libraries for the past ten years in a row. He lives in Florida with his wife and son.
Have you read them
Alex Cross is working on the high-profile disappearance of two rich kids. But is he facing someone much more dangerous than a callous kidnapper?
KISS THE GIRLS
Cross comes home to discover his niece Naomi is missing. And she’s not the only one. Finding the kidnapper won’t be easy, especially if he’s not working alone …
A pair of ice-cold killers are picking off Washington’s rich and famous. And they have the ultimate target in their sights.
An old enemy is back and wants revenge. Will Alex Cross escape unharmed, or will this be the final showdown?
Alex Cross faces his most fearsome opponent yet. He calls himself Death. And there are three other ‘Horsemen’ who compete in his twisted game.
After a series of fatal bank robberies, Cross must take the ultimate risk when faced with a criminal known as the Mastermind.
ARE BLUE
As Alex Cross edges ever closer to the awful truth about the Mastermind, he comes dangerously close to defeat.
Preparing to resign from the Washington police force, Alex Cross is looking forward to a peaceful life. But he can’t stay away for long …
There is a mysterious new mobster in organised crime. The FBI are stumped. Luckily for them, they now have Alex Cross on their team.
The stakes have never been higher as Cross pursues two old enemies in an explosive worldwide chase.
Hollywood’s A-list are being violently killed, one-by-one. Only Alex Cross can put together the clues of this twisted case.
Haunted by the murder of his wife thirteen years ago, Cross will stop at nothing to finally avenge her death.
Alex Cross is starting to settle down – until he encounters a maniac killer who likes an audience.
When an old friend becomes the latest victim of the Tiger, Cross journeys to Africa to stop a terrifying and dangerous warlord.
(with Richard DiLallo)
In a family story recounted here by Alex Cross, his great-uncle Abraham faces persecution, murder and conspiracy in the era of the Ku Klux Klan.
Investigating the violent murder of his niece Caroline, Alex Cross discovers an unimaginable secret that could rock the entire world.
Alex Cross is planning his wedding to Bree, but his nemesis returns to exact revenge.
The President’s children have been kidnapped, and DC is hit by a terrorist attack. Cross must make a desperate decision that goes against everything he believes in.
MERRY CHRISTMAS, ALEX CROSS
Robbery, hostages, terrorism – will Alex Cross make it home in time for Christmas … alive?
With his personal life in turmoil, Alex Cross can’t afford to let his guard down. Especially with three blood-thirsty killers on the rampage.
When a dangerous enemy targets Cross and his family, Alex finds himself playing a whole new game of life and death.
TO DIE
Cross’s family are missing, presumed dead. But Alex Cross will not give up hope. In a race against time, he must find his wife, children and grandmother – no matter what it takes.
CROSS JUSTICE
Returning to his North Carolina hometown for the first time in over three decades, Cross unearths a family secret that forces him to question everything he’s ever known.
Cross steps in to investigate a wave of murders erupting across Washington, D.C. The victims have one thing in common – they are all criminals.
A list of more titles by James Patterson can be found at the back of this book
Why everyone
James Patterson and Alex Cross
‘It’s no mystery why James Patterson is the world’s most popular thriller writer. Simply put:
‘No one gets this big without
amazing natural storytelling
talent – which is what Jim has, in spades. The Alex Cross series proves it.’
‘James Patterson is the
by which all others are judged.’
‘Alex Cross is one of the
best-written heroes
in American fiction.’
‘Twenty years after the first Alex Cross story, he has become one of the
greatest fictional detectives
of all time, a character for the ages.’
Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
‘Alex Cross is a
‘Patterson boils a scene down to the single, telling detail, the element that
defines a character
or moves a plot along. It’s what fires off the movie projector in the reader’s mind.’
‘James Patterson is
. End of.’
The Gatekeeper by Michelle Gagnon
Nightwise by R. S. Belcher
Fringe Runner (Fringe Series Book 1) by Rachel Aukes
Momentous Kisses: Love in Sandy Beach by Gray, Jessica
Love On The Brazos by Carlton, Susan Leigh
Thrust into the Alien's Arms (Lords of Astria) by Juno Wells
Sleeping Beauty by Judith Ivory
Gathering Storm by Parry, Jess
Seducing the Enemy's Daughter by Jules Bennett
The Grace In Darkness by Melissa Andrea
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Ben Denzer, 2011–present
Procrastination may also give you some status. After all, its only very lucky or very wealthy people who don’t have to work hard at things. If you procrastinate and take it easy, you may be saying, I’m a special kind of person-I’m one cut above the rest. I shouldn’t have to work hard and hustle. I deserve to play and have fun.
— David D. Burns, M.D. The Feeling Good Handbook
Bread and butter letter, also known as bagel and cream cheese.
— Sid the Kid on thank you note email subject line
Becoming the biggest small.
— Markus Dohle
Aspen’s had a rough day.
— United baggage claim representative at LGA
I like the sound of rehearsal.
— Lily on the sound of a child playing piano near the bathrooms at the Aspen Jewish Community Center
Waitress.
— Emily at Il Poggio
Are you the one she was waving at? Ah! That’s hilarious.
— Random woman after I said “did she (Emily) get on the plane?”
Stay funky. Stay fresh. Stay thug. Stay #blessed…
— Spencer in email after I sent one saying I was going on vacation
I exchanged kids for these other pursuits.
— Barstow alumnus
Figuring it out.
Intellectually restless throughout his life, Professor Minsky sought to move on from mathematics once he had earned his doctorate. After ruling out genetics as interesting but not profound, and physics as mildly enticing, he chose to focus on intelligence itself.“The problem of intelligence seemed hopelessly profound,” he told The New Yorker magazine when it profiled him in 1981. “I can’t remember considering anything else worth doing.”
— Glenn Rifkin, “Marvin Minsky, Pioneer in Artificial Intelligence, Dies at 88,″ The New York Times
And I must push my barrow all the day.
— The Decemberists, “Eli, the Barrow Boy”
Each of these are individual snowflakes!
— Lily in a big pile of snow
And then I thought, if chicken’s in it, how bad could it be?
— Sid the Kid on Wednesday’s cabbage soup
Funeral cards.
— Co-worker
Work harder.
— Helen
But the beginner should not think that he will recognize the full beauty of these examples right away. Only after long study and practice in copying does one grasp the vital importance of each detail and of the specific shape of a letter in relation to the entire alphabet.
— Jan Tschichold, Treasury of Alphabets and Lettering
We have made ever effort to make this the best book possible. Our paper is opaque with minimal show-through; it will not discover or become brittle with age. Pages are sewn in signatures, in the method traditionally used for the best books, and will not drop out, as often happens with paperbacks held together with glue. Books open flat for easy reference. The building will not crack or split. This is a permanent book.
— Disclaimer under “A DOVER EDITION DESIGNED FOR YEARS OF USE!,” back of Snow Crystals by W. A. Bentley and W. J. Humphrey (2453 illustrations)
— Little Chinese girl to Lily at Jing Fong with Eli and David
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What We Charge
Wills and Conveyancing
Accessible Family Law
Domestic Violence & Intervention Orders
“Your safety and your children’s safety should never be at risk – this is a non-negotiable issue.” – Nicole Le Pou, Principal Family Lawyer.
What to do when you and/or your children are at risk.
Family and domestic violence is unfortunately an all too common occurrence - especially during the painful breakdown of a relationship. The most important thing you can do is to get help – immediately.
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Research ArticleOncology Free access | 10.1172/JCI87191
Dynamin impacts homology-directed repair and breast cancer response to chemotherapy
Sophia B. Chernikova,1 Rochelle B. Nguyen,1 Jessica T. Truong,1 Stephano S. Mello,1 Jason H. Stafford,1 Michael P. Hay,2 Andrew Olson,3 David E. Solow-Cordero,4 Douglas J. Wood,5 Solomon Henry,5 Rie von Eyben,1 Lei Deng,1 Melanie Hayden Gephart,6 Asaithamby Aroumougame,7 Claudia Wiese,8 John C. Game,1 Balázs Győrffy,9,10 and J. Martin Brown1
1Department of Radiation Oncology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.
2Auckland Cancer Society Research Centre, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand.
3Microscopy Service,
4High-Throughput Bioscience Center,
5Data Coordinating Center, Department of Biomedical Data Science, and
6Department of Neurosurgery, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.
7Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA.
8Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA.
9MTA TTK Lendület Cancer Biomarker Research Group, Institute of Enzymology, Budapest, Hungary.
10Semmelweis University 2nd Department of Pediatrics, Budapest, Hungary.
Address correspondence to: J. Martin Brown, 244 Esmeralda Drive, Santa Cruz, California 95060, USA. Phone: 415.730.1190; Email: mbrown@stanford.edu.
Authorship note: RBN, JTT, and SSM contributed equally to this work.
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First published October 29, 2018 - More info
Published in Volume 128, Issue 12 on December 3, 2018
First published October 29, 2018 - Version history
After the initial responsiveness of triple-negative breast cancers (TNBCs) to chemotherapy, they often recur as chemotherapy-resistant tumors, and this has been associated with upregulated homology-directed repair (HDR). Thus, inhibitors of HDR could be a useful adjunct to chemotherapy treatment of these cancers. We performed a high-throughput chemical screen for inhibitors of HDR from which we obtained a number of hits that disrupted microtubule dynamics. We postulated that high levels of the target molecules of our screen in tumors would correlate with poor chemotherapy response. We found that inhibition or knockdown of dynamin 2 (DNM2), known for its role in endocytic cell trafficking and microtubule dynamics, impaired HDR and improved response to chemotherapy of cells and of tumors in mice. In a retrospective analysis, levels of DNM2 at the time of treatment strongly predicted chemotherapy outcome for estrogen receptor–negative and especially for TNBC patients. We propose that DNM2-associated DNA repair enzyme trafficking is important for HDR efficiency and is a powerful predictor of sensitivity to breast cancer chemotherapy and an important target for therapy.
DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) are believed to be the most critical lesions induced by many cancer therapies, including chemotherapy and ionizing radiation (IR). Homology-directed repair (HDR), or homologous recombination repair, plays an important role in tumor resistance to treatment because it repairs these breaks. Hence, the clinical ability to inhibit HDR may lead to improved outcome for patients undergoing DSB-inducing cancer therapy. On the other hand, defects in HDR result in genomic instability and increase carcinogenesis, explaining the fact that tumor cells in many aggressive cancers, including some forms of breast, ovarian, and pancreatic cancers, are defective in HDR (1). HDR defects are thought to be involved in the etiology of these cancers in such cases. As an example, women with germline mutations in BRCA1, a tumor suppressor with crucial roles in HDR and maintenance of genome stability, have a high risk of developing breast and ovarian tumors. Since HDR is involved in repair of DNA DSBs and interstrand cross-links (ICLs), cells with defective BRCA1 are unable to repair these types of damage and display sensitivity to DSB- and ICL-inducing agents, such as IR and nitrogen mustards (e.g., chlorambucil and cyclophosphamide).
Mutations in BRCA1 are particularly prevalent in triple-negative breast cancers (TNBCs), i.e., those that do not express estrogen receptor and progesterone receptor and lack overexpression or amplification of human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2/NEU, or erbB2). TNBCs have a significant overlap with basal-like breast cancers (BLBCs), and the majority of BRCA1-related tumors are both triple-negative and basal-like (2, 3). These cancers are characterized by high genomic instability, fast growth, and early metastasis, and have the worst prognosis among breast cancer types. Sporadic TNBCs also display a genome instability phenotype and sensitivity to chemotherapy similar to those of the BRCA1-related TNBCs, suggesting that deficiency in BRCA1 or other DNA repair defects may also be involved in their etiology. In fact, promoter methylation and transcriptional inactivation of BRCA1, defects in DNA excision repair, and low expression of DNA repair genes from HDR, nucleotide excision repair, and Fanconi anemia pathways (4, 5) are observed in TNBCs.
Since TNBCs lack the expression of hormone receptors and do not overexpress HER2, no targeted therapy is available for these breast cancers, and standard DNA-damaging chemotherapy remains the main treatment of choice for TNBC/BLBC patients (2, 3). On a positive note, as mentioned, early-stage TNBCs/BLBCs display high sensitivity to chemotherapy, likely due to DNA repair defects, and if they do not relapse within the first 3–5 years after chemotherapy, the risk of relapse at later times is significantly lower than for other types of breast cancer (6, 7). However, in an apparent paradox, tumors that present at late stage or have relapsed are very resistant to treatment and often display upregulation of HDR (8–12). Mechanistically, this HDR upregulation may represent selective adjustment to DNA repair deficiencies characteristic of TNBCs. For example, in cells with BRCA1 deficiency the HDR defect can be rescued by upregulation of RAD51, the protein with a central role in the homologous recombination reaction (13, 14). In fact, overexpression of RAD51 is a common feature of tumors from TNBC patients (13), but the mechanisms of HDR reactivation in TNBCs are largely unknown.
HDR inhibitors may be particularly useful for targeting upregulated HDR in TNBCs. In addition, HDR inhibitors may benefit tumor therapy in general, as they target S/G2 populations and spare normal tissues that are mostly in G1/G0 (15). S/G2 populations are often enriched within tumors as a result of chemotherapy or fractionated IR therapy (16).
In a search for new and more effective HDR inhibitors, we conducted a small-molecule screen based on potentiation of the cytotoxicity of the ICL-inducing agent chlorambucil. Cells defective in HDR cannot perform a recombination step of ICL repair and are therefore hypersensitive to DNA cross-linking agents (17, 18). Unexpectedly, we identified a group of tubulin binders as potent inhibitors of HDR. We also show that inhibition of dynamin 2 (DNM2) — mostly known for its role in endocytosis and interaction with microtubules (19–21) — has a rapid and profound inhibitory effect on HDR capability. We considered the possibility that the DNM2-mediated role in HDR involved trafficking of DNA repair enzymes and studied the distribution of RAD51 within different cellular compartments. We found that, under unperturbed conditions, a considerable fraction of RAD51 in cytoplasm is found in vesicles tightly associated with the microtubules, and that DNM2 inhibition leads to reduced nuclear accumulation of RAD51 at the sites of DSBs.
We reasoned that if dynamin levels were important in enabling HDR in cells, then high HDR activity might correlate with high dynamin expression, which then potentially could predict the response to therapy of patients with TNBC/BLBC. In a retrospective analysis, we find that low DNM2 expression in tumors at the time of chemotherapy is associated with significantly increased survival of patients with TNBC/BLBC. Taken together, our results suggest that DNM2 and associated cell trafficking of the RAD51 recombinase are important determinants of HDR efficiency and treatment outcome for patients with TNBC/BLBC.
High-throughput screen to identify HDR inhibitors. HDR deficiency is associated with extreme sensitivity to agents that induce DNA ICLs (17, 18). Therefore, inhibitors of HDR are expected to further increase the sensitivity of cells to these agents. As nitrogen mustards (e.g., chlorambucil) are potent inducers of ICLs, we monitored the increase in cellular sensitivity to chlorambucil as a readout to identify HDR inhibitors (Figure 1A). In secondary screens, 2 HDR-specific assays — for the capabilities for RAD51 foci formation and for gene conversion — were tested. The RAD51 foci formation assay relies on quantitation of subnuclear RAD51 foci formed in response to DNA damage. The gene conversion assay uses a direct-repeat DR-GFP recombination substrate that quantitates HDR efficiency by detecting GFP signal in cells that used HDR to restore broken GFP sequence (Supplemental Figure 1A; supplemental material available online with this article; https://doi.org/10.1172/JCI87191DS1) (22). As a positive control, we chose to treat cells with 17-AAG (17-allylamino-17-demethoxygeldanamycin; see structure in Supplemental Figure 1B), an agent belonging to the geldanamycin family (23) that binds to the ATP-binding region of HSP90 and inhibits HDR by blocking the HSP90-dependent maturation of RAD51 and BRCA1 (24). Treatment of cells with 17-AAG inhibited both gene conversion (Figure 1B and Supplemental Figure 1C) and IR-induced Rad51 foci formation (Figure 1C and ref. 24) in CHO AA8 cells, as well as in CHO irs1SF cells, which are defective in HDR because of loss of the Xrcc3 gene (Supplemental Figure 1D). Exposure to 17-AAG also significantly elevated chromatid-type aberrations after chlorambucil (Figure 1D and Supplemental Figure 1E). Notably, 17-AAG increased chlorambucil sensitivity of repair-proficient CHO AA8 cells, but had no effect on the chlorambucil sensitivity of HDR-defective CHO irs1SF cells (Figure 1E), suggesting that 17-AAG potentiates chlorambucil cytotoxicity through inactivation of HDR. This conclusion is further supported by the knockdown of the HDR mediator Rad51C in AA8 cells (Supplemental Figure 1F): both knockdown of Rad51C and pretreatment with 17-AAG separately increase the sensitivity of AA8 cells to chlorambucil, while 17-AAG does not further increase chlorambucil sensitivity in cells with shRad51C knockdown. Combined, our data suggest that 17-AAG can be used as a positive control in the screen to identify agents compromising HDR. As expected, in our library screen of known compounds for HDR inhibition (see Methods), 17-AAG (and other geldanamycins) came up among the positive hits. Interestingly and unexpectedly, our screen also identified agents that disrupt tubulin dynamics and endocytosis (Figure 2A).
Overview of the small-molecule screen performed to identify inhibitors of homology-directed repair (HDR). (A) Diagram of the screen. (B–E) 17-Allylamino-17-demethoxygeldanamycin (17-AAG) is used as a positive control for the screen. (B) 17-AAG inhibits gene conversion in the U2OS-DR-GFP cells. Details on gene conversion assay and quantification are provided in Supplemental Figure 1, A and C. (C) 17-AAG (100 nM) inhibits formation of Rad51 foci in the CHO AA8 cells after 3 Gy. Images were taken at 2 hours after irradiation. Representative images from n ≥ 3 experiments are shown. Scale bars: 10 μm. Quantification of signals is provided in Figure 2D. (D) Chlorambucil (CMBL; 5 μM) induces chromatid-type aberrations in CHO AA8 cells, and 17-AAG (150 nM) potentiates this effect. Arrowheads point to chromatid gaps and breaks, and arrows to complex chromatid exchanges. Scale bars: 20 μm. Graph on the right shows quantitation for data exemplified on the left. Significance analysis: 2-way ANOVA (P = 0.0343). Distribution of chromatid-type aberrations for each treatment is shown in Supplemental Figure 1E. (E) 17-AAG (50 nM) increases sensitivity of CHO AA8 cells to chlorambucil, but does not affect sensitivity of HDR-deficient CHO irs1SF cells, as measured by MTS assay. Bottom: The same data as in the top panel for the irs1SF cells at lower concentrations of chlorambucil. Shown are means ± SDs from n ≥ 3 experiments. Significance analysis: 2-way ANOVA (P < 0.0001). *P < 0.05, ****P < 0.0001.
High-throughput chemical screen identifies tubulin binders as inhibitors of HDR. (A) A pie chart of the prescreen using the libraries of known compounds shows that 21% of compounds potentiating the chlorambucil effect classify as disruptors of cell trafficking. (B) Fraction of cells undergoing gene conversion after DSBs induced by I-SceI (GFP-positive cells) versus fraction of surviving cells. The plot identifies compounds that are able to inhibit gene conversion without affecting cell viability. The yellow line and the area above it show compounds (light gray symbols) for which inhibition of gene conversion (low fraction of GFP-positive cells) could have resulted from increased cell death associated with compound toxicity. True inhibitors of gene conversion are clustering in the left lower quadrant (below the yellow line), where compounds inhibit gene conversion at concentrations not affecting cell viability. (C) CB2, CB4, and CD3 (see Supplemental Figure 2B) inhibit tubulin polymerization similarly to vinblastine. The results for taxol are shown for comparison purposes. Taxol, vinblastine, CB2, CB4, and CD3 were used at 10 μM. (D) CB2, CB4, CB6, and CB13 inhibit radiation-induced Rad51 formation in CHO AA8 cells. CB2 and CB6 were used at 100, 200, and 400 nM each. CB4 and CB13 were used at 200, 400, and 800 nM each. 17-AAG (control) was used at 100, 200, and 400 nM. Shown are means ± SDs from n > 2 experiments. Significance analysis: ANOVA. **P < 0.01, ****P < 0.0001.
A high-throughput screen reveals that microtubule-binding agents impair HDR. We screened chemical libraries of more than 130,000 diverse compounds. We found 640 hits in the primary screen using the chlorambucil sensitivity assay, of which 46 were confirmed in a dose-response assay to indeed increase cellular sensitivity to chlorambucil. These 46 compounds were further tested in the gene conversion assay. To separate inhibitors of HDR from compounds that reduce GFP expression because of their cytotoxicity or cytostatic effects, we plotted gene conversion levels versus cell growth (Figure 2B). Inhibition of HDR at concentrations compatible with cell survival should significantly reduce the number of GFP-positive cells. Therefore, HDR inhibitors should cluster in the lower left (low gene conversion and high survival) quadrant of the chart (dark gray symbols). As expected, this quadrant contained 17-AAG, and also mirin and curcumin, 2 other compounds previously reported to inhibit HDR (25, 26). All 3 compounds reduced I-SceI–induced HDR at concentrations compatible with cell survival (Figure 2B). In agreement with the results of our screen using the known compound libraries (Figure 2A), the “low gene conversion and high survival” quadrant contained several compounds from a family related to a naphthopyran, LY290181 (Supplemental Figure 2, A and B), which binds microtubules (27, 28). These hits were tested for inhibition of microtubule polymerization. We found that they acted similarly to the Vinca alkaloid vinblastine, a well-characterized and clinically used inhibitor of microtubule dynamics (Figure 2C). In addition to inhibiting gene conversion (Figure 2B and Supplemental Figure 2C), all tested compounds from the LY290181 family also impaired IR-induced Rad51 foci formation (Figure 2D). Importantly, these compounds inhibited gene conversion and Rad51 foci at low concentrations known to affect tubulin dynamics but not tubulin polymerization, and at these concentrations they did not affect cell growth and cell cycle distribution (Supplemental Figure 2D and Supplemental Figure 3).
To test whether other tubulin binders affected HDR in a similar manner, we chose to investigate the effects of 3 drugs that bind to different microtubule domains, namely vinblastine, combretastatin A4 (CA4), and taxol. All 3 inhibited both gene conversion and the formation of IR-induced Rad51 foci (Figure 3, A and B). In AA8 cells costained with γH2AX, IR-induced Rad51 foci overlapped with γH2AX foci (Figure 3C). Treatment with tubulin binders led to a reduction in the number of cells with Rad51-positive γH2AX foci (Figure 3C and Supplemental Figure 4A). Importantly, tubulin binders did not inhibit the nonhomologous end-joining (NHEJ) pathway of DSB repair (Supplemental Figure 4B). We note that γH2AX foci in cells treated with tubulin binders were noticeably larger in size (Figure 3C). To the highest dose used, they still contained some Rad51, suggesting that Rad51 recruitment to DSBs was reduced rather than abolished. In a popular view of Rad51 foci assembly, foci are formed from the available nuclear pool of Rad51 (29). Cell fractionation studies further show that the full response to DNA damage involves a cytoplasmic-to-nuclear transport of Rad51 (30) and that this process may be tubulin-dependent (31). Our data obtained by quantification of total Rad51 nuclear fluorescence after treatment with tubulin binders support these cell fractionation studies (Supplemental Figure 4C).
Tubulin binders inhibit HDR. (A) The tubulin binders combretastatin A4 (CA4), taxol, and vinblastine inhibit gene conversion in the U2OS-DR-GFP cells. (B) CA4, taxol, and vinblastine inhibit formation of Rad51 foci in CHO AA8 cells at 2 hours after 3 Gy. (C) Colocalization of Rad51 and γH2AX foci shows that Rad51 foci are induced at DSBs and that taxol reduces Rad51 accumulation at DSBs. Scale bars: 10 μm. Insets show higher magnification of selected γH2AX foci. (D) CA4, taxol, and vinblastine increase the sensitivity of CHO AA8 cells to chlorambucil. (E) Taxol and vinblastine increase chlorambucil sensitivity of CHO mutant cells defective in nucleotide excision repair (UV5, UV20, and UV41) and base excision/single-strand break repair (EM9), but do not increase chlorambucil sensitivity of irs1SF cells defective in HDR. UV5, irs1SF, UV41, UV20, and EM9 cells have mutations in the XPD, XRCC3, XPF, ERCC1, and XRCC1 genes, respectively. Shown are means ± SDs from n ≥ 3 experiments (A, B, and D) and means ± SDs from n > 2 experiments (E; ranges are shown for points with 2 replicates). Significance analysis: 1-way ANOVA (A and B) and 2-way ANOVA (D and E). Drug-treated samples were compared with the solvent controls. **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001, ****P < 0.0001.
Tubulin binders have pleiotropic effects (32). Therefore, some of our results might have been impacted by the known effects of tubulin binders on cell cycle progression (32). Importantly, our data showed that the compounds from the LY290181 family did not affect the cell cycle progression at concentrations used in our study, but we did observe cell cycle changes at the highest concentrations of CA4 and vinblastine (Supplemental Figure 3A). To minimize cell cycle perturbations induced by CA4 and vinblastine, we reduced the treatment time to 3 hours (which did not affect cell cycle distribution; Supplemental Figure 3B) and still observed the impaired formation of Rad51 foci (Supplemental Figure 4A).
As expected, vinblastine, CA4, and taxol sensitized cells to chlorambucil (Figure 3D). To address the possibility that tubulin binders may increase sensitivity to chlorambucil by interfering with repair of lesions other than DSBs, we used a panel of CHO mutant cell lines with mutations in DNA repair pathways that may be involved in processing chlorambucil-induced DNA damage. These include mutants in nucleotide excision repair (NER) (with defects in XPD, XPG, XPF, and ERCC1 genes) and single-strand break repair (with a defect in XRCC1). Repair of DNA ICLs induced by chlorambucil involves excision and removal of DNA ICLs by NER and repair of DSB intermediates by HDR (17). Among NER proteins only XPF and ERCC1 are involved in repair of ICLs (33). Cells with defects in these proteins (UV41 and UV20, respectively) cannot repair ICLs and therefore, like HDR mutants irs1SF and irs1, are extremely sensitive to chlorambucil (note the scale differences between panels, Figure 3, D and E). Cells defective in other NER proteins, such as XPD and XPG (UV5 and UV135 cells, respectively), are proficient in ICL excision, but have defects in repair of other (less critical) types of DNA damage induced by chlorambucil and are therefore mildly sensitive to this drug. We show that tubulin binders increased sensitivity to chlorambucil in all mutants tested, with the exception of HDR-deficient irs1SF cells (Figure 3E). Importantly, the lack of effect of tubulin binders on sensitivity of irs1SF cells cannot be explained by the extreme sensitivity of these cells to chlorambucil, as tubulin binders sensitized the equally hypersensitive UV41, UV20, and EM9 cells. Since, in contrast to all other mutants tested, there was no further sensitization to chlorambucil in HDR-defective cells, we conclude that tubulin binders potentiate chlorambucil sensitivity largely through impairment of HDR.
Response to DNA damage initiates reorganization of tubulin and involves dynamin 2. Our data (Figures 2 and 3) suggest that microtubule-dependent trafficking of Rad51 may be required for efficient HDR. Super-resolution microscopy (34) showed that Rad51 was present as 2 populations: as Rad51 foci in the nucleus and as a separate punctate population in both the nucleus and the cytoplasm (Figure 4, A and B). These puncta were much smaller than the nuclear Rad51 foci, with an estimated maximum size of 280 ± 50 nm (Figure 4B). The size of these Rad51 puncta suggests that they might be associated with vesicles formed during clathrin-mediated endocytosis (35), which mediates vesicular transport between different compartments within the cell. 3D super-resolution microscopy analysis showed that Rad51 is associated with tubulin in a manner suggestive of its transport along microtubules (Figure 4, C and D). We observed a significant reduction of those tubulin-associated vesicles upon knockdown of Rad51, thus ruling out the possibility of a staining artifact (Supplemental Figure 5, A and B). We also observed the direct physical association of Rad51 with microtubules in a coimmunoprecipitation assay (Supplemental Figure 5C).
Response to DNA damage changes tubulin dynamics and involves DNM 2. (A and B) Super-resolution microscopy analysis reveals a discrete punctate pattern of Rad51 in cytoplasm and nucleus. Human MDA-MB-231-BR3 (A) and CHO AA8 (B) cells fixed at 2 hours after 3 Gy show Rad51 foci in the nucleus. Note the much smaller Rad51 dots in both the cytoplasm and the nucleus. Scale bars: 3 μm. B, right: Higher-magnification image taken from the same cell as in the left panel; scale bar: 1 μm. Estimation of Rad51 dot size: light gray spheres drawn around Rad51 dots have an average diameter of 280 ± 50 nm. (C) Super-resolution microscopy images of MDA-MB-231-BR3 cells show that Rad51 associates with microtubules in unperturbed cells. Scale bar: 3 μm. (D) 3D super-resolution analysis: images of the same Rad51 vesicles (white numbers) viewed from different angles. Numbers correspond to the same objects. Scale bars: 1 μm. (E) Lysine 40 (K40) α-tubulin acetylation is increased after DNA damage in human B lymphoma cell line PW. Left: Representative images. Scale bars: 20 μm. CMBL, chlorambucil. Right: Quantification of the fluorescence intensity per cell. (F) K40 α-tubulin acetylation increases after DNA damage. FACS of CHO AA8 cells fixed 2 and 4 hours after treatment with x-rays. (G) FACS analysis of K40 α-tubulin acetylation in CHO AA8 cells shows that G2/M-phase cells compared with G1 have the highest increase in tubulin acetylation after radiation. Left: Representative dot plots. Right: Quantification. Shown are means ± SDs from n = 3 experiments. (H) FACS analysis of CHO AA8 cells irradiated with 3 Gy in the absence and presence of the dynamin 2 (DNM2) inhibitor dynasore. (E and G) Significance analysis: ANOVA. **P < 0.01, ****P < 0.0001.
Regulation of vesicular trafficking is strongly associated with tubulin acetylation, which facilitates the recruitment of molecular motors and the microtubule-associated transport of cargo proteins (reviewed in ref. 36). Tubulin acetylation is required for efficient protein translocation to the nucleus in response to stress (37). We found that tubulin acetylation was significantly elevated after exposure to IR or chlorambucil in a dose-dependent manner (Figure 4, E–H). Consistent with HDR taking place later in the cell cycle, cells in G2/M phase had the highest increase in tubulin acetylation signal per cell in response to DNA-damaging treatment (Figure 4G). To explore this further, we searched for a target associated with vesicular trafficking and tubulin acetylation. Dynamin 2 (DNM2) was an obvious choice, because this GTPase plays key roles in receptor-mediated endocytosis and regulates tubulin acetylation and inhibitors of DNM2 are now readily available. DNM2 inhibitors were absent in the library that we used for our screen. Treatment of cells with dynasore (38), an inhibitor of DNM2, increased tubulin acetylation to the same level as treatment with moderate doses of IR or chlorambucil (Figure 4H). Dynasore pretreatment did not further increase tubulin acetylation after 3 Gy (Figure 4H), suggesting that DNM2 might be acting downstream of tubulin acetylation in response to DNA damage. Overall, these results suggest that tubulin and DNM2 may increase HDR efficiency through improved trafficking of Rad51 and possibly other HDR proteins.
Inhibition of DNM2 impairs HDR. The dynamin inhibitor dynasore effectively reduced I-SceI–induced gene conversion without impairing NHEJ (Figure 5, A and B) and reduced the number of cells with Rad51-positive γH2AX foci (Figure 5, C and D), suggesting that it interfered with the HDR of DSBs. Dynasore also increased the sensitivity of HDR-proficient cells to chlorambucil (Figure 5E and Supplemental Figure 6, A and B). Other inhibitors of DNM2 (39, 40) acted similarly to dynasore (Supplemental Figure 6C). Dynamin inhibition had no significant effect on the cell cycle distribution (Supplemental Figure 3B).
Inhibition of DNM2 impairs HDR. (A) Dynasore reduces gene conversion in the U2OS-DR-GFP cells. (B) Dynasore does not inhibit NHEJ, as measured by the appearance of CD8+GFP– cells after induction of DSB by the I-SceI enzyme in 293-1040 cells. (C) Dynasore reduces numbers of cells with Rad51-positive/γH2AX-positive foci after IR. CHO AA8 cells were fixed 2 hours after 3 Gy. (D) Left: Rad51 foci in the CHO AA8 cells at 2 hours after 3 Gy are positive for γH2AX, showing that HR repair occurs at the sites of DSBs. Right: Treatment with dynasore reduces the accumulation of Rad51 at the γH2AX foci. Insets show higher magnification of selected areas. Scale bars: 10 μm. (E) Treatment with dynasore increases sensitivity of HDR-proficient CHO AA8 cells to chlorambucil, while it does not alter the sensitivity to chlorambucil in HDR-deficient XRCC3-mutant irs1SF cells. See Supplemental Figure 6A for the survival of irs1SF cells at lower concentrations of chlorambucil. (F) DNM2 knockdown results in increased sensitivity to chlorambucil in the human TNBC cell line MDA-MB-231-BR3. DNM2 knockdown was induced by the addition of doxycycline, as shown in the Western blot (right). Cells were treated with chlorambucil on day 5 after the addition of doxycycline. Shown are means ± SDs from n ≥ 5 experiments. (G) Correction of HDR defect in the irs1SF cells by introduction of XRCC3 cDNA restores both the resistance to chlorambucil and the potentiation of chlorambucil effect by inhibition of DNM2. (A–C, E, and G) Shown are means ± SDs (ranges) from n ≥ 2 MTS experiments. (A–C and E–G) Significance analysis: ANOVA. Dynasore-treated groups were compared with no-drug group (A–C, E, and G). *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001, ****P < 0.0001.
Dynasore, as other DNM2 inhibitors, also inhibits dynamin 1 (DNM1) and mitochondrial dynamin (DRP1) (38–40). To rule out possible off-target effects of DNM2 inhibitors, we created a doxycycline-inducible knockdown of DNM2 in human MDA-MB-231-BR3 breast cancer cells. DNM2 knockdown impaired IR-induced Rad51 foci formation and sensitized cells to chlorambucil and cisplatin (Figure 5F and Supplemental Figure 7), in accord with our data obtained for DNM2 inhibitors.
Importantly, while dynasore effectively sensitized HDR-proficient AA8 and V79 cells to chlorambucil, it had no effect on the corresponding isogenic HDR-deficient irs1SF and irs1 cell lines with mutations in XRCC3 and XRCC2, respectively (Figure 5E and Supplemental Figure 6, A and B). These observations suggest that potentiation of chlorambucil sensitivity by the dynamin inhibitor occurred because of the impairment of HDR and not because of the effects on other targets of dynamin inhibition. Indeed, potentiation of the chlorambucil effect by dynasore is restored in the CXR3 cell line (41) obtained by expression of human XRCC3 in XRCC3-deficient irs1SF cells (Figure 5G).
We reasoned that if dynasore acts through impairment of HDR, then selective upregulation of the HDR function should rescue the compound sensitivities. A moderate increase in HDR activity by either overexpression or stimulation of RAD51 has been reported to improve cell survival and to partially complement (i.e., suppress) defects in a number of different HDR genes that encode recombination mediator and comediator proteins (13, 14, 42). Hence, overexpression or stimulation of Rad51 may overcome impairment of HDR by dynasore. To stimulate HDR, we used a sulfonamido-benzamide compound, RS-1, that increases DNA binding and recombination activities of RAD51 by stabilizing RAD51 filaments and promotes resistance to chemotherapy (42, 43). We show that treatment with RS-1 reverses both the inhibition of gene conversion and potentiation of chlorambucil sensitivity by dynasore (Figure 6, A and B). Similarly, overexpression of RAD51 also reverses dynasore-induced sensitization to chlorambucil (Figure 6C and Supplemental Figure 8).
Upregulation of HDR by direct stimulation of RAD51 activity or overexpression of RAD51 overcomes dynasore-induced sensitization to chlorambucil. (A) Stimulation of RAD51 activity by RS-1 overcomes dynasore-induced inhibition of gene conversion in U2OS-DR-GFP cells. Shown are means and SDs from n ≥ 2 experiments. Ranges are shown for points with 2 replicates. (B) CHO AA8 cells are effectively sensitized to chlorambucil by dynasore, and RS-1 (7.5 μM) reverses this dynasore effect. MTS assay: Shown are means ± SDs from n ≥ 2 experiments. Ranges are shown for points with 2 replicates. (C) U2OS cells overexpressing the RAD51-HA construct show increased resistance to chlorambucil. While U2OS cells are effectively sensitized to chlorambucil by dynasore, the effect of dynasore is lost or reduced in cells overexpressing RAD51. MTS assay: Shown are means and SDs from n ≥ 3 experiments. See Supplemental Figure 8A for Western blots showing the overexpression of RAD51 and for the significance analysis. (A–C) Significance analysis: ANOVA. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001, ****P < 0.0001.
Taken together, our results show that DNM2 function impacts HDR. First, low or impaired DNM2 is associated with the major phenotypic manifestations of HDR deficiency. Second, DNM2 inhibition does not further increase the sensitivity of HDR-defective hamster cell lines. Last, HDR defects stemming from DNM2 impairment can be rescued by direct chemical stimulation of RAD51 activity or by overexpression of RAD51.
RAD51 upregulation does not rescue dynamin inhibition effects in TNBC cells. BRCA1-mutant cells are deficient in HDR. Hence, we expected that, similarly to HDR-deficient XRCC2- or XRCC3-mutant hamster cells (Figure 5, E and G, and Supplemental Figure 6, A and B), BRCA1-defective human cells would not be further sensitized to chlorambucil by inhibition of dynamin. In contrast to our expectations, we observed that the sensitivity to chlorambucil was enhanced by dynasore treatment in BRCA1-mutant TNBC cell lines (Figure 7, A and B, and Supplemental Figure 9). Overall, dynasore effectively increased the sensitivity to chlorambucil in cells representing different types of TNBC (as shown for BRCA1-mutant inflammatory breast cancer SUM149, basaloid HCC1806, and metastatic mesenchymal-like MDA-MB-231-BR3 cells) (Figure 7, B–F).
Upregulation of HDR by direct stimulation of RAD51 activity or overexpression of RAD51 fails to rescue dynasore-induced sensitization to chlorambucil in TNBC cells. (A and B) Dynasore increases chlorambucil sensitivity of the human BRCA1-mutant TNBC cells HCC1937 (A) and SUM149 (B). (B–D) Sensitization to chlorambucil by dynasore is not reversed by overexpression of RAD51-HA in TNBC cell lines SUM149 (B), HCC1806 (C), and MDA-MB-231-BR3 (MDA-BR3) (D). (E) Overexpression of RAD51-HA does not reduce sensitivity to chlorambucil in MDA-MB-231-BR3 cells with DNM2 knockdown. (F) RS-1 does not reduce the sensitizing effect of dynasore in MDA-MB-231-BR3 cells. (A–F) Shown are means ± SDs (ranges) from n ≥ 3 (A) and n ≥ 2 (B–F) MTS experiments. (B–F) See Supplemental Figures 10 and 11 for Western blots showing RAD51 overexpression and for significance analyses. **P < 0.01 by ANOVA.
Martin et al. (13) showed that cells from BRCA1-deficient tumors compensate for the HDR defects by elevated RAD51 expression; they predicted that any additional RAD51 may have little or no effect on tumor-derived BRCA1-deficient cells, as optimum levels of RAD51 may already be reached in TNBC tumors. In agreement with those predictions, we show that RAD51 overexpression in SUM149 cells has only a small effect on resistance to chlorambucil (dose-modifying factor [DMF] = 1.3; Figure 7B), compared with a much stronger effect in the U2OS cells (DMF = 2.5; Figure 6C). Similarly, overexpression of RAD51 in other TNBC cell lines had no effect or only minor effects on chlorambucil sensitivity (DMF = 1.2 and 1, respectively; Figure 7, C and D, and Supplemental Figure 10).
Importantly, while RAD51 overexpression in U2OS rescued dynasore-induced sensitization to chlorambucil (DMF = 2.5; Figure 6C), it failed to do so in all TNBC cell lines tested (Figure 7, B–D, and Supplemental Figure 10). Also, both overexpression of RAD51 in MDA-MB-231-BR3 cells with DNM2 knockdown and chemical stimulation of RAD51 in MDA-MB-231-BR3 cells treated with dynasore failed to increase their resistance to chlorambucil (Figure 7, E and F, and Supplemental Figure 11). The fact that all our attempts to rescue dynasore-induced sensitization to chlorambucil did not work in TNBC cells (while they did in other cell types) argues that the upregulated recombination that occurs in TNBC may be dependent on DNM2 to a greater extent or in additional ways compared with that in other cell types, and therefore, DNM2 inhibition may constitute a new way to enhance the therapy of TNBCs.
In vivo tests and implications for DNM2 inhibition in cancer therapy. Since HDR takes place predominantly in the S/G2 phase, an inhibitor of HDR is expected to increase the IR sensitivity of cells in the S and G2 phases, largely without affecting cells in G0/G1 (15). This could be useful in cancer therapy, as an HDR inhibitor would specifically sensitize rapidly dividing tumor cells, which at any given time include a significant fraction of cells in the more IR-resistant S and G2 phases, without sensitizing the cells of the normal tissues surrounding the tumor, mostly found in G0/G1. To test this, we collected cells in G1, early S, and late S/G2 phases using mitotic shake-off as previously described (44). As predicted, dynasore increased the IR sensitivity of cells in the S and late S/G2 phases, without affecting the radiation sensitivity of cells in the G1 phase (Figure 8A). We conclude that dynasore acts as a true inhibitor of DSB repair pathways specific to S/G2 phase.
Inhibition of DNM2 sensitizes cells in S/G2 phase and improves tumor response to cytotoxic therapy in an orthotopic mouse model. (A) Dynasore increases radiation sensitivity of AA8 cells in S and S/G2 phases, but does not affect radiation sensitivity of G1-phase cells. Shown are means ± SDs (ranges) from n ≥ 2 MTS experiments. ANOVA: all groups were compared with the G1. **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001. Cell cycle distribution is shown on the right. (B) DNM2 knockdown increases tumor sensitivity to cyclophosphamide (CPX) in an orthotopic model of TNBC. MDA-MB-231-BR3 cells with an inducible DNM2 knockdown (described in Figure 5F) were injected into mammary fat pads of female Nu/Nu mice and treated with 2 cycles of 100 mg/kg CPX on days 12, 14, and 16. After a 2-week break, mice were treated with CPX again (days 33, 35, and 37). DNM2 knockdown was induced by the addition of doxycycline to drinking water 3 days before and during CPX treatment. Symbols and error bars are means ± SEMs. Significance analysis: ANOVA, *P < 0.05. (C) Same experiment as in B analyzed using repeated-measures method. Post hoc pairwise comparisons were performed using a Tukey adjustment for multiple comparisons. P values are shown at day 49. See Supplemental Table 1 for details of the significance analysis.
We then tested whether lowering DNM2 levels would increase chemosensitivity in vivo. For this purpose, MDA-MB-231-BR3 cells with doxycycline-inducible expression of shRNA against DNM2 (shDNM2) were implanted into mammary fat pads in Nu/Nu mice. The tumors were subjected to 2 rounds of treatment with cyclophosphamide, a nitrogen mustard widely used in chemotherapy of breast cancers. We show that reduced expression of DNM2 significantly improved tumor response to cyclophosphamide (Figure 8, B and C, and Supplemental Table 1). Lowering DNM2 levels also marginally increased tumor sensitivity to cisplatin (Supplemental Figure 7, B and C). This effect, however, was not as pronounced as for cyclophosphamide, likely because DNA ICLs represent only a minor portion of all DNA cross-links induced by cisplatin (45, 46).
In summary, lowering or inhibiting DNM2 sensitized cells to IR and improved response to chemotherapy in the orthotopic breast cancer model. This suggests that high DNM2 likely interferes with the response to chemotherapy of patients with late-stage estrogen receptor–negative (ER–) breast cancers and TNBCs.
DNM2 predicts the outcome of chemotherapy of hormone receptor–negative breast cancers. To evaluate the role of DNM2 in resistance to chemotherapy, we performed a survival analysis on an integrated breast cancer data set derived from publicly available gene expression studies (see Methods). We classified each breast cancer patient into 1 of 3 groups based on treatment: “chemotherapy-treated,” “endocrine therapy–treated,” and “systemically untreated” (47). We then compared DNM2 expression in tumors between each group at the time of chemotherapy. Compared with the systemically untreated patients and those on endocrine therapy, chemotherapy-treated breast cancer patients had significantly higher DNM2 expression, likely correlating with the high aggressiveness of cancers for which chemotherapy is prescribed (Figure 9A). While further separation of chemotherapy-treated patients into ER+ and ER– groups did not show significant differences in average DNM2 expression between the groups (Figure 9B), a striking difference was observed in the effects of DNM2 levels on treatment outcome. In the ER– group, DNM2 expression levels below the median of the total breast cancer population were associated with highly improved post-chemotherapy outcome (P = 0.005; Figure 9C). Low DNM2 expression remained significantly correlated with good treatment outcome after adjustment for lymph node status, grade, and size in the Cox proportional hazards multivariate analysis (P = 0.0134). Of the clinical variables, only lymph node status (P = 0.0131) reached significance, while grade and size were not significant (P = 0.525 and P = 0.721, respectively).
DNM2 expression predicts chemotherapy outcome for ER– breast cancer patients. (A) DNM2 expression in 1,000 systemically untreated patients, 752 patients treated with endocrine therapy, and 274 breast cancer patients treated with chemotherapy. *P < 0.05, ANOVA. (B) DNM2 expression levels are not significantly different between chemotherapy-treated ER+ and ER− tumors. P = 0.167, Mann-Whitney test. (C and D) Decreased DNM2 is associated with better chemotherapy outcome in ER− patients. Patients were split by median expression of DNM2 over the entire breast cancer data set (3,455 patients). Patients with higher than median expression of DNM2 are denoted in red, and those with lower than median expression of DNM2 are in black. Note the hazard ratio increase in the ER−, but not in the ER+, group. (C) Kaplan-Meier analysis of 105 patients with ER+ breast tumors treated with chemotherapy and 169 patients with ER− breast tumors treated with chemotherapy. (D) Kaplan-Meier analysis of 125 patients with BLBC and 76 patients with TNBC. (E) Longer disease-free survival after chemotherapy is associated with lower tumor DNM2 levels at the time of chemotherapy in ER− patients, but not in ER+ patients. Patients diagnosed with disease recurrence at the time of follow-up are designated as “Relapse,” and those remaining disease-free at the time of follow-up as “No relapse.” (F) Longer disease-free survival after chemotherapy is associated with lower tumor DNM2 levels at the time of chemotherapy in TNBC patients. Box plot: TNBCs that relapse during the first 3 years after treatment have significantly higher DNM2 than those that do not relapse or relapse later. (E and F) Linear regression analysis: P < 0.05 indicates that the slope is significantly non-zero. (A, B, and F) The boxes and whiskers contain points within the 25th to 75th and the 5th to 95th percentiles, respectively.
The association of DNM2 expression with chemotherapy outcome was especially pronounced in basal-like and/or triple-negative breast cancers (TNBCs/BLBCs) (Figure 9D), which constitute a significant fraction of ER– cancers and are associated with the worst prognosis. Remarkably, patients in this group with DNM2 levels below the median showed no relapse in a 5-year follow-up period, in contrast to a greater than 40% relapse rate for those with above-median DNM2 levels (Figure 9D). In contrast, the ER+ group showed no difference in survival outcome after chemotherapy when classified by DNM2 expression (Figure 9C). Even in the ER+ luminal B subgroup, which may be more suitable for a comparison with highly proliferative ER– cancers (48), DNM2 expression was no predictor of treatment outcome (Supplemental Figure 12). Furthermore, ER– and TNBC patients with longer disease-free post-chemotherapy survival showed lower DNM2 expression in tumors at the time of chemotherapy (Figure 9, E and F). No such association was found for the ER+ cancers (Figure 9E). The data in Figure 9, E and F, are in agreement with the reported relapse rates for ER– breast cancers and especially for TNBCs, which peak between the first and third year after chemotherapy (6, 7). Our analysis shows that DNM2 expression at the time of chemotherapy in TNBCs that relapsed within the first 3 years after chemotherapy was significantly higher compared with DNM2 expression in TNBCs that did not relapse until later or did not relapse at all (Figure 9F).
Taxanes (e.g., paclitaxel and docetaxel) have been increasingly used as an addition to standard chemotherapy since their approval as chemotherapy agents in 1995. Exposure to taxanes has been shown to be associated with alterations in tubulin expression (49). Although most of the regimen for the cohorts in our analysis did not include taxanes, some studies did not provide the specifics on the kinds of chemotherapy used. Therefore, it is possible that the increased patient survival we observed for the ER– breast cancers in Figure 9, C and D, might have resulted from the exposure to taxanes. To rule out any possible exposure to taxanes as a confounding factor in the integrated breast cancer data set, we next analyzed breast cancer patient data from the highly annotated Stanford Cancer Institute Research Database. In this group of patients there was no difference in taxane exposure between the chemotherapy-treated ER+ and ER– breast cancers (Supplemental Figure 13A), making it unlikely that taxane treatment affected our findings for the integrated breast cancer data set. Moreover, no difference was observed in high-grade/low-grade tumor composition between the ER+ and ER– groups (Supplemental Figure 13B). In addition, we show that while the addition of taxanes to chemotherapy was clearly beneficial for the patients with ER+ breast cancers, no statistical significance for taxane treatment was observed in patients with TNBCs (Supplemental Figure 13C). Together our retrospective analyses show that DNM2 expression predicts the response to chemotherapy in patients with hormone receptor–negative cancers, particularly TNBCs/BLBCs.
In this study, we propose a new mechanism for the regulation of HDR involving microtubule-dependent molecular trafficking. We identified dynamin 2 (DNM2), involved in endocytic transport of molecular cargo between cell compartments, regulation of microtubule dynamics (19), and interaction between microtubules (20, 21), as a critical factor in regulation of HDR activity. We propose that changes in tubulin- and DNM2-associated cell trafficking in response to DNA damage are critical for HDR and are of specific relevance to the treatment of ER– breast cancers and TNBCs/BLBCs (Figure 10). Targeting DNM2 may therefore provide a new way of enhancing the effects of chemotherapy, which at present is the only option available for these difficult-to-treat cancers.
Proposed model: DNM2 expression differentiates between good and nonfavorable chemotherapy outcomes in TNBC patients. Cells with high DNM2 may have more efficient HDR and may be selected for during DNA-damaging chemotherapy. High HDR proficiency, as well as higher migratory and metastatic potential in these cells, may constitute a mechanism for resistance to chemotherapy in late-stage and recurrent TNBCs.
The unifying feature of TNBCs is that they trace their origin to genomic instability associated with a DNA repair (or HDR) defect, but regain HDR capability in late-stage, aggressive tumors (8–10, 13). We propose that upregulated DNM2/tubulin dynamics play a role in the HDR reactivation in these cancers. Notably, we show that elevated expression of DNM2 is associated with worse chemotherapy outcome in TNBC/BLBC patients (Figure 9, D–F). Importantly, DNM2 expression does not appear to affect the survival of patients treated with endocrine therapy, but is an important determinant of patient survival following cytotoxic therapy, particularly in the ER– group (Figure 9C and Supplemental Figure 14).
RAD51 overexpression is typically observed in late-stage TNBCs, likely as a defense mechanism to counter high genomic instability (13, 14). RAD51 overexpression has been demonstrated to rescue proliferation defects and sensitivity to genotoxic agents in BRCA1- and BRCA2-defective cells (13, 50). Also, in the absence of BRCA/Fanconi anemia proteins, RAD51 overexpression has been shown to improve the stability of stalled replication forks (51, 52). We hypothesize that in the absence of BRCA and other proteins that control recruitment of RAD51 to the sites of DNA damage and/or stalled replication forks (30, 51), RAD51 trafficking largely depends on DNM2. This may explain why overexpression of RAD51 failed to reverse DNM2 inhibition effects in TNBC cells (Figure 7), suggesting that the upregulated recombination that occurs in TNBC may be dependent on DNM2 to a greater extent than in non-TNBC cells.
DNM2-associated trafficking of RAD51 provides a rational explanation for the recent observation that ties tumor aggressiveness, and specifically the basal and triple-negative status, to high cytoplasmic expression of RAD51 (53, 54). We note that overexpression of RAD51 may be toxic to the cells as a result of the formation of RAD51 complexes on undamaged DNA. In this regard, DNM2-mediated trafficking of RAD51 may alleviate the toxic effects of RAD51 overexpression and contribute to survival of TNBC cells, by maintaining low nuclear/high cytoplasmic levels of RAD51.
Our data may have immediate implications for improved treatment options for TNBC patients. Our finding of the role of disturbed microtubule dynamics and its negative impacts on HDR capacity may be useful in fine-tuning current chemo-/radiotherapy regimens to achieve higher cure rates. In fact, greater efficacy of tubulin binders when used in combination with DNA-damaging agents has been reported (reviewed in refs. 3, 55–57), although the interplay of the molecular mechanisms and associated benefits has not been understood.
Using dynamin inhibitors to improve chemotherapy outcome is an attractive possibility that might reduce systemic toxicity associated with the use of tubulin binders. Also, since we demonstrated that a DNM2 inhibitor acted as a true inhibitor of HDR, by specifically sensitizing S- and G2-phase cells to IR without affecting cells in G0/G1, combining DNM2 inhibitors with localized radiotherapy might offer further advantage to reducing systemic toxicity.
The involvement of DNM2 in HDR may provide a long-awaited explanation for 2 observations. First, DNM2 was isolated as a genomic fragment that corrected mitomycin C hypersensitivity of cells from a Fanconi anemia group D [FA(D)] patient (58, 59). Importantly, the DNM2 message was present and not mutated in the FA(D) patient studied, and therefore the correction of mitomycin C hypersensitivity by DNM2 could not be explained by a complementation of a possible defect in the DNM2 gene. The newly identified function of DNM2 in HDR suggests that in that case the correction of mitomycin C hypersensitivity could be due to upregulation of HDR by additional copies of DNM2. Separately, mutation in DNM2 has been shown to be associated with the neuropathic disorder Charcot-Marie-Tooth syndrome (CMT) (19). CMT patients display unusual sensitivity to both tubulin binding and ICL agents (60). Sensitivity to each of these classes of drugs is consistent with and can be explained by our findings that show that DNM2- and tubulin-associated trafficking of RAD51 is important in HDR.
While we favor the hypothesis that high resistance to chemotherapy in TNBCs results from the upregulation of HDR mediated by DNM2 in late-stage TNBC, we are aware of the fact that elevated DNM2 also is associated with increased cell motility and metastasis (61), which could provide an alternative explanation for the increased relapse rates observed in TNBC patients with high DNM2. The 2 mechanisms are by no means mutually exclusive, as it is plausible that a tumor cell population that survives primary tumor chemotherapy is selected for high DNM2 expression, and is, therefore, more resistant to chemotherapy and more metastatic.
In summary, we found that microtubule-associated trafficking affects the efficiency of HDR. Agents that disrupt microtubule dynamics, including tubulin binders and DNM2 inhibitors, impaired all assays conducted to monitor HDR capacity. Similarly to tubulin-binding agents, DNM2 inhibitors sensitized cells to chemotherapy and IR, supporting the targeted clinical application of these compounds as radio- and chemosensitizers. In addition, the fact that reduced expression of DNM2 is associated with improved outcome of cytotoxic therapy in patients with hormone receptor–negative breast cancers, and specifically TNBCs/BLBCs, strongly suggests that DNM2 expression status could be used to stratify patient groups in the future.
Cell culture and transfection. All cell lines used in this study were cultured for 2 passages to expand the cell population and frozen for future use. The CHO AA8, UV41, UV5, UV135, EM9, UV20, and HCC1806 cells were obtained from the American Type Culture Collection and the SUM149 cells from Asterand Bioscience. CHO irs1SF and hamster V79 and irs1 cells were provided by L.H. Thompson (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California, USA), human U2OS-DR-GFP cells by M. Jasin (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York, USA), PW human B lymphoma cells by S.J. Knox (Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, USA), MDA-MB-231-BR3 cells by J.E. Price (M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, USA), the BRCA1-deficient HCC1937 cell line and its derivatives bearing an empty pcDNA3.1 or a plasmid with BRCA1 cDNA (62, 63) by S.N. Powell (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center), and the human 293/1040 and HT1080 cells with an inducible knockdown of RAD51 by A. Aroumougame (University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, USA). RAD51-HA expression construct was a gift from Z. Shen (Rutgers Cancer Institute, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA). Cells were cultured in DMEM supplemented with 10% FBS and maintained in a humidified incubator with 5% CO2 at 37°C. Plasmid DNA transfections were done using LipofectAMINE-2000 (Life Technologies) following the manufacturer’s instructions.
High-throughput chemical screen. Small-molecule chemical screening was performed at the High-Throughput Bioscience Center at Stanford University Medical School. Screening was performed using libraries from ChemDiv, Specs, ChemBridge, Sigma LOPAC1280, the NIH Clinical Center, the National Cancer Institute Developmental Therapeutics Program, Microsource Spectrum, Biomol ICCB Known Bioactives, and Biomol FDA-approved drug library. More details are provided in Supplemental Methods.
Gene conversion assay. Gene conversion assay was performed as described in ref. 64. Briefly, U2OS-DR-GFP cells were transfected with I-SceI enzyme and, 6 hours after transfection, treated with chemical compounds of interest. Seventy-two hours after transfection, cells were analyzed for the presence of GFP-expressing cells by FACS.
Nonhomologous end-joining assay. Nonhomologous end-joining (NHEJ) assay was performed as described in ref. 65. Briefly, we used a 293/1040 cell line, which stably expresses an end-joining reporter that contains a GFP gene flanked by I-SceI recognition sites. Downstream of the GFP gene the reporter contains a CD8a gene, which is not constitutively expressed because of the lack of an internal ribosome entry site. To induce DSBs, 293/1040 cells were transfected with the I-SceI expression plasmid. If NHEJ occurs, cells lose expression of GFP and gain expression of CD8, which is measured by PE-conjugated anti-CD8 mAb (anti-CD8–PE, BD Biosciences, 555635). Cells were analyzed for the loss of GFP expression and gain of CD68 expression by FACS 4 days after transfection with I-SceI–expressing plasmid. The end-joining rate was determined by counting of the percentage of GFP-CD8+ cells and normalizing for the transfection efficiency.
Immunofluorescence. Rad51 and γ-H2AX staining were performed as previously described (66). Briefly, cells were plated at 70%–80% confluence. Cells were pretreated with desired compounds for 30 minutes or 1, 3, or 16 hours and irradiated with 3 Gy. Cells were fixed in 2% formaldehyde for 15 minutes on ice, permeabilized in 0.2% Triton X-100 for 15 minutes on ice, and blocked in 5% goat serum for 30 minutes. Cells were incubated with rabbit anti-Rad51 (clone H-92, sc-8349, Santa Cruz Biotechnology, or ab63801, Abcam) and/or with anti-γH2AX (pS139, 16-202A, Millipore) antibody. Secondary antibodies were from Molecular Probes, Invitrogen. Tubulin staining was performed as previously described (67) with anti–α-tubulin (05-829, DM1A, Millipore), anti–acK40–α-tubulin (ab24610, Abcam), and anti–β-tubulin (F2043, Sigma-Aldrich) antibodies.
Tubulin polymerization assay. Tubulin polymerization was conducted in the 96-well format using HTS-tubulin polymerization assay kit BK004P (Cytoskeleton Inc.). Optical density at 340 nm was measured using a Tecan Infinite M1000 PRO microplate reader (Tecan Group Ltd.).
Super-resolution microscopy. Structured illumination microscopy (34) images were acquired with an OMX V4 microscope (GE Healthcare) equipped with an Olympus U-Plan Apo 60×1.42 NA oil immersion objective. Image reconstruction and channel alignment processing were performed with softWoRx software (GE Healthcare).
Immunoprecipitation. Cell pellets from triple-negative breast cancer MDA-MB-231-BR3 cells were washed twice with PBS and resuspended in hypotonic lysis buffer (10 mM HEPES-KOH, pH 7.5, 1.5 mM MgCl2, 10 mM KCl, 0.5 mM DTT, and protease inhibitors). Cells were broken down in Dounce homogenizer and centrifuged 5 minutes at 200 x g. Supernatants were collected as cytoplasmic fraction and precleared with rabbit IgG followed by Protein A/G PLUS agarose beads (sc-2003, Santa Cruz Biotechnology; 1 μg of IgG and 50 μl of Dynabeads per each milligram of lysate). Precleared lysates were divided for incubation with IgG and anti-Rad51 antibody (1 μg of antibody and 10 μl of beads per each 1 mg of protein) and incubated for 4 hours, followed by 1-hour incubation with Dynabeads. Beads were washed 3 times with lysis buffer and resuspended in 50 μl NuPAGE loading buffer. All procedures were performed at room temperature to preserve the structure of microtubules, which depolymerize on ice.
Western blotting. Western blotting was performed with anti-Rad51 (H-92, sc-8349, Santa Cruz Biotechnology, or ab63801, Abcam), anti–α-tubulin (05-829, DM1A, Millipore), anti-H2B (07-371, Upstate), anti-DNM2 (ab3457, Abcam), and anti-HA tag (clone 6E2, 2367S, Cell Signaling Technology). See complete unedited blots in the supplemental material.
Cell cycle synchronization. CHO AA8 cells were synchronized in mitosis using mitotic shake-off procedure, as previously described (44). Cell cycle distribution was confirmed by FACS analysis, and cells were considered to be in G1 phase at 3 hours, S phase at 8 hours, and S/G2 at 11 hours after shake-off. Synchronized cells were pretreated for a half hour with 30 μM dynasore and irradiated using an X-rad 320 irradiator (Precision X-Ray).
RNA interference. For downregulation of DNM2 by RNAi, we used a lentiviral RNAi system based on the BLOCK-iT system (Invitrogen) modified by Campeau et al. (68). The following sequences were used to create shDNM2 constructs: 5′-GGACTTACGACGGGAGATC-3′ and 5′-GACATGATCCTGCAGTTCA-3′. A doxycycline-inducible GFP shRNA was used as a control.
Survival analysis in integrated breast cancer data set. Gene chip data sets for breast cancer were identified in PubMed GEO (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gds) using the keywords “breast,” “cancer,” and “survival.” The database was constructed as described previously (47). Only data sets with available raw data and clinical survival information and including at least 30 patients were considered. Altogether, 4,142 breast cancer patients were processed; of these, 3,458 had relapse-free survival data. Of these, 1,000 had not received a systemic treatment, 274 had received chemotherapy only, and 752 had received endocrine therapy only. For the remaining patients, either the applied therapy was not documented or they received both endocrine and chemotherapy. Chemotherapy for most of the cohorts (where described) included cyclophosphamide as part of the CMF regimen (cyclophosphamide, methotrexate, 5-fluorouracil) or FEC regimen (5-flourouracil, epirubicin, cyclophosphamide). As many genes are represented by multiple probe sets on the Affymetrix gene chips, we selected the most reliable probe sets using JetSet (69). For DNM2 the probe set 202253_s_at was used. The median expression of the genes was calculated over the entire data set, and this was used as cutoff in each analysis. Kaplan-Meier survival plot, and the hazard ratio with 95% confidence intervals and log-rank P value, were calculated and plotted in R using Bioconductor packages (47). For the multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression analysis, the clinical variables (lymph node status, tumor grade and size) were included.
Chemotherapy in the orthotopic xenograft model of TNBC. The MDA-MB-231-BR3 cells expressing doxycycline-inducible shDNM2 or shGFP were used to create an orthotopic model of TNBC in Nu/Nu mice. The details of tumor inoculation and monitoring are provided in Supplemental Methods. Treatment began when tumors reached 60–90 mm3 and consisted of 2 cycles of cyclophosphamide or 1 cycle of cisplatin (300 mg/kg/cycle or 16 mg/kg/cycle, respectively). To induce DNM2 knockdown, doxycycline was given 3 days before and during cyclophosphamide or cisplatin administration. Cisplatin was given by i.p. injections on days 11, 13, 15, and 17 after tumor cell inoculations. Cyclophosphamide cycle was composed of 3 i.p. injections given every other day followed by a 2-week rest period.
Statistics. The specific details of statistical tests and number of samples and experimental repeats are included in the figure legends. A Student’s t test was used for comparing 2 groups. ANOVA models were used for comparing 3 or more groups with post hoc testing for pairwise comparisons. A Tukey adjustment was applied in testing all possible pairwise comparisons, and a Dunnett’s adjustment was applied in comparing treatment groups with a control. To find interactions between compounds or to compare dose-response curves, we used 2-way ANOVA. The in vivo experiments were randomized and analyzed in a generalized linear model to account for the within-mouse correlations. The treatment groups were compared across time, and at each time point and post hoc, pairwise comparisons were done with a Tukey adjustment. All tests were 2-sided with an α level of 0.05; and all tests were performed in Prism (GraphPad Software) or SAS version 9.4 (SAS Institute Inc.). A P value less than 0.05 was considered significant.
Study approval. All animal procedures were approved by Stanford University’s Administrative Panel on Laboratory Animal Care.
Additional methods are provided in Supplemental Methods.
SBC, JCG, and JMB designed the studies. SBC, RBN, JTT, SSM, BG, JHS, AO, LD, DESC, DJW, SH, AA, and CW performed various parts of the study. SBC, JCG, RBN, JTT, SSM, BG, MPH, DESC, DJW, RVE, MHG, and JMB analyzed the data. AA, CW, and MHG provided reagents. SBC wrote the manuscript. SBC, JCG, SSM, CW, BG, and JMB edited the manuscript.
We thank M. Jasin, S.N. Powell, L.H. Thompson, S.J. Knox, J.E. Price, and Z. Shen for the gifts of cell lines and constructs used in the study. We thank O.V. Razorenova (University of California, Irvine, California, USA) for valuable manuscript critiques, and Jason Wu from the Stanford High-Throughput Bioscience Center (Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA) for technical assistance with the chemical screen. This work was supported by NIH grants P01-CA067166 to JMB, ES021454 to CW, K08-NS901527 to MHG, and R01-AG053341 to AA. High-resolution microscopy images were obtained with Stanford Neuroscience Microscopy Service, supported by NIH NS069375. Stanford Cancer Institute Research Database was supported by National Cancer Institute Cancer Center Support Grant 5P30CA124435 and Stanford NIH/National Center for Research Resources Clinical and Translational Science Award UL1 RR025744. BG was supported by grant NVKP_16-1-2016-0037 of the National Research, Development and Innovation Office, Hungary. LD was supported by the China Scholarship Council.
SBC’s present address is: Department of Neurosurgery, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.
License: Copyright 2018, American Society for Clinical Investigation.
Reference information: J Clin Invest. 2018;128(12):5307–5321.https://doi.org/10.1172/JCI87191.
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Version 1 (October 29, 2018): Electronic publication
Version 2 (December 3, 2018): Print issue publication
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Archive for Scott Thomas Outlar
7/7 Inflammatosis! by Mark Spitzer & Spell to Spell by Lea Graham launch party @ Nine Stories Books + Alien Buddha Invades Erie @ Ember+Forge
Posted in Events, Interviews, New Releases with tags above/ground press, Alien Buddha Press, Arkansas Ghoulash, Barbara Edelman, Ben Gwin, Clean Time, Crab Creek Review, Ember+Forge, From the Hotel Vernon, Heath Brougher, Inflammatosis, Jason Baldinger, Jay Miner, Jeremy Stolz, Karen Lillis, Lea Graham, Luke Kuzmish, Mark Spitzer, Matt Borczon, Nine Stories Pittsburgh, Scott Thomas Outlar, Scotty Lewis, Spell to Spell, Thasia Anne, The Second Elizabeth on June 20, 2018 by 6GPress
7PM Saturday, July 7 at Nine Stories Books, three scribblers from Arkansas join three from the 412 to celebrate the launch of Mark Spitzer’s latest book Inflammatosis, “a big, punk-ass Fuck You to all the petty, pretentious haters out there dicking around with 1) his life, 2) your life, 3) all our lives, and 4) fish.”
Mark Spitzer, novelist, poet, essayist and literary translator, grew up in Minneapolis where he earned his Bachelor’s degree at the University of Minnesota in 1990. He then moved to the Rockies, where he earned his Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Colorado. After living on the road for some time, he found himself in Paris, as Writer in Residence for three years at the bohemian bookstore Shakespeare and Company, where he translated French criminals and misanthropes. In 1997 he moved to Louisiana, became Assistant Editor of the legendary lit journal Exquisite Corpse, and earned an MFA from Louisiana State University. He taught creative writing and lit for five years at Truman State University and is now an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Central Arkansas.
Traveling with Mark from the home state of Johnny Cash & C. D. Wright will be Lea Graham & Scotty Lewis. We’ll also be celebrating the launch of Lea’s new chapbook.
Spell to Spell
by Lea Graham
Gristle, (n.) cartilage; tough cartilaginous, tendinous, or fibrous matter
For Georganna Ulary
Grit’s spell. / A bone of sound / between hustle, just whistle. / Grist to the mill of welter, / close to grisly but more wattle / less huddle. / Tattooed thistle, / apple of my ire, / a subtle gris-gris / around the wrist of tussle. / The gist of it: / A muscle that fasts is lost. / We must wrestle that lustful, fustling angel of self, / bedazzle that recluse; / bust and move the offal, / dis refusal. / Wrest our names, / our castling furies, / cast and fuss to surge, / gird and guzzle that shit; / grease the wheels against hair-shirts of hurt, / storm the bastille of cry, the cradle of grow; / jazz and cussle this tigress, / this mottled grindle of rage, / muddle the sonic barb. / Steal away steal away steal away home
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
celebrating twenty-five years of above/ground press
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
Lea Graham is the author of the forthcoming book, From the Hotel Vernon (Salmon Press, 2019), the chapbook, This End of the World: Notes to Robert Kroetsch (Apt. 9 Press, 2016) and the poetry book, Hough & Helix & Where & Here & You, You, You (No Tell Books, 2011). She is an associate professor at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY and a native of Northwest Arkansas.
This is Graham’s third above/ground press chapbook, after Calendar Girls (2006) and metric : a collaboration (with rob mclennan, 2011).
Here’s another poem from Spell to Spell at Crab Creek Review.
Scotty Lewis is a 2015 graduate of the Arkansas Writers MFA Program. His first book of poetry, Arkansas Ghoulash, came out last December on Six Gallery. Here’s an interview with Scotty talking about the book, & here’s another one.
The Pittsburgh lineup is pretty outstanding too:
Karen Lillis is a writer and bookseller. She is the author of four poetic novels, including The Second Elizabeth (Six Gallery Press, 2009), and runs Karen’s Book Row, a pop up and online bookshop. Her writing has appeared in The Austin Chronicle, The Brooklyn Rail, Evergreen Review, LA Cultural Weekly, and the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology, among others. An Acker Award winner for Avant Garde Excellence in Fiction, her recent publications include Submerging Zine, From Somewhere to Nowhere: The End of the American Dream, and forthcoming prose in Local Knowledge (Fall 2018).
Ben Gwin is the Fiction Editor at Burrow Press Review. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Normal School, Bridge Eight, Word Riot, Mary: A Journal of New Writing, and others. His novel manuscript, Clean Time: The True Story of Ronald Reagan Middleton, was shortlisted for the 2014 Pressgang Prize, and named a semifinalist for the 2015 Horatio Nelson Fiction Prize. He lives in Pittsburgh with his daughter.
I’d add that Clean Time is out now & by all accounts hilarious. You can read a bit of it at Literary Hub.
Barbara Edelman is the author of the poetry collection Dream of the Gone-From City from Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2017. Her poems have appeared in journals nationally, including Prairie Schooner, Cimarron Review, and Poet Lore; in translation in the Italian journal Nuovi Argomenti, and in several anthologies. Her short prose has appeared in Rattle and Arts & Letters. She’s the author of two poetry chapbooks: Exposure, Finishing Line Press, 2014 and A Girl in Water, Parallel Press, 2002. Her work has been recognized with a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts individual artist’s grant in poetry and the Turow-Kinder Prize in short fiction.
Edelman teaches in the writing, composition, and literature programs at Pitt and coordinates the Writers’ Café. She won the 2012 CGS Student Choice Award for teaching. She holds a B.A. in English from Colgate University, an M.A. in English from California State University Northridge, and an M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Pittsburgh.
Meanwhile, in Erie, it’s
Open mic and featured writers series
feat. Jason Baldinger, Heath Brougher, Scott Thomas Outlar, Jay Miner, Jeremy Stolz, Luke Kuzmish, Matt Borczon, Thasia Anne, & Veronica Hopkins at Ember+Forge.
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The True Cost of War
February 21, 2019 June 26, 2017 by Ryan Lau
By Ryan Lau | MIDDLE EAST
After the absolute strategic mishap that was the military’s decision to shoot down a Syrian plane in Syrian airspace, tensions are once again rising between the United States and Russia. This is not remotely surprising, given Vladimir Putin’s close ties with Bashar Al-Assad of Syria, but rather it is deeply saddening and disturbing, as it brings the two superpowers one step closer to war. After the incident, Russia responded with a reminder to the United States that any planes over the western half of Syria would be considered “air targets” to them, essentially placing a no-fly zone. These no-fly zones seldom are successful, as seen by implementation in Bosnia and Iraq. More often, they result in the absolute tragedy that is war. We as a free society must reject these anti-diplomatic measures in order to avoid the mass slaughter that is war.
The fact of the matter is, half of all war casualties consist of innocent civilians caught in the battle. The other half consists of soldiers who are often naive to the drastic consequences of war, and many who are unaware of the ulterior motives behind the fighting. Two men will fight valiantly against each other, each imagining themselves on some sort of moral high ground, fighting because of the emblem on the other’s shirt. Two people, once separated by geographic location, shedding blood for an unimportant cause, enacted by merciless superiors.
Many may say that these young men and women are exercising their patriotic and civic duty, pledging to make the ultimate sacrifice out of selflessness. But more times than not, these same soldiers do not even know why their rulers have chosen to send them into battle. Even when enlightened, it is darkly laughable that one can consider a pledge to kill to be an act of selflessness. These innocent soldiers die at the mercy of other young people, often from the same generation, often from similar backgrounds, often with families and friends and lives similar to their own. Innocent people are transformed into murderers, killing only because somebody somewhere signed some paper with someone else. Blind patriotism and faith in these arbitrary papers lead to servicemen being murdered and committing acts of murder, acts that could have been avoided, had our society rejected violence as a means long ago.
Soldiers in war go through physical and mental struggles that make it exceedingly difficult to live after they are out of combat, that is, if they make it that far. The real cost of war is not measured in dollars spent on weapons and supplies, but in the human lives wasted in seemingly endless bloodshed. Families tear apart, and mothers often don’t know when their children will return– or if they will return at all. If they do return, soldiers often have extreme emotional problems resulting from the killing they have completed, and from the often gruesome deaths of comrades they witnessed. War may bring soldiers closer together, but this is of no benefit unless all of one’s comrades make it through the war alive. There is a severe human cost of war, the toll on soldiers, the lives of family members, the bonds between mothers and sons, of grandmothers and grandchildren, of sisters and brothers, of comrades.
Unfortunately, the cost of war doesn’t end with the last shot. The last shot of one war turns into the first shot of the next war, as the continuous cycle of bloody battles continues. Since 1914, there has not been a period of peace longer than twenty-five years. When a war occurs, the lives of innocent civilians are destroyed, and civilians who are not killed often have family members and loved ones torn away from them. The civilians who survive a war often grow to hate those who have killed their loved ones, and another war commences.
War is a cycle of hatred that will continue unless someone has the courage to end it, and our current foreign relations show no sign of approaching this courage.
The Future Libertarian President of Brazil? Meet João Doria
State Representative Defects To The Libertarian Party
Eric Ciaramella Named in Impeachment Testimony
WikiLeaks for Everything: The Path to Freedom
Editorial: PR Agent Caroline McAteer Can’t Threaten 71 Republic
The Libertarian Party of Nevada is Literally Brain-Dead
Counterculture in the US: Naturality of Bohemianism
Gun Rights: Death By A Thousand Cuts
You and I Paid for Bombs That Hit a Hospital Yesterday
Cody Wilson Talks Libertarianism, Strategy, and the Future
These Five Senate Races Will Make or Break the Blue Wave
Spoiler Alert: Israel Has Nukes
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Meet the 2020 Libertarian Candidates
The Ideals of the Declaration of Independence
Alabama Senate Election: LIVE Coverage
Did a Drone Spot Jeffrey Epstein Alive on His Island?
Exclusive: Westwood High School Covers Up Shooting Incident
New York Bill to Force Kids to Get HPV Vaccine
BREAKING: French Government Opens Fire on Tax Protesters
Ron Paul Attacks Libertarian Leadership in Response to Controversy
Banning Kratom Nationwide Will Be Deadly
71 Republic is always looking for new talent to help spread and promote our message and vision. We accept writers and of any age, background, and level of experience. Join our team by applying here.
71 Republic’s mission is to report on the injustices in our society. See something? Say something.
© 2019 71 Republic • Powered by GeneratePress
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Black Crowes Reunite for ‘Shake Your Money Maker’ Tour
Josh Cheuse
The Black Crowes are getting back together for a North American tour where they'll celebrate the 30th anniversary of their debut, Shake Your Money Maker. They'll perform the album in its entirety as well as other songs from the band's catalog.
A billboard spotted in New York City already revealed two dates for next July. Their now-confirmed tour begins June 17 in Austin and closes out Sept. 19 in Los Angeles. You can see the dates below and visit their website for tickets and VIP packages, all of which go on sale today.
"I'm thrilled and blessed to be playing with my brother celebrating the music we've made and bringing our lives together full circle," frontman Chris Robinson said in a news release. "Long live rock n' roll & the Black Crowes!"
Rich Robinson added: "First and foremost, I'm really happy to have my brother back in my life. To be able to play music again together and celebrate the first record we made as kids, is a gift. To have these songs stand up after 30 years is something I could've never fathomed."
The brothers made the announcement today on the Howard Stern show, where they also revealed that the Black Crowes will play a special show tonight at New York's Bowery Ballroom. Another concert is set for Wednesday at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. These will be the group's first performances since February 2014.
Chris also admitted that he had some personal issues to work through in order for the reunion to happen. "I said some horrible things. I was in a negative place, but you know what, I've apologized to Rich about that," Robinson said on the Howard Stern program. "A lot of things have changed for me in the last two years. I was in a relationship that was failing. I was in a negative place. I was dealing with depression. And I'm sitting over here, like, 'Why am I saying bad things about my brother?'"
The new lineup will be fleshed out by guitarist Isiah Mitchell, bassist Tim LeFebvre (who played on David Bowie’s Blackstar), keyboardist Joel Robinow and drummer Ojha, according to Rolling Stone.
Black Crowes 2020 North American Tour Dates
June 17 – Austin, TX @ Austin360 Amphitheater
June 19 – Dallas, TX @ Dos Equis Pavilion
June 20 – Houston, TX @ Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion Presented by Huntsman
June 23 – Tulsa, OK @ BOK Center
June 24 – Rogers, AR @ Walmart AMP
June 26 – Birmingham, AL @ Oak Mountain Amphitheater
June 27 – Atlanta, GA @ Cellairis Amhitheatre at Lakewood
June 30 – West Palm Beach, FL @ Coral Sky Amphitheatre
July 1 – Tampa, FL @ MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre
July 3 – Charlotte, NC @ PNC Music Pavilion
July 4 – Raleigh, NC @ Coastal Credit Union Music Park at Walnut Creek
July 7-8 – Nashville, TN @ Ascend Amphitheatre
July 10 – Virginia Beach, VA @ Veteran United Home Loans Amphitheater
July 11 – Washington, DC @ Jiffy Lube Live
July 14 – Camden, NJ @ BB&T Pavilion
July 15 – Bethel, NY @ Bethel Woods Center for the Arts
July 17 – Holmdel, NJ @ PNC Bank Arts Center
July 18 – Wantagh, NY @ Northwell Health at Jones Beach Theater
July 21 – Gilford, NH @ Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion
July 22 – Boston, MA @ Xfinity Center
July 24 – Hartford, CT @ XFINITY Theatre
July 25 – Saratoga Springs, NY @ Saratoga Performing Arts Center
July 28 – Toronto, ON @ Budweiser Stage
July 29 – Detroit, MI @ DTE Energy Music Theatre
July 31 – Buffalo, NY @ Darien Lake Amphitheatre
Aug. 1 – Pittsburgh, PA @ KeyBank Pavilion
Aug. 13 – Minneapolis, MN @ Xcel Energy Center
Aug. 15 – Chicago, IL @ Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre
Aug. 16 – Indianapolis, IN @ Ruoff Home Mortgage Music Center
Aug. 18 – Cleveland, OH @ Blossom Music Center
Aug. 20 – Cincinnati, OH @ Riverbend Music Center
Aug. 23 – St. Louis, MO @ Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre
Aug. 26 – Kansas City, MO @ Providence Medical Center Amphitheater
Aug. 28 – Omaha, NE @ CHI Health Center
Aug. 30 – Denver, CO @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre
Sept. 1 – Salt Lake City, UT @ USANA Amphitheatre
Sept. 4 – Seattle, WA @ White River Amphitheatre
Sept. 5 – Portland, OR @ Sunlight Supply Amphitheater
Sept. 8 – Concord, CA @ Concord Pavilion
Sept. 9 – Mountain View, CA @ Shoreline Amphitheatre
Sept. 11 – Las Vegas, NV @ MGM Grand Garden Arena
Sept. 12 – Phoenix, AZ @ Ak-Chin Pavilion
Sept. 18 – San Diego, CA @ North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre
Sept. 19 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Forum
See the Black Crowes Among the Top 100 Albums of the '90s
Next: Top 10 Black Crowes Songs
Source: Black Crowes Reunite for ‘Shake Your Money Maker’ Tour
Filed Under: The Black Crowes
Categories: Concerts, News
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Mom of 2-year-old on life support at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland granted US visa
By by Jobina Fortson
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KGO) -- A Yemeni mother of a 2-year-old boy on life support at an Oakland hospital has been granted a U.S. visa, the family's attorney says.
RELATED: Family pleads for waiver to allow Yemeni mom to visit dying 2-year-old at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland
Shaima Swileh is currently in Egypt, and is now able to visit her son Abdullah at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital.
Abdullah, who turned 2 years old last week, has a genetic brain condition that has worsened. His father brought him to the U.S. earlier this year. Both Abdullah and his father are U.S. citizens.
Swileh, however, is a Yemeni national and was unable to visit under President Donald Trump's travel ban, which applies to mostly Muslim majority nations.
politicssacramentooaklanducsf benioff children's hospital oaklandhealthdonald trumpchildren's healthtravelbanfamilyu.s. & worldpresident donald trump
Travel ban keeps Yemeni mom from sick child in Oakland
14th Amendment controversy: Can Pres. Trump change the Constitution?
Deported Oakland nurse returns to U.S. in time for the holidays
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Fatal crash cleared from I-880 lanes in Oakland
Fatal accident on I-880 in Oakland, Wednesday, July 29, 2015. (KGO-TV)
Bay City News
OAKLAND, Calif. -- All lanes have reopened on southbound Interstate Highway 880 after a four-car crash left one person dead this morning, a California Highway Patrol spokesman said.
The crash was reported at about 4:50 a.m. on southbound Highway 880 near High Street. Officers responded and found four vehicles at the scene, two of which were engulfed in flames, CHP Officer Sean Wilkenfeld said.
Investigators determined the crash started when a 2001 Hyundai Sonata driven by a 47-year-old Oakland man stalled in the No. 2 lane of the highway. The female driver of a 2000 Honda Civic used her emergency brake to
try to avoid the stalled Hyundai and came to rest sideways in the far left lane, Wilkenfeld said.
A 52-year-old San Francisco man driving a 2010 Subaru Forester then struck the Honda, which was also hit by a 2005 GMC 1500 driven by a 42-year-old Vacaville man, according to Wilkenfeld.
The driver of the Honda was killed in the crash. Her name is not yet being released by the Alameda County coroner's bureau.
The driver of the Subaru was taken to the hospital with minor injuries. His car and the Hyundai were the vehicles on fire when officers arrived, Wilkenfeld said.
The crash shut down multiple lanes of the highway for more than two hours. All lanes reopened as of shortly before 7:30 a.m., according to the CHP.
All of the drivers cooperated with the investigation into the crash and no arrests were made, Wilkenfeld said.
trafficoaklandcar accidenti 880accident
Copyright 2020 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, re-transmission or reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. Is prohibited.
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Parents lose custody of son denied leukemia treatment
TAMPA BAY, Fla. -- A Tampa Bay area family at the center of a national controversy will not be getting their 4-year-old son, who is battling leukemia, back into their home.
Parents of 4-year-old Noah McAdams were denied custody of the young boy Monday evening.
Noah McAdams was diagnosed with leukemia earlier this year. His parents, Joshua McAdams and Taylor Bland-Ball, refused to give him chemotherapy treatments.
The case sparked a nationwide search when the boy's parents took him out of Florida instead of going to the hospital for treatments.
RELATED: Florida parents lose custody of 3-year-old son after discontinuing chemotherapy
During Monday's hearing, Judge Thomas Palermo said the state successfully proved that Joshua McAdams is "an untimely threat to them because of his anger issues." Judge Palermo went on to call the details of Joshua McAdams "disturbing."
Judge Palermo recommended both parents to seek mental health evaluations.
"Mrs. Bland-Ball testified that she had no training on how to remove a pic line, had not researched the ramifications of removing it, but was aware that the line could break off in Noah McAdam's body. She explained during the trial that she is still comfortable removing it, because she had watched a YouTube video on how to do it," said Judge Palermo. "She also explained she had inserted IV's into adults and she knew there were two hospitals located approximately ten miles away from the cabin if there were any complications. And with that, and with Mr. McAdams consent, she simply pulled the pic line out of her son's body."
Noah will remain in custody of his grandparents. The State of Florida will have the option to give Joshua McAdams and Taylor Bland-Ball custody in the future.
His parents' attorney said Noah is in remission.
health & fitnessfloridafloridaleukemiau.s. & worldcancercustody
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PolicyGrid II
University Research Themes, Groups, Pools and Institutes
Websitehttp://www.abdn.ac.uk/ncs/departments/computing-science/policygrid-304.php
PolicyGrid is a research Node of the National Centre for e-Social Science (NCeSS). NCeSS is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to investigate how innovative and powerful computer-based infrastructure and tools developed over the past five years under the UK e-Science programme can benefit the social science research community. PolicyGrid involves a collaboration between computer scientists and social scientists at the University of Aberdeen, the Macaulay Institute (Aberdeen) and elsewhere in the UK.
Fingerprint Dive into the research topics where PolicyGrid II is active. These topic labels come from the works of this organisation's members. Together they form a unique fingerprint.
rural community Social Sciences
rural area Social Sciences
Chronic Pain Medicine & Life Sciences
Technology Medicine & Life Sciences
Telemedicine Medicine & Life Sciences
retirement Social Sciences
Rural Population Medicine & Life Sciences
digital divide Social Sciences
1 Other Report
After Brexit: 10 key questions for rural policy in Scotland
Atterton, J., Copus, A., Glass, J., Liddon, A., de Lima, P., McCracken, D., Moxey, A., Philip, L. J., Shortall, S. & Shucksmith, M., Jan 2018, Newcastle University/ Rural Policy Centre SRUC. 17 p.
A Window to the Outside World: Digital technology to stimulate imaginative mobility for rural housebound older adults
Dowds, G. L., Philip, L. J., Currie, M. & Masthoff, J., 2018, Geographies of Transport and Ageing. Curl, A. & Musselwhite, C. (eds.). 1 ed. Palgrave Macmillan, p. 101-130 30 p.
Tales from a Small Island: Applying the ‘Path-Dependency’ Thesis to Explore Migration to a Remote Rural Community
Philip, L. J. & MacLeod, M., Jan 2018, In : Sociologia Ruralis. 58, 1, p. 147 - 170 24 p.
PolicyGrid II - supporting interdisciplinary evidence bases for scientific collaboration & policy making
Edwards, P. (Creator), Hunter, C. J. (Creator), Philip, L. (Creator), Mellish, C. (Creator), Farrington, J. (Creator), UK Data Service, 17 Jan 2013
DOI: 10.5255/UKDA-SN-850723
Semantic grid tools for rural policy development
Edwards, P. (Creator), Mellish, C. (Creator), Farrington, J. (Creator), Preece, A. D. (Creator), UK Data Service, 14 Jan 2013
Trusted Tiny Things: Guidelines Draft Version
Beran, S. (Creator), University of Aberdeen, 2015
DOI: 10.20392/04a2cb61-0cda-4207-b512-1b31bff5ba16
View all 6 datasets
1 Membership of peer review panel or committee
Programme Committee - Extended Semantic Web Conference 2012 (External organisation)
Pete Edwards (Participant)
Activity: Membership › Membership of peer review panel or committee
What the NHS can learn from the smartphone on data consent
Christopher Burnett & Edoardo Pignotti
Press/Media: Articles in 'The Conversation'
Small businesses think smart to keep up with Amazon drones
Jennifer Ann Holden, Edoardo Pignotti & Liang Chen
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Patent/IP Analysis
Abiro IoT
Abiro Password
Abiro PhoneGap Image Generator
Abiro Picit
Abiro Pics
Abiro QR Code Generator
Abiro SMS
Abiro Trends
CliqTags
Gramofy
Mobile Life
TweetLink
Twitizer
Affärslyft
AmoLib
Exensor
Instant Advice
Mobile Labs
Netville
Paolo Roberto
Rörkraft
Teleca
Trivendia
Location involves finding out a device’s geographical position, and optionally also its heading and speed.
Several methods are used, depending on local availability and whether you are outdoors or indoors:
GPS or Global Positioning System consists of a network of geo-stationary satellites that at any given time, and provided line of sight, can position you wherever you are in the world with high precision (a number of meters). Apart from latitude and longitude, you can also get information about altitude, speed and heading, which is quite useful for navigation, mobile surveillance and the like.
Cell ID uses the knowledge of where mobile base stations are placed and provides an approximation of the position of the phone that way. Cell ID works as well and exactly the same way outdoors and indoors, as opposed to GPS, but can be very coarse outside cities (100 meter vs kilometers at times).
Wi-Fi is primarily used for communication of course, but the fact that each Wi-Fi access point has a worldwide unique identifier they can also be used for rough positioning similar to Cell ID, with the addition of rough 3D space. The main disadvantage of Wi-Fi is that it almost only exists indoors for obvious reasons.
QR Code uses the knowledge of where specific QR Codes have been placed in 3-dimensional space. Precision can be very high as you are most likely very close to a QR Code when reading it, but this also means each and every QR Code and its position needs to be registered centrally. Not much used today for location.
NFC has characteristics quite similar to QR Code in terms of use, but uses radio instead of vision. Not much used today for location (if at all).
All smartphones and also many featurephones sold today have integrated mobile radio (of course), GPS, Wi-Fi and a camera, and NFC is around the corner.
Adding to the possibilities are ways to determine the direction and detail/transient movement of the phone, using primarily the following:
Measurement of acceleration, that also measures the earth’s gravity, via an accelerometer
Measurement of geographical static heading using a compass
Measurement of momentary change of direction using a gyroscope
Gyroscopes are still relatively rare in smartphones, but expect such to be commonplace soon.
Obvious uses of these features are for games, navigation etc, but also augmented reality applications use this to determine what the phone’s camera is looking at, so information can be overlayed.
The accelerometer is often used for measuring the angle of the phone in e.g. games, as the gravity of Earth (g) is so much larger than the acceleration of the phone itself. As g points straight down (surface-wise), it’s a good reference for the phone’s direction.
Abiro AB
info@abiro.com
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April 29, 2015 | Why give alcoholics any assistance? They’ll just spend it on booze!
September 24, 2014 | Why is it up to alcoholics to help themselves?
June 16, 2014 | Is 2 Buck Chuck Wine Good for America?
May 13, 2014 | Would You Rather…
March 26, 2014 | The Brain and the Heart are Organs
Golf Outing – June 8th, 2019
The 3rd Annual Eric G Madden FAR Golf Outing on June 8th 2019 supports the mission of the Foundation for Alcoholism Research (FAR): to raise and distribute funds to support research into the causes, identification, prevention, treatment, and cure of Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) in memory of our son, brother, best friend, colleague, and teammate, Eric G Madden. Eric lost his life to AUD 3 years ago and with that we all lost a most beloved young man with vast potential. AUD is a cunning disease – so prevalent yet largely hidden from view in our society. We want to invite you to come out and play golf, another sport Eric loved so well, share your memories and make new ones, have fun in the spring sun, and help raise awareness and funds to combat AUD! The Foundation for Alcoholism Research (FAR) is an all-volunteer 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE…
Kathleen Madden New FAR President
Melanie, Brianne, Kathleen, Caitlin
MIDDLEBURY, VT – Effective November 8, 2016, Kathleen Madden is the new President of the Foundation for Alcoholism Research, Inc. (FAR). Kathleen, a Special Education and English teacher at Taft High School in Chicago, IL, brings a wealth of knowledge, experience, and passion to her role.
After a year-and-a-half nationwide search for new management, FAR had not found a new home and was ready to close its doors. Although FAR was growing on-line throughout the country, current management was unable to continue for a variety of reasons including aging and job and family responsibilities. In July a final letter was sent to supporters for anyone to step forward. Kathleen and her three daughters volunteered and, after many discussions, will be taking over the operation of FAR.
Kathleen and her husband Mark lost their son Eric to alcohol last March just short of his 31st birthday. Kathleen and her family including Eric sought help in many in-patient and out-patient facilities for years and had done much reading and research on their own to no avail. Their devastation defies words.
The Madden daughters, Brianne, Melanie, and Caitlin bring expert skills to maintaining and growing FAR. Brianne, in her third year of law school at Washington University has a degree in psychology; Melanie with a math and secondary education degree, is finishing her Masters in Leadership and Curriculum and is a teacher in the St. Louis, MO public schools; and Caitlin is a senior at the University of Wisconsin in Social Justice. This family has not only the skills but most importantly, the heart to bring to find better solutions for this, 3rd most prevalent disease in the US.
Peg Calder, founder and out-going president of FAR feels that the organization is in good hands “I am thrilled and comforted with the changes. This family is as passionate about the need for better answers as I have been, they are in a major metropolitan area, and they are open and willing to talk about Eric. They can grow FAR and extend research. It couldn’t be better. I thank them for their commitment.”
Kathleen expresses her thoughts: “My family and I feel incredibly grateful that we found FAR in the midst of our darkest moments of grief and despair after losing Eric to the cunning disease of alcoholism. In attempting to come to terms with the greatest tragedy our family has ever suffered and with much collective soul-searching: amongst ourselves, our extended family, numerous friends and colleagues, and the marvelous Peg Calder, instead of despair, we are choosing to channel our sorrow into productive work to help others. FAR’s mission is our mission as well: to inspire, encourage and fund research into understanding this disease and finding ways to prevent, treat, and enact cures. I am devastatingly sad to know that nothing more can be done to help my son, but we are committed to honoring his memory by taking on the leadership of this amazing foundation and carrying on its excellent work.”
Peg will remain as a member of the Board of Directors and as Treasurer. Alex Bertoni, Christine Fraoli, and James McMillan will also continue on the Board. Kathleen and Brianne Madden have also been voted onto the Board as President and Recording Secretary respectively.
FAR’s current status shows that online donations dramatically increased after the release of FAR’s transformational, new website last year. Also, the previous research grant to study baclofen for reduced craving had been stalled for several technical reasons last year but is now back on track, and FAR is discussing the next grant for a possible breakthrough in diagnosis.
About the Foundation for Alcoholism Research
The Foundation for Alcoholism Research is an all-volunteer 501(c)3 non-profit organization founded in 2008 to raise and distribute funds to perform research in the following areas: Causes, Identification, Detection, Prevention, Treatment, Control, and Cure of/for Alcoholism.
FAR has awarded three research grants.
Tax-exempt donations can be sent to the following address:
AMERICA WAKES UP TO ITS ADDICTION CRISIS
To raise and distribute funds to perform research in the following areas: causes, identification, detection, prevention, treatment, and cure of/for Alcoholism. It is not to provide funds for rehabilitation, detoxification, counseling, or any personal aid to people with this disease.
FAR is a fully-qualified IRS 501(c) 3 public charity.
What is FAR – and Why?
FAR is concerned about the disease of alcoholism, not the beverage. FAR is the only public charity supporting research to find better solutions for those afflicted. The funding for such research has been small compared to other diseases, yet it is the 3rd most prevalent disease in the US. Read more…
FAR Public Service Announcement
Have you ever felt totally helpless watching someone close to you fight their addiction to alcohol? You can help…
Join the Foundation for Alcoholism Research and its mission to fund research into effective medical treatments for alcohol dependence, one of America’s most destructive diseases. FAR is an all-volunteer charity and 100% of your donation goes to research. The last grant went to a pilot program to test a promising anti-craving medication. The next grant being considered is for better diagnosis. FAR is the only public charity addressing research for alcohol addiction. Be part of the solution!
Mary Williamson
Kevin Baer
Joseph Deitch
Brett Hilgendorf
Paul Wittenburg
Diane Clodfelter
Anonymous Mr. W.
Rita Kaye Byler
Mark Ferguson
Darick Sarley
Tammy Resko
Alexander AlbertoDuno
Michelle Lewis
Meg McKennon
Harry C. Moreland III
Walker Neuhaus
Marcy Lape
Nicolas Michael Marquez
Bob Morse
David Galli
Kenneth L. Hadsock
Jim Patterson
Anne Buckingham
Vannoy Thompson
Amy Grabina
Bryan Beaman
Diane Maye
Laura Jean Malay Murphy
Eric G. Madden
Walter Mercado
Edward Truan
Grant Zacher
Bruce Moran
Jason Meilike
Thomas Baran
Robert W. Doria
JoAnn (Bootsie) Jean Derer
Carter Roland Tague
Brian D. White
Gerard (Jerry) Saville
Jane McKillop Steingberg
High-Dose Baclofen Supports Abstinence in Alcoholism
From Athens Greece: High doses of baclofen (multiple brands), a drug normally used to treat spasticity, supports alcohol-dependent patients in maintaining abstinence from alcohol and is reasonably well tolerated, new research indicates. Read More
Huge New Penn Study: Red Wine Not So Good For Your Heart After All
Uh, guys? I think the entire health community might soon take back everything good it’s ever said about red wine and heart health: A huge new study out of Penn Medicine, published today on BMJ.com, found absolutely no cardiovascular benefits to drinking even moderate amounts of alcohol, including red wine. Read more
Chilean Researchers Working on Alcoholism Vaccine
Researchers in Chile say that if their venture is successful, a shot a month could help alcoholics kick their habit.
A team of researchers in Chile are working to come up with a vaccine against alcoholism. If successful, the patient will get a shot a month and not crave alcohol anymore. Read more
Why give alcoholics any assistance? They’ll just spend it on booze!
Why is it up to alcoholics to help themselves?
Is 2 Buck Chuck Wine Good for America?
Is Alcoholics Anonymous Irrational?
BBC | March 23, 2015
(BBC) Alcoholics Anonymous is a standard part of alcohol therapy in America. It was established 80 years ago and it’s famous 12 step philosophy says that in order to be cured an alcoholic must never drink a single drop again… Read More
A Cure for Alcoholism?
The Doctors | 2015
(The Doctors) Todd’s binge drinking has cost him his job and his family. He agrees to try a new medical treatment for alcoholism, a time-released implant that claims to curb alcohol cravings. Find out if the implant has any effect on this father. Plus, what advice does former child star and recovering alcoholic, Jeremy Miller, have for Todd?… Read More
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Dr OBrien and Peg Calder
“It would be a product of false pride to claim that AA is a cure-all, even for alcoholism”
~ Bill W. (founder of AA)*
June 8th will be the third annual Eric G. Madden FAR Golf Outing at Fox Run Golf Links - Elk Grove Village, IL. Click here to learn more.
Peg Calder, FAR President presented "FAR, Why, How, and What" at the monthly seminar series at the University of Pennsylvania, Treatment Research Center on November 9, 2015. She is the only non-research scientist to be invited to give a presentation to this illustrious group. Shown here with Dr. Teresa Franklin.
Contact FAR
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Is Your Gut Causing Sleepless Nights?
Berberine May Ease Symptoms of Anxiety and Depression — And Much More
Alfalfa: Beneficial to Both Humans and Livestock Alike
It’s already known that sleep influences your gut health, in part because lack of it makes it harder for you to control your impulses and manipulates hormones linked to food intake, causing you to eat more and crave unhealthy foods
Now researchers are asking whether the opposite also holds true and perhaps your microbiome influences your ability to sleep as well
There could be a link between sleep quality, composition of gut microbiome and cognitive flexibility in older adults
Prebiotics, which act as food for beneficial bacteria, or probiotics, in your gut, have been found to influence sleep in animal studies
When men slept for just four hours a night for two nights in a row, the balance of bacteria in their gut shifted in ways linked to metabolic disturbances
You share your body with trillions of microorganisms, the bulk of which reside in your gut, including your stomach and small and large intestines. There, however, they are not restricted to influencing only the goings-on of your digestive process.
Far from it, these microorganisms, collectively known as your microbiome, influence your body's homeostasis daily and are intricately tied to other body systems via a number of complex pathways, including the gut-brain axis and a recently revealed gut-brain-bone marrow axis, the latter of which may influence your blood pressure, mood and more.
One of the most compelling avenues of study relating to your microbiome is how it relates to your sleep. It's already known that sleep influences your gut health, in part because lack of it makes it harder for you to control your impulses and manipulates hormones linked to food intake, causing you to eat more and crave unhealthy foods.
So skimping on sleep is a remarkably good bellwether of a poor diet, the latter of which can quickly take a toll on your gut health. Now researchers are asking whether the opposite also holds true and perhaps your microbiome influences your ability to sleep as well.
Can Your Microbiome Keep You Up at Night?
Although the science is in its early stages, researchers are looking into whether improving gut health could act as a new form of sleep therapy. Michael Breus, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and fellow of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, told The Guardian:1
"There is no question in my mind that gut health is linked to sleep health, although we do not have the studies to prove it yet. Scientists investigating the relationship between sleep and the microbiome are finding that the microbial ecosystem may affect sleep and sleep-related physiological functions in a number of different ways: shifting circadian rhythms, altering the body's sleep-wake cycle, affecting hormones that regulate sleep and wakefulness."
For instance, writing in the journal Chest, researchers pointed out that changes in gut microbiota have long been linked to lifestyle behaviors such as diet, travel, exercise and disturbances to circadian rhythm.2 Meanwhile, diseases once primarily attributed to lifestyle, such as obesity, heart disease and depression, are turning out to have increasing links to microbiota. In this case, they believe that "microbial-immune cross-talk" may be playing a role in obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), particularly in fatal cases.
"[W]e posit that altered patterns of sleep and oxygenation, as seen in OSA, will promote specific alterations in gut microbiota which in turn will elicit the immunological alterations that lead to OSA-induced end-organ morbidities," they stated. Likewise, in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology, researchers evaluated the interplay between sleep dysfunction, gastrointestinal health and disease, with particular focus on how the effects of sleep and circadian rhythm disruption could affect the microbiota.3
Yet another study pointed out that partial sleep deprivation is known to alter gut microbiome, and its composition is linked to cognitive flexibility. Their study found that there could be a link between sleep quality, composition of gut microbiome and cognitive flexibility in older adults, such that "improving microbiome health may buffer against sleep-related cognitive decline in older adults."4
Prebiotics Affect REM and Non-REM Sleep
Prebiotics, which act as food for the beneficial bacteria, or probiotics, in your gut, have already been found to influence sleep in animal studies. When young rats were fed a diet containing prebiotic fiber or a control diet for four weeks, the prebiotic group spent more time in restful and restorative non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep cycles.5
In addition, rats eating prebiotics had an increase in beneficial gut bacteria as compared to the control group and spent more time in REM sleep after being stressed, which is important for promoting recovery. The researchers noted:6
"The results of the current study demonstrate that a … diet rich in prebiotics … started in early life increases the growth of Lactobacillus rhamnosus and alleviates the stress-induced disruption of REM sleep, diurnal physiology and gut microbial alpha diversity.
Rats on the test diet exhibited decreased impact of the stressor, including increased REM sleep rebound following stress, attenuated disruption of the diurnal rhythm of CBT [core body temperature], and prevention of dysbiosis in all three measures of alpha diversity …
Given that sufficient NREM sleep and proper nutrition can impact brain development and function and that sleep problems are common in early-life, it is possible that a diet rich in prebiotics started in early-life could help improve sleep, support the gut microbiota and promote optimal brain/psychological health."
Dr. Michael Mosley, a doctor-journalist with BBC News, conducted a similar trial on himself, taking prebiotics for five days, and noticed a remarkable improvement in his sleep. Prior to the prebiotics, he spent 21 percent of his time in bed awake but this dropped to 8 percent after the prebiotics.7
This isn't definitive proof that prebiotics improve sleep, but considering the many other benefits they add to your health, there's little harm, and potentially great gain, in adding them to your diet. If you're interested in adding more prebiotic fiber to your diet to improve the health of your microbiome, and possibly your sleep, the following foods are good sources:8
Chicory root
Fennel bulb
Konjac root
Too Little Sleep Alters the Bacteria in Your Gut
The many ties between your microbiota, your sleep and your overall health only continue to grow. For instance, melatonin, the sleep hormone, is made from serotonin, and is normally found in abundance in your gut — even more so than in your brain. Gut bacteria affect both serotonin and melatonin production.
Further, the composition and functions of your gut microbiome is affected by circadian rhythm disruptions, including jet lag. Researchers believe circadian rhythms play a key role in regulating the gut microbiome as well as its responses to gastrointestinal pathogens.9
If you skimp on sleep, you also prompt changes in your body's microbial community. When men slept for just four hours a night for two nights in a row, the balance of bacteria in their gut shifted.10 Specifically, they had increased firmicutes to bacteroidetes ratio, higher abundances of the families Coriobacteriaceae and Erysipelotrichaceae and lower abundance of Tenericutes, changes that have previously been linked to metabolic disturbances. The researchers concluded:11
"Our findings demonstrate that short-term sleep loss induces subtle effects on human microbiota. To what extent the observed changes to the microbial community contribute to metabolic consequences of sleep loss warrants further investigations in larger and more prolonged sleep studies."
The Link Between Sleep, Depression and Your Gut
Your gut microbiome plays an intricate role in your mood, and sleep plays a role in depression, raising intriguing questions about how all three — microbiome, sleep and depression — are related. Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King's College London, told The Guardian:12
"We know that people who live with depression and people who sleep poorly both have abnormal microbes in the gut, which would suggest there is a very real connection here between all three … I've always found that if you help someone sleep, it improves their depression, and vice versa. If we can also look after the gut, this may have an impact on both sleep disturbances and mood disorders."
Also intriguing, a small study involving adults diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and depression found the probiotic Bifidobacterium longum provided depression relief. At six weeks, 64 percent of the treatment group had reduced depression scores compared to 32 percent of the control group that received a placebo.13
Those receiving the probiotic also reported fewer symptoms of IBS and improved overall quality of life. At the end of 10 weeks, approximately twice as many in the treatment group were still reporting lower levels of depression.
Interestingly, functional MRI scans revealed a link between reductions in depression score and actual changes in brain activity, specifically in areas involved in mood regulation, such as the amygdala. As noted by Dr. Roger McIntyre, professor of psychiatry and pharmacology at the University of Toronto, who was not involved in the study:14
"We know that one part of the brain, the amygdala, tends to be red-hot in people with depression, and it seemed to cool down with this intervention. It provides more scientific believability that something in the brain, at a very biological level, seems to be affected by this probiotic."
Could Your Diet Improve Both Your Sleep and Your Gut Health?
Another common thread affecting both your sleep and your gut is your diet. One study evaluating the diets and sleep patterns of more than 4,500 people found distinct patterns:15
Very short sleepers (less than five hours a night): Had the least food variety, drank less water and consumed fewer total carbohydrates and lycopene (an antioxidant found in fruits and vegetables).
Short sleepers (five to six hours): Consumed the most calories but ate less vitamin C and selenium, and drank less water. Short sleepers tended to eat more lutein and zeaxanthin than other groups.
Normal sleepers (seven to eight hours): Had the most food variety in their diet, which is generally associated with a healthier way of eating.
Long sleepers (nine or more hours): Consumed the least calories as well as less theobromine (found in chocolate and tea), choline and total carbs. Long sleepers tended to drink more alcohol.
Further, Spector told The Guardian, "[I]f we eat badly, we sleep badly … If you wanted to improve sleep, you could try a gut-friendly regime by eating a broad and inclusive diet with real food, not processed."16 Indeed, it's likely that eating a varied, whole food diet is one key to normal, healthy sleep and gut health alike. If you need some help in this area, check out my nutrition plan for a step-by-step guide to optimizing your eating habits.
As for how to support a healthy microbiota, which could do more to improve your sleep than is currently appreciated, it isn't very complicated, but you do need to take proactive steps to encourage its health while avoiding factors known to cause harm. This includes:
Eat plenty of fermented foods. Healthy choices include lassi, fermented grass fed kefir, natto (fermented soy) and fermented vegetables.
Antibiotics, unless absolutely necessary, and when you do, make sure to reseed your gut with fermented foods and/or a high-quality probiotic supplement.
Take a probiotic supplement. Although I'm not a major proponent of taking many supplements (as I believe the majority of your nutrients need to come from food), probiotics are an exception if you don't eat fermented foods on a regular basis
Conventionally raised meats and other animal products, as CAFO animals are routinely fed low-dose antibiotics, plus GE grains loaded with glyphosate, which is widely known to kill many bacteria.
Boost your soluble and insoluble fiber intake, focusing on vegetables, nuts and seeds, including sprouted seeds.
Chlorinated and/or fluoridated water. Especially in your bathing such as showers, which are worse than drinking it.
Get your hands dirty in the garden. Exposure to bacteria and viruses can help to strengthen your immune system and provide long-lasting immunity against disease.
Getting your hands dirty in the garden can help reacquaint your immune system with beneficial microorganisms on the plants and in the soil.
Processed foods. Excessive sugars, along with otherwise "dead" nutrients, feed pathogenic bacteria.
Food emulsifiers such as polysorbate 80, lecithin, carrageenan, polyglycerols and xanthan gum also appear to have an adverse effect on your gut flora.
Unless 100 percent organic, they may also contain GMOs that tend to be heavily contaminated with pesticides such as glyphosate. Artificial sweeteners have also been found to alter gut bacteria in adverse ways.17
Open your windows. For the vast majority of human history, the outside was always part of the inside, and at no moment during our day were we ever really separated from nature.
Today, we spend 90 percent of our lives indoors. And, although keeping the outside out does have its advantages it has also changed the microbiome of your home.
Research shows that opening a window and increasing natural airflow can improve the diversity and health of the microbes in your home, which in turn benefit you.18
Agricultural chemicals, glyphosate (Roundup) in particular is a known antibiotic and will actively kill many of your beneficial gut microbes if you eat foods contaminated with it.
Wash your dishes by hand instead of in the dishwasher.
Research has shown that washing your dishes by hand leaves more bacteria on the dishes than dishwashers do, and eating off these less-than-sterile dishes may actually decrease your risk of allergies by stimulating your immune system.
Antibacterial soap, as it too kills off both good and bad bacteria and contributes to the development of antibiotic resistance.
1, 7, 12, 16 The Guardian March 19, 2018
2 Chest. 2018 Mar 13.
3 J Clin Gastroenterol. 2018 Mar;52(3):204-209.
4 Sleep Med. 2017 Oct;38:104-107.
5, 6 Frontiers of Behavioral Neuroscience January 10, 2017
8 Monash University, FAQs for the High Fiber, High Prebiotic Diet
9 Curr Opin Gastroenterol. 2016 Jan;32(1):7-11.
10, 11 Mol Metab. 2016 Oct 24;5(12):1175-1186.
13 Gastroenterology August 2017, Volume 153, Issue 2, Pages 448-459.e8
14 Time June 2, 2017
15 Appetite January 20, 2013
16 The Guardian March 19, 2018
17 Scientific American March 17, 2015
18 ISME Journal 2012 Aug;6(8):1469-79
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Hong Kong Eastern Adds Young Guards for 2019–2020 ABL Season
Hong Kong Eastern have announced that they have signed 23-year-old Trey Kell and 26-year-old TJ Price as two of their three imports for the upcoming ABL season—along with recently re-signed big man Michael Holyfield. The news comes after the reports of Marcus Elliott’s exit from the team to join the Singapore Slingers.
Trey Kell is a 6’4″ guard who first came out as a prospect from San Diego State University. Kell averaged 10.5 points, 4.1 rebounds, and 4.1 assists during his senior year for the Aztecs. After his collegiate stint, he began his professional career by moving to Europe before returning to North America to play in the National Basketball League of Canada.
Trey Kell had a spectacular run with the Moncton Magic as he averaged all-around stats of 21.6 PPG, 7.7 RPG, 4.6 APG, and 1.7 SPG, eventually leading the Canadian squad to its first championship finish—awarding him Finals MVP.
Despite his historic run in the NBLC, Trey wanted to further hone his basketball career as he leaped to play in one of Asia’s biggest leagues, the ASEAN Basketball League—cladding the blue and white for Hong Kong Eastern.
In an interview, Trey shared what went through his mind upon deciding to play in the Southeast Asian region. “I decided to come to this league because I felt like it was a league that can help me further my career,” he said. Trey added that former ABL import Winston Shepard also played a part in influencing him to head to Asia as Shepard “talked to him about [the] league and told [him] great things about it.”
On the other hand, TJ Price was a former standout for the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers. Listing at 6’5”, he is an adept guard with a knack of a smooth shooting touch and defensive capabilities. Price then decided to embark on his professional basketball career—first playing in France for Lille Metropole BC. He then got the opportunity to showcase his skills in the NBA Developmental League for the Lakeland Magic (previously the Erie Bayhawks), until he moved back to Europe to play for Egis Kormend.
Price then got an update from his agent that Hong Kong Eastern was interested in having him on board as one of their World Imports and gladly accepted the offer. During his interview, he said that his trainer Matt Binder told him countless times that if he stumbles upon a chance to play in Asia, he should grab it.
According to him, “Well my friend/trainer [Matt Binder] is very big on leagues in Asia. He always told me that if I get a chance to play over there, I should take it. Then the following year my agent tells me Eastern is interested so I immediately took an interest.”
Price also admired the professionalism within the league and the fan atmosphere during games, which led him to fully commit to playing for Hong Kong Eastern.
When asked about their game, both had different things to say. Trey explained, “I’m a player who can do a little of everything. I pride myself on not being one dimensional and I feel like I can affect the game in multiple ways.” Meanwhile, Price says that people should wait for the season to assess his game, and is solely focused on winning. “Can I put up numbers? I know so but this season I want to WIN. If it takes putting up numbers, then I will or if it takes to just playing great defense then I will or even setting up players passing the ball. This season you’re going to see me do whatever it takes to win. I’m all about winning!” he adds.
Kell then added that people describe his game similar to Paul Pierce or Joe Johnson, while Price never thought of comparing his game to anyone. But if he were to be asked, TJ answered that his on-court mentality is as same as with Clippers stars Patrick Beverley and Kawhi Leonard. “I think my mentality at times could be like a Pat Beverley or Kawhi Leonard to where I can score if we need a bucket or I can play defense to lock up the opposing team,” he elaborates.
Both American floor generals expressed their gratitude towards the team. Kell told the ABL that their experiences with Hong Kong Eastern have nothing but wholehearted acceptance from his teammates and staff.
“Everything has been great… my teammates have been accepting of me and helping me with what I need and the same with the coaching staff they have been very helpful. So [it has] been a smooth transition.” Kell stated.
Price then inserted that his teammates and staff were not only treating them nicely but also were exemplifying a great work ethic. “It’s been great so far. everyone seems to be nice and everyone is working hard right now. As a player, you have to love that everyone is trying to get better because that gives you confidence that you’re not the only one here who cares about winning and try to win a championship.”
Although Eastern welcomed them as the leading backcourt for next season, fans will be expecting more out of them as they will fill in the roles of O’Darien Bassett and the former ABL MVP Marcus Elliott. Despite the pressure, the duo of Kell and Price keep their composure intact.
“No, I don’t feel any pressure because when I went to Canada it was the same thing where I was replacing a player the fans loved so I’ll be used it and know if I play my game everything will be good and the fans will be happy,” Kell answered.
Price then added that their backcourt duo will be completely different from theirs. Price stated, “We are here to play our game and make the team better. Not try to do what they did or mimic them. We both know what we can do, it’s just new to the fans. Once we get started and the fans get to see us, I’m pretty sure they will be very, very happy with what we bring to the court.”
In their upcoming ABL debut, Kell and Price expect to take their game up a notch. Trey said, “I just expect to perform to my potential and be able to lead the team to wins. And my goals [are] to be able to play at the highest level I can and don’t settle for less.”
For Price, he is focused on becoming a mainstay in the Asian basketball scene. “This season I have no personal goal. I just want to win. Once I’ve shown I’m a winner, I believe everything else would come…”
Even though they recently lost the Elliott-Bassett duo, Hong Kong Eastern took a fresher turn in revamping their lineup through signing younger guards who are full of potential. Trey and TJ look to prove to everyone that Eastern should not be crossed out in the hunt for the ABL championship.
Graham Erupts for 45, Heat Rally To Defeat Wolf Warriors
Mono Vampire cruises to second win over Heat
Laurence September 27, 2019
This team is deadly! ABL Season is so exciting! Rooting for ALAB PILIPINAS ❤ Goodluck to all the teams.
ShaneBycle September 29, 2019
why don’t you just date asian women
Get reddit premiumA Hapa location for multiracial Eurasians, Blasians, Quapas, Hfus (), Hnxu (), Luk khrueng (), Honhyeol (), Amerasians (mirielle lai); That welcomes all varieties of mixed race part Asian Pacific Islanders.
We in addition provide an anti racist safe space to empower Hapas who grow chinese women up in interracial families that suffer from White Patriarchy and internalized white supremacy
No leaving comments on linked pages. Archived links are most loved
No posting of information /social media. (including your own)
No getting out of hand or personal attacks, Even for verified Hapa users this will result in temporary bans that will increase in severity for repeated offenses, Or permanent bans dependent situation.
Non Hapas who make posts that are not on the main topics Hapa people will be banned
New Users must enter their racial mix within his or her flair
Visitors from Alt Right Extremist subreddits are granted non hateful free speech to debate their points of views here. they also must be held accountable transparent. web page visitors posting in racist, refined nationalist, Misogynist subreddits as in r/the_donald, R/CringeAnarchy, R/TheRedPill are required to flair as such. Failure to comply will are responsible for banning. I am mixed race on my own, Half Persian/half chinese.
I have always defined as white, I spent my childhood years in Texas, But that’s not me a blond/blue eyed guy unlike my dad.
I have friends being hapas, I never considered that to be anything distinctive or even a negative quality (Just learned there was even a term last week). One guys is equally as successful as me with women, I dated his sister for a bit and if she is the lady version of him, I can gain knowledge of him being found attractive.
If theres getting some white worship going on in the asian female community, Shouldn everyone (hapas) Be slaying on that point there? my mate dated a hapa girl who was a knockout also. why not date other hapas?
In a setting of people fully white, I would discuss with myself as mixed persian. In a setting of individuals who are fully persian, I would consult with myself as mixed white. Context situations.
I don actually have trouble with that. I also don accept it true; if you ask me people have fixated more on cultural identification and assimilation than pure racial makeup. Also the non white worshiping hapa girls also want full Asian guys. you will find there’s hapa youtuber and she said she prefers full Asian guys over hapa guys and white guys.
Antonio Syddall December 30, 2019
http://www.koreabiomed.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=1938
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HomeRegionsAsia PacificAsia Pacific carriers call on governments to up their game
Asia Pacific carriers call on governments to up their game
28 November 2019 Donald Urquhart Asia Pacific, Carriers 0
Andrew Herdman
Leaders of the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) called on governments across Asia to adopt a more positive attitude towards the industry and work meaningfully towards removing obstacles that hinder its sustainable growth.
The annual gathering of chief executives at the 63rd AAPA Assembly of Presidents meeting – originally scheduled for Hong Kong, was shifted to Kuala Lumpur because of the escalating violence between democracy protestors and police – saw six key resolutions passed. These include resolutions on Environment, Cybersecurity, Infrastructure, Slots, Passenger Facilitation and Taxation.
The AAPA notes that Asia Pacific carriers have developed an outstanding reputation for effectively and flexibly responding to challenges over many decades and as a result, remain at the forefront of the global air transport industry today, but “the industry is now entering a challenging phase”.
“The emergence of Asia as a powerhouse driving the global economy during the 21st century naturally creates a sense of optimism for the region’s dynamic air transport industry in the long term,” says Andrew Herdman, AAPA director general.
“However, success cannot be automatically assured without robust efforts to support carriers, who continue to face an ever increasing number of challenges to achieving strategic development and growth. Given the significant contribution that air transport makes towards wider economic and social development, governments need to adopt a much more positive attitude towards the industry, and work meaningfully towards removing obstacles that hinder the sustainable growth of the industry,” Herdman adds.
Aviation infrastructure
With air travel demand projected to more than double over the next two decades, and the Asia Pacific region expanding at an even faster rate, there is a clear need for airport and air traffic management (ATM) infrastructure development to keep pace with such demand, the AAPA says.
AAPA calls upon Asian governments and all industry stakeholders to work more closely together to deliver effective ATM services to meet present and future operational requirements; and to collaborate beyond national borders and commit to the development and implementation of enhanced Asia Pacific air traffic flow management systems.
With anxieties about the impact of climate change gaining increasing momentum around the world this year, AAPA is calling on governments and industry stakeholders to collaborate more closely in collective efforts to address aviation’s climate impact and promote sustainable aviation.
AAPA calls on governments and operators to work together towards the effective implementation of the ICAO CORSIA scheme in a way that is fair and equitable, avoids competitive market distortion, and recognises the interests of developed and developing nations. AAPA also calls on governments to refrain from applying duplicative requirements on international aviation CO2 emissions.
The civil aviation sector is increasingly reliant on complex information and communications technology systems, as well as on maintaining the integrity and confidentiality of data. Today, cybersecurity threats to civil aviation are continuously evolving, whether targeting operational safety, business disruption or the theft of information for other motivations.
As such, AAPA urges governments, industry and other stakeholders to establish a global and regional approach to cybersecurity built on the basis of trust and transparency, and to work together to enhance cyber threat awareness, promote cybersecurity culture, and strengthen cyber resilience.
Air travel accessibility
Air travel is now an essential means of transport with over four billion passengers travelling worldwide by air annually. AAPA calls on governments to work closely with other aviation stakeholders towards a shared long term vision of harmonised international practices on the facilitation of passengers with disabilities, with the aim of achieving a more inclusive air transport system.
Additionally, AAPA calls on governments to support ICAO efforts to develop a work programme on improving accessibility for passengers with disabilities, in a safe, secure and dignified manner, using evidence-based approaches that are practical and cost-effective.
An increasing number of capacity constrained airports around the world require a process for allocating airport slots. AAPA calls on governments and slot coordinators to manage the allocation of slots in an independent, transparent, fair and non-discriminatory manner in line with ICAO guidance and established international standards and procedures such as the Worldwide Airport Slots Guidelines, recognising the benefits of a single, globally harmonised approach to slot management involving all stakeholders to optimise the efficiency and predictability of air transport services.
In addition, AAPA calls on governments to ensure timely investments in the development of aviation-related infrastructure, including airport runways and terminal capacity, as well as modernising air traffic management systems, to meet the projected growth in demand for air transport, to the benefit of the wider economy.
Airlines and the travelling public continue to bear the burden of numerous taxes and charges imposed by governments, as well as monopolistic service providers and other agencies. Recently introduced or increased taxes on air travel include Malaysia’s Departure Levy, the New Zealand International Visitor Conservation and Tourism Levy and the imposition of various levies by different governments such as France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland, often under the guise of environmental initiatives. Further, a number of airports are imposing or increasing passenger service charges as pre-funding mechanisms to finance future infrastructure facilities.
At a time when the industry is already having to cope with an increasingly challenging business environment, and recognising the adverse impact on the wider travel and tourism sector, AAPA renews its call on governments to refrain from increasing the burden of aviation levies in any form on international air travellers.
The 16 members of the AAPA include:
•Air Astana
•All Nippon Airways
•Asiana Airlines
•Bangkok Airways
•Cathay Pacific Airways
•China Airlines
•Cathay Dragon
•EVA Airways
•Garuda Indonesia
•Japan Airlines
•Korean Air
•Malaysia Airlines
•Philippine Airlines
•Royal Brunei Airlines
•Singapore Airlines
•Thai Airways International
Donald Urquhart
AsiaCargoBuzz.com
http://asiacargobuzz.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/NEW-LOGO1.png
63rd AAPA Assembly of Presidents
Association of Asia Pacific Airlines
Brussels Airport, Nallian further empower forwarders
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10 Things to Do in Singapore When it Rains
What to Do on a Rainy Day in Singapore
When it rains in Singapore, it often pours, meaning that many of the best outdoorsy things to do and see are automatically crossed off your day’s itinerary. However, bad weather doesn’t mean you have to stay confined to the cover of your hotel room all day.
From vast indoor greenhouses to flying your own jumbo jet (in a simulator), this list of things to do when it rains in Singapore is proof that you’ll never be short of fun activities and sightseeing spots when the sky turns grey. The ‘wet’ season in Singapore technically lasts from September to February, but bad storms and long periods of rain aren’t too common, even in the wettest months.
Scale the world’s tallest indoor waterfall
Ok, so perhaps not the best bet if you want to stay completely bone dry (you’ll get a bit wet if you stand right up close), but the world’s tallest indoor waterfall – as well as the rest of the ‘Cloud Forest’ it’s housed in – is easily one of the best ways to spend a rainy day in Singapore.
Take the elevator up to the top of this huge manmade greenhouse and make your way down the spectacular ramps, noticing the vegetation and flowers evolve with the altitude just the way they would if you were making your way down a real tropical mountain. Cloud Forest, as well as the adjacent Flower Dome, are both climate-controlled, meaning you’ll stay cool as well as dry!
الموقع: 18 Marina Gardens Dr, Singapore 018953
أوقات العمل: Daily from 9am to 9pm
رقم الهاتف: +65 6420 6848
Take cover at Orchard Road’s gauntlet of shops
Hitting up the shops is an obvious choice for when it rains in Singapore, and the best place to do it is at the word-famous Orchard Road. Not only does this giant shopping avenue have a huge choice of malls, but many of the best ones are all connected to one another with underground walkways (containing more shops, of course!). This means you don’t even have to set foot outside to switch malls.
One of the most popular malls - ION Orchard - is connected to Ngee Ann City and Wisma Atria and you can also directly access ION, Plaza Singapura and 313 Somerset directly from either Orchard or Somerset MRT Station. Alternatively, if you’re towards the west of the city centre and want to escape the rain by shopping, head to Bugis + and Bugis Junction, which are both connected and have direct MRT access.
Educate yourself at Science Centre Singapore
This fun family day out is located in Jurong East, near the popular Japanese Gardens (which are not so good for rainy days in Singapore). The Science Centre showcases a wide range of interesting educational resources, as well as interactive displays, games and presentations.
Look out for the ever-changing list of temporary exhibitions on their website, such as the ‘CSI Experience’, ‘Human Body Experience’ as well as the popular Kinetic Garden and Waterworks exhibitions. Take the MRT to Jurong East Station or grab a taxi from the city centre if it’s raining! Entrance is S$12 for adults and S$8 for children.
الموقع: 15 Science Centre Rd, Singapore 609081
أوقات العمل: Daily from 10am to 6pm
Go to the pub at Clarke Quay
Everybody knows it’s ok to drink in the daytime when you’re on holiday, and you have even more of an excuse if it’s raining outside. Not only that, but many bars, restaurants and bistros, especially around Clarke Quay, run tempting all-day happy hours. Plenty of the bars around here open from 1pm and they are all under the cover of a huge, futuristic roof, meaning you can go bar-hopping day or night and stay dry.
Head to Fremantle Seafood Market for S$5 beers and wines (12pm–late, Little Saigon for 50% off drinks until 8pm, Bungy Bar for S$9 pints (1pm–9pm) and soak it all up with free pizza (with drinks orders over S$15) at Verve Pizza Bar.
Get a cultural fix at a museum
Singapore has a long list of superb museums that are all great for when the weather’s fine (but even better for when it’s raining). The 2 most popular are the Asian Civilisations Museum and the National Museum, which are both as comprehensive as the next and each cost around S$10 to get in. The former encompasses all corners of Asia, whilst the latter inevitably focuses more on Singapore’s fascinating (but relatively short) history.
Other recommended spots are the modern Singapore Art Museum, the flamboyantly-designed ArtScience Museum, the poignant Changi Prison and, for a look into Singapore’s rich cultural history in more depth, head to the Chinatown Heritage Centre or the Malay Heritage Centre.
Pamper yourself at a spa
When it’s rainy in Singapore, you’ll feel much less guilty about treating yourself to an afternoon at the spa and not being outside, exploring the city. Luckily, Singapore is home to some superb, often award-winning spas, and most of the best hotels will offer massage and spa services either in-room or in a designated centre.
Our recommendations include CHI, The Spa which is set in the lush tropical gardens of the Shangri-La Hotel, as well as Renewal Day Spa at The Next Millennium and Esthetica, conveniently located on Orchard Road for some post-shopping stress relief.
Get a Singapore Sling at Raffles Hotel
Raffles Hotel is famed as the place which invented the cherry flavoured cocktail called The Singapore Sling. If the weather prevents you from going outside, head to the Long Bar within the hotel and enjoy the colonial charm which has changed little in over 100 years. A tradition of the Long Bar at Raffles Hotel is the peanut shells that cover the floor. Boxes of monkey nuts can be found on tables and visitors are encouraged to drop the casings
Once taxes have been added, a Singapore Sling at Raffles Hotel costs almost S$30, but it is money well spent, and experiencing such nostalgia is great fun. This is on everyone’s list when they visit and it is worth experiencing at least once.
الموقع: 1 Beach Rd, Singapore 189673
الصورة من تقدمة Robb1e (CC BY-SA 2.0) معدّلة
Dinner, drinks and a movie - all under one roof
Although their open-air rooftop might be off limits when it rains in Singapore, The Screening Room in Chinatown is a great spot to come for dinner, cocktails and a private movie screening, all in the same building.
Located on the hip Ann Siang Hill, the Middle Eastern-themed restaurants serves up flavours from Iran, Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon and the third-floor cinema comes with comfy (but limited) seating and a large projection screen. Reservations are definitely recommended in advance and you can check their website or phone to see what’s showing each night.
الموقع: 12 Ann Siang Rd, #03-00, Singapore 069692
أوقات العمل: Monday–Thursday from 6pm to 1am, Friday–Saturday from 5pm to 3am (closed on Sunday)
الصورة من تقدمة Marcin Konsek (CC BY-SA 4.0) معدّلة
Stuff your face at an all-day international buffet
Singapore’s international buffet scene is booming at the moment and, when it’s raining outside, there’s even more excuse to really make the most of what’s on offer by going back to that buffet counter for thirds, fourths or fifths...
A long list of 5-star hotels lay on all-day dining buffets, importing some of the finest ingredients from around the world, as well as having expert chefs cook fresh local and Asian flavours right in front of you.
Fly a jumbo jet at Flight Experience Singapore
For a completely unique experience in Singapore, head to the Flight Experience centre on Raffles Avenue to fly your very own Boeing 737-800, albeit in an ultra-realistic simulator. As well as some pre-flight training, you get your very own licensed pilot to guide you through the take-off, cruise and landing, which can last up to 90 minutes.
Visitors have a whopping 24,000 airports to choose from, and you can fly over some iconic cities either at night or day, including the famously nerve-wracking descent into Hong Kong’s harbour airport or over the spectacular Manhattan skyline into New York JFK. Thirty-minute packages start from S$175, whilst you can pay just over S$400 for an hour and a half. Bookings are needed in advance.
الموقع: 30 Raffles Ave, Singapore 039803
أوقات العمل: Daily from 10am to 10pm
Paul Smith | مسافر مثابر
Getting Around Singapore
11 Best Restaurants in Singapore
Penny Wong, 21 Oct, 2019
7 Best Nightlife in Bugis and Kampong Glam
8 Best Nightlife in Sentosa Island
Singapore History
Changi Airport in Singapore
Singapore MRT Guide
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Bookclubs!
Guest Posting Policy
Indentured America: Bibliography
sotd test
State of the Discussion
The 500kth Ordinary Comment
Tag Archives: Tiny Boo
Ten Second News
+ Roger Stone Indicted, Arrested
( 12 ) / #Mueller #Roger Stone #Trump
-Roger Stone Indicted, Arrested
/ #Mueller #Roger Stone #Trump
Roger Stone can add an indictment from the Special Counsel’s office to his highly-checkered resume.
Roger Stone has been indicted by a grand jury on charges brought by special counsel Robert Mueller, who alleges that the longtime Donald Trump associate sought stolen emails from WikiLeaks that could damage Trump’s opponents at the direction of “a senior Trump Campaign official.”
The indictment’s wording does not say who on the campaign knew about Stone’s quest, but makes clear it was multiple people. This is the first time prosecutors have alleged they know of additional people close to the President who worked with Stone as he sought out WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
“After the July 22, 2016, release of stolen (Democratic National Committee) emails by Organization 1, a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact STONE about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign. STONE thereafter told the Trump Campaign about potential future releases of damaging material by Organization 1,” prosecutors wrote.
Stone was arrested by the FBI Friday morning at his home in Florida, his lawyer tells CNN. He was indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia on seven counts, including one count of obstruction of an official proceeding, five counts of false statements, and one count of witness tampering.
The special counsel’s office said he will appear before a federal judge in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, at 11 a.m. ET.<
We will see how far Stone’s “I’ll never testify against Donald Trump,” proclamations will go. Also of note, while the indictment details many activities of Stone’s during the campaign, Mueller is only charging offenses that occurred during the investigation. As we have learned, probably best to let this latest blaring headline breathe a bit before making wide-sweeping proclamations of its importance.
Like that’s going to happen.
Please do be so kind as to share this post.
Comment → -
+ BuzzFeed to Cut 15% of Its Workforce
-BuzzFeed to Cut 15% of Its Workforce
The Wall Street Journal is reporting:
BuzzFeed is planning to lay off about 15% of its workforce, according to people familiar with the situation, as the company seeks to reorient itself in a shifting digital-media landscape.
The cuts could affect around 250 jobs, the people said. The firm, among the most high-profile digital-native publishers, also is looking to realign its resources to invest more in promising areas of the business like content licensing and e-commerce, one of the people said.
(Featured image is a screenshot of Buzzfeed’s front page menu.)
+ Trump’s Transgender Military Ban Remains- For Now
( 5 ) / #LGBTQ #SCOTUS #TransgenderTroops
-Trump’s Transgender Military Ban Remains- For Now
/ #LGBTQ #SCOTUS #TransgenderTroops
The Supreme Court today voted 5-4 to allow the Trump administration’s restrictions on transgender troops to be implemented while the matter is battled out in lower courts. The five conservative justices, Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh, voted to grant the government’s application to stay a nationwide injunction on the restrictions.
From the Washington Post:
The justices lifted nationwide injunctions that had kept the administration’s policy from being implemented.
It reversed an Obama-administration rule that would have opened the military to transgender men and women, and instead barred those who identify with a gender different from the one assigned at birth and who are seeking to transition.
The court’s five conservatives–Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh–allowed the restrictions to go into effect while the court decides to whether to consider the merits of the case.
The liberal justices–Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan–would have kept the injunctions in place.
The Court also turned down a request by the government to hear the matter on its merits, despite the lower court not having ruled yet. So, while the “ban” will go into effect, the controversy is not dead. The litigation in the lower courts will continue.
The policy, announced on Twitter by President Trump and refined by the defense secretary at the time, Jim Mattis, generally prohibits people identifying with a gender different from their biological sex from military service. It makes exceptions for several hundred transgender people already serving openly and for those willing to serve “in their biological sex.”
Challenges to the policy have had mixed success in the lower courts. Trial judges around the nation issued injunctions blocking it, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, is expected to rule soon on whether to affirm one of them.
The administration had also asked the justices to immediately hear appeals, an unusual request when an appeals court has not yet ruled. The court turned down those requests.
The Supreme Court’s rules say it will review a federal trial court’s ruling before an appeals court has spoken “only upon a showing that the case is of such imperative public importance as to justify deviation from normal appellate practice and to require immediate determination in this court.”
So, while the “ban” will go into effect, the controversy is not dead; the litigation in the lower courts will continue.
UPDATE: Some reports indicate that one injunction remains in place which prevents the immediate implementation of the ban.
From Mark Joseph Stern, lawyer and writer for Slate:
Here is the injunction that remains in place. The Trump administration may try to argue that it doesn't apply to the current "Mattis policy," but by its own terms, it obviously does. https://t.co/fnNeFbT955 pic.twitter.com/do3kT6Kvmk
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) January 22, 2019
+ Video: January 21
( 0 ) / #Music
-Video: January 21
/ #Music
I present the best song ever written about the 21st of January.
Phil Pritchett – January 21
Or if you just want to listen to it, the acoustic studio version is good.
+ What Happened To The 15-Hour Workweek?
( 53 ) / #work
-What Happened To The 15-Hour Workweek?
/ #work
We wanted something else more:
Well, one explanation is that there are simply more things to want. A supermarket today has thousands of options, and there will always be more things than we can afford.
Advertising—which appears on billboards, in trains and trams, on our smartphone screens, or cleverly disguised as a blog post—is now impossible to escape from, and it exposes us to a never-ending stream of products we didn’t know we needed.
These are well-known complaints. However, there’s another important and poorly understood reason for want expansion. Keynes thought that once our needs were fulfilled, it wouldn’t make sense to work more. However, it turns out that there is a certain need that requires an infinite supply of money to satisfy: the need for social status.
This ties into my writing on the UBI and why I don’t think it would end work as we know it. People will work so they can live around other people that work. So that their “station” is with those that also work.
If we had a 15-hour work week, how would we differentiate ourselves from the people that are only willing to work 15 hours a week?
+ The Pending Discovery of Alex Jones
( 3 ) / #alex jones #First Amendment #Infowars #Sandy Hook
-The Pending Discovery of Alex Jones
/ #alex jones #First Amendment #Infowars #Sandy Hook
I’m not even going to pretend that this possibility doesn’t warm the cockles of my heart.
A judge in Connecticut has granted the families’ discovery requests, allowing them access to, among other things, Infowars’ internal marketing and financial documents.
The judge has scheduled a hearing next week to decide whether to allow the plaintiffs’ attorneys to depose Jones.
The plaintiffs include the parents of five children who went to the school as well as family members of first-grade teacher Victoria Leigh Soto and Principal Dawn Hochsprung, according to a statement from the plaintiff’s attorneys.
There is still quite a bit of doubt that the lawsuit will be successful, as defamation suits have a high burden to clear for public media figures like Jones. Jones and his attorney are claiming everything done by InfoWars is covered by the First Amendment, and they have plenty of precedent to stand on. Still, the fulcrum point of any civil action as to whether it is going anywhere or not is discovery, and having probing eyes into his operations is something Alex Jones cannot be happy about. Scrutiny and conspiracy is something Alex Jones is more accustom to subjecting others too. We already know, from Jones’ own lawyer in his divorce and custody case, that “he’s playing a character” on air, allegedly, so no surprises like that will be shocking. More interesting to some, however, will be the financials, plus the fact that if Jones is found not to comply it could cause even further legal complications. Laying bare the inner working of the InfoWars grifting machine will make Jones’ detractors happy, and if nothing else should be rather entertaining. Who knows what might come of it. We will see.
+ The First Day of Amendment 4 for Re-enfranchised Voters
( 3 ) / #Amendment 4 #disenfranchised #felons #Florida #Voting rights
-The First Day of Amendment 4 for Re-enfranchised Voters
/ #Amendment 4 #disenfranchised #felons #Florida #Voting rights
Tuesday, 9 January 2019, is the first day that some felons in Florida who previously had their voting rights removed can register to vote again under the effects of Amendment 4. The question is how exactly is that going to work?
For all the uncertainty surrounding the launch of Amendment 4 in Florida, there’s no question that hundreds of thousands of convicted felons previously unable to participate in the state’s elections will be able to register to vote come Tuesday.
It’s what will happen after they register that remains unclear.
Despite assertions from Amendment 4 advocates that the changes to Florida’s Constitution are self-implementing, incoming Gov. Ron DeSantis reiterated his belief Monday that the Legislature must pass a bill to help guide the Division of Elections as it verifies the eligibility of newly registered voters. An estimated 1.2 million people are expected to regain the right to vote Tuesday as the amendment takes effect, and it’s up to the state to verify whether any of those newly registered voters are ineligible due to a disqualifying criminal offense.
For now, in order to ensure that no one is disenfranchised while the state determines how to comply with Amendment 4, the Division of Elections has stopped running new voters through its felony database. That means those who believe their rights have been restored can register to vote and likely begin participating at the very least in local elections.
This being Florida, there are more than a few concerns with implementation:
But it also means that it could be weeks or even months before the state notifies any of those new voters if they’ve been deemed ineligible. And it would potentially compound any controversy should the Legislature take a restrictive interpretation of the amendment.
+ Cyntoia Brown Granted Clemency
( 32 ) / #Cyntoia Brown
-Cyntoia Brown Granted Clemency
/ #Cyntoia Brown
Bill Haslam, Tennessee’s outgoing governor, has granted Cyntoia Brown full clemency.
In 2004, Brown was a 16-year-old living with a man named Garion McGlothen. McGlothen raped and abused Brown; he also forced her into prostitution. It was during this time that she met and then killed Johnny Allen, a man who had raped her. Prosecutors ignored both Brown’s age and the lifetime of abuse she had endured, charging her as an adult and pursuing the maximum possible punishment for her having killed Allen. Prosecutors insisted that Brown had not feared Allen, as she had claimed, and was in fact in no danger. The jury went with the prosecutors, sentencing Brown to life in prison. A Supreme Court decision later clarified that sentencing juveniles to life in prison constituted cruel and unusual punishment, but after an appeal based upon that clarification, Tennessee’s Supreme Court confirmed that Brown would have to serve at least 51 years of her life sentence before she would be eligible for parole.
Brown was the focus of a documentary called Me Facing Life: Cyntoia’s Story and subsequently became a cause for some celebrities, including Rihanna and Kim Kardashian-West. Brown’s case then became a flashpoint in arguments about how the American justice system valued lives, with numerous critics observing that whereas the justice system often bends over backward to excuse away crimes committed by men, it offers no such leniency otherwise. This, then, serves as a step in the right direction.
Brown will be eligible for release on August 7, 2019.
← ITW All TSN →
Review Of The Charges
A close look at the law and the allegations suggests that outrage about the Brandon Duncan prosecution may be based on incomplete information. Burt Likko dissects the charges and the law for your review, compares that to the advice of his colleagues, and then finishes his nightcap.
Burt Likko / January 30, 2015 / ( 16 ) / in Law / Not a Potted Plant / #Brandon Duncan #California #Crime #Criminal Law #evidence #First Amendment #law #presumptions #punishment #rap music #Tiny Boo
Musical Selection
The Firewatcher's Daughter (2015)
Designed by CK MacLeod
Based on "Expound," a Theme by Konstantin Kovshenin
"Steampunk Airship" by Gavin Grant
© 2015 - 20 Ordinary Times
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EE Times-Asia > Amplifiers/Converters
Amplifiers/Converters??
Tiring of royalties, China seeks compression spec for video
Posted: 07 Oct 2003 ?? ? Print Version ?
Keywords:mpeg? dvd player?
China is pushing to define a homegrown audio and visual compression technology that would rival MPEG-4 and H.264 and, by various estimates, save Chinese consumers and manufacturers anywhere from $300 million to $1 billion in royalties during the next decade. The video compression spec is due out at the end of this year, followed by basic decoder intellectual property (IP) in 2004.
The standards initiative is part of a Chinese effort to lessen reliance on foreign IP. Increasingly frustrated over clashes with licensing agencies like MPEG LA, China is striving to wean itself from foreign standards and to free itself of royalty payments for high-volume products, such as DVD players and cellphones.
The move could undercut the power and revenue of licensing agencies like MPEG LA, a consortium of patent holders such as Apple and Sun that charge a royalty of $2.50 per system, compared with China's proposal of 1 yuan (12 cents) for its codec. During the past few years, MPEG LA and others have had trouble collecting royalties from Chinese manufacturers of DVD players, who feel the combined fees of $15 to $20 per system are too high.
Since Chinese manufacturers produced 10 million of the world's 50 million DVD players in 2002, the stakes are high. And over the next decade, as Chinese consumers help expand the market for consumer electronics, they will only get higher.
The video compression project is directed by the Audio Video Coding Standard (AVS) Workgroup of China, a consortium of 50 universities, government organizations and companies that has been given authority by China's influential Ministry of Information Industry and placed under the supervision of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The academy has been working on compression technologies for more than five years, but few details have emerged.
About a year ago, during the height of acrimony between Chinese manufacturers and various licensing agencies, the AVS was formed to help commercialize the research.
"The government was scared by the DVD royalty fiasco," said Mike Yu, chief technology officer for Vimicro, a Beijing-based designer of graphics chips for cellphones. "They understand that there is a new organization working on the next-generation compression technology and they are worried. They don't want to be left alone again."
That fear was a big factor in China's adoption of a little-known mobile phone standard called TD-SCDMA, or time-division synchronous code-division multiple access. Supported by Siemens AG in Europe more than a decade ago, the technology was once considered a has-been. But the Chinese government rekindled interest in TD-SCDMA and then co-developed the latest iteration with Siemens in exchange for lower royalty payments.
The government has helped build an AVS-like consortium around TD-SCDMA, and foreign chipmakers have come together in joint ventures to hedge their bets against the more entrenched standards, wideband CDMA and cdma2000. TD-SCDMA is now one of three international 3G cellular standards and a contender in China for a 3G license.
Other examples of greater self-reliance are also emerging. Over the summer, China formed a group devoted to networking home appliances and IT products. The Information Gateway Resource Sharing (IGRS) working group consists of some of China's biggest electronics companies, including Great Wall Computer Group, Hisense, Konka, Legend Group, and TCL.
IGRS is similar to another standards group founded this summer in the United States, dubbed the Digital Home Working Group, of which Legend is also a member. Although the two groups have similar goals and will cross-pollinate each other's markets with products, it appears that little contact has occurred between them.IGRS is expected to develop a protocol for automatic detection, networking and resource sharing among IT systems, home appliances and communication devices in wired and wireless environments. The standard will use a TCP/IP-based application protocol, which should be out in draft form by year's end. Development tools will follow next year and a final protocol will be ready in 2005, the group said.
In a statement, Konka said, "The establishment of the IGRS working group reflects the desire of Chinese companies to get rid of the dominance of core technologies and standards of foreign big names in the information technology industry."
China has also made forays into new optical-disk technology during the past few years, but nothing concrete has emerged. Part of the problem has been overcoming an entrenched video-CD and DVD industry that carries most of the world's popular content, such as Hollywood movies.
As much as Chinese manufacturers would like to be free of foreign IP, there is little alternative to using it. Even if their systems used a Chinese standard, they would still want to be backward-compatible with DVD and CD technology for domestic and, more importantly, foreign export markets like North America and Europe.
Unlike TD-SCDMA, however, the AVS specification will not require a massive and expensive new infrastructure, so it may be easier to implement over time. The government has no immediate plans to make it mandatory, said Huang Tiejun, secretary-general of the AVS Workgroup. Huang said the group can develop a more efficient compression technology than MPEG-4 or MPEG-2. After that, "the market will decide," he said. "AVS is only a choice - a better choice for markets in China and outside of China."
Foreign companies have taken an interest in the project, but it's difficult to tell whether they think AVS is a legitimate rival to MPEG-4. At this early stage, it is more likely they just want to keep an eye on developments. Philips, Sony, Microsoft and IBM have been members of the AVS Workgroup, and LSI Logic Corp. recently joined.
Huang said the consortium is open to anyone who can contribute research staff and pay the roughly $1,000 annual fee.
As part of the 3C consortium that requires a $5 royalty payment per DVD system, Philips and Sony have had their own problems with royalty collection in China and are viewed by some Chinese manufacturers as part of the problem. Philips believes otherwise and said it is willing to lend its expertise to China-based standards.
"Philips is pushing MPEG-4, but in China I think Philips is doing the right thing to support Chinese efforts and to also try to push our own IP," said Ernest Ma, Philips' representative to the AVS Workgroup.
Even domestically, AVS will have an uphill battle against MPEG compression standards. Vimicro's Yu cautioned, "The difficult part is to convince everybody to take it seriously and come up with product."
- Mike Clendenin
FPGA core tech for H.264/MPEG-4 AVC/SVC
CE MPEG IC revenue to top $4.5 billion by 2014
MPEG-2 patent holders slam suit vs. Lenovo
MPEG-4 reference design zooms in on various apps
Comag sued for MPEG-2 patent infringement
MPEG eyes new Internet video coding standard
Full HD H.264/MPEG SoC powers flat-panel DTVs
Accelerating MPEG-4 video decoding with an Xtensa processor
Measuring and interpreting picture quality in MPEG compressed video content
MPEG-2 encoder IP core rolls for apps with MathStar FPOAs
Article Comments - Tiring of royalties, China seeks com...
Site resource about China phone.HTM?from=ART_Search
ZTE, Datang to set up 3G bases in China(2007-04-11)
ZTE, China Mobile HK build LTE-TDD network(2012-07-20)
ZTE to deliver RPR-based network tools in China(2004-03-02)
ZTE sets up industry base in Tianjin, China(2007-11-12)
ZTE inks AVS-IPTV deal with China Netcom(2007-12-10)
Zetex opens China office(2005-11-24)
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White House hacker is from China 5289 Embedded Systems
What is the global impact of China's leadership in IC industry? 4315 Asia Trends
Wanted: Failure Analysis Engineer for Infineon in Beijing, China 175 Jobs Wanted
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Staff Product Engineer job vacancy for Sandisk in Shanghai (Zizhu), China 387 Jobs Wanted
What is DVD?
Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc is an optical digital disc storage media format that can be used for movies with high video and sound quality.
What does MPEG stand for?
MPEG stands for Moving Pictures Experts Group. It is a standard for compressing digital video.
Will Apple mark the end of 3.5mm headphones?
Tackling IoT and Industry 4.0 sensor backplane needs
1.5kW RF transistor from NXP operates up to 500MHz
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Please help identify John Doe
Justin Teck, 25, critical in KHMH after being shot
Fatal traffic accident corner of Central American Boulevard and Caesar Ridge Road
PUP says Jaen “like deja vu all over again”
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Final House of Representatives meeting for 2017; US$40 million loan motion introduced
BELMOPAN, Cayo District, Fri. Dec. 8, 2017--The House of Representatives held its final meeting for this year today to debate a motion for a...
The FBI has identified a “person of interest” in the murders of American Francesca Matus and Canadian Drew DeVoursney in Belize
BELIZE CITY, Mon. Dec. 4, 2017--The gruesome double murder in Belize of Canadian national, Francesca Matus, 52, and her American boyfriend, Drew DeVoursney, 36,...
Maria Marin says the Immigration Ministry instructed officers to abandon full vetting and expedite visa applications recommended by ministers and caretakers
Saturday, December 2nd, 2017
BELMOPAN, Cayo District, Wed. Nov. 29, 2017--During her appearance before the Senate Special Select Committee today, former Director of the Immigration and Nationality Department,...
The strange case of the missing Indian medical student
BURRELL BOOM, Belize District, Mon. Nov. 27, 2017--On Friday police reported that he had been missing since November 9, but Amandala can today confirm...
Corozal woman– shot after refusing to provide murder suspect’s alibi — dies
COROZAL TOWN, Corozal District, Tues. Nov. 21, 2017--While many spent Sunday, November 19, celebrating the settlement of the Garinagu in Belize, Corozal resident Brenda...
Police charge man and woman for Carlos Navarro’s murder
Post-mortem confirms that Navarro, 29, was shot to death ARMENIA, Cayo District, Thurs. Nov. 16, 2017--An onsite post-mortem exam conducted on the decomposed body of...
Charges against “Gato” Gutierrez for rape of 3 women dismissed
He was accused of wounding and raping the women in San Pedro BELIZE CITY, Mon. Nov. 13, 2017--The details of an apparently strange case of...
“Wishy-washy” Elrington!
Former Foreign Minister Courtenay tells Foreign Minister Elrington to “stop acquiescing and accepting things Guatemala does!” BELIZE CITY, Tues. Nov. 7, 2017--In its International Court of...
Put up or shut up, AG Peyrefitte tells 200 pastors
The Attorney General said that if the pastors want to change laws, they should run for office BELIZE CITY, Fri. Nov. 3, 2017--Two days before...
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ASIR201020 Syracuse & Ortygia Relaxing in bewitching Ortygia with its stunning views and piazze. Discover Sicilian Baroque architecture in Noto and travel to Piazza Armerina, with its unique array of mosaic floors which have been newly renovated. Visit the Temple of Athena incorporated in the modern Cathedral 6490 6 20 October 2020 Worldwide Escorted Tours 2 Dr Ffiona Gilmore Eaves Italy https://andantetravels.co.uk/tours/worldwide-escorted-tours/syracuse-and-ortygia/ https://andantetravels.co.uk/media/2395/cathedral-duomo-syracuse-sicily.jpg InStock 1995 1995 GBP /tours/worldwide-escorted-tours/ 20
Syracuse & Ortygia
From £1,945 £1,995
With a history stretching back almost 3000 years, the city of Syracuse has the rare accolade of being classed as a World Heritage Site in its entirety. At the heart of the ancient city is Ortygia, painstakingly and dazzlingly restored.
We follow in the footsteps of the Greeks, Romans and much later civilisations who landed upon these shores. More than two thousand years later, we can still gaze out over the same harbour and imagine the cool blue waters heaving with triremes. Discover not only Ortygia, but surrounding sites including the Pantalica hills, honeycombed with ancient tombs.
Tour highlights:
Ortygia Cathedral
Ortygia
Relaxing in bewitching Ortygia with its stunning views and piazze
Discover Sicilian Baroque architecture in Noto
Travel to Piazza Armerina, with its unique array of mosaic floors which have been newly renovated
Visit the Temple of Athena incorporated in the modern Cathedral
Benefit from one of these limited time offers:
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Meet your Experts
Expert guides, whenever you travel
We are proud of our team of expert guide lecturers. Whenever you travel, your guide lecturer will be on hand to answer questions, tell stories and deliver insights to make your trip truely remarkable.
Dr Ffiona Gilmore Eaves
Guide Lecturer
Dr Ffiona Gilmore Eaves wrote her thesis on the early church at Porec and travelled extensively along the Adriatic littoral. She has worked in life-long learning and adult education, especially for the WEA.
Lois Ferguson
Lois Ferguson, a musician by training, has worked for many years as a tour manager and lives near Orvieto in Italy where she runs workshops in photography and botany.
Day 1 - London - Ortygia
We fly to Catania from London and drive to our hotel on the island of Ortygia, in Syracuse’s historical centre.
Royal Maniace Hotel, Syracuse
Royal Maniace Hotel in Siracusa Italy is a superbly located hotel in the historic city centre of Siracusa. The comfortable 4 star hotel offers panoramic views and breathtaking beauty combined with elegant modern rooms to make your stay as relaxing and comfortable as possible.
The Royal Maniace Hotel has 21 rooms all equipped with modern amenities, a restaurant and garden.
Day 2 - Ortygia
This morning we explore Ortygia, starting with the Temple of Athena, remarkably assimilated into the fabric of the Cathedral and continuing with the Temple of Apollo, Fountain of Arethusa, and the Great Harbour, where the sea battle between Syracuse and Athens in 413 BC took place. The afternoon is free for us to enjoy. Visit the Caravaggio painting in Santa Lucia, or the Byzantine Jewish baths or the ruins of the Temple of Artemis.
All meals included
Day 3 - Ortygia - Noto
We enjoy a free morning, where we might choose to explore the harbour by boat before driving to Noto, famed for its exceedingly well-preserved Baroque architecture. The city, built ex-novo following a severe earthquake in 1693, is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We also take in the late-Roman villa of Romana del Tellaro, which has fine mosaics depicting the ransom of Hector’s body and a hunting scene, reminiscent of the Piazza Armerina mosaics.
Day 4 - Piazza Armerina
Today we travel to the late-Roman villa in Piazza Armerina for a chance to see its exceptionally fine mosaics first-hand. More than 50 of the villa’s rooms depict vivid hunting and mythological scenes. Another UNESCO World Heritage Site, it is an astounding example of a luxury Roman villa. We tour its rooms and admire these excellent works of art.
Day 5 - Syracuse
We visit the fine Paolo Orsi Archaeological Museum before exploring the spectacular Neapolis archaeological area famed for its theatre. After lunch, we shall visit the catacombs of San Giovanni in Syracuse, underground Greek cisterns transformed into Christian burials in the Paleochristian era. Here, we also visit the Norman basilica of San Giovanni, felled by the 1693 earthquake, along with the crypt that is home to well-preserved frescoes.
Day 6 - Syracuse - London
To mark our final morning, we take a short drive to Megara Hyblaea, founded by colonists in the 8th century BC, from whom the city took its name. We then transfer to the airport for our return flights home.
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Included in your cost:
Expert Guide Lecturer
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Meals as per the itinerary, wine and tea or coffee with dinner
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ASIR201020 20 October 2020 (Tuesday) 25 October 2020 (Sunday) Dr Ffiona Gilmore Eaves Lois Ferguson £1,995
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A Moment of Healing – 10th Anniversary of the Apology
First and Second Peoples in the Uniting Church have marked the 10th anniversary of the National Apology to the Stolen Generations, by calling for urgent action on sovereignty, treaty and Indigenous education.
President of the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress Rev. Garry Dronfield says the Apology shows that Australia can address the injustices of past and present.
“This was a moment of healing in our nation's history,” said Rev. Dronfield.
“It also sent a message of hope for the future as we work towards treaty and sovereignty.
“We must not forget that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the members of our Stolen Generations and their families continue to feel the pain of the past.
“This anniversary of the Apology should remind us all of the journey that we are on together. As the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress, we see the hope of a positive future under God's direction with the guidance, support and commitment of all our communities.”
The Uniting Church made its formal apology to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in 1997, after the release of the landmark Bringing Them Home report, by Mick Dodson and former UCA President Sir Ronald Wilson.
Current UCA President Stuart McMillan has apologised again for the Uniting Church and its predecessors’ part in that pain, again acknowledging the continuing hurt.
“At the recent Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress National Conference we heard stories told through showers of tears about the painful memories of the past,” said Mr McMillan.
“There is still so much more we have to do to truly correct the wrongs which former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd acknowledged and to give hope for healing.
“The National Apology included commitments about ensuring this never happens again and a commitment to closing the gap on indigenous disadvantage.
“The latest Closing the Gap reports have shown that we are not on track in life expectancy, literacy and numeracy, school attendance and employment.
“I believe we need a comprehensive education plan which addresses all the shortcomings and fragmentation that exists in Indigenous education.
“That plan should provide access to secondary education in remote communities and appropriately funded indigenous boarding places which are able to address the complex needs of students.”
Mr McMillan also reminded Uniting Church members of the special Covenanting relationship between their church and the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress.
“In the words of the original Covenant we must recommit ourselves to building understanding between First and Second Peoples in every locality and to build relationships which respect the rights of First Peoples to self-determination,” said Mr McMillan.
“In this our fellowship will be a witness to God’s love for all.”
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Wesley Chu’s The World of Tao Series
Born: September 23, 1976 in Taipei, Taiwan
B.A. – Management Information Systems, University of Illinois
Website: http://wesleychu.com/
Thriller Sub-genre: Sci-fi/Technothriller
Publisher: Angry Robot
Future of the Series: The next book in the series is entitled The Fall of Io which was released on 1/1/19.
My Review Of The Latest In The Series, The Fall of Io
The Simon Review
Now that the next presidential campaign is in full swing and the debate shenanigans are at their best, haven’t you ever wondered if maybe our political leaders are possessed by aliens? Well according to Wesley Chu’s the world of Tao series, that maybe possible.
This would explain many things.
Photo from All Day
The Tao, in this case, isn’t about philosophy or idealism but instead is the name of a member from an alien race known as the Quasing. The Quasing accidently inhabited Earth when their ship crashed millions of years ago, long before Homo sapiens walked on the planet. In order to survive in our atmosphere, the Quasing had to take refuge within living specimens. Until humans came along, the Quasing could not interact with each other, but once they started using humans as hosts, they started making plans on eventually returning to their home planet. The Quasing felt in order to get humans to quickly evolve to the point where they would be technologically capable of assisting them to journey back to their home base, they needed to manipulate them into becoming a warring species. One Quasing eventually decided that the manipulation of humans that resulted in their own destruction was immoral and should be stopped. That Quasing was Tao and he tries to persuade his fellow Quasings to follow suit. But not all Quasing agreed with Tao and two factions formed, the Prophus ‘the anti-war group’ and the Genjix ‘the pro-war group’. This resulted in a battle between the two groups with humans in the middle which went on for centuries. So this leads us to the beginning of the series.
In the beginning of the Lives of Tao, Tao’s host is killed in a skirmish between the Prophus and the Genjix and Tao desperately must find a new host before he dies. The only human within access is a portly IT technician known as Roen Tan. Tan and Tao are now a symbiotic unit and Tao must now whip the reluctant Roen Tan into battle ready shape, which turns out not to be easy and the story goes on from there.
Chu has created a delightful and wonderfully geeky series. Full of martial arts, weaponry, and plenty of wicked action, it will truly please any thrill seeking fanatic. The relationship between Tao and Roen Tan is the highlight of this series as these two seemingly mismatched individuals, intimately entwined, lends to some hilarious as well as touching moments.
Wesley Chu is in the process of creating a new follow-up trilogy entitled the Rise of Io which is based off of the Lives of Tao series, and since the two series are closely related, I will be reviewing those books as they come out. The Lives of Tao series is written as a trilogy and should be read in order.
Simon’s pick:
Most Favorite Novel in the Series- The Lives of Tao- because Roen Tan’s evolving into a hardened warrior was very entertaining
Least Favorite Novel in the Series- The Deaths of Tao- which is a difficult choice because I like all the books in the series, but I would have to say this is the least memorable of the series.
What about the science? The series is considered a techno-thriller/science fiction hybrid but there really isn’t much discussion of any real science. Chu does have some educational points about historical figures that are quite interesting, especially about Genghis Khan.
The Tao Technical Word in Review: Osmium-is derived from the Greek word for ‘smell’ which is appropriate for one of the compounds of osmium, osmium tetroxide, which has been said to have a distinctive ozone-like or chlorine-like smell. Osmium is element number 76 on the periodic chart and is the densest stable element. It is also the rarest stable element and can be found either in its elemental form or as an alloy. The vast majority of osmium is mined in South Africa, Russia, and Canada.
Example of Elemental Osmium (Image from Wikipedia)
Osmium tetroxide is the most commercially useful form of osmium. One of its most significant uses is as biological stain for electron microscopy because of its ability to react with biological compounds without disruption in structural integrity of a cell and to introduce an electron dense atom to facilitate electron scattering which provides contrast in the image. Because it readily binds to biological material, it is quite toxic and even small amounts of exposure can result in death. Because of its extreme toxicity, there has been concern about its use as a weapon but its scarcity as well as its cost makes that highly unlikely.
“They do refine a specialized Osmium Quintoxide that is only available from a military plant in North Carolina. I think this could be what we’re after.”
“That is one of the primary compounds in Quasar’s atmosphere,” Paula added. “Yen, can you and Tao get eyes on the material and retrieve a sample? It could go a long way to cracking this secretive Phase III.”-The Deaths of Tao
Osmium Quintoxide or more likely would be called Osmium pentoxide is totally fictional and does not exist, at least in this universe, because the electron configuration of osmium doesn’t allow it to be possible.
Books in the Series by Order:
Most Favorite in the series: The Rebirths of Tao with a score of 4.10
Least Favorite in the series: The Days of Tao with a score of 3.75
Based on overall ratings from Goodreads, Library Thing, and Amazon (US & UK)
The Lives of Tao Trilogy
#1A-The Lives of Tao- 2013
Winner of the 2014 Alex Award
Listed #237 out of 553 on Goodreads Best Technothrillers Ever Book List
Listed #61 out of 172 on Goodreads Best Science Thriller Book List
The five most egotistical personalities in history.
Roen Tan/Tao: IT technician turned Prophus warrior whose quasing is Tao
Sonya Lyte/Baji: Roen’s main trainer whose quasing is Baji
Jill Tesser: Roen Tan’s love interest
Sean Diamont/Chiyva: Genjix leader and his quasing Chiyva
Jacob Diamont: Sean’s son
Marc Kenton: Prophus turned Genjix
Antonio Desilarez: Roen Tan’s roommate
Paula Kim/Yol: The Keeper, head of the Prophus
Dylan: An Australian that is one of Roen Tan’s mentors
When out-of-shape IT technician Roen woke up and started hearing voices in his head, he naturally assumed he was losing it. He wasn’t. He now has a passenger in his brain – an ancient alien life-form called Tao, whose race crash-landed on Earth before the first fish crawled out of the oceans. Now split into two opposing factions – the peace-loving, but under-represented Prophus, and the savage, powerful Genjix – the aliens have been in a state of civil war for centuries. Both sides are searching for a way off-planet, and the Genjix will sacrifice the entire human race, if that’s what it takes. Meanwhile, Roen is having to train to be the ultimate secret agent. Like that’s going to end up well…
Looking for a review of The Lives of Tao? Check out:
The Home School Reader
Infinitefreetime.com
Lynn’s Book Blog
A Writer’s Wings
Every Read Thing
Joe’s Geek Fest
Always Dreaming
SFF Book Reviews
TheBagWantsFlour
Strange Currencies
Urban Writers Network
B.S. Donovan
Amazon Rating-US: 4.19 out of 5 stars based on 293 ratings
Amazon Rating-UK: 3.98 out of 5 stars based on 30 ratings
GoodReads Rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars based on 7,365 ratings
Library Thing Rating: 3.62 out of 5 stars based on 176 ratings
Total Score 3.76 (updated 4/12/19)
#2A-The Deaths of Tao- 2013
The lone black car slunk through the dark, unlit streets, a ghostly shadow creeping past the decrepit warehouses and abandoned storefronts along the South Capital at the outskirts of Washington, DC.
Roen Tan/Tao, Jill Tesser/Baji, Paula Kim/Yol, Jacob Diamont, and Dylan
Marco/Ahngr: Prophus agent and his quasing
Enzo/Zoras: Genjix host and quasing, leader of the Genjix within an Adonis host.
Cameron: Roen’s son
Washington, D.C., Taiwan, China
The Prophus and the Genjix are at war. For centuries they have sought a way off-planet, guiding humanity’s social and technological development to the stage where space travel is possible. The end is now in sight, and both factions have plans to leave the Earth, but the Genjix method will mean the destruction of the human race.
That’s a price they’re willing to pay.
It’s up to Roen and Tao to save the world. Oh, dear…
Looking for a review of The Deaths of Tao? Check out:
The Irresponsible Reader
Looking For a Good Book
JPBrownBlog
Library Thing Rating: 3.83 out of 5 stars based on 69 ratings
#3A-The Rebirths of Tao- 2015
Listed on Buzzfeed’s 24 Best Science Fiction Books of 2015
The problem Vladimir had with this damn country was that everything was too damn big.
Roen Tan/Tao, Jill Tesser/Baji, Paula Kim/Yol, Jacob Diamont, Dylan, Marco/Ahngr, and Cameron
Ontario, Oregon and Eureka, California
Many years have passed since the events in The Deaths of Tao. The world is split into pro-Prophus and pro-Genjix factions, and is poised on the edge of a devastating new World War. A Genjix scientist who defects to the other side holds the key to preventing bloodshed on an almost unimaginable scale
With the might of the Genjix in active pursuit, Roen is the only person who can help him save the world, and the Quasing race, too.
And you thought you were having a stressful day…
Looking for a review of The Rebirths of Tao? Check out:
Robert McGrath’s Blog
Amazon Rating-US: 4.49 out of 5 stars based on 76 ratings
#3.5A-The Days of Tao- (A Novella) 2016
My Review Of The Days of Tao
Nazar Savaryn was good at two things: mixing drinks and staying off of people’s minds.
Cameron Tan wouldn’t have even been in Greece if he hadn’t gotten a ‘D’ in Art History.
Instead of spending the summer after college completing his training as a Prophus operative, he’s doing a study abroad program in Greece, enjoying a normal life—spending time with friends and getting teased about his crush on a classmate.
Then the emergency notification comes in: a Prophus agent with vital information needs immediate extraction, and Cameron is the only agent on the ground, responsible for getting the other agent and data out of the country. The Prophus are relying on him to uncomplicate things.
Looking for a review of The Days of Tao? Check out:
SFFWorld
Profmorbius
Amazon Rating-UK: 4.25 out of 5 stars based on 4 ratings
GoodReads Rating: 3.77 out of 5 stars based on 404 ratings
The Rise of Io Trilogy
#1B-The Rise of Io- 2016
My Review Of The Rise of Io
Ella Patel loved metal brief cases.
Ella Patel/Io: A young Indian women that becomes a host to the Quasing Io
Cameron Tan
Tokyo, Oregon and Eureka, California
Ella Patel – thief, con-artist and smuggler – is in the wrong place at the wrong time. One night, on the border of a demilitarized zone run by the body-swapping alien invaders, she happens upon a man and woman being chased by a group of assailants. The man freezes, leaving the woman to fight off five attackers at once, before succumbing. As she dies, to both Ella and the man’s surprise, the sparkling light that rises from the woman enters Ella, instead of the man. She soon realizes she’s been inhabited by Io, a low-ranking Quasing who was involved in some of the worst decisions in history. Now Ella must now help the alien presence to complete her mission and investigate a rash of murders in the border states that maintain the frail peace.
With the Prophus assigned to help her seemingly wanting to stab her in the back, and the enemy Genjix hunting her, Ella must also deal with Io’s annoying inferiority complex. To top it all off, Ella thinks the damn alien voice in her head is trying to get her killed. And if you can’t trust the voices in your head, who can you trust?
Looking for a review of The Rise of Io? Check out:
Books and Traveling With Lynn
Strange Alliances
Occasionally Random Book Reviews
Book Geeks Uncompromised
Noodlings
#2B-The Fall of Io- 2019
The announcement for the emergency all-hands meeting came right as Josie Perkins sat down to eat her crème brûlée without the brunt caramelized sugar on top, which honestly made it just a rather mediocre custard.
Ella Patel/Io, Roen Tan/Tao, Jill Tesser/Baji, and Cameron Tan
For Ella Patel, sharing her mind with the alien, Io, has been tough, but they’re beginning to trust each other. Of course, it’s not just Io she’s dealing with, but the whole of the alien Prophus high command, and the rest of her new team. Given time, some of them might even be friends… But their enemies, the Genjix, are a constant threat, and it looks like the Prophus may have seriously underestimated them. Someone should really do something about that – but are Ella and Io the right agents for the job?
Looking for a review of The Fall of Io? Check out:
The Speculative Herald
Reviews & Robots
Amazon Rating-UK: not reviewed
Library Thing Rating: 4.25 out of 5 stars based on 2 ratings
#5 Out Of Best 25 Thriller Book Bloggers On Feedspot
Nick’s Pics
Click on cartoon for a better view. Created by Nick D. Kim
Many series are being made into movies or television programs. If you are like me, you probably imagine who you would like to play the lead role. So who would you pick to play Roen Tan? My choice would be John Cho.
Wesley Chu
#3.5A-The Days of Tao
#1B-The Lives of Io
Revolver Maps
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Looking for things to do in Cape Town? The Courtyard Playhouse boasts a brand new, professionally equipped intimate theatre featuring locally written and produced grassroots theatre half the week, and the rest of the week, our very own, improv theatre and comedy shows, as well as kids theatre and workshops for all ages.
Quiz Tickets
Current and Forthcoming Shows
Play Things
The Waterworks Anthology
Written and directed by Wessel Pretorius | Starring Wessel Pretorius & David Viviers
Two hapless travelling players unpack their suitcases full of budget store props to tell four short stories based on the adventures of four drops of liquid. A tear falls in love with its crier, a love triangle between a bull, a matador and his cape and finally the seed of love (that’s a euphemism for sperm) witnesses the doomed affair between Romeo and Juliet. Previously staged in Afrikaans as Klara Maas se Hart is Gebreek : die Vloeistof Trilogie - we are delighted to bring the English premiere of this critically acclaimed and much-loved gem from one of South Africa’s most gifted playwrights.
'If you, like me, adore Mel Brooks movies, howl with laughter watching Jeff Dunham's "Peanut", have extensive musical and literary references to draw from and to top it off, have a soft spot for freaks and misfits, then The Waterworks Trilogy is right up your street.' - Marina Griebenow
'Remarkable .. full of imagination and wonderment .. exquisitely executed .. supremely intelligent.' - Fritz
'A ridiculously hilarious show about bodily fluids? In a world as crazy as the one we are currently in, this feels positively normal. A love-struck teardrop, an eternal droplet of blood and a spermatozoon with a hankering to fly. If this doesn't tickle your soul, nothing will.' - Tracey
https://weekendspecial.co.za/klara-maas-se-hart-gebreek/
https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/volksblad/20170714/281895888286175
Wessel Pretorius
Wessel Pretorius is a writer, director and performer trained at the University of Pretoria and Stellenbosch University and working across English and Afrikaans theatre. His breakout student work Ont/Undone won 4 KykNet Fïesta Awards in 2013 and the Golden Ovation Award at the National Arts Festival in 2014, going on to tour extensively and multi-lingually in South Africa and across Europe.
His play Die Dag is Bros first staged in 2016 starring Sandra Prinsloo was published in 2017. As a performer, his notable work includes WIE’S BANG VIR VIRGINIA WOOLF? (2015), Balbesit (2014) and So Ry Miss Daisy (2016). Having worked alongside South Africa’s most esteemed actors in larger work, it is his own unconventional and intimate works where his inimitable talent - as director, writer and performer - really shines. As well as Ont/Undone this impressive body of independent work includes Waterpas (2014 - winner of Kanna award for Best Comedy), Al Julle Volke (2015)/ The Gospel According to Jan Coetzee (2019), Klara Mass se Hart is Gebreek, ensomeer: Die vloeistof trilogie (2016 - nominated for a plethora of awards), and Die Ontelbare 48 (2017), Renaissance (2017) and Fotostaatmasjien (2018). If not in all of these works, a large percentage of them displayed Wessel’s signature theatrical gesture - a confetti explosion - which he cites as the cheapest and most effective on-stage special effect.
David Viviers
David is a film and theatre actor. He graduated in 2014 from UCT (Theatre and Performance). In 2016, David was the recipient of the Brett Goldin Bursary award which allowed him to study with the Royal Shakespeare Company for a month in Stratford-upon-Avon. For theatre, David has received two Fleur du Cap Nominations, two Kanna nominations and two Fiesta nominations. He won none of them. Career highlights include playing an overly enthusiastic mime in the Afrikaans comedy Klara Maas se Hart is Gebreek (written and directed by Wessel Pretorius), playing Lady Macbeth in Fred Abrahamse 's Macbeth and playing the virile virus Rabies in Jemma Kahn's Cellist with Rabies (directed by Jaco Bouwer).
Book for The Waterworks Anthology by clicking the button of the date and time you wish to attend:
Wed 22nd Jan 8pm R180
Thu 23rd Jan 8pm R180
Fri 24th Jan 8pm R180
Sat 25th Jan 8pm R180
Wed 29th Jan 8pm R180
Thu 30th Jan 8pm R180
Fri 31st Jan 8pm R180
Sat 1st Feb 8pm R180
Wed 5th Feb 8pm R180
Thu 6th Feb 8pm R180
Fri 7th Feb 8pm R180
Other shows...
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Also we unfortunately don’t have any wheelchair access to our theatre. There is 1 flight of steps.
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Feminist Friday: Pussy Riot Imprisonment, One Year Later
March 1, 2013 March 1, 2013 Allyson
On Feburary 21, 2012, members of the punk band Pussy Riot, staged a protest against Vladimir Putin in a Russian Orthodox church. Two members, Maria Alyokhina and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, were sentenced to two years in jail. Yekaterina Samutsevich was imprisoned, but was released in October after hiring a new attorney. The remaining two members at the protest remain at large.
One year after the protest, Samutsevich says she has no regrets:
I don’t regret the performance. I only regret that they put us in prison. But it’s the government, which brought criminal charges, that’s guilty in this [. . . ] Many people are now critical of the government and state authorities [because of Pussy Riot]. They see the injustice. The situation has changed.
Pussy Riot, an art collective consisting of anonymous members (with 10-20 members at any given time), has not staged any major protests since last year, though Samutsevich has focused her work on the collective rather than on her other career as a computer programmer.
Alyokhina and Tolokonnikova are 24 and 23, respectively. They’re giving up two years of their lives as punishment for trying to incite political change in Russia. Reading news reports reminding me that a year has passed already reminds me to take stock of my values and beliefs. What would I be willing to go to jail for? What would be worth giving up my freedom? Perhaps this is purely a hypothetical question. But it’s one that I think we need to ask ourselves every now and then. Do we believe in our politics enough to risk imprisonment (or worse)? And if we don’t, then what do we do?
Posted in feminismTagged feminist friday
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One thought on “Feminist Friday: Pussy Riot Imprisonment, One Year Later”
freepussyriot says:
My blog is dedicated to these ladies. I would give up my freedom for the rights of others as perps have done so in years gone by for us. Our fight is others gain and there’s a whole lot of fighting still to be done. FREE PUSSY RIOT!
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Cell Division Site Placement and Asymmetric Growth in Mycobacteria
Graham Joyce, Kerstin J. Williams, Matthew Robb, Elke Noens, et al
http://www.mendeley.com/research/cell-division-site-placement-asymmetric-growth-mycobacteria
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http://doi.org/10.1099/mic.0.076174-0
http://doi.org/10.1016/j.fgb.2014.10.004
http://doi.org/10.1021/acschembio.8b00080
http://doi.org/10.1111/mmi.13593
http://doi.org/10.1093/femspd/fty017
http://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro3299
http://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-micro-092412-155622
http://doi.org/10.1002/cm.21490
http://doi.org/10.1039/C4LC01270D
http://doi.org/10.3389/fcell.2017.00064
http://doi.org/10.1093/femsre/fuz016
http://doi.org/10.1093/femsre/fuu012
http://doi.org/10.1128/MMBR.00031-15
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{"files"=>["https://ndownloader.figshare.com/files/579754"], "description"=>"<p>. (<b>A</b>) <i>M. smegmatis</i> mc<sup>2</sup> 155 cells with two polar and one internal spots of VanBODIPY staining; note variable cell lengths and eccentric internal spot placement. (<b>B</b>) <i>C. glutamicum</i> cells with three spots are of similar size with a centrally located internal spot. Scale bar = 2 µm. (<b>C</b>) Plotting cell length versus frequency for 3-spot cells (n = 148) from all three species of bacteria, shows there is significantly more cell length variability in mycobacterial populations compared to <i>C. glutamicum</i> (p<0.01 Wilcoxon signed-rank test). (<b>D</b>) More than 95% of <i>C. glutamicum</i> cells contain an internal spot within the central 20% of the cell length, compared to only 70% of mycobacteria. Data for 3-spot cells was collected from three independent experiments.</p>", "links"=>[], "tags"=>["mycobacteria", "compared"], "article_id"=>250245, "categories"=>["Microbiology", "Biotechnology", "Cell Biology", "Infectious Diseases"], "users"=>["Graham Joyce", "Kerstin J. Williams", "Matthew Robb", "Elke Noens", "Barbara Tizzano", "Vahid Shahrezaei", "Brian D. Robertson"], "doi"=>"https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0044582.g001", "stats"=>{"downloads"=>0, "page_views"=>1, "likes"=>0}, "figshare_url"=>"https://figshare.com/articles/_Internal_spot_placement_and_cell_length_are_more_variable_in_mycobacteria_compared_to_C_glutamicum_/250245", "title"=>"Internal spot placement and cell length are more variable in mycobacteria compared to <i>C. glutamicum</i>", "pos_in_sequence"=>0, "defined_type"=>1, "published_date"=>"2012-09-10 00:04:05"}
{"files"=>["https://ndownloader.figshare.com/files/579865"], "description"=>"<p>(<b>A</b>) Three fields of uninduced <i>M. smegmatis</i> mc<sup>2</sup>155 pMEND-PBP1a-mCherry stained with VanBODIPY display the characteristic polar and septal staining of nascent peptidoglycan (Green spots). (<b>B</b>) Induction of PBP1a-mCherry with 20 ng/ml Tc for 3.5 hr results in strong expression of red PBP1a-mCherry that localizes to the septum and poles, in a pattern similar to VanBODIPY staining (three fields of cells). (<b>C</b>) Expression of PBP1a-mCherry disrupts the localization of VanBODIPY staining, leaving diffuse green staining across the cell. The columns show the green, red and merged images respectively.</p>", "links"=>[], "tags"=>["pbp1a", "vanbodipy"], "article_id"=>250355, "categories"=>["Microbiology", "Biotechnology", "Cell Biology", "Infectious Diseases"], "users"=>["Graham Joyce", "Kerstin J. Williams", "Matthew Robb", "Elke Noens", "Barbara Tizzano", "Vahid Shahrezaei", "Brian D. Robertson"], "doi"=>"https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0044582.g002", "stats"=>{"downloads"=>1, "page_views"=>11, "likes"=>0}, "figshare_url"=>"https://figshare.com/articles/_Co_localization_of_PBP1a_and_VanBODIPY_in_M_smegmatis_/250355", "title"=>"Co-localization of PBP1a and VanBODIPY in <i>M. smegmatis.</i>", "pos_in_sequence"=>0, "defined_type"=>1, "published_date"=>"2012-09-10 00:05:55"}
{"files"=>["https://ndownloader.figshare.com/files/579999"], "description"=>"<p>PBP1a-mCherry expression in <i>M. smegmatis</i> mc<sup>2</sup>155 was induced with 20 ng/ml Tc for 3.5 hr cells and images were captured every 10 mins as described. Panels <b>A</b> and <b>B</b> are time series of images showing diffuse patches of staining at variable locations between the poles (white arrow). These eventually condensed into a central septal spot (white asterisk) around mid-cell. Cell envelope invagination and separation was not seen in the bright field images until 160 minutes after this condensation event (n = 10; yellow arrow). See <a href=\"http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0044582#pone.0044582.s001\" target=\"_blank\">File S1</a> and <a href=\"http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0044582#pone.0044582.s002\" target=\"_blank\">File S2</a> for complete movie sequences. The septal spots of PBP1a-mCherry form within the central 20% of the cell (Panel <b>C</b>; n = 23), without the outliers seen with Vancomycin staining. Panel D shows a control strain expressing mCherry alone. Septal spots are present in cells of various lengths (panels <b>E</b> and <b>F</b>), ranging between 4 and 12 µm (<b>G</b>), showing that cell division occurs at a wide range of cell lengths, indicating it is not a cue for placement of the new septum. See <a href=\"http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0044582#pone.0044582.s003\" target=\"_blank\">File S3</a> and <a href=\"http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0044582#pone.0044582.s004\" target=\"_blank\">File S4</a> for complete movie sequences.</p>", "links"=>[], "tags"=>["localizes", "centrally", "septa", "independently"], "article_id"=>250484, "categories"=>["Microbiology", "Biotechnology", "Cell Biology", "Infectious Diseases"], "users"=>["Graham Joyce", "Kerstin J. Williams", "Matthew Robb", "Elke Noens", "Barbara Tizzano", "Vahid Shahrezaei", "Brian D. Robertson"], "doi"=>"https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0044582.g003", "stats"=>{"downloads"=>1, "page_views"=>12, "likes"=>0}, "figshare_url"=>"https://figshare.com/articles/_PBP1a_mCherry_localizes_centrally_at_septa_that_form_future_cell_division_sites_independently_of_cell_length_/250484", "title"=>"PBP1a-mCherry localizes centrally at septa that form future cell division sites, independently of cell length.", "pos_in_sequence"=>0, "defined_type"=>1, "published_date"=>"2012-09-10 00:08:04"}
{"files"=>["https://ndownloader.figshare.com/files/306461", "https://ndownloader.figshare.com/files/306504", "https://ndownloader.figshare.com/files/306548", "https://ndownloader.figshare.com/files/306598"], "description"=>"<div><p>Mycobacteria are members of the actinomycetes that grow by tip extension and lack apparent homologues of the known cell division regulators found in other rod-shaped bacteria. Previous work using static microscopy on dividing mycobacteria led to the hypothesis that these cells can grow and divide asymmetrically, and at a wide range of sizes, in contrast to the cell growth and division patterns observed in the model rod-shaped organisms. In this study, we test this hypothesis using live-cell time-lapse imaging of dividing <em>Mycobacterium smegmatis</em> labelled with fluorescent PBP1a, to probe peptidoglycan synthesis and label the cell septum. We demonstrate that the new septum is placed accurately at mid-cell, and that the asymmetric division observed is a result of differential growth from the cell tips, with a more than 2-fold difference in growth rate between fast and slow growing poles. We also show that the division site is not selected at a characteristic cell length, suggesting this is not an important cue during the mycobacterial cell cycle.</p> </div>", "links"=>[], "tags"=>["asymmetric", "mycobacteria"], "article_id"=>120465, "categories"=>["Cancer", "Biotechnology", "Cell Biology", "Microbiology"], "users"=>["Graham Joyce", "Kerstin J. Williams", "Matthew Robb", "Elke Noens", "Barbara Tizzano", "Vahid Shahrezaei", "Brian D. Robertson"], "doi"=>["https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0044582.s001", "https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0044582.s002", "https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0044582.s003", "https://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0044582.s004"], "stats"=>{"downloads"=>0, "page_views"=>13, "likes"=>0}, "figshare_url"=>"https://figshare.com/articles/Cell_Division_Site_Placement_and_Asymmetric_Growth_in_Mycobacteria/120465", "title"=>"Cell Division Site Placement and Asymmetric Growth in Mycobacteria", "pos_in_sequence"=>0, "defined_type"=>4, "published_date"=>"2012-09-10 00:07:45"}
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A career in tech starts with a plugged-in teacher
It also helps them prepare for the careers of the future that will certainly involve digital skills and combining computer science with other disciplines like health, science, agriculture, art and more to solve complex challenges and design innovation solutions for the world.
With their CS4HS grant in 2015, Australian Catholic University responded to Australia’s newly introduced Digital Technologies curriculum by creating a compulsory course that will help all pre-service teachers in their Bachelor of Education programs learn how to teach CS and CT.
More than 2,000 pre-service teachers have completed the course to date. This course has also been open-sourced so that other universities can use the content to prepare future teachers in this important skill.
Other CS4HS recipients have delivered hands on practical workshops to teachers all around Australia to equip them with both the knowledge and the skills to engage and excite students in the opportunities that computer science can lead to. And with our free online courses through Adelaide University we’ve seen thousands of teachers inspired and equipped to implement this new curriculum.
Applications are now open for our 2016 CS4HS program in Australia and New Zealand, and will remain open until 19 March 2016.
If you want to know where computer science can take today’s students, check out Careers with Code. In the future, young Australians will use computer science to do great things, and it will all start with a great teacher with a passion for the topic.
Posted by Sally-Ann Williams, Engineering Community & Outreach manager
Computer science education provides students with lifelong skills that enable them to solve problems and develop critical analysis skills.
Computer science (CS) is more available in classrooms across Australia than ever, thanks to the Digital Technologies curriculum, and so equipping teachers with the everything they need to teach CS and computational thinking has never been more important.
“A lot of students come out of school able to push the right buttons, but don’t know how to approach real-world problem solving. We need to teach students how to tackle problems that seem unsolvable,” says Leanne Cameron, lecturer of educational studies at Australian Catholic University.
Labels: Policy
A tiny difference can make all the difference
team in the world - no surprise given that Google Maps was born in Sydney; we are working to transform the way businesses operate in a digital world; we’re helping people in emerging economies make the most out of the internet in spite of poor bandwidth. We are also in a unique position to help others solve big problems using technology, and through our philanthropic arm Google.org we donate more than US$100 million and a further US$1 billion in products and resources every year to non-profit partners tackling some of the biggest social issues we face.
Google Australia & New Zealand managing director Jason Pellegrino, Infoxchange chief executive David Spriggs and Google.org director Jacquelline Fuller.
One of those partners is Infoxchange, which is transforming the way society tackles homelessness. It’s hard to believe, but one in 200 people in Australia is homeless. You may also be surprised to know that roughly eight out of ten of those homeless people has a smartphone. For many homeless people their smartphone can play a decisive role in determining their outcome. Infoxchange saw the opportunity to provide people in need with location-based information via their mobile, helping connect them with essential things such as food, counselling, employment services, legal support and a safe place to sleep. Earlier this year it launched Ask Izzy, the world’s first, nationwide mobile website connecting people who are at risk with essential services. Ask Izzy was developed with support from Google, News Corp and REA Group.
It is exactly the kind of problem-solving that motivates people at Google; not only did we fund the development, but a number of Google staff helped develop the technology and assist with user testing. The mobile site was co-designed by those who have experienced homelessness. It’s also free, anonymous, and the data usage costs nothing if you access it via Telstra’s network. The people at Infoxchange have been amazing partners because of their passion for the issue of homelessness, for the partners they’ve been able to bring together to make this project happen, and for their belief in the power of technology to make a real difference in people’s lives. Ask Izzy was launched in January by Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, and has now been used more 250,000 times - many more times than Infoxchange expected.
Launching Ask Izzy in January, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Lucy Turnbull spoke with people who consulted on the design of Ask Izzy.
The next step for Infoxchange and Ask Izzy is to create a national database that understands how people are using essential services so that policymakers can ensure they are available where they are needed most. This Christmas if you wish to donate to Infoxchange go to http://info.westpac.com.au/askizzy so they can put pocket-sized mobile phone chargers into the hands of homeless people - for just $15 you can ensure that when they need that little bit of extra charge for their phone, it’s there for them. A single power card will charge their phone for four hours. An extra phone charge in the pockets of people in need can help them find a bed, a shower, a meal, a friend. Even when we’re seeking to make big changes to society, it’s the small things that often matter the most.
Posted by Alan Noble, Director of Engineering, Google Australia
At Google we often talk about trying to solve the really big problems - connectivity, communication, organising the world’s information. Sometimes we take on ideas so large it could almost seem preposterous - like organising all the information on the internet, or using artificial intelligence to translate languages. Google has engineers in Australia working on all kinds of global problems. We have the largest Google Maps team in the world - no surprise given that Google Maps was born in Sydney; we are working to transform the way businesses operate in a digital world; we’re helping people in emerging economies make the most out of the internet in spite of poor bandwidth. We are also in a unique position to help others solve big problems using technology, and through our philanthropic arm Google.org we donate more than US$100 million and a further US$1 billion in products and resources every year to non-profit partners tackling some of the biggest social issues we face.
A Year in Search: The Moments that Defined 2016
It’s that time of year again, when we look back at the last 12 months, 366 days, 527,040 minutes and reflect on the search trends and moments when we celebrated, mourned and wondered in 2016. It was the year we ‘caught ‘em all,’ grasped extraordinary political change, said goodbye to some greats – and made Harambe a hero.
From breaking news, to breaking Olympic records, and the UK’s break from Europe – the events of this year affected all of us in different ways. We turned to Search in the happy and hard moments to get the details, see the bigger picture and find our way forward. To rediscover the events, people and topics that defined 2016 around the world, watch our video.
Here's a wrap-up of the five top topics that caught Aussies' attention and brought us together in Search in 2016:
We love a good game
2016 was a super sporty year, with many historic and unforgettable moments that kept us searching, cheering – and dancing with Michelle Jenneke. We supported our Olympians in Rio de Janeiro, placed our bets for Melbourne Cup and followed the scores for the Australian Open, AFL and Super Rugby. We missed buses and trains, ran into walls (and each other) as we tried to catch ‘em all when the Pokémon Go! craze took Australia and the world by storm.
Politics and personalities
Donald Trump beat Hillary for the second time this year – piping her at the post to take home the title of our most trending person, along with the presidency. Back on home soil, Pauline Hanson took out the title of Australia’s top trending politician, ahead of current Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. At times we were lost for words, but we were never short of questions – with many of us still trying to figure out exactly what a plebiscite is.
The oh-no and uh-oh moments
The shock and tragedies of the Dreamworld accident and Brussels attack had Aussies trying to comprehend what, how and why. We looked into the Mitchell Pearce incident, and watched cricketer Chris Gayle try and fail while interviewing with Mel McLaughlin on live TV. We also followed Tara Brown’s imprisonment in Lebanon closely, and fired up our opinions (and our Google searches) about controversial comments from Sonia Kruger. Together, we kept clicking for the Census site and wondered what was next when the UK voted out.
Saying goodbye to the greats
This year the world mourned three of music’s greatest with the passing of musicians David Bowie, Prince and Leonard Cohen. They weren’t the only legends headed for the stars, with Alan Rickman, Muhammad Ali and Gene Wilder also passing away this year. Closer to home, we bid farewell to journalist, commentator and broadcaster Rebecca Wilson, who lost her battle with cancer in October.
Calling mother nature
Aussies looked to understand natural events and disasters in 2016, with the total solar eclipse, Hurricane Matthew and the Zika virus landing in the lead Searches. We also discovered an unsung hero, with an outpouring of grief, Searches and a lifetime of memes following the death of Harambe. More broadly, we wondered why the sky is blue, the ocean is salty – and why biodiversity matters.
And that’s just a preview. To dive into the top trending terms of the year, check out Australia's full trending and most searched lists*:
Overall Searches (Trending)
News (Trending)
US election results
Total solar eclipse
Dreamworld accident
Global People (Trending)
Steven Avery
Aussies (Trending)
Mitchell Pearce
Molly Meldrum
Pauline Hanson
Mel McLaughlin
Sonia Kruger
Malcolm Turnbull
Michelle Jenneke
Loss (Trending)
Sporting events (Trending):
How to…? (Most Searched)
How to screenshot on mac
How to get rid of pimples
How to download from YouTube
What is..? (Most Searched)
What is a plebiscite
What is Pokemon Go
What is the weather today
What is the time
What is all purpose flour
What is Brexit
What is gluten
What is the meaning of life
Why is…? (Most Searched)
Why is there a leap day
Why is the sky blue
Why is my internet so slow
Why is my poop green
Why is my computer so slow
Why is Australia in Eurovision
Why is the ocean salty
Why is biodiversity important
Why is my period late
Why is my eye twitching
Recipes (Most Searched)
Go to google.com.au/2016 to explore the rest of the 2016 Year in Search stories and top trending charts from around the world.
* Trending Searches: What was hot in 2016? The "trending" queries are the searches that had the highest spike in traffic over a sustained period in 2016 as compared to 2015.
* Most Searched: What topped Google’s charts? The "most searched" queries are the most popular terms for 2016—ranked in order by volume of searches.
Posted by Camilla Ibrahim, Communications Manager, Google Australia & Zealand
Aussies searched for Brexit, Bowie and banana bread
Bringing amazing teachers together, in Australia and beyond
conference: a free, around-the-clock global conference for teachers to share and learn.
Google’s Education on Air brought together leaders in learning, including Google chairman Eric Schmidt; Second Lady of the US, Dr Jill Biden; and the 27th Prime Minister of Australia and Chair of the Global Partnership for Education, Julia Gillard to discuss curriculum and best practices.
Delivering the opening keynote, Ms Gillard said that teachers unlock the world of learning for our children and good teachers never stop learning themselves. She said Education on Air is working to equip teachers with the tools they need to navigate our changing world and that teachers are transforming education with technology in many ways to better engage and enrich their students.
After participating in a panel discussion and leading a breakout session, Anthony Speranza, ICT Learning and Teaching Leader at St Mark’s Primary school in Melbourne said Education On Air used technology to deliver innovative Professional Development for the educational community and highlighted best practices for today's students and schools.
Image: students from St Mark's Primary School in Melbourne preparing for a joint Education on Air presentation with teacher Anthony Speranza
If you missed the event, or you want to share it with an educator who might be interested, you can find it here.
Posted by Fiona Coles, Google for Education, Google Australia
More than 30,000 education professionals around the world joined forces online last week for Google’s Education on Air conference: a free, around-the-clock global conference for teachers to share and learn.
A billion reasons to celebrate music on YouTube
, spurred in large part by the growth of music streaming subscriptions. This year, the industry has even more reasons to be optimistic. Even as music subscriptions have been growing faster than any other subscription type, advertising is another powerful driver of revenue. In fact, in the last 12 months, YouTube has paid out over $1 billion to the music industry from advertising alone, demonstrating that multiple experiences and models are succeeding alongside each other.
And this is just the beginning. As more advertising dollars shift from TV, radio and print to online services, the music industry will generate even more revenue from ads. In the future, the music business has an opportunity to look a lot like television, where subscriptions and advertising contribute roughly equal amounts of revenue, bolstered by digital and physical sales. To achieve this, there is a lot of work that must be done by YouTube and the industry as a whole, but we are excited to see the momentum.
At a time when there’s never been more competition for attention, fans can’t get enough good music. It is clear that this creative industry has two strong engines of growth -- subscriptions and advertising -- and we are honored to be a part of it.
Robert Kyncl, Chief Business Officer, recently watched "The Hamilton Mixtape Performance Live Stream."
Last year was a bright one for music—after several tough years of declining revenues, the industry started growing again, spurred in large part by the growth of music streaming subscriptions. This year, the industry has even more reasons to be optimistic. Even as music subscriptions have been growing faster than any other subscription type, advertising is another powerful driver of revenue. In fact, in the last 12 months, YouTube has paid out over $1 billion to the music industry from advertising alone, demonstrating that multiple experiences and models are succeeding alongside each other.
#YouTubeRewind: Celebrating what you watched, shared and created in 2016
Aussies went crazy for Sia, stormtroopers and Superwog in 2016.
2016 was a year of challenge and triumph. You broke records, you caught ‘em all – and you celebrated “The Aussiest Interview Ever.” Now 2016 is coming to an end, you know what that means…. It’s time for #YouTubeRewind!
This year, more than 200 YouTube stars from 18 countries accepted our Ultimate 2016 Rewind Challenge to pay homage to the biggest videos, memes, channels, songs, and pop culture moments of the year. Keep an eye out for some pretty epic surprise guests.
Feel like a YouTube expert? Take our Rewind quiz to see how many trends and creators you can spot.
Australia's Top Trending Videos
As we look back at 2016, we replay and rejoice in the trending videos and music videos from 2016, according to time spent watching, sharing, commenting, liking and more. From celebrity moments to breakdancing stormtroopers to Superwog’s skits, this year’s top trending videos are a quirky mix of song, dance and laughs – representing the amazing variety of creativity shared on YouTube every day.
James Corden's Carpool Karaoke series was the number one hit for Aussies in 2016, winning four spots in the top ten trending videos. Women took the front seat, from JLo to Adele, Sia and First Lady Michelle.
We also played with Play-Doh, shared Superwog and tuned in to Triple J.
The channels who made these videos have more than 30M subscribers who tune in regularly to watch the funny, insightful, entertaining things they create.
Adele Carpool Karaoke
HUGE EGGS SURPRISE TOYS CHALLENGE Inflatable water slide Disney Cars Toys Paw Patrol Spiderman
Jennifer Lopez Carpool Karaoke
Sia Carpool Karaoke
Ice Cube, Kevin Hart And Conan Help A Student Driver - CONAN on TBS
Boogie Storm make Simon’s dream come true! | Auditions Week 5 | Britain’s Got Talent 2016
Halsey covers Justin Bieber's 'Love Yourself' for triple j's Like A Version
First Lady Michelle Obama Carpool Karaoke
Does Elsa Eat Too Much? Play-Doh Disney Frozen Movie Clips Best Stop-Motion videos
Australia's Top Music Videos
Aussies were hooked on The Chainsmokers in 2016, with the anthem “Closer” landing the year’s top music video, and "Don't Let Me Down" (Ft. Daya) in ninth place. It’s fair to say that 2016 was a year of "work work work work work," with Fifth Harmony and Rihanna taking charge in the charts.
The Chainsmokers - Closer (Lyric) ft. Halsey
Fifth Harmony - Work from Home ft. Ty Dolla $ign
Calvin Harris - This Is What You Came For (Official Video) ft. Rihanna
ZAYN - PILLOWTALK
Twenty one pilots: Heathens (from Suicide Squad: The Album) [OFFICIAL VIDEO]
Major Lazer - Cold Water (feat. Justin Bieber & MØ) (Official Lyric Video)
Ariana Grande - Side To Side ft. Nicki Minaj
Rihanna - Work (Explicit) ft. Drake
With Aussie-born artists Sia and Superwog landing the leaderboards, 2016 was a time to shine for Aussie homegrown creative talent.
Soon we’ll be releasing YouTube’s global list and YouTube’s Rewind video celebrating the top memes and moments of the year from around the world – so stay tuned!
For more Rewind fun, check out the #YouTubeRewind Channel.
Kevin Allocca, Head of Culture & Trends, and the YouTube Rewind team
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muovere gli affetti
Baroque Opera then and now: 1600 & 1607, 1970-2020
How did Baroque ‘opera’ develop in the first decade of the 1600s?
And how have our modern-day performances of early music-drama advanced in a half-century of Historically Informed Performances?
This post is based on an interview for Radio Orpheus (Moscow) in which the presenter, Russian poet, novelist and dramaturg, Alexey Parin asked me to compare and contrast two of the earliest surviving baroque operas: Cavalieri’s Anima & Corpo (1600) and Monteverdi’s Orfeo (1607). Both operas can be seen in regular repertoire at Moscow State Theatre ‘Natalya Sats’, in award-winning productions by Georgy Isaakyan, and in collaboration with OPERA OMNIA, the Academy for Early Opera & Dance.. My thanks to Alexey for his profound enthusiasm for opera, for his translation of the libretto of Anima & Corpo, and for his provocative questions in this interview.
With his long experience of opera in Russia, Alexey Parin finds the audience’s experience of the two works very different from one another. Both productions succeed admirably, but why are they musically so different?
I think the first thing that strikes us, looking at the scores and listening to the music, is the similarity between the two works. Both composers are starting from the text, as if they were setting a spoken play to music.
But Monteverdi’s subject gives him the possibility for a lot more music, arising ‘realistically’ out of the drama. Since the protaganist is Orpheus, the great musician, the famous singer, of course we want to hear him sing and make music. And so he sings a magnificent Aria in Hell, accompanied by all the latest instruments of the early 17th-century Italian baroque. These are actually the same instruments that we hear in Cavalieri – violins, cornetti and the double-harp – but what’s now very different, is that with the excuse of Orpheus, Monteverdi writes virtuosi solos for these instruments. So although we have similar instruments, the sound of Monteverdi’s music begins to change.
Also in the earlier scenes, we are in pastoral Arcadia, and the shepherds of Arcadia all sing. They invite the Muses to descend from Parnassus to play instruments. So once again, Monteverdi has the chance to bring in a lot more ensemble music, proceeding ‘realistically’ from the mythological story.
Comparing the libretti
Another difference between the two works comes also from the text. With Orfeo, we are following one protagonist, we could almost say that the other characters are two-dimensional, only Orfeo is truly ‘there’. So while earlier operas exist on the same story, called Euridice, this drama is really the story of Orpheus. Eurydice has only two lines in the whole opera, but nevertheless what she says is extremely important, and perhaps her lines are the clue for understanding the whole opera. More about Eurydice here.
At the beginning when Orpheus sings beautifully of all his love for Euridice, her reply is that she cannot speak, and we should just ask Love, in order to know her feelings. And so we realise that Orpheus is perhaps speaking too much.
And this suspicion is reinfored with Eurydice’s second speech at the crucial moment in the drama, when Orpheus fatally turns to look at her. She says that the sight of him is too sweet, but also too bitter, and for the sake of too much love, he is going to lose her. And so in this very short speech, the word troppo, too much, comes three times. The poet is making it very clear for us here: this is the message. Orpheus was ‘too much’: too happy, too sad, too much love, too excessive in every way.
And so the message of the opera is then to look for the golden mean, for the perfect balance. But nevertheless, I think that Striggio as librettist and Monteverdi as composer both know that the audience enjoy the excesses. More about the message of Orfeo here.
And this brings us right back to Cavalieri again, because in his Preface, Emilio de’ Cavalieri says that the emotions in this kind of music come from rapid contrasts of opposites. More about Cavalieri’s Preface here.
Comparing the scores
It’s important to realise that a score in the early 17th-century had a very different purpose. It was not there for musicians like me to create a performance four hundred years later. More than anything, it was a souvenir for the public who had been to the performance and wanted to study the work further.
This reminds us how new this style of music-drama was. Cavalieri’s religious music-drama was so different from what had gone before, that he wanted to give his audience a chance to look at it again.
Nowadays, if we go to an opera we like, we might listen to the CD afterwards, as a nice memory of the real theatrical experience. So in Cavalieri’s score there is a lot of detail to help the reader remember the whole experience. He prints the music and the libretto and cross-references one to the other with numbers, number 1 in the music corresponds to number 1 in the libretto.
But, from the performers point of view, other information is missing. Many musical details are not specified in the score, and must be decided by the performers. In particular, the score provides no information about the orchestration of the instrumental parts, which instruments should play where.
In contrast, Monteverdi working at the Ducal court, wants to show off not only the opera, but also the court orchestra. So in his score, which is also a kind of souvenir-edition, he includes not only details of the drama but also a lot of information about the instruments. Especially at very strong dramatic moments…
This focus on moments of high drama shows us the purpose of publication. It’s not a score for musicians to work from. It’s to help audience members remember the show they saw. And so the score makes a kind of ‘close-up shot’ of the orchestra when it comes to the most dramatic moments. This gives us today, as musicians working with this historical material, vital information.
From the score, we know that in the original production of Orfeo, the instrumentalists appeared in different positions around the stage. We know that sometimes the instruments were part of the stage action. In a new piece of research, part of my investigation reveals that in one particular scene, when the Muses appear and the character La Ninfa says “you Muses have come with your instruments, so we’ll sing and you play, and everyone’s happy”, the score describes precisely which instruments play, and there are 10 of them – Apollo and the 9 Muses. So here the instruments are not just the accompaniment, they are part of the stage picture, and essential to the poetic concept.
Combining the information
But these differing levels of information in the two scores make today’s artistic process different for historically informed performers. Often Monteverdi writes details about the instrumentation that we don’t know from Cavalieri. For example, at the beginning of Act III, Monteverdi is extremely clear: the scene changes to Hell, the violins, the theorbos, the harp and the beautiful organs stop playing, and instead we have the cornetti, trombones and the regal. And so we can understand the two worlds, Hell and Arcadia, in Monteverdi’s opera. And this gives us a suggestion for the two worlds of Cavalieri’s opera, again Hell, and (now) Heaven. So from the point of view of a researcher and music director working with the score, it’s good to combine the information from both scores, to help us understand the cultural context of the period.
We don’t know if the Maenad ending was ever composed or not, but for sure it’s now lost. There’s a hint of how the lost music might have been, in the Moresca that survives as the finale of the happy ending with Apollo. This Moresca starts in the score without time signature – there is no 3/2. This is very strange, and perhaps it’s because this Moresca was the continuation of something else, and that something else, whatever it was,is now lost. A Moresca, which is a danced battle, would also be an appropriate finale after the Bacchic ending with the Maenads. On the other hand, we should remember that often they would put a dance at the end that had no relation to the rest of the drama. After one of Shakespeare’s tragedies, the actors – including characters who had died – would all stand up and dance a jig. Cavalieri says that you can put whatever dance at the end of a show, but then what he actually writes is the perfect dance finale, actually, yes, very connected to the show. More about dancing in Orfeo and Anima & Corpo here.
Personally, I’m fascinated by this question of the end of Orfeo. In another production, in Helsinki, we showed both endings (with my reconstruction of the Maenad scene from the 1607 libretto), and I’m intrigued by the idea of letting the audience vote: should the final triumph be for Apollo, or for Bacchus?
Here in Moscow, in this production, in Georgy Isaakyan’s particular style, it seems to me that he doesn’t tell the audience what happens, he encourages them to ask themselves: does Orpheus live or die?
7 years of Early Opera, half a century of Historically Informed Performance
As we work on Orfeo at OPERA OMNIA, we now have the advantage of 7 years of work together in Theatre Sats on the baroque style of Cavalieri. More about how to study early operatic roles here. No doubt 17th-century musicians also developed their ideas in the 7 years between Anima & Corpo and Orfeo. And I think it’s also fair to say that Monteverdi is musically more difficult than Cavalieri. In our production of Orfeo, we have the opportunity to sing in the Italian language, which makes some things easier for the music, but challenges the actors to make that direct contact with the audience that we have when we sing Anima & Corpo in Russian. More about OPERA OMNIA here,
Perhaps the most unusual thing about the musical approach for the Orfeo production is that we have effectively two musical directors, in the same way that Monteverdi effectively had two orchestras: the orchestra of the violins and wind instruments who play written parts; and the orchestra of the continuo who improvise their parts. And just as Georgy Isaakyan’s staging is an encounter between Monteverdi’s 17th-century story, and Russia of the 1970s and 1980s; so there is a similar contrast within the musical realisation. Amongst the continuo and soloists, we share the latest ideas of Monteverdi’s baroque style; whilst in the orchestra and chorus the audience are presented with the Russian way to play baroque from the 1970s.
This juxtaposition of fundamentally differing approaches to early opera within one production has led to me reflect on how Historically Performed Performance of Monteverdi has changed in my own lifetime. In the table below, I attempt to identify some key topics and trail-blazing pioneers associated with significant re-discoveries. Any serious early opera production should at least consider these topics. Nevertheless, even decades later, some findings are still considered too “radical”, whilst others are routinely ignored, even by ‘historically informed’ ensembles.
How HIP is your Monteverdi?
Chitarrone 1960s Robert Spencer
Cornetto 1970s Bruce Dickey
Vocal ornamentation 1970s Nigel Rogers
Quarter-comma meantone 1970s Mark Lindley
Negri/Caroso dance 1970s Julia Sutton
Renaissance recorders 1970s Bob Marvin, Martin Skowroneck
No conductor 1980s Roger Norrrington
Recit without bowed bass 1980s Graham Dixon
Baroque harp 1980s Frances Kelly, ALK
Led from continuo 1980s Ensemble Tragicomedia
Renaissance violin band 1980s David Douglass, Peter Holman
Count recit in minims 1980s Ensemble Tragicomedia
Metre in Music 1980s George Houle
Baroque Gesture 1980s Dene Barnett
Il Corago 1980s Fabbris & Pompilio
Chiavette 1980s Andrew Parrot
Vibrato 1980s Greta Moens-Haenen
Proportions 1990s Roger Bowers
Pitch 1990s Bruce Haynes
Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre 2002 Tim Carter
1615 print free online 2009 IMSLP
Tactus throughout 2010 ALK
Historical swordsmanship 2012 Guy Windsor
Beating time & measuring music 2014 Roger Mathew Grant
Arianna a la recherche 2017 ALK
Violini alla francese ?
5 trumpets ?
Of course, this list reflects my own personal experiences and fortunate encounters with individual experts. So I look forward to your comments, corrections and additions. And most importantly, I look forward to new research findings in the 2020s, which will provide new impetus for re-thinking, re-imagining and re-working Monteverdi’s theatrical music.
Posted in Arianna, Continuo, Early Harps, Historical Action, History of Emotions, Introductions, Italian baroque harp, Moving the Passions, Music and Philosophy, Music, Dance & Swordsmanship, Rhythm, Text
Tagged baroque, Baroque Gesture, Baroque Music, Baroque Opera, Continuo, Early Harp, Early Music, Early Opera, Emotions, Expression, HIP, Historical Action, muovere gli affetti, musica recitativo, ornamentation, Phrasing, Rhythm, Rubato, seicento, Swordsmanship, Tactus, Text, Triple Harp
Musing allowed – Reflecting on Music, Time & Play
This article reports on my work-in-progress to create an Explorer’s Guide to Early Opera, under the title The Play of Music & Time. More about the project here. Written within the discipline of Reflective Practice, this post simultaneously documents the on-going process and is itself part of that process, a considered “thinking-aloud” that helps establish a blue-print for continuing the design. And no doubt, that blue print will be adapted, along the way…
Listening again to Peter & the Wolf (1936) – score here – video with animations here – and The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra (1945) – sound with animated score here – was an experience both inspiring and somewhat daunting. I feel a palpable sense of awe at the achievements of Prokofiev and Britten in creating these expertly crafted and artistically powerful works.
These two models are of course, very different. Peter would fit into Monteverdi’s concept of favola in musica, a story in music. More about Monteverdi’s Orfeo here. Prokofiev’s fable resembles the Grimm brothers’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen: underneath the charming fairy tale of a young boy, his grandad and various animals there is an undercurrent of danger and violence. As in an opera, music and action are united, the spoken narration is like recitatives that link the instrumental ‘arias’ and duos, the final tutti is a rousing chorus.
Although by 1946 Britten had already written two operas, Paul Bunyan and Peter Grimes, as well as many settings of thought-provoking poetry, his Guide is presented not as a story, but as a set of Variations, creating a certain abstract quality, in contrast to Prokofiev’s naïve, but vivid realism. Britten seems to write for more sophisticated listeners, and formal construction is part of his educational message. Not only are we introduced to the instruments of a much larger orchestra, but those instruments are categorised into sections (strings, woodwind, brass, percussion), individually itemised, and then re-assembled in – who else would have dared to aim such a thing at Young Persons? – a thrilling double-fugue.
The power of Prokofiev’s art is hidden underneath what seems to be innocent pastoral: Peter is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Britten’s intellectual explorations proclaim both the seriousness and the fun of symphonic writing: his large orchestra with its close-knit team of elite soloists becomes a playground of the mind, a space-time for rhythmic and colourful music-games.
“La Joie de Vivre” by Picasso (1946)
The Play’s the Thing
We play music. And opera is also a play: a theatrical drama in music, and an act of playfulness that romps across multiple media. The first baroque ‘operas’ were often called rappresentatione: a show, a Play.
So I still like my title The Play of Music & Time, with its echo of the very first baroque music-drama, Cavalieri’s Rappresentatione di Anima & Corpo (1600) – introduction to the first opera here – Cavalieri’s Preface here. Following Monteverdi and Cavalieri, my two protagonists are La Musica and Il Tempo, the personifications of Music and Time – female and male. Soul and Body are united in a third character, Life, also embodied onstage in many early operas.
But I’m puzzling over how to reconcile 17th-century aesthetics with a design that will speak to young audiences and to listeners unfamiliar with Orfeo, Celos, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme or even Dido & Aeneas. What is the appropriate Rhetorical Decorum, an artistic structure of what is suitable? What compositorial Voice will by its Nature be understood by all, at once charming the senses and captivating their minds?
Music & Time in the models
The common features of Peter and the Guide are extreme economy of material, tight control of the balance between unity and variety, and masterful orchestration.
Britten confines himself to variations on an eight-bar theme taken from Purcell’s music for the play, Abdelazar (1695): the only new material is the pair of fugue subjects, introduced just before the final recapitulation of the Purcellian theme. Each variation lasts about a minute, there is strong contrast between successive variations, and though the theme is hard to perceive in some variations, it reappears triumphantly at the end. Within each variation, the sequence-structure of Purcell’s melody encourages Britten to use many short-term repeats.
Prokofiev works with different time-scales, inventing many themes (one for each character in the story), and with many (and more obvious) reappearances of those themes. Variation is mostly confined to changes of tonality and accompaniment, allowing the original melody to shine through clearly. Each thematic statement lasts fifteen seconds or less; often there is an immediate repeat before moving on another theme, but each melody returns every time the corresponding character re-appears in the story. There is some directly descriptive music for various action-scenes, and a new march-tune is introduced for the finale, which also reprises the character-melodies with touches of light counterpoint.
In operatic terms, we meet most of the dramatis personae in what might be thought of as Act I. This concludes with Grandad shutting the garden gate to protect Peter from the Wolf lurking nearby in the forest. Act II is all action, as the Wolf attacks and is captured by Peter, with help from the Bird. New characters enter for Act III, the Huntsmen. Exposition – action – new characters and resolution: this is a schema that could fit many three-act operas.
Both composers have superlatively keen ears for orchestral colour, matching varied orchestrations with appropriate musical material to offer young listeners memorable examples of just how each instrument sounds at its best. What could be more perfect than Prokofiev’s chalumeau-register clarinet-cat, or his quacking oboe-duck? And then Britten’s exchanges of gravity-defying two-octave arpeggios turn a pair of cats into acrobats who always land on their feet. Meanwhile both composers effortlessly loop the loop with flute-bird aerobatics.
One can be equally enthusiastic about both treatments of bassoon-grandad, wolf-horns, and hunter-timpani. Trumpets are used to good effect in both scores, and one might even wish that Prokofiev had invented a character-role for his solo trumpet.
Rhetoric at Play
For my own piece, I have some ideas about orchestration of 17th-century continuo-instruments. But the challenges I am grappling with are the balance of unity/variety and the question of how to introduce repeats of material previously heard – this seems essential for my audience – whilst remaining true to the early baroque aesthetic.
The first ‘operas’ were verse-plays set to music in a text-based style that imitated the declamation of a fine actor in spoken theatre. The poet’s choice of strophic or refrain structures might lead to some short-term musical repeats; dance-songs will repeat each phrase and instrumental ritornelli unify an entire scene. But since the same lines of poetry are unlikely to be repeated frequently from scene to scene, so the music also avoids long-term repeating structures. In Monteverdi’s Orfeo, the first pastoral ritornello reappears to identify scenes in Arcadia, but no other melody is carried forward from one of the five Acts to any other. Listening to the Rhetoric of Orfeo here. The leitmotifs heard (repeatedly, and very effectively) throughout Peter and also in Prokofiev’s (1919) Love of Three Oranges are not part of the seicento style.
I’m planning to use ground basses to give unity within each scene as well as contrast between one scene and another. Grounds are certainly an essential, and very attractive, feature of baroque music. But I haven’t yet decided on an appropriate solution for creating a sense of familiarity for a first-time listener and unity from one scene to another, i.e. some kind of long-term repeating structure.
Meanwhile, in my search for baroque models, my Facebook survey
What are your top ten 17th-century operas?
– the survey results are here – has provided an embarrassment of riches beyond my wildest nightmares. I already knew that it was an impossible task, to introduce new listeners to all the early music-dramas I know and love, within a suitable duration for a children’s opera. Now I have a list of many more baroque operas to listen to, learn from, and learn to love!
Britten’s dedication of the Guide to the four Maud children “for their edification and enjoyment” reminded me of two of the three aims of Rhetoric. Perhaps Prokofiev goes even further in hitting all three rhetorical targets – docere, delectare, movere – to teach, to delight and to move the emotions. Even as a composer sets out to teach, he can only touch his audience’s hearts if he first captures their ears with delightful sounds.
La Musica declaims in the Prologue to Orfeo:
With a golden continuo-instrument
My singing usually
Beguiles mortal ears for a while;
And in this way
With the structured harmony
of the Music of the Spheres,
I can even move your souls.
More about the Philosophy of La Musica here.
So how might those heavenly orbits circle round in ear-charming repeats? That’s what I want to know….
Facebook: @PlayMusicTime
Posted in Historical Action, History of Emotions, Introductions, Moving the Passions
Tagged baroque, Baroque Music, Baroque Opera, Continuo, Early Music, Early Opera, Emotions, Expression, HIP, Historical Action, History of Emotions, muovere gli affetti, seicento
The Young Person’s Guide to Early Opera – What are the Top Ten 17th-century operas?
The Play of Music & Time
I’m working on a new project, inspired by Peter & the Wolf and The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, to introduce young audiences to Early Opera. The working title is The Play of Music & Time. So in the search for expert opinions and enthusiastic recommendations, I posted a question on Facebook, which was shared widely in Baroque and Operatic chat-groups.
WHAT ARE THE TOP TEN 17th-century OPERAS?
I received many replies, from performers, academics, baroque opera fans, CD-listeners, You-Tube viewers, audience members from staged productions, and (most importantly) some reports of the preferences of young persons aged 5 to 10. Many agreed on the favourite works in this repertoire, and counting the votes was for me something like watching the Eurovision Song Contest (except with better music), as two front runners (one by Purcell, one by Monteverdi) took an initial sprint away from the peloton and then fought it out every inch of the way to the chequered flag (have I mixed enough metaphors here?)…
But there were also many lesser-known suggestions, including several works that I haven’t heard. So I now have a substantial reading/listening list to work through, as well as welcome reminders of some fine operas that had slipped my memory.
The aim of my project is both to introduce the accepted canon of Early Operas to new listeners, and to expand the repertoire for those who already have knowledge and experience of 17th-century music-drama. So I’m very grateful to everyone who commented. Thanks to your expertise and enthusiasm, I now have a much wider knowledge-base from which to assess what is essential and what might be fascinating, but as yet little-known.
And as a thank you in return, I now present the results of this online survey, so that you can see how the votes came in.
The posted question was informal, designed to provoke enthusiastic answers. It is not a scientific survey, and should be read in the spirit of fun with which it was carried out. The sample group was self-selecting (those who chose to reply) from within an online community of over 15,000 FB readers (my own Friends and members of the Historical Performance Practice group were the two largest targets for the initial post).
Although I asked for a ‘top 10’, some responders gave fewer, or more than ten suggestions: I counted all these votes equally. For this reason, it isn’t possible to give a clear indication of the sample size, but over 50 operas are listed and some 140 votes were cast.
Some suggested “anything by such-and-such a composer”: for this response, I gave an extra vote to each work by that composer that was mentioned by another respondent.
Quite a few allowed their enthusiasm to carry them beyond the 17th-century: I allowed the first decade of the 18th century, and include here in this commentary Handel’s Acis & Galatea (1718), about which two respondents were very enthusiastic, as especially suitable for young audiences. Handel’s Alcina (1735) was also warmly supported. But I have not recorded the many 18th-century operas that were suggested by only one person: to do so would have been misleading.
I did not define ‘opera’ more specifically, and there was some discussion as to whether English Semi-Opera, Masques and Oratorios could be included. I accepted a vote for any kind of music-drama, and one might well consider that some famous works that do not fit neatly into the ‘opera’ category might have received more votes if my question had been worded more inclusively: Monteverdi Combattimento and Cavalieri Anima & Corpo come to mind.
I did not ask for specific arias.
One respondent argued that the 17th-century opera that was most famous in its own time was Cesti’s Il Pomo d’Oro (1668), a huge production that is little known today. But there are other candidates for that position, not least Monteverdi’s Arianna (1608).
Although some respondents strayed into the 1700s, no-one mentioned the most famous ‘opera’ prior to the 17th-century, the multi-composer spectacular Florentine Intermedi (1589), which is usually considered an essential element of what we now call The History of Opera.
Although I did not ask for specific 17th-century arias, three music-drama excerpts aroused so much enthusiasm that respondents mentioned them anyway:
Pur ti miro (Poppea ) – this is not the moment to discuss whether this is by Monteverdi or Cavalli.
Purcell Music for a While (1692, Oedipus) – which my respondent compared to a rock anthem!
Lamento d’Arianna (1608) – In 2017, I wrote what might be called ‘the fourth opera in the Monteverdi trilogy’, composing a setting of the complete 1608 libretto ‘in Claudio’s voice’, around the sole surviving fragment of the famous Lament. Read about Arianna a la recherche here.
Music Dramas
I present the list of works grouped by how many votes they received. Within each group, the ordering is chronological, from the earliest to the later. Some dates are disputed, this is not the place to argue about them!
In the best traditions of such ‘contests’,
I shall present the results in reverse order…
Your Top Ten 17th-century Operas
Many heartfelt thanks to all who took part!
Posted in Arianna, Continuo, Historical Action, History of Emotions, Introductions, Moving the Passions, Music, Dance & Swordsmanship
Tagged baroque, Baroque Music, Baroque Opera, Continuo, Early Music, Early Opera, Emotions, Expression, HIP, Historical Action, History of Emotions, muovere gli affetti, musica recitativo
Orlando Orlando: Drama and dance-rhythms
1st November 2019:
To celebrate Orlando Orlando‘s being nominated for Russia’s highest theatrical award, the Golden Mask, in 6 categories – best production Georgij Isaakyan, best design Hartmut Schörghofer, best musical direction Andrew Lawrence-King, best lighting design Alexey Nikolaev , best female soloist Maria Mashulia, best male soloist Kiril Novakhatko – this article has been updated with additional commentary on Handel’s techniques of Drama & Dance-rhythms.
This article was first posted in connection with the premiere of Handel’s Orlando at the Helikon Theatre in Moscow, 27th March 2019, entitled Orlando, Orlando: Handel’s Orlando (1733) in memory of the victims of the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida (2016). Music by George Frideric Handel, Libretto adapted from Carlo Sigismondo Capece L’Orlando (1711) after Ludovico Ariosto Orlando Furioso (1516/1532). Concept & Adaptation by Georgij Isaakyan (Director), Edition by Andrew Lawrence-King (Musical Director), Techno episodes by Gabriel Prokofiev, Design by Hartmut Schörghofer.
Synopsis of Georgy Isaakyan’s version (read online and/or download pdf)
Orlando Orlando libretto (includes English translation: read online and/or download pdf)
This production is not an ‘authentic’ reconstruction of baroque opera, but a new work of music-theatrical creativity in which 18th-century music tells a 21st-century story, bringing together Gabriel Prokofiev’s specially composed electronic music and the most modern understanding of how George Frideric’s score would have sounded at the King’s Theatre, London in 1733.
For Orlando, Handel assembled an unusually large orchestra with a powerful bass-section, and the dance-rhythm of the fashionable Gavotte is heard several times, representing Orlando’s fury.
In his madness, Orlando identifies Angelica as the mythological godess Persephone: “Beautiful eyes, no, do not weep, no”
In his madness, Orlando mistakes Dorinda for the goddess Venus, or an enemy warrior: “Already, I wrestle him; already I embrace him with the force of my arm”
In the extraordinary mad-scene created for the famous Italian castrato Senesino, bass instruments play alone as the protagonist descends into a hell of jealous rage.
“I am my own spirit, cut off from myself. I am a ghost, and like a ghost I want to make the journey down there to the kingdom of sorrow!”
And the full orchestra lurches into 5/8 metre as Orlando imagines himself rowing Charon’s boat into the underworld.
“There is boat across the river Styx! In spite of Charon, already I’m rowing over the waves”
Handel freely borrowed from other composers’ (and his own) work, and the previous season he re-wrote two earlier dramas, expanding the chamber-opera Acis & Galatea and transforming a one-act staged masque into the first English oratorio, Esther, performed as a three-act concert with the addition of solo harp, trumpets, drums and a chorus. For Orlando, Handel adapted Carlo Sigismondo Capece’s (1711) story of mad jealousy, itself a re-working of episodes from Ariosto’s 16th-century classic, Orlando furioso. Bernard Picart’s (1710) engraving of the giant Atlas, republished in 1733 as Le Temple des Muses, was re-interpreted as the stage set for the opening scene with the magician Zoroastro.
Perhaps this 1731 print inspired the first scene of Handel’s ‘Orlando’
Handel’s audience were thrilled by several spectacular stage transformations, utilising the full resources of period stage machinery and dramatically presented as the result of Zoroastro’s magic, assisted by his demons. In our production, Schörghofer’s design employs modern stage technology to offer the audience surprise and spectacle, whilst clarifying the subtly interwoven stories as characters from medieval romances (Chanson de Roland, 11th cent) are re-drawn by Boiardo (Orlando innamorato, 1495) Capece, Handel and Isaakyan.
“Orlando Orlando” at Helikon Theatre
A German musician producing Italian opera in England, Handel writes a conventional French-style overture, but surprises the audience with up-to-date dance-music, a fast Italian giga.
This Italian giga has characteristically continuous movement in the melody line, with a driving bass.
Listen to how Gabriel Prokofiev transforms Handel’s giga, the height of fashion in 1733, into 21st-century electronic dance-music.
The rhythmic drive of the giga is disrupted with broken phrases to depict Dorinda’s misplaced faith in ‘sweet little lies’.
In spite of trills and rests, this Aria still shows the characteristics of an Italian giga: “Oh dear little words, sweet glances; even if you are lies, how I will believe you!”
The step-and-jump rhythms of a French gigue are heard in Medoro’s second Act aria;
The restrained movement of a French gigue characterises Medoro’s hesitation: “I would like to be able to love you, but…”
the slow swing of an Italian folk-dance, the siciliano characterises Dorinda’s wistful longing;
More gentle than a giga, the tender siciliano characterises Dorinda’s nostalgia for a love that never was: “If I return to the meadow, I am made to see my Medoro in every flower”
Orlando’s lament in hell is sung to a French passacaille.
In French operas the descending bass of the minor-mode passacaille suggests tragic passions and creates opportunities for expressive dissonances and chromatic variations: “For from tears even in the kingdom of Hell, pity can be aroused in everyone”. The audience come to realise that this text is ironic: in his madness, Orlando shows no pity for Angelica, and changes his Gavotte-refrain to “Yes, eyes, weep, yes, yes!”
The composer’s bold strokes of dramaturgical re-designing and contrasting musical styles were further transformed by unwritten baroque performance practices. Continuo-players spontaneously realised the written bass-line with rich harmonies and strong rhythms; singers added their own variations to the repeated section of a da capo aria; sometimes time would stop whilst singers or instrumentalists improvised a final cadenza. Handel did not conduct, but directed by playing the harpsichord, alongside the theorbo (bass lute). The expression of the vocal line was not indicated with markings of piano and forte, but follows from the accentuation and emotions of the words.
This Recitative is not just rapid patter, look at all the rhetorical detail: A long note and glorious high notes for “As custodian of your glory…”. Strong dissonance for “I stimulate you to follow it”. Another long note for “Urge.. ” and the highest notes and thrilling contrasts of short notes for “…your heart to great works!”. A long sigh “Ah!” with an intake of breath afterwards, dissonance and Orlando’s voice dropping “love takes it all away from me”. Zoroastro’s voice rises with long notes and an unexpected sharp in the melody-line for “It will be given back to you by valour!”. Orlando’s falling phrase (which would be given the conventional drooping appoggiatura) “It languishes in my breast”. Zoroastro’s strong retort with high notes “Scorned…”, snappily broken phrases “is that what you want to be…” and a suitably horrible melodic tritone “by a vile little boy?”. The “little boy” is Cupid as the flute’s flapping wings show in the following bars.
Instrumentalists similarly have few written phrasing-marks, but imitate the crisp articulation of the Italian language with a great variety of bow-strokes.
What might appear to be just a series of equal quavers acquires subtle rhythmic patterning from the long/short, accented/un-accented syllables of the Italian text, imitated in this English-language metrical paraphrase: “Respond to it for me; your heart might tell you that.. I discard all your love”. Today’s performers might usefully channel a jazz-singer’s approach to text and rhythm, rather than classical training.
For the eerie calm of Orlando’s final aria we added baroque harp, which in Handel’s dramatic works suggests a vision of heavenly peace. Trumpets and drums represent royal authority and military power; horns and oboes a pastoral idyll; the flute an amorous nightingale or Cupid’s fluttering wings. Modern scholarship has revealed the subtle structure of Handel’s recitatives, which imitate the pitch contours and speech rhythms of a great actor in the baroque theatre.
Studying the text as dramatic speech in the grandiose style of baroque spoken theatre reveals how accurately Handel notates [what Il Corago first described c1630 as] ‘the declamation of a fine actor’, in the generation between Thomas Betterton and David Garrick. As shown in my English-language metrical paraphrase: Zoroastro barks out his anger with the urgency of poetic anapests followed by the characteristic contrast of short and long notes “To what risks you’re exposed now, you reckless lovers, by blinded love!”. Angelica’s reply is a languid drawl “We only have to get free from Orlando.” Zoroastro barks again with the upward intonation of an abrupt question “And if he comes here?” – singers can appropriately add an upward appoggiatura. Medoro tries to assert himself, but Handel’s downward inflections betray the character’s weakness “My heart is also valiant!” and Angelica interrupts with powerful rhythm and a strong upward leap “P’haps for my sake, he would not be so cruel” – the conventional appoggiatura makes a harsh dissonance here. Zoroastro mimics her phrase with the slow tempo of bitter sarcasm “And he’ll be nice… to his unfaithful lover?”. With a wonderfully dramatic contrast, he switches back to fast anapests “Hurry up and get running, fly away from his anger…”. The notated rhythms of Handel’s music work perfectly as dramatic speech.
See my previous article on tempo and rhythm for Handel, here.
We added a chorus, whose members (in the manner of Handel’s oratorios or Bach’s Passions) comment on and drive forward the events of which, in the end, they are the victims. Their music is borrowed from Handel’s drama of cultural identity and religious conflict, Israel in Egypt (1739): Handel himself re-worked one of these choruses for Messiah (1741).
In Isaakyan’s reworking of the story, the magician Zoroastro appears in different guises, always as an authority figure: a star news-presenter, a domineering father, a bible-preacher, a populist politician. The choruses I selected show the public’s various reactions: unchallenging acceptance “Great was the company of the preachers”; anxious forboding “The people shall hear and be afraid… they shall be as still as a stone”; belated understanding “There came a thick darkness”; and a fascination with destructive power “He gave them hailstones for rain, fire mingled with the hail”.
“Orlando Orlando” Premiere Left to right: Hartmut Schörghofer, Gabriel Prokofiev, Georgy Isaakyan, Andrew Lawrence-King, Dmitry Bertman
Orlando, Orlando: Nominated for the Golden Mask in 6 categories (2019)
Posted in Continuo, Historical Action, History of Emotions, Improvisation, Introductions, Moving the Passions, Music, Dance & Swordsmanship, Rhythm, Text
Tagged 18th century, baroque, Baroque Music, Baroque Opera, Continuo, Early Harp, Early Music, Early Opera, Emotions, Expression, Harp, HIP, Historical Action, History of Emotions, muovere gli affetti, musica recitativo, ornamentation, ornaments, Phrasing, Rhythm, Tactus, Text
Understand, enjoy and be moved! Listening to the Rhetoric of Orfeo
This article is based on a pre-performance talk for the production of Monteverdi’s Orfeo at the Vaasa Baroque Festival and in Helsinki, October 2019.
Many audience members seeing performances of Orfeo in 2019 will encounter a more-or-less familiar situation: a baroque opera with Historically Informed Performance of the music, shown in a thoughtful and sympathetic modern production. Nevertheless, a staged production of Monteverdi’s 1607 music-drama is a special event. This beautiful and moving work is justly famous as one of the very first operas, admired by Early Music fans for its varied ensembles and rich instrumental writing. But it is not often staged: Opera Houses tend to favour more the austere scoring and stark psychodrama of Poppea (1643).
What’s different now?
In this particular production, some features that are different from mainstream opera reflect the situation at the first performance in Mantua. The venue is a hall (originally a room within the Ducal Palace) not a purpose-built theatre. The performing space is small, there is no stage machinery. The cast is just 9 singers, some of them doubling roles, and all of them combining to form various vocal ensembles – there is no separate chorus.
Other features of this project reflect the latest research findings in Historical Performance Practice. The instruments are distributed in contrasting ensembles (strings, flutes, continuo, cornetti & sackbuts) across various positions behind and to the sides of the stage. Cello and violone play with the string ensemble, not with the continuo. The default scoring for continuo is organ & theorbo. Singers and continuo alike avoid ornamentation in this stilo rappresentativo – theatrical style.
There is no conductor, not even someone waving their hands whilst using a harpsichord as a very expensive music-stand! The anonymous writer of a c1630 manuscript for a Baroque Opera Director, Il Corago, rules out even the Tactus-beating that would be usual in madrigals and religious music. Nevertheless, as Frescobaldi describes in 1615, the whole performance is ‘facilitated by Tactus‘, a slow, steady pulse around one beat per second, which changes slightly according to the emotional affetto from one movement to another.
What was different in 1607?
But if the concept of Baroque Opera is familiar to us, then we might question how today’s situation differs from the experience of the audience in 1607. Certainly, they would not have viewed Orfeo as the beginning of a ‘History of Opera’. They could not know the future, but they were well informed about the recent past and excited at the on-going development of new genres of music-drama.
These were not yet called opera. Orfeo is favola in musica, a story in music. That music was only rarely called recitativo: the usual word (as for Orfeo) was rappresentata, a show, a theatre-piece. In the following year, 1608, librettist Ottavio Rinuccini made the bold move to claim for Monteverdi’s lost masterpiece Arianna the grand status of Tragedia (Tragedy) rappresentata in musica.
There was not yet any specific training for opera-singers. The 1607 cast were court and chapel musicians, all male, who brought to the stage their rhetorical skills of presenting poetry, of narrating stories, of expressive gestures and court decorum – how to stand, where to position oneself, how to behave in the presence of a Prince, or (in this case) in the presence of the demi-god Orpheus, or of Pluto, King of the Underworld. This all changed the following year, when professional actresss Virginia Ramponi-Andreini, known as La Florinda, brought her stage-skills to Arianna, performing the famous Lament to great acclaim.
But even though there was no word for it, by 1607 opera was already a ‘thing’. Peri describes in the Preface to Euridice (1600) how to turn theatrical speech into music; Cavalieri gives detailed instructions for opera-composers and performers in the Preface to Anima & Corpo (1600), the earliest surviving such work. In 1601, Caccini proclaims the priorities of the nuove musiche – new music – as Text and Rhythm.
Research into ancient Greek drama and experiments with new genres were supported by renaissance Academies, including the Mantuan Accademia degli Invaghiti (music-lovers) who promoted Orfeo. The aristocratic and artistic membership of the Academy would have regarded the work as Striggio’s verse-drama set to music by Monteverdi. And much of what we might today analyse as Musical Forms comes from the poetical of the libretto. But Monteverdi sometimes chooses to disregard Striggio’s blue-print, tending to prefer expressive Monody even where the design of the verses suggests Aria.
As Tim Carter writes in his survey of Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre (2002), Academy members’ chief delight was in a show of Rhetoric. Rhetoric is the use of persuasive speech to explain, to entertain and to stir up the emotions. This focus on words might surprise us, as a way of listening to Monteverdi’s music, but if we think of Shakespeare’s plays (e.g. Anthony and Cleopatra, also in 1607), then we can understand such delight in the powerful use of heightened language.
So in the Prologue to Orfeo, as La Musica tells the story of Orfeo, the sound of instruments tickles your ears, and the supernatural power of Music moves your soul. At the gates of Hell, Orpheus’ song delights Charon’s heart, but does not arouse any emotion of pity in this tough male. Several decades before Descartes, period Medical Science did not consider a mind/body dualism, but more complex models with mind, spirit, soul, heart and lower-body emotions all interacting.
Academicians admired ancient Greek drama for its capacity to move the audience’s passions ‘to tears or laughter’. And Monteverdi’s reputation as ‘the divine Claudio’ was precisely for his ability to compose music that profoundly affected listeners, even if such contemporaries as Artusi complained about technical breaches of the rules of counterpoint.
As music, Monteverdi’s Orfeo was rappresentata – staged, a show. As literature, Striggio’s Favola d’Orfeo was rappresentata in musica. And according to the new concept of Personation – the ‘realistic’ embodiment of a character on stage, for example in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (c1600) – Orpheus himself is ‘represented’ in this drama. We listen to the words, we hear the music, we watch the action, and we are moved also by seeing Orpheus’ reactions.
But the decorum of Greek drama would not allow death to be enacted, and in Classical Theatre the most dramatic events were presented as Narration. This tradition of stage Messengers suited baroque singers’ skills in presenting Rhetorical speech in music: telling a story, delighting in detail, moving the listeners’ passions.
We tend to hear baroque opera as Recitative and Aria, in which Recitative is the ‘boring bit between the nice tunes’. This is problematic, since Monteverdi writes only a few ‘nice tunes’. His audience was – of course – unaware of Mozart, Handel and Vivaldi’s operatic recitative, or the story-telling Evangelist in Bach’s Passions. The words Recitative and Aria were used. but around 1600 they had different meanings. New scholarship on this subject is crucial for a better understanding, not only of how to perform, but also of how the 1607 audience would have heard Orfeo.
Recitare means ‘to act’. According to Doni’s (1640) Annotazioni it is incorrect to apply this word to dramatic Monody. Il Corago explains that there are three ways to act – recitare: with music, with plain speech, and in silent mime. So musica recitativa simply means ‘music for acting’, everything that is delivered by a soloist. including Aria. Aria in this period is any repeated structure in music, rhythm or words. So in period terms, Shakespeare’s ‘A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!’ [Richard III (c1593)] is an Aria within the Recitative of the whole speech.
In the 20th century, it was assumed that expressive recitative required romantic rubato. But Monteverdi’s rhetorical purpose is not to express the performer’s emotions, but to move the audience’s passions. He does this with subtly composed and carefully notated contrasts of pitch, harmony, rhythm and speed of declamation, controlled by the steady pulse of the Tactus beat.
How to listen?
Concentrate on the words.
Let the poetic imagery create Visions in your imagination, as if the events were happening before your very eyes.
Let the power of your own imaginative Visions be supported and enhanced by what you see on stage and what you hear in the music.
In Monteverdi’s dramatic Monody – music for acting – contrasts in pitch represent the impassioned speech of a great actor. Speaking on a monotone is code for ‘Let me tell you a story’ – if there is no music, concentrate on the words.
Contrasts of syllabic speed indicate heightened passion. Crescendo on a single note carries the emotion to the listener. Speaking on the Tactus beat suggests stability, whilst being off the beat or syncopated shows agitation.
The continuo bass is structured to convey emotions: a sustained pedal-point signifies seriousness; slow movement of the bass accompanies a serious or sad subject; fast movement creates the lightness of happiness and dancing. Dissonances of many different types show varied emotions.
Typically, there are many changes of emotions, often with rapid contrasts between opposites.
Ensemble music, vocal or instrumental, on stage represents diegetic, ‘real life’ music. The string ensemble symbolises the mythical Lyre, associated with boh Orpheus and Apollo. Strings, flute and harp are played by the nine Muses. A pair of flutes suggest pastoral pan-pipes. The snarling Regal is the organ from Hell. Cornetti and sackbuts evoke the horror of Hell or the power of sacred music.
In a humanist opera, we might well ask, to Whom is music sacred? To Apollo? Apollo and Orpheus were understood as allegorising God and Christ. Or to Bacchus? Whilst the 1609 and 1615 prints of Monteverdi’s music have a happy ending in which Apollo rescues Orpheus from despair, Striggio’s 1607 libretto ends with a glorious triumph for the opposing team, Bacchus and his hard-drinking, hot-loving Maenads. Andrew Lawrence-King has reconstructed music for the original ending, and you will have to wait till the end of the show to find out who triumphs in the end.
So, in the best traditions of Rhetoric, I hope that this Explanation helps the music move your Emotions, and that you Enjoy the show!
Read more at the ORFEO Page by Il Corago
Posted in Arianna, Continuo, Early Harps, Historical Action, History of Emotions, Introductions, Italian baroque harp, Moving the Passions, Music and Philosophy, Rhythm, Text, Triple Harp
Tagged Agazzari, baroque, Baroque Gesture, Baroque Music, Baroque Opera, Continuo, Early Harp, Early Music, Early Opera, Emotions, Expression, Harp, HIP, Historical Action, History of Emotions, muovere gli affetti, musica recitativo, ornamentation, Phrasing, Rhythm, Rubato, Science, seicento, Tactus, Text
I won’t say too much… the role of Euridice in Monteverdi’s Orfeo
This article is posted in connection with the production of Monteverdi’s Orfeo for Vaasa Baroque Festival in October 2019.
See also The Orfeo Page by Il Corago for further articles and a documentary film.
Whilst Rinuccini’s verse-drama, set by Peri and Caccini in 1600, has the title L’Euridice, Striggio’s 1607 libretto for Monteverdi presents the same mythological ‘fable in music as a theatrical show’ – favola in musica rappresentata – as L’Orfeo, and the focus is almost exclusively on the protagonist. Following the trend towards Personation – increasingly ‘realistic’ embodiment of theatrical roles – seen also in Shakespeare’s Hamlet and other dramas circa 1600, Striggio seeks to move the audience’s passions by encouraging them to watch how each event affects the central character, Orpheus himself.
As Rhetoric, baroque music-drama persuades by Logos (word), Pathos (emotions) and Ethos (character). Details of poetic imagery in the text use the power of Energeia not only to express, but to induce listeners to share in ever-changing emotions, from the very beginning of the first Act: In questo lieto e fortunato giorno (happy and lucky)… sospirato e pianto (sighing and crying)… lieto e fortunato (happy and lucky again). As the first Pastore delivers those words and sends out waves of Energia (the communicative spirit of passion), he also mentions and gestures towards nostro semideo (our demigod)… Orfeo, directing the spectator’s attention to the protagonist. The audience then sees the present happiness and good fortune as well as the past melancholy and tears, all mirrored in the face and gestures of the principal actor, reflecting and amplifying the emotional Energia. This amplification is all the more effective, because that actor embodies a character renowned for his divine ability to convey emotions in music. Logos, Pathos and Ethos thus unite to convert poetic Enargeia into emotional Energia, with music as the catalyst.
Also, Orpheus is the presiding figure at the pastoral court of Arcadia. Renaissance courtiers were accustomed to watching their Prince, to gauge his reactions to any event. As the audience at a performance, they would divide their attention between the performers and their Lord: their appreciation of the show depended on his approval. So the split-screen effect on stage (simultaneously showing the action, and Orpheus’ reaction to it) takes advantage of the audience’s real-life experience to super-charge the emotional impact.
This is most obvious in the long Messenger scene, where Eurydice’s death (too terrible to be enacted, and too impractical to show on stage effectively) is narrated in every detail, with almost cinematic changes of pace from the girls fussing around her dying body with cold water and powerful charms to the heroine’s languid eyes and last deep sigh. (There are similar contrasts of pace, with slow-motion effects and rich poetic detail, for the death of Clorinda in Monteverdi’s Combattimento.)
As we hear detailed narration, we envisage the scene. And the 1607 audience also saw Orpheus’ reactions: at the bitter news, the unhappy man is like a mute stone, who for too much grief cannot grieve. A l’amara novella rassembla l’infelice un muto sasso, che per troppo dolor non puo dolersi.
Nevertheless, it does seem surprising that Eurydice herself has only two speeches in the entire music-drama. In the original production, the part was played by a male soprano (perhaps the little priest who had so much difficulty memorising words), but this in itself would not have been an obstacle to extending the role. Shakespeare’s plays, even the great love stories of Romeo and Juliet or Anthony and Cleopatra were originally performed by all-male casts, and the Mantuan audience would have been accustomed to this convention.
The result of the concentration of Eurydice’s entire role into just a dozen lines (six in Act I and another six in Act IV) is to invite us to weigh carefully every word she utters, and to listen attentively to Monteverdi’s realisation of her emotions in the most expressive genre of dramatic monody. More about Monteverdi’s monody here.
I won’t say…
Io non diro qual sia
Nel tuo gioir Orfeo la gioa mia,
Che non ho meco il core,
Ma teco stassi in compagnia d’Amore.
Chiedilo dunque a lui, s’intender brami
Quanto lieta gioisca, e quanto t’ami.
I won’t say what might be
In your joy, Orpheus, my own joy,
For I don’t have my heart with me,
But it is with you, in the company of Love.
Ask this therefore of my heart, if you desire to understand
How happily I rejoice, and how much I love you.
Whereas Orpheus’s love song Rosa del ciel is a rhetorical and musical tour de force, opening with the solemn dignity of an invocation of Apollo over a sustained bass on Gamut (the foundation of all music), Eurydice begins plainly. Her first words show the feminine modesty expected at the time, and Monteverdi’s music obediently takes up the D harmonies from the end of Orpheus’ song. And in spite of the structured poetry in rhyming couplets, she does not sing, but speaks (in the convention of expressive Monody).
But what expression Monteverdi introduces! The harmonic shift to the hard hexachord in the continuo-bass C#6 – E major – A minor foreshadows the harmonies of the Messaggiera’s despairing wail Ahi, caso acerbo!, of Orpheus’ tragic wrong turn in Hell ma qual eclissi, ohime, v’oscura? and of his last request to Apollo Ma non vedro piu mai de l’amata Euridice i dolci rai? (But won’t I ever see again beloved Eurydice’s sweet eyes?)
Euridice does not say much, but with her words “I will not say..”, Monteverdi says all that could be said.
Now the harmonies turn to the natural hexachord, C major, with Orpheus’ joy and hers too. But a strange melodic leap and high dissonance highlight the poetic imagery “I have no heart” – this conventional trope will gain uncanny power in Act III when Orpheus argues that since his heart (Eurydice) is no longer with him, without a heart he cannot be alive, so he must qualify for passage on Caronte’s ferry to the underworld.
In a speech artfully crafted to appear naive, the rhetorical term dunque stands out as an unexpected connector …therefore… Perhaps Striggio is marking connections to other appearances of this word: in the first Pastore’s opening speech (where it underlines a rhetorical repeat of the first lines); in the second Pastore’s reminder that joy comes from heaven; in the Shepherds’ praise of Orpheus and his Lyre in Act II; and in Apollo’s formal invitation to heaven at the end of the whole drama.
In Eurydice’s first speech, by the time we reach the word Amore, we have returned to the soft hexachord and to the harmonies of Orpheus’ song. And her last words are the simplest possible declaration, “I love you”, all on one note. This is a musical code: the absence of melody tells the audience to pay attention to the words. And if we listen carefully, two words are repeated in this short speech, emphasising the emotional tone: love and joy.
But nevertheless there was a hard hexachord hint of trouble ahead when Orpheus’ desire is coloured by B natural, whilst Eurydice’s love has soft hexachord Bb. Bramare (to desire) evokes the Choleric humour associated also with anger, violence and Bacchic excess; whereas amare (to love) is associated with the generosity, joy and hope of the Sanguine humour. With delicate choice of similar but contrasting words and notes, Striggio and Monteverdi drop a subtle hint that Eurydice’s feelings are appropriately warm, but Orpheus’ passions are already too hot.
Too much!
Ahi, vista troppo dolce e tropp’ amara!
Cosi per troppo amor, dunque mi perdi?
Ed io, misera, perdo
Il poter piu godere e di luce
E di vita, e perdo insieme
Te, d’ogni ben piu caro, o mio consorte!
Ah, sight too sweet and too bitter!
Thus through too much love, therefore you lose me?
And I, wretched girl, lose
The power anymore to enjoy light
And life, and I also lose
You, of every good thing the most dear, Oh my husband!
Only one word from Eurydice’s first speech is heard when she speaks again: that word is Amor – love. But two new words dominate this short but emotionally searing lament: troppo – too much, and perdere – to lose, and they are connected by another rhetorical dunque. The message could not be clearer: it is Orpheus’ excessive emotions that have resulted in total loss.
This verdict will be underlined by the commenting chorus at the end of the Act: Degno d’eterna gloria fia sol colui ch’avra di se vittoria. (Worthy of eternal glory is only he who will have victory over himself.)
And at the end of the story, Apollo hammers home the lesson, arriving when Orpheus is ‘in greatest need, driven to a desperate end with extreme grief by anger and love’. Al maggior uopo arrivi, ch’a disperato fine con estremo dolore m’havean condotto gia sdegno ed Amore.
Apollo’s message is stern and clear:
Troppo, troppo gioisti
Di tua lieta ventura,
Hor troppo piangi
Tua sorte acerba e dura.
Too much, too much you rejoiced
In your happy luck,
Now you cry too much
For your bitter and harsh fate.
But with the following dunque (the last one), drawn out and high in the voice, Apollo connects his severe judgement to an invitation to eternal life in heaven, and Orpheus is saved to admire Eurydice’s beautiful face in the sun and the stars.
Euridice’s Act IV music is also loaded with information and emotion. The expressive exclamatione in the soft hexachord, “Oh!”, with a tender dissonance against Eb (compare Grandi’s O quam tu pulchra es here) twists unexpectedly to hard hexachord and the fatal harmony of E major on dolce, an ominously troubled sweetness. Amara returns to soft hexachord Eb again, but with the bitterest dissonance this hexachord allows.
The crucial verse is heralded by the use of narrative style – speaking on a monotone F# warns the audience to pay attention to the words, without being distracted by pretty tunes. And with the genius for expressing emotions that the ‘divine Claudio’ was famous for, this story-telling F# collides heartbreakingly with Orpheus’ love-music of G minor, on the word Amor itself. Monteverdi even manages to convey Eurydice’s disbelief by turning Striggio’s statement into a question, with an upwardly inflected cadence. This musical gesture corresponds to the actor’s upturned hand, indicating a question.
The dissonance on misera (wretched) stabs harsh G# into soft hexachord F, leading inevitably to fatal E major and the Messaggiera’s C# 6. The word caro is given soft hexachord Bb, and another tender exclamatione expresses unhappy Eurydice’s last sigh, before the Infernal Spirit thunders (in E major, of course) Return to the shadow of death! Torna a l’ombra di morte, infelice Euridice!
17th-century poets and poetry-fans would collect beautiful verses in isolation, to admire them, and to insert them into a longer poem when opportunity arose. In the centre of this speech, at the crucial moment in the whole drama, here surely is one such line from Striggio, shining sadly like a dark gemstone in Monteverdi’s artfully bitter-sweet setting:
Cosi per troppo amor dunque mi perdi!
Posted in Continuo, Historical Action, History of Emotions, Italian baroque harp, Moving the Passions, Music and Philosophy, Text
Tagged baroque, Baroque Gesture, Baroque Music, Baroque Opera, Continuo, Early Music, Early Opera, Emotions, Expression, HIP, Historical Action, History of Emotions, muovere gli affetti, musica recitativo, seicento, Text
The Minister’s Conditions in Monteverdi’s Orfeo
Read more about Monteverdi’s ‘story in music’ and watch a documentary film here: The Orfeo page by Il Corago
When Pluto, King of the Underworld, declares that Orpheus can recover his beloved Eurydice, two of his infernal Ministers comment. In the musical score, the first speech is marked to be sung a tone higher, perhaps reflecting changes in the distribution of vocal roles during the rehearsal period for the 1607 first production.
O de gli habitator de l’ombre eterne
Possente Re, legge ne fia tuo cenno
Che ricercar altre cagioni interne
Di tuo voler nostri pensier non denno.
O, the inhabitants’ of the eternal shadows
Powerful King, the law will be made from your gesture
For to search out other deeper reasons
For your wishes our thoughts are not worthy.
Striggio’s verses recall Giovanbatisto Strozzi’s lyrics for the Hell scene in the 1589 Florentine Intermedi, set by Giovanni de Bardi Miseri habitator del ciec’ averno (Wretched inhabitants of blind Avernus). The architecture and social structures of Striggio’s Hell would be instantly recognisable to the 1607 audience: within a landscape familiar from Dante’s Inferno, Pluto presides over an infernal court, just as Orpheus presided over the pastoral shepherds in Arcadia. And amidst the Minister’s courtly flattery we are reminded of the importance of the cenno – Gesture – as signifying a binding decision in a court of law, as a manner of royal proclamation to attending courtiers, and as communication to the audience from performers on the baroque stage. See Bonifacio’s 1616 L’Arte de’ Cenni (The Art of Gesture) here.
Monteverdi’s setting uses the coding of dramatic Monody to send listeners two important signals. Long notes in the continuo bass-line, in the Tactus values of semibreves and minims show that this is a serious subject, as explained by Peri in the Preface to his 1600 setting of Euridice. More about the coding of ‘recitative’ here. And the first words are recited on a monotone, categorised in Doni’s 1640 Annotazioni, additional notes to his Compendium of the Genres and Styles of Music (1635) as the Narrative style. This signals that infernal Spirit has a story to tell, that the audience is being addressed directly with significant information about the plot of this ‘fable in music’.
More on Rhetoric, Rhythm and Passions in Monteverdi’s favola in musica here. together with links to the 1607 Libretto, and original scores from 1609 and 1615.
Striggio presents these two speeches of the two infernal Ministers as a single Chorus (in the Greek sense of commentary on the action of the principal characters), a Choro di Spiriti Infernali in 8 continuous 11-syllable lines of rhyming couplets, contrasting with the blank verse of Plutone and Proserpina’s speeches. And the significant information comes in the second half of this Chorus, allocated by Monteverdi to a second, lower-voiced singer. Striggio’s poetical structures would usually have cued the composer to write ensemble or song-like music, but Monteverdi declines that invitation, choosing the more serious texture of Monody. Monteverdi’s choice – not to cloak the words in attractive melody but rather to deliver them in stark declamation – is another signal to the audience that this moment is highly significant, not just pretty music!
Trarrà da queste orribili caverne
Sua sposa Orfeo, s’adoprerà suo senno,
Si che no’l vinca giovenil desio,
Ne i gravi imperi tuoi sparga d’oblio.
He will lead out from these horrible caves
His wife, [he] Orfeo, if he uses his wisdom,
If he is not overcome by juvenile desire,
Nor forgets your grave commands.
The conventional rhetorical phrase for ‘forget’ is to ‘scatter into oblivion’. In the libretto, the commands are tuoi = yours, i.e. Pluto’s commands given. But in the scores they are suoi – his, i.e. Orfeo’s commands received. And for ‘wisdom’ the scores have ingegno – ingenuity: here the libretto seems the better choice, suggesting mature wisdom as opposed to juvenile impetuosity. The word senno also appears elsewhere in the drama, and here it makes the better rhyme.
Monteverdi directs the continuo to play their solemn D minor for an extra beat before the singer breathes, another marker of heightened significance. Plutone similarly has two extra beats, and we see notations in other operas for the continuo to repeat opening chords as many times as necessary, if a character is making a grand entrance: Penelope in the first scene of Monteverdi’s Ulisse, Tempo in the first scene of Cavalieri’s Anima & Corpo. More about Anima & Corpo here.
The pitch contours of the opening line step upwards in thirds, imitating the opening line of the first Spirto. This kind of repeating structure is what was called aria in this repertoire, not necessarily a melody, but any kind of repeated structure in words, rhythm or music. This movement in thirds is characteristic of the earliest Spanish recitado, where it represents the speech of divine characters/ Almost certainly Monteverdi intends a similar characterisation here, for the powerful ministers of hell.
The vital message that all these markers point towards is the threefold condition, under which Orpheus’ mission to Hell might succeed. The singer-hero must employ wisdom, not be overcome by passion, and he must remember the command not to turn and look at Eurydice. Of course, the 17th-century audience knows the story already, and so – as very often in early opera – they are ahead of the characters on stage, enjoying an almost god-like capacity to see the future.
This frequent use of dramatic irony is just one more aspect of the period attitude that privileges the audience as high-status courtiers, noble guests for whom the whole spectacle is provided. As La Musica sings in the Prologue, the audience are praised as ‘noble heroes, noble blood of kings’ – more about the Philosophy of La Musica here.
Since the audience are already with, if not even ahead of, the plot. all this emphasis on the Minister’s Conditions highlights what will become the message of the whole drama, the moral of the tale, summarised in the chorus at the end of this Act (after Orpheus’ disastrous turn):
Orfeo vinse l’Inferno e vinto poi
Fu da gl’affetti suoi
Orpheus conquered Hell, and then was conquered
by his own passions.
and reiterated by Apollo in one of the two surviving endings to the show:
Non e consiglio di generoso petto
Servir al proprio afftetto.
It is not wise for a generous heart
To be a slave to its own passions.
Thus in a music-drama that celebrates the power of music to move the passions, the audience is nevertheless guided towards moderation in their emotional response. Or at least, this is the message, if the Apollo ending (from the musical scores) is performed. The alternative Bacchic ending in the libretto concludes the show with a glorious paean to the ‘divine fury’ of inspiration and inebriation, ‘the spice of all human pleasure and the comfort of every troubled heart’.
Posted in Continuo, Historical Action, History of Emotions, Moving the Passions, Music and Philosophy, Rhythm, Text
Tagged baroque, Baroque Gesture, Baroque Music, Baroque Opera, Continuo, Early Music, Early Opera, Emotions, Expression, HIP, Historical Action, History of Emotions, muovere gli affetti, musica recitativo, Rhythm, seicento, Tactus, Text
Rhetoric, Rhythm & Passions: Monteverdi’s Orfeo in 2019
This article is posted in connection with the production of Orfeo in Vaasa and Helsinki, October 2019.
With the golden harp I charm mortal ears,
With the powerful harmony of the cosmos I touch your soul.
La Musica, Prologue to L’Orfeo
More about the Philosophy of La Musica here…
The Theatre of Dreams: La Musica hypnotises the Heroes here…
Monteverdi’s music is Rhetoric that tells a story, delights the senses and stirs your emotions. Although it is one of the earliest music-dramas to be presented in today’s Opera Houses, L’Orfeo was not the ‘first opera’. The designation in Striggio’s (1607) libretto here… as favella in musica… (a story in music) …rappresentata ( a theatrical show) in Mantua, associates this music-drama with Cavalieri’s (1600) Rappresentatione di Anima e di Corpo in Rome, and with Peri and Caccini’s Euridice, performed in Florence later that same year.
Monteverdi’s Score was printed in 1609 here…, not to facilitate future performances, but as a souvenir of the original production, with many details of instrumentation and staging not often found in early baroque sources. There were three groups of instruments distributed around the stage: strings and flutes, cornetti and sackbuts, and the Basso Continuo who ‘supported and guided the whole ensemble of voices and instruments’ (Agazzari, 1607). There was no conductor: rhythmic precision was based on the steady pulse of Baroque Tactus more about Monteverdi’s rhythm here…; rehearsals were led by the Corago (opera director) more about Il Corago here…
For this new genre of music-drama, the performers were not theatre actors but court singers, with star tenor Francesco Rasi in the title-role. And the first performance was not in a purpose-built theatre, but in a small hall inside the Ducal Palace, without the grandiose stage-machinery used in the 1589 Florentine Intermedi. Nevertheless, the show was a great success, and the following year the spirit of this music led to the birth of the Tragedy, Arianna, Monteverdi’s lost masterpiece (reconstructed by Lawrence-King in 2017 from the surviving Lamento). More about Arianna a la Recherche here…
Libretto and Score offer alternative endings, in which Orpheus either encounters a gang of Bacchus’ followers, or is rescued by Apollo. In the 2019 staging in Finland, you must wait and see who triumphs in the end: Apollo (Monteverdi’s original setting) or Bacchus (in Lawrence-King’s reconstruction for this production)?
Whilst we might today view L ‘Orfeo as a symbolic journey, 17th-century audiences appreciated it as an allegory of music-drama’s power ‘move the passions’. They experienced the emotional impact of hearing the story narrated by La Musica and the Messaggiera, watching the same story dramatised by actors on stage, whilst both seeing and hearing how Orpheus himself reacts to each new event. As courtiers, the Mantuan spectators were accustomed to watching their Duke, in order to gauge his reaction to any happening. On stage, Orpheus’ Shepherds represent a pastoral ‘court’ surrounding the semi-divine singer.
A stage court, a dramatised wedding more about the Ballo for Orpheus’ wedding here…, and a mythical singer as protagonist all serve to make music ‘realistic’ within this story. The Muses themselves appear from Parnassus, and baroque audiences were thrilled by the horrors of Hell. Striggio’s inferno is deliberately modelled on Dante. Ordinary speech is represented not by the Recitative more about Recitative here… that we know from Handel and Vivaldi, but by earlier modulatione, Monody, in which Monteverdi’s precisely notated rhythms and pitch-contours imitate the rhetorical delivery of a fine actor in the spoken theatre (Peri, 1600, Il Corago c1630). More about Peri’s monody here…
Tim Carter’s survey of Monteverdi’s Musical Theatre here…
Caccini defines this ‘new music’ (1601) as “words and rhythm, with sound last of all, and not the other way around”. More about Caccini here… Monteverdi, Caccini and Jazz here… Cavalieri (1600) alerts us to abrupt contrasts in emotion. More about Cavalieri here… Monteverdi declares (1638) that his purpose was to bring narration, action and music together into ‘a unified representation’. In this Gesamtkunstwerk, centuries before Nietzsche and Wagner, Apollo and Bacchus contend to charm your ears and touch your soul.
The Orfeo page by Il Corago here…
Posted in Arianna, Continuo, Dream Theory, Early Harps, Historical Action, History of Emotions, Introductions, Italian baroque harp, Moving the Passions, Music and Philosophy, Music, Dance & Swordsmanship, Rhythm, Text, Triple Harp
Tagged Agazzari, baroque, Baroque Music, Baroque Opera, Continuo, Early Harp, Early Music, Early Opera, Emotions, Expression, Harp, HIP, Historical Action, History of Emotions, muovere gli affetti, musica recitativo, Phrasing, Rhythm, Science, seicento, Tactus, Text, Triple Harp
Baroque Opera & Rhetoric: audience reaction to Landi’s ‘Il Sant’ Alessio’
This article is posted in connection with the first production in Russia of Landi’s opera, performed by the advanced students and young professionals of the International Baroque Opera Studio, and presented by OPERA OMNIA with historically informed music and staging directed by Andrew Lawrence-King and Tanja Skok, August 29th-September 8th 2019.
In 2013, the Internatioanl Baroque Opera Studio OPERA OMNIA also presented the first staged performance in modern times of Landi’s (1619) La Morte d’Orfeo, at the St Petersburg Philharmonic, directed by Andrew Lawrence-King and Xavier Diaz-Latorre, and choreography by ensemble Vento del Tempo.
Anton Varentsov as the river Hebro mourns the Death of Orpheus, in a scene from Landi’s ‘La Morte d’Orfeo’ (1619)
Il Sant’ Alessio shows Landi’s genius for rich vocal ensembles, dramatic contrasts and lively humour, already evident 12 years earlier in La Morte d’Orfeo. This representation of a saintly man, living incognito under his father’s stairs, whilst all the family lament for his absence is celebrated nowadays as the first opera with a historical figure as protagonist, rather than Orpheus, Euridice, Dafne or other mythological characters. Beautiful engravings published along with the score show spectacular images of the original production.
Prologo to Il Sant’ Alessio: The personification of Rome as a Queen on a victory-throne of trophies.
In addition to sinfonias and ritornelli for the unusual combination of three violins, Landi’s score calls for a rich continuo section, giving lutes, theorboes and harps the more active line, whilst keyboard instruments provide a fundamental bass. See Agazzari’s (1607) comments on continuo-playing…
Delighting the seventeenth-century Roman audience, Landi and his librettist, Rospigliosi present a dazzling sequence of drama and scenographic contrasts, including all the most popular topoi of contemporary music-drama: Classical Antiquity and urban sophistication, fashionable Pastoralism and exotic Africa, Heaven and Hell; laments, comedy, letter-reading, disguisings, messengers, Angels and Demons, and even two Commedia dell’Arte zanni, clowns in the role of servants who disrupt their master’s household.
Landi “La Morte d’Orfeo” (1619) First staged production in modern times, International Baroque Opera Studio (2013)
The success of Monteverdi’s (1608) Arianna was greatly influenced by the performance of Commedia actress Virginia Ramponi-Andreini ‘La Florinda’ in the title-role, her dramatic skills in lament-scenes complementing the musical skills of the court singers in ensemble music and arias. More about Arianna…
More than two decades later, Landi integrates dramatic and musical expressivity, acting and aria into various laments for St Alessio, and brings in the physical energy of the Commedia’s notorious clowns as hilarious contrast: one of them leads an expedition to the countryside to play games, the other even tries to wrestle the Demon.
Il Sant Alessio: The Infernal Choir summons the Demon
As in many early music-dramas, the pleasure for the audience is often in knowing more than characters on stage do. So even as father, mother and wife lament for St Alessio’s absence, the audience know that he is right there, in disguise. And when an old Hermit tries to divert the Saint from his religious path, the audience recognises the Demon in disguise. Even the humour gains much from anticipation: from the beginning of the scene, we can guess that the encounter between a clown and the disguised Demon will lead to trouble. More subtly, we can enjoy hidden meanings, as when the Demon offers the warmest room in the house, if you would like to visit him at home!
Marco Scavazza as the Devil in Orgambide’s ‘Oratorio del nacimiento’
Nicole Jordan as the Angel in Ordambide’s Oratorio del Nacimiento
Promoted by the Pope’s nephew, Francesco Barberini, nicknamed cardinal padrone, Landi’s music-drama presents a clear religious message. The stairway to heaven is steep and difficult, but Religion is a true guide and Angels welcome the victorious soul with music and dancing in a glorious happy ending.
Il Sant’ Alessio: La Religione, the personification of Religion
Steffano Landi wrote Il Sant’ Alessio in 1631 on a libretto by Giulio Rospigliosi and it was first performed the following February (1632, in the modern calendar). The opera seems to have been revived in 1634, for which occasion the score was printed. It is designated Dramma Musicale … fatto rappresentare: ‘Music-Drama… presented by the most Eminent and Reverend Signor Cardinal Barberini for the most Serene Prince Alessandro Carlo of Poland’.
The word opera occurs several times in the preliminary pages and in the sung text: the meaning is probably general, ‘work’, but nevertheless it remains undeniable that this term is beginning to be used in connection with music-drama. The term dramma musicale contrasts with the literary genres designated to earlier music-dramas: Landi’s La Morte d’Orfeo is a Tragicomedia [I co-directed the first performance in modern times as well as the ensemble that arose from that event]; Monteverdi’s (1608) Arianna is a Tragedia; Orfeo one year earlier is famously favola per musica (story in music). But the term rappresentata – presented – indicates continuity from the very first ‘baroque opera’, Cavalieri’s Rappresentatione di Anima e di Corpo (1600) .More about Anima & Corpo…
Emilio de Cavalieri’s ‘Rappresentatione di Anima e di Corpo’ (1600) is indeed the ‘first opera’. Jacopo Peri, whose ‘Euridice’ was performed later the same year, acknowledges Cavalieri’s role as originator of the style. (Earlier music-dramas by these two composers, notably Peri’s ‘Dafne’, have not survived.)
This word rappresentare and its derivatives – rather than recitativo – characterises the various genres of theatrical music in the early seicento.
It’s Recitative, but not as we know it….
Un Ritratto dell’ opera
Nutrice, Sposa, Madre, Eufemiano & Adrasto
A letter printed in the 1634 publication provides an insight into how Landi’s audience received the performance:
Una lettera all’hora scritta da huomo litteratissimo, la cui penna fece senza colori un Ritratto dell’opera; e se bene con attestatione troppo cortese forse lo figure alquanto piu bello del naturale, non e pero, che ne perdesse la somiglianza.
“A letter written at that time by a most literary gentleman, whose pen makes without colour a Report of the opera; and although with too courteous remarks, perhaps his description is somewhat more beautiful than the reality, it does not, however, fail to resemble it.”
This letter is itself ‘most literary’ and rhetorical, evaluating the opera’s success in terms of the Canons of Rhetoric:
Inventio – the story
Dispositio – the organisation of the material
Elocutio – the appropriate style for each part
Memoria – not only memorisation, but deep study
Pronuntatio & Actio – performance, vocal delivery dramatic action
As leading scholar Tim Carter has commented in connection with Monteverdi’s musical theatre, period audiences enjoyed opera not only for music, drama, dancing and spectacle in general, but appreciated in particular the presentation of Rhetoric: narrating the story, delighting with subtle word-play, and moving the listener’s passions.
“The opera seemed to me perfect in every part: the structure and the Composition, which Aristotle calls favola (story), well united, not episodic, concise and not wandering: the arrangement (costume) so well fitting, that there was nothing there, that lacked what it was to be made with; the style (sentenza) proportionate to the arrangement, witty, serious, surprising, as needed and conforming to appropriateness. The elocution effective, not affected, not coarse; but either grand, or moderate or intimate, as required by the subject, or by the person who was speaking. The action and the performance of the actors flexible, suitable and corresponding to the meaning of the words, so that also the gestures and movements seemed as harmonious and consonant as the voices.
ALK comments:
Indeed, Rospigliosi and Landi are to praised for their organisation of the story into the more up-to-date three-Act structure (Orfeo, Arianna & La Morte d’Orfeo are all in five Acts), into a glittering sequence of contrasting scenes, and with witty contrasts and clever use of dramatic irony.
Sentenza – the use of rhetorical devices and grandly constructed sentences is closely related to the elocutio also praised by the writer: this would be the poetic choice of particular words, according to the register (elevated or everyday style) and the ever-changing emotions.
As the Demon (disguised as a Hermit) leaves St Alessio, the Angel flies in to comfort the Saint.
“But about the Scenic equipment, which Aristotle truly takes account of as the last part, but nevertheless is so important, which – as he says – very often carries off the prize, what shall I say? The first introduction of new Rome, the Angel flying through the clouds, the appearance of Religion in mid-air – this was ingenious and technical creativity, that competed with nature itself (opera furono d’ingegno e di machina, ma gareggianti con la natura). The Scenery most artful; the appearances of Heaven and Hell marvellous; the changes of the flats (lati) and of the Perspective ever more beautiful: but the last scene of the [protagonist’s] disappearance with the illuminated cupola of the portico with the appearance of the garden in the far distance, incomparable.
ALK: The visual highlights mentioned in the letter correspond closely to the engraved scenes printed in the score. These in turn correspond with the descriptions of each scene in the libretto and score. It might even be possible to read from the scene listings the position of each actor, scene by scene, as Dene Barnett did from later French theatrical sources.
Madre Sposa & Nutrice lament for St Alessio
“The costumes sumptuous, showy, beautiful, varied, historic, appropriate and fitting well the people who wore them, the entrances onto the stage (nel palco) and the exits to backstage/wings (dentro alla Scena), measured and well timed (misurati, ed a tempo): the balli ingenious and lively; everything and every part well integrated one with another, and with the body technically able and well managed (col suo corpo ben disposte e ben governate. This might be read as referring not to the physical body, but to the corps de ballet for each particular dance: ‘with each dance-troupe well choreographed and well organised’).
ALK: The actors’ performance is viewed through their physical actions: movements, the quality of their entrances and exits, rhetorical gestures. The writer silently adopts the underlying assumptions of this period, that character and emotions are revealed by movement and gesture, and that such movements and gestures also awake corresponding emotions for onlookers. More about “How to Act” in 17th-century theatre…
I Sant Alessio – a country-dance comprised of various games
“Seeing this [performance] confirmed the judgement of an Article (Discorso) of mine that I already made, in which I approve of Tragedy that takes as its Subject a Personage of eminent goodness and sanctity, even if it seems contrary to what Aristotle decreed. The article is dedicated to the Most Eminent Signor Cardinal, on whose authority I have been happy to have it printed several times. Seeing this so devout and spiritual [performance] so well received in the Theatre, I’m inclined to make it [the article] public; the only thing holding me back is that for a while (un passo) I’m working to rediscover the Author of the Tragedia di Christo Patiente (Tragedy of Suffering Christ, i.e. a dramatized Passion), commonly ascribed to The Nazianzeno. When I’m out of this mess, I’ll bring it immediately his Eminence, and Your Lordship will be pleased to have it received.”
Il Sant Alessio: the final scene with Angel musicians and dancing Virtues.
Posted in Arianna, Continuo, Early Harps, Historical Action, History of Emotions, Introductions, Italian baroque harp, Moving the Passions, Music and Philosophy, Music, Dance & Swordsmanship, Text
Tagged Agazzari, baroque, Baroque Gesture, Baroque Music, Baroque Opera, Continuo, Early Harp, Early Music, Early Opera, Emotions, Expression, HIP, Historical Action, History of Emotions, muovere gli affetti, musica recitativo, ornamentation, seicento
The Art of Time: Tomas de Santa Maria on performing renaissance Fantasia
Tomas de Santa Maria’s Arte de tañer Fantasia (1565) free to download here is a teaching book for keyboard instruments and vihuela. Like Milán’s (1536) book for vihuela El maestro read more here, this publication is intended not only to teach the rudiments of notation and instrumental technique, but also to give detailed information for high-quality performance and to empower students to improvise their own Fantasias, in the strict polyphonic style of the late renaissance. Thus, the second part download part 2 here offers a complete introduction to 16th-century counterpoint.
In this post, I offer a brief overview of the contents of the two volumes of the Art of playing Fantasia, and analyse in detail Tomas’ comments on his highest priorities, Time and Rhythm, as well as his remarks on Ornamentation and on Performance Practice in general.
The Art of Fantasia
Tomas presents improvised Fantasia-playing as a renaissance Art, a term which had quite a different flavour almost half a millennium ago. Whilst the 20th century has taught us to regard art as the triumph of a lone genius over rules and restrictions applying only to ordinary folk, in the 16th and 17th centuries Art was defined as a system of coherent principles that transformed raw nature into artful creativity, full of life and grace. More about the period meaning of Art and period terminology here.
As Renaissance Art, Tomas’ fantasia is improvised within the rigorous structures of Franco-flemish polyphony, inherited and developed by such composers as Antonio de Cabezon (who checked and approved Tomas’ work), and his arte is indeed a book of rules: 78 chapters of detailed prescriptions, plus several bonus sections on key Performance Practice topics.
The remainder of this article consists mostly of extensive quotes from Tomas’ book, so for clarity my brief comments below are in blue.
Prologo: principles & fundamentals
El fin de este libro es arte de tañer fantasia – “the aim of this book is rules for improvising, divided into two parts. The first deals with all the pre-requisites that are necessary to begin improvising… the second part deals with everything necessary for this purpose, which is to improvise counterpoint, all put into a system (puesto en arte) and into universal rules (reglas universales)…
“In this first part we proceed by way of easier and clearer matters, beginning with the names of the notes (signos), but our principal intention is only to teach young professionals in this discipline (arte) what they need to put into practice, step by step from the most obvious and lightest matters, towards greater matters, and not [beginning] with the most demanding and difficult matters, which would tend to confuse and intrigue experts in such questions rather than enlightening and educating those new beginners, who like children should be nourished with light sustenance, easily digested, and later with more solid food!”
“In all the sciences and disciplines such order is essential… we see the same in Nature, which proceeds from imperfection to perfection… This has been the reason and motivation for our setting out to begin the first part with the notes, not as they have previously been analysed, but from first principles and fundamentals.”
Science, Art & Use
Tomas’ Prologue also includes a discussion of the need for arte – a coherent set of principles, contrasting this with uso – use, i.e. the habitual way of ‘just doing it’. Such use is not necessarily bad – a good habit can be a useful skill – but it must be guided by arte – rules. Our modern-day understanding of ‘art’ as the engagement with mysterious beauties beyond everyday rules is Renaissance Science.
Tomas’s personal connection to the ineffable, divine aspect of Music is proclaimed in a lengthy exposition of the role of Music in the Bible and in Christian doctrine. Reluctantly, he leaves this topic, to focus on the subject of his book – arte as a set of principles.
‘But I wish to leave this [Science], about which much more could be said, so as not to depart from my main purpose. And I say that although I have served the institution of my Order by playing organ wherever my duties took me, I considered many times the great effort required until now, and the many years taken up by learning singing and playing. Moved by emotions of love and charity, I began to investigate and re-examine how all this might be expressed as arte – a set of principles, so that in a short time and with less effort one could acheive the goal, and not merely as uso – habit, ‘just doing it’.
‘Because habit is broad and risky, whereas principles are narrow and sure. And so we see from experience that no-one without principles is perfect in their skilled discipline (facultad); because those who go without principles are like those don’t know the way and go without a guide; and like those who go in the dark without light. Since principles are the guide and the light, then it’s quite fair to say that those who do creative work (obran) without observing principles are ignorant.
‘This is the declaration of the Philosopher, who was asked what knowledge is; and who replied that knowledge is understanding the matter from its causes and first principles (primeros principios), which is what arte consists of.’
And so Tomas spent 16 years of ‘incalculable and incredible work‘, consulting with high-level colleagues, in particular Antonio de Cabezon, in order to perfect his set of principles, and teach his arte as ‘universal rules‘.
Part 1 begins with the names of the notes in plainchant (canto llano) and staff-notation (canto de organo); the three Hexachords (propriedades); the contradiction between the hard and soft Hexachords (see below); changing Hexachord (mutacion); the two pre-requisites for singing from staff-notation.
Then follows an extra section with ‘advice for maintaining the Tactus (compas) well, analysed in detail below.
Chapter 6 continues with note-values; introduction to the keyboard; semitones; black and white keys; intervals etc. Chapter 13 deals with Performance Practice, setting out eight conditions for fine playing (see below), which are discussed point by point in the following chapters.
From Chaper 20, Tomas explains how to perform polyphonic works on vihuela or keyboard, including advice on ornamentation. Then he analyses the Church Tones, Renaissance Modes, use of remote tonalities and Cadences.
Part 2 is devoted to the rules of counterpoint in 51 chapters: dissonance and consonance; suitable progressions, ascending and descending, whether in slow notes or faster; voice-leading; formal design. Chapter 52 has advice for new players (see below). The final chapter shows how to tune keyboard instruments and vihuela (in meantone).
Whilst every musician understands that one shouldn’t mix up B-flat and B-natural, Tomas’ comments on the contradiction of the hard and soft Hexachords – la contradicion que ay entre las dos propriedades de bequadrado y bemol (Part 1, Chapter 3) are interesting in the context of musical expression and History of Emotions.
‘Of the three Hexachords, the two that are B-natural and B-flat are notorious for being mutually repugnant and contrary – muy notorio ser repugnantes y contrarias entre si – and to such a degree that in no way can they suit or conform one to another nor vice versa, unless there is a particular necessity to make some perfect fifth or perfect fourth, or to excuse some dissonance of fa against mi… Finally, if we are singing or playing in B-natural, we must necessarily avoid singing or playing with B-flat [and vice versa].
‘The reason and cause of this contradiction and repugnance is because song with B-flat is a soft, sweet and smooth song (blando, dulce y soave), and on the contrary, song with B-natural is hard, strong and bitter (duro, rezio y aspero), and so – like soft and hard – they are manifestly opposites and contraries.’
The natural Hexachord [C D E F G A, containing neither B-flat nor B-natural] is halfway between the hard and soft Hexachords, conforming with either of them’. Tomas links this ‘convenience and conformity’ to the structure of eight-note modes, which combine notes from two six-note Hexachords. ‘The natural Hexachord is halfway, a tempering and concord … with which every mode (tono) can complete its perfect operation.’
Part 1, Chapter 5 De dos documentos para en brevemente cantar canto de organo – two pre-requisites for quickly [learning] to sing from staff-notation
‘It is certain and evident that staff-notation – canto de organo – is highly important and necessary for the player, both to understand what they are playing as well as to set a work [i.e. arrange polyphony for solo instrument] and gain advantage from [studying] it. Just as a scholar to complete his diploma has to read many learned writers every day… so the player should… set works in staff-notation by selected composers every day, enriching his knowledge of new and fine things… Por falta de fundamentos se gastava mucho tiempo…‘
If you lack fundamental skills, you’ve been wasting a lot of time!
Tomas’ emphasis on staff-notation and deep understanding of counterpoint takes his book into territory beyond that explored by Milán in El maestro (1536). Milán uses tablature notation, which tells the vihuela-player which string to pluck with the right hand and which fret to stop with the left hand, note by note, and with careful control of rhythm. But this notation does not show the movement of the individual polyphonic voices, and Milán allows more freedom than Tomas de Santa Maria in adapting the strict rules of counterpoint to the exigencies of a particular instrument. Although Milán requires basic knowledge of staff-notation, his students learn to improvise polyphony mostly by ear and by ‘muscle memory’, by learning the stops and plucks that create the progressions and cadences of each mode. Tomas teaches staff-notation in detail and wants his students to learn counterpoint as an academic, as well as practical, exercise. But both writers encourage students to play good music, in order to learn by example, reproducing and imitating learnt musical fragments in their own improvised fantasias.
Tomas gives ‘two very brief and comprehensive rules (reglas), with which in a very short time one can easily learn and understand in depth: the first deals with compas and the second with written note-values.’
As for Milán (read more here), so also for Tomas, the term compas combines the philosophical concept of Tactus (the slow, steady pulse governing renaissance and baroque rhythm) with the practical, physical representation of that pulse as a down-up movement of the hand (or foot) and with the notation of the duration of a down-up pulse unit by the note-value of a semibreve and by a bar of staff-notation enclosed by bar-lines. Tomas distinguishes clearly between Tactus (the complete down-up movement, corresponding to a semibreve) and semi-Tactus – medio compas (downbeat only, or upbeat only, corresponding to the duration of a minim).
‘Quanto al compas, que es como fundamento del canto de Organo, por quanto siempre estriva en el, sea mucho de notar que la llave y govierno de toda la musica, assi del cantar como del tañer, es el compas y medio compas, de los quales el que bien supiere usar, terna bien fundamento para bien cantar y tañer, por que el compas es ciera guia en toda la musica mensurable que por su certidumbre le dezimos ser el freno de la musica, porque nos detiene para no cantar ni tañer desatinada y desconcertadamente, sino conforme a razon, por peso y medida, y por preceptos y reglas de musica. Y assi con justo titolo el compas es llamado el govierno con que se concierta y rige toda la musica, assi del cantar como del tañer, dandole toda gracia y ser.
‘Regarding Tactus, which is like the foundation of staff-notation, since it is always based on Tactus, it should be carefully noted that the key and government of all music, whether sung or played, is the Tactus and semi-Tactus. If you know well how to use them, you’ll have a good foundation for singing and playing well, for Tactus is a sure guide in all measured music [i.e. not plainchant], which for its certitude we can say is the musical brake which restrains us from singing or playing recklessly and in disorder, but instead rationally, by weight and measure, and by precepts and rules of music. And so it is the appropriate title to call Tactus the government with which all music (both sung and played) is brought together and ruled, giving it all its grace and its very existence.’
Tomas now links the practical purpose of Tactus as the basis of musical ensemble to its formal definition in relation to Aristotelean Time: ‘a number of movement in respect of before and after’ Physics (4th cent. BC). We should keep in mind that Isaac Newton’s theory of Absolute Time was not published until more than a century later.
‘Compas es medida, en la cantoria tomado a intento que las bozes concurren en consonancia a un mesmo tiempo. Tactus is Measure, used in choir so that the voices come together in consonance at the same time.’
‘Compas es la cantidad a tardanca de tiempo que ay del golpe que hiere en baxo a otro siguente baxo. Tactus is the amount of duration of time from one down-beat to the following down-beat.’
In the next paragraph, he links the physical hand-movement and practical purpose of Tactus-beating to the notation of musical time with bars and note-values.
‘El compas con que se mide toda la musica practica assi del cantar como del tañer fue sacado del compas con que se mide y inivela la cantidad a cuya semejança el compas de la musica practica mide el tiempo que se gasta en las figuras del canto de Organo… The Tactus that measures all practical music-making both vocal and instrumental is taken from the Tactus that measures and determines the quantity represented by a bar of musical notation which measures the time taken up by the note-values of staff-music.’
Tomas makes it abundantly clear that all measured music (i.e. all music except chant) is governed by Tactus, and the music has to conform to the Tactus, not vice versa.
‘El compas, en el qual estriva toda la musica practica… Tactus, on which all music-making is founded. ‘Toda la musica, assi del cantar como del tañer, esta subjectada y atajada al compas, y no la compas ala musica. All music, both vocal and instrumental, is governed by and founded on Tactus, and not the other way around.
About this, students who want to excel in this art should be well admonished.
‘The Tactus is divided into two equal parts, that is into two semi-Tactus… by the upbeat, so that the Tactus is always on the downbeat and the semi-Tactus on the upbeat’. Tomas emphasises that in binary metre every semi-Tactus is of equal duration.
‘There are two different types of compas in music-making – in one the Tactus is divided (as above) into two equal parts. In the other type into three equal parts: this is the compas of Proportion, also known as Triple metre, in which of the three parts that it has, two are spent on the down-stroke and the other one on the up-stroke. This is done singing two Semibreves on the downstroke and one on the upstroke [slow, Sesquialtera proportion] or two Minims on the downstroke and one on the upstroke [fast, Tripla proportion].
Four requirements for maintaining Tactus perfectly
Beat time with the hand, down-up, with each stroke of equal duration
‘Even though the upstroke should not have a ‘bump’ [topar] as the down-stroke does, nevertheless the down-beat must hit as if it struck something.’ He mentions two faults to avoid: ‘often we see imprecise Tactus-beating without any ‘bump’ neither on the down nor the up, or hitting with the hand as if it struck something on down and up’. This subtle difference between down- and up-strokes is the concept of arsis and thesis. ‘Every bar has these two beats.’
The hand stays down for the entire duration of the semi-Tactus
‘It is not lifted until the note on the upstroke. Similarly on the upstroke the hand stays up for the entire duration of the semi-Tactus, until the downstroke.
‘For this it is necessary to raise and lower the hand with equal regularity – una misma ygualdad.
The up- or down-beat and the note on which it falls are struck together simultaneously – juntamente a un mesmo tiempo –
‘The beat is not before or after the note, the note is not before or after the beat, but absolutely together at once. For this, it’s necessary that each beat, both down and up, should be struck with a certain force or impetus, and in addition both should be struck equally, that is one doesn’t strike the downbeat harder than the up, nor the up harder than the down.
Every bar goes as measured and determined by the measure of the first bar
‘The measure of tempo maintained in the first bar is maintained in every bar that follows, by reason, that one doesn’t take more time for one bar than for another.
‘We give this advice to new players, that they basically count by semi-Tactus [minims] … and this way they cannot fail to play in Tactus with all the rigour that is required. because by experience we see that those who don’t play in Tactus err in the semi-Tactus.’
Note that Tomas is encouraging beginners to count relatively quickly, in minims [about MM 60], whereas more experienced players might count the whole Tactus [semibreve ~ MM30]. Modern-day musicians are so used to a fast count, that even Tomas’ easy option of 60 bpm is challengingly slow for many nowadays
‘If you want to maintain Tactus and semi-Tactus well, practise a lot maintaining it for yourself [i.e. within your own body] with the hand and with the foot… for players, maintain Tactus & semi-Tactus with your foot, since whilst playing you can’t do it with your hand.’
Mensuration signs & note-values
Part 1, Chapter 6 De las figuras
‘We are discussing the figuras – written notes – according to their note-value sung in compasete [indicated by C, modern ‘common time’], which is now commonly used by everyone…. even though [C-slash, modern ‘alla breve’] is also called compasete by many, which if taken strictly we would have to sing by whole compas [down-up Tactus, and also bar-length], which is breve or two semibreves. Nevertheless we use it [in the same way] as C, a half-circle without the slash, with the result that using one or the other [mensuration sign, ‘time signature’] we now sing in compasete. What is strictly called compasete in this period, which is C without slash… the Semibreve is one compas [down-up Tactus, and also bar-length]’
So by Tomas’ time, the strict definition of compasete (Milán calls it by another dimunuitive, compasillo) as C is informally extended by many to include C-slash; and the realisation of C-slash strictly according to theory, i.e. counting by breve and semibreve (which would suggest double tempo, though Tomas does not clarify this explicitly), seems to have been abandoned in practice.
Bar-length
Although period use of the term compas often includes the meaning ‘a bar of notated music’, Tomas’ basic explanation of note-lengths clearly shows that bar-lengths can be varied in practice. In his table, the numbers viii, iv, ii and 1 count the number of Tactus beats.
This defining exemplo shows:
Bar-lengths are expanded as necessary to accommodate large note-values
The primary meaning of compas is Tactus (as a duration of time corresponding to the movement of the Tactus-hand)
Note-values are defined in relation to Tactus
In theory, the relationship depends on mensuration sign, but the theoretical distinction between C and C-slash no longer applies in practice.
A single mensuration sign (i.e. C) allows varying bar-lengths
This contrasts with the modern use of C as a time signature requiring a consistent bar-length of one semibreve.
There is no assumption of maintaining duration as bar = bar.
This has implications for triple-metre proportions, which today’s performers sometimes describe as ‘bar=bar’. That might be an accurate description in some circumstances, but ‘bar = bar’ is not a period principle that can be used to determine proportions.
Tomas’ (1565) principles of rhythmic notation are entirely consistent with Milan’s theory and practice in El maestro, three decades earlier.
The fundamental quantity is Tactus. Relative durations are specified by note-lengths. The notated bar-length framed by bar-lines is essentially a visual convenience, no more.
Two Principal Requirements for singing from staff notation
Dos cosas se reguieren principalmente para saber cantar canto de Organo.
Give each note its written time-value
Know which note is on the up- or down-beat, and which is not
For minims it’s easy… with each beat down or up, you sing a minim… if one minim comes with the downbeat, the next is with the upbeat and vice versa.
Tomas now gives examples for various note-values of how notation is linked to Tactus beats.
8 conditions for playing with total perfection and beauty
Book 1, Chapter 13 ‘So that all music might have that grace and essence (ser – literally, ‘being’) which it deserves, it’s necessary to play with all the delicacy that is required, which is repaid in much gold and creates yet more essence and grace. Without this, all that is played, however good it might be, will not have grace nor brilliance. Here is the clear difference between the same work played by a perfect and refined player, or played by another, imperfect and coarse; because played by the expert it will appear to be delicate and high art, and played inexpertly it seems low-class and coarse, as if it were two different pieces.
‘The conditions which thus beautify the music can be reduced to eight:
Play in Tactus (compas)
Place your hands well.
Strike the keys well.
Play cleanly and distinctly.
Let the hands run well up and down the keyboard.
Use appropriate fingering
Play with good groove (ayre)
Make good ornaments and trills (redobles y quiebros)’
‘Playing in Tactus … is the first condition’
For more on Tactus, Tomas refers his readers back to his previous remarks (analysed above).
Chapters 14-18 are specific to keyboard, in particular clavichord, technique. Chapter 14: Fingers are numbered from thumb 1 to little finger 5. Hands are curved like cat’s paws, fingers close together, thumb underneath and close to the 5th finger. All this is close to period harp-technique too. Elbows are dropped, relaxed and close to the body.
Chapter 15: strike the keys with the flesh of the finger; with impetus; equally strongly with both hands; don’t strike from too high above the key; press down into the key, but not so much as to raise the pitch; don’t raise the fingers too much away from the keys.
Chapter 16: for clarity, release one key before playing the next. Lift the finger a little after playing, but don’t take them too far away from the keys.
Chapter 17: for facility throughout the whole range, keep the hand compact, turn the hand slightly in the direction of movement (especially for fast notes), keep the active fingers close to the keys.
Chapter 18 defines Principal Fingers as those that strike the first note of trills. Thumbs are not used for black notes, except for octaves in one hand, or when there is no possible alternative. One should not use the same finger twice in succession for crotchets or (especially) quavers. Consecutive semibreves, on the contrary, are played with one finger repeating. Melodic crotchets are taken pair-wise, alternating two fingers. This is the familiar Renaissance concept of Good and Bad notes, corresponding to the accented and unaccented syllables of a song-text: more on Good & Bad here. Quavers and semiquavers are fingered four-by-four.
Tomas analyses fingering in considerable detail, confirming the importance of fingering in creating short-term phrasing and articulation. His fingerings for two-note chords require changing fingering on consecutive thirds, which has implications for facilitating particular ornaments (page 45).
Groove and Swing
Chapter 19 introduces the concept of ayre – particular ways to apply rhythmic freedom to fast notes, within the regular pulse of the Tactus. Ayre sometimes refers to melodic tunefulness, but more often to subtle rhythmic patterning. Depending on context, I translate it as ‘groove’ (dance patterns and/or medium- term patterning) or ‘swing’ (changeable, short term patterns), in the jazz sense of subtle rhythmic adjustments that give a particular character or elegant shape without disturbing the fundamental beat.
‘The way to play with good ayre… requires playing the Crotchets in one way [groove] and the Quavers in three [alternative options for three different ways to swing].’ Thus these adjustments are within the fundamental steady pulse of Tactus (semibreve, down-up) and semi-Tactus (minim, down or up).
‘The manner – manera – you must have for playing Crotchets is to wait – detenerse – on the first and hurry – correr – the second; and neither more nor less wait on the third and hurry the fourth; and in this way for all the Crotchets. As if the first Crotchet were dotted, and the second a Quaver… and take note that the Crotchet that hurries should not be very hurried, but a little moderate – un poco moderada.
‘Of the three manners of [playing] Quavers, two are done almost the same way, which is waiting on one quaver and hurrying the other one… In one manner you begin by waiting on the first Quaver, hurrying the second; and neither more nor less waiting on the third and hurrying the fourth; and in this way all of them… As if the first were dotted and the second a Semiquaver. This manner is suitable for works that are contrapuntal throughout – todas de contrapunto – and for passages of decorative fast notes both long and short – passos largos y cortos de glosas.
The second manner is done by hurrying the first Quaver and waiting on the second; and neither more nor less hurrying the third and waiting on the fourth; and in this way all of them… As if the first were a Semiquaver and the second a dotted Quaver. In this manner, the dotted Quavers are never on the beat, but in-between. This manner is suitable for short decorations – glosas cortas – which are done like this in [composed, contrapuntal] works as well as in [improvised] fantasia. And note that this manner is very much more galana (elegant, showy) than the other one, above.’
The noun gala and its related adjective galana occupy an area of meaning that extends from ‘decorative’ or ‘elegant’ to ‘luxury’ or ‘ostentation’. Milán discusses tañer de gala, which seems to be well towards the ‘showy’ end of this semantic spectrum, as suggested by my translation ‘bravura playing’. More on Milán here.
‘The third manner is done by hurrying three Quavers and waiting on the fourth; and be warned that the waiting has to be all the time that is necessary so that the fifth Quaver comes to be struck in time on the semi-Tactus; and in this way all of them. With the result that they go four by four… as if the three Quavers were Semiquavers and the fourth a dotted Quaver. This third manner is the most galana of all, and is suitable for long and short decorations – glosas largas y cortas.
‘Take note that the waiting on the Quavers should not be much, but just enough to show and be understood a little, because waiting a lot causes great gracelessness and ugliness – desgracia y fealdad – in the music. And similarly for the same reason, the three Quavers that hurry should not hurry too much, but with moderation, conforming to the waiting on the fourth Quaver.
The soundscape of Renaissance rhythm
Tomas’ instructions for Renaissance ayre create a rhythmic soundscape that differs sharply from 20th-century assumptions about art-music and improvisatory fantasias. He demands that the player count in minims, which should be completely steady. From other evidence, it is plausible that this count would be somewhere around minim = 60. Within that slow steady beat, crotchets are good/bad (i.e. subtly long/short), quavers are subtly shaped in one of three specific ways, the choice depending on the genre of music and the length of the decorative passagework. Whichever groove or swing is applied, it is maintained consistently throughout the passage in question.
There is no trace of 20th-century rubato, nor of its early-music derivative, phrasing that ‘goes towards’ a certain point. There is none of the hesitancy and pauses that often characterise modern-day performances of ‘improvisatory’ music: on the contrary, even if the player is genuinely improvising, Tomas and his advisers, the Cabezon brothers (as well as Luys Milán before them) expect Tactus, Groove and Swing to be maintained.
Nowadays, one might describe Tomas’ sound-world as steady pulse at approximately 60 bpm, with regular groove at the subordinate level around 120 bpm, and various options for swing at the most rapid level of rhyhmic activity, around 240 bpm. But in that pre-Newtonian age, Tomas has no concept of Absolute Time on which to base such a description; he has no clock precise enough to measure such short durations: rather, he has Tactus, which counts Aristotelean Time as ‘a number of movement in respect of before and after’ (Aristotle, Physics). The essential quality of that Tactus movement is that it is consistent – within the limits of human perception – so that Tomas’ minim is always about one second in duration (though he has no machine to measure it, and no conceptual framework for comparing it to anything more objective than his own feeling of consistency).
It is this essential consistency that allows Tomas to map specific performance practice instructions onto particular note-values (minims are steady, crotchets groove good/bad, quavers swing in one of three ways). Such linkage, which is seen also in Ortiz’s instructions for viola da gamba, strongly implies that the absolute duration in time of any given note-value is approximately fixed within the whole repertoire: e.g. minims are approximately one second. If the durations of note-values could vary arbitrarily (as they can in modern practice), this linkage would be meaningless.
Nevertheless, Milan indicates subtle changes in tempo from one piece to another, centred on a default tempo of ‘well measured Tactus’ that is ‘neither very fast nor very slow’. But these changes are not imposed arbitrarily by performers’ artistic choice: performers are required to follow the composer’s directions. So – in contrast to the 20th-century concept of ‘artistic freedom’ for performers, the period attitude is that there is a correct tempo, and that it is the performers’ job to find it.
Ornamentation 1: Graces
Chapter 20: How to make redobles and quiebros
Summarising Tomas’ definitions & examples: Redoble is a reiterated upper-note trill, starting on the written note, and turned at the beginning.
Quiebro is an upper- or lower-note trill, starting on the written note, but without initial turn. Quiebros can be senzillos (simple, i.e. one flip) or reyterados (reiterated).
The difference between redoble and quiebro is that the redoble has the initial turn through its lower note.
‘Redobles are only made on complete bars, i.e. on Semibreves. And Quiebros are made on MInims and on Crotchets and, as a marvel, on Quavers. Reiterated quiebros are made on Minims, simple quiebros on Crotchets; except for one which is not reiterated, and always made on Minims on the [hexachord] pitches sol fa mi fa. This is called the Quiebro de Minima.
‘Reiterated quiebros are made on every Minim where the fingering permits. But simple ones are not made on every Crotchet, but alternately yes and no.
‘There is only one way to make Redoble … with whole-tone and semitone combined. Quiebros are made with tone or semitone, except for the Quiebro de Minima, which is always made … with the lower semitone and upper tone. The other way would produce gracelessness and displeasure – desgracia y desabrimiento – to the ears, for which reason it must not be made where it would finish on mi…. But it can finish on any other note ut, re, fa, sol, la.
Redobles can have the semitone above or below, ‘but note that in no way is it permitted to make a Redoble with two whole-tones combined, because this is very graceless and displeasing to the ear.’
Redobles permitted and prohibited
Tomas gives specific fingerings for each ornament, for the keyboard, left and right hands.
‘These styles of redobles and quiebros … are very new and very elegant – galanos – causing such grace and tunefulness – melodia – in the music, which bears them in so many degrees – grados – and with such contentment to the ears, that it seems something quite different from playing without them, so much so that there is every reason to use them always, and not others which are old-fashioned and not graceful.
‘Simple quiebros … for ascending are made with tone or semitone below. Those for descending are made with tone or semitone above.’
Tomas describes a very fast ornament, in which the principal note is not actually repeated, but sustained whilst the auxiliary is played almost simultaneously and quickly released. There is no conventional notation for this technique (described also in some harp sources), so he does not provide an example. With this type of fast mordent, Tomas prefers the descending version (with upper auxiliary) to the little-used ascending version.
Quiebros on Crotchets, both ascending and descending, are sometimes made on the beat, and sometimes on the off-beat, and this [on the off-beat] is the better and more elegant – galana – manner, because it gives more grace to what is played.
Tomas gives keyboard fingerings for each option, for each hand.
The upper-auxiliary Minim quiebro normally used for descending can be used ascending if the principal note is a mi.
‘Sometimes, and only descending, one can make quiebros on two consecutive Crotchets. which is done for grace and elegance. This occurs when after an ascent to a Semibreve there are two Crotchets descending.
‘When there are ascending Crotchets which then descend, one must always make a quiebro on the highest note, which is done for descending [upper auxiliary]’ ‘Similarly, when there are descending Crotchets which then ascend, one must always make a quiebro on the lowest note, which is done for ascending [lower auxiliary].
‘Similarly, to give more grace to the music, one must always make quiebros on every Crotchet that follows immediately after a dotted Minim.’
‘So that the music should have more grace and thus give more contentment to the ears, it’s necessary that redobles and quiebros de minimas should be done by either hand, a redoble with one hand, another redoble with the other; and similarly a quiebro with one hand, another quiebro with the other; responding to each other.’ The fingerings for consecutive thirds (above) facilitate a similar effect between two voices in one hand. ‘This is heard when both hands play Semibreves or Minims which can have redobles or quiebros, playing them one after another, which greatly adorns the music and gives it grace, especially when there is a chain of Semibreves or Minims.’
‘When the Mode – tono – avoids certain notes … the ornaments should also avoid them.’
Tomas gives technical advice for executing ornaments at the keyboard, repeating his earlier comments about keeping the fingers close to the keys. That advice might well be adapted for vihuela and harp, as keeping the fingers close to the strings.
Tomas characterises his ornamentation as ‘new’, and it is intended for the relatively short sustain of the clavichord. Fewer, or different ornaments might be appropriate to Milán’s period and/or to other instruments. Nevertheless, it seems likely that all renaissance music was ornamented considerably more than the raw notation suggests.
Tomas demands almost ceaseless ornamentation, more-or-less on every second note, as well as strict adherence to rules of ‘grammar’ for ornamentation. Such florid playing in regular Tactus, and with the groove and swing of ayre, creates a sound-world for the late 16th century that contrasts notably with 20th-century assumptions about art-music, the ‘purity’ of polyphony and what ‘improvisatory’ playing might mean.
Setting polyphonic works
Chapter 20. ‘Playing polyphonic works on the clavichord is the font and origin from which are born and proceed all the fruits and benefits, and all the art of playing for players.’
‘It should be noted that in whatever work of any kind, all the voices are interdependent and linked one to another, that no individual voice can move a single note without having specific respect and regard for all the other voices. And similarly voices are measured and counted, linking voices Tactus by Tactus, semi-Tactus by semi-Tactus.’
‘Two things have to be kept with all rigour, which rule and govern the arranger so that they never err: these are count and measure, which are interdependent… Measure is the same as compas (Tactus, also bar-length), by which all practical Music is ruled and governed.’
Tomas also explains vihuela tablature, and how to set polyphonic works for vihuela.
Tips for understanding polyphonic works
Chapter 21. ‘Brief advice for new players to master quickly any kind of work’
‘Three things are necessary to understanding any kind of work quickly, and thus to play it more perfectly.
1. Play in Tactus
‘maintaining it always with the same equality of time, i.e. not changing it from more to less nor from less to more. For this, it’s necessary to maintain Tactus with the foot and similarly to take great care with the semi-Tactus… in addition, it’s necessary to understand note-values and give each of them their full duration.’
2. Sing through each individual voice in turn
3. Understand all the Consonances and Dissonances in the work, whether in 2, 3 or 4 voices.
How to obtain benefit from studying polyphonic works
Chapter 22. ‘Five things have to be noted:
1. Understand profoundly the invention and artfulness in the contrapuntal progressions – passos – whether the response or repeat is at the fourth, fifth, octave or other interval… in two, three, four or more voices; with or without imitation. The Art of Fantasia consists of all this, which above all one has to get to know; because in everything it is only arte [i.e. a coherent system of rules] that makes a Master. And from that it follows that all those who ignore the rules are imperfect.
2. Note the entrance of each voice, to know if it enters before the cadence, in the cadence, or after the cadence; with what invention or subject it enters; for the entry of each voice is the most delicate matter, of greatest subtlety and arte that there is in music. So this must receive great attention and care, in order to apply it in the works.’
3. Note all the styles of Cadences which are used in the works, undersanding them profoundly and memorising them, in order to make similar cadences when improvising [fantasia].
4. Note all the Consonances and Dissonances… and memorise them, in order to create varied progressions, for this is of great benefit in acheiving flow and abundance of spontaneity [fantasia].
5. When a progression is repeated, note the differences in the repeated version, whether in 2, 3 or 4 voices.
‘For new students to apply these benefits in improvisation – fantasia – it’s necessary that they practise constantly with the same progressions that they have learnt, so that with this practice – uso – they become accustomed to the [rules of] arte, and then they can easily play other progressions. Similarly, it is very advantageous to transpose a particular progression into all possible keys. For this, take note that wherever you want to transpose them, they must keep the same [Hexachord] solmization.
‘To gain the great fruits and benefit for improvising of all the above, it’s necessary to practise many times each day, with great perseverance, never mindlessly – desconsiando – but trusting for certain that work and constant practice – uso – conquers all and creates a maestro… A drop of water can carve out stone, not in one or two droplets, but falling constantly.’
Tomas recommends frequent, mindful practice, repeating the same material many times in order to perfect, memorise and internalise it. Although his comments are consistent with the modern-day understanding of learning elite skills, he expresses himself through the period meaning of such terms as uso (practical techniques) and arte (a coherent set of rules for effective creativity). What we mean nowadays by ‘art’, the ineffable mystery of the emotional power of music, is Renaissance Science. More about period terminology here and here.
Tomas’ emphasis on learning progressions and cadences echoes the approach of Milán’s El Maestro.
Ornamentation 2: Divisions
How to add divisions to polyphonic works. Chapter 23 Del glosar las obras
Renaissance ornamentation is categorised as Graces on a single note (the redobles and quiebros discussed above) and Divisions or Diminuitions – glosas – where the interval between two long notes is ‘divided’ into many shorter notes. Tomas gives several examples for each interval, ascending and descending.
‘To add divisions – glosar – to polyphonic works one must be advised that glosas are only made on three note-values – Semibreves, Minims and Crotchets – even so, least often on Crotchets.
‘To glosar a work well, there are two things to note:
All the voices should have equal amounts of glosas
If the voices repeat something, the glosas are also repeated in all the voices
unless something prevents this, which is often the case.
If it is necessary to glosar Crotchets ascending or descending [four by four, stepwise], one must take the glosas for Semibreves ascending or descending a fifth.
Helpful Hints & Improvisation
Book 2, Chapter 52. Useful advice for new players.
Tomas’ purpose is not only to teach the instrument and basic musicianship, he also gives advice on how to learn to improvise within the demanding style of 4-voice Renaissance polyphony.
1. Practise running the hands throughout the whole range of the instrument, with appropriate fingerings, observing all the conditions and circumstances already discussed.
2. Practise making redobles and quiebros with both hands.
3. Maintain Tactus very well with hand or foot… give each note-value its precise value
4. After studying a piece well in a class, write it out just as the master taught it, with the glosas etc. Similarly, sing through each individual voice.
5. Understand well how to play the instrument
6. Take as your foundation and guide the Eight Conditions for playing perfectly [above].
7. Understand and be able to play in all possible keys
8. Practise easy works first, and then progressively more difficult ones
9. Practise transposing works into every possible key.
Similarly, try to take from each work those progressions which have graceful melodies, and memorise them, so that afterwards you can improvise on them spontaneously.
Once you are expert in all these things, try to start to play improvisations, based on some melodious progressions. In addition, try to play the progressions with different imitative counterpoints – fugas – i.e. at the fourth, fifth and octave, which greatly beautifies the music.
Similarly, try taking one voice from a work (whichever you want, soprano, alto, tenor or bass), and play it as the treble in four-voice harmony, making up three voices in your head… with a variety of harmonies, which greatly exalts and beautifies the music.
Similarly, once you are already a little expert in playing a given voice like this as the treble, trying playing it as the alto, tenor or bass [with three new voices created around it]. This suggests the Renaissance technique of composing a Parody Mass, in which the counterpoint of a pre-extant motet is re-worked and greatly extended to create an entire mass setting. This technique could be a model for improvisation in Tomas’ style, as could the fantasias compiled for keyboard, harp and vihuela by Henestrosa, ‘cutting and pasting’ contrapuntal progressions from various works into a new creation.
If you want to be a perfect player, try to apply yourself and practise little by little, playing counterpoint that has a good feeling – ayre – and graceful melody; on plainchant; and especially polyphonic music, until you are perfect at it. For this is the root and source from which grow and proceed all the skills applicable to the keyboard, and also the perfection and grace which it gives to all the music that is played.’
Tomas final words perfectly capture the essence of Renaissance improvisation: Practise by playing good music well; strive for total perfection; this will improve your skills, your improvisation and your playing of written music.
Modern-day performance
Three significant differences stand out from Tomas’ rules of arte, when compared to today’s HIP approach to fantasia and renaissance polyphony.
Many modern-day performers choose not to play in rhythm.
Few modern-day performers add much ornamentation.
Few modern-day improvisers maintain correct counterpoint to Tomas’ standards.
Tomas’ comments on Tactus are so strongly worded that it is beyond any doubt that all the music of this period should be played in Tactus, counting regularly on a minim beat, and controlling this with the physical movement of hand or foot. Unless you frequently practise and problem-solve with a physical Tactus-beat, you are out of touch (sic) with Renaissance rhythm.
This insistence on Tactus is certainly fundamental, but it is not merely elementary. On the contrary, Tomas associates it with ‘a perfect and refined … expert’, and with playing that is ‘delicate and high art’.
The amount and detail of ornamentation specified by Tomas is alarming for those of us accustomed to ‘the pure lines of renaissance polyphony’. Our ears, as well as our fingers, will need plenty of practice with so many redobles, quiebros and glosas in all the voices, on almost every second note.
We might assume that improvisation excuses sloppy rhythm and bad counterpoint, even that ‘art has no rules’: Tomas’ book exists to teach the contrary!
Posted in Early Harps, History of Emotions, Improvisation, Introductions, Moving the Passions, Music and Philosophy, Rhythm, Spanish baroque harp
Tagged Art, Early Harp, Early Music, Emotions, Expression, HIP, History of Emotions, muovere gli affetti, ornamentation, ornaments, Phrasing, Rhythm, Rubato, Tactus
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BEST CURRENT AFFAIRS & POLITICS BLOG 2017
Current Affairs Politics
Boris Johnson And The Conservatives On Course For Reelection In the UK
by An Sionnach Fionn
Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Given the events of the last fortnight, that Shakespearean quip is as good a summation of the general election in the United Kingdom as any other. There is lots of noise, lots of controversy, but will the Brexit-focused contest bring substantial change to the political landscape of the UK? The polls are indicating that the current Conservative Party government under Boris Johnson will probably be re-elected, though this time with a workable if not spectacular majority in the House of Commons. Enough at least to allow him to cast aside any need for a backdoor coalition deal with the Democratic Unionist Party in another break with the precedents set by his incompetent predecessor, Theresa May. The assumption by some observers that the Brexit Party would attract enough disaffected Tory-supporting Leave voters to stymie BoJo’s chances of staying in office, under his own steam anyway, seems to have faded away as Nigel Farage’s lobby group falls into confused infighting between soft and hard Brexiteers, the latest iteration of the proposed Withdrawal Agreement between the European Union and the UK undermining some of the BP’s supposed rationale for standing in the election.
This of course also impacts the opposition Labour Party which was hoping to see a split vote among its primary opponents in a number of marginal constituencies, allowing its candidates to sneak through under the dubiously democratic first-pass-the-post system (FPTP), giving Jeremy Corbyn the keys to Number 10. Instead, not only is it faced by a slightly reinvigorated Conservative Party, weaponised with a coherent plan for Britain to exit the EU, but its own support is under threat from the Lib Dems, the Green Party, Plaid Cymru and to a lesser extent, the Faragists. Or at least, what’s left of the nouveau UKIP in a handful of Brexit-favouring constituencies around provincial England and Wales. Meanwhile, north of the border, there is a dearth of hard stats from Scotland due to a lack of comprehensive polling (or any type of polling that goes beyond merely treating the Scots as a statistically meaningless sub-set of the English and Welsh samples). However, despite a very modest Tory revival, the SNP seems likely to not only hold its Westminster seats but to increase them, if the vagaries of FPTP fall their way. And probably at the expense of Labour.
So, the outcome of the British general election 2019? As things stand now, another Conservative administration, though with a better parliamentary majority than the last one, faced by a fractured opposition led by the Labour Party. And no Brexit Party MPs in sight.
TagsBoris Johnson • Brexit • Brexit Party • British Labour Party • Jeremy Corbyn • Nigel Farage • UK General Election 2019
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12 comments on “Boris Johnson And The Conservatives On Course For Reelection In the UK”
This is a wonderful summation, ASF. I’ve meant to say before but feared it might sound patronising, so please take this in the spirit intended – you can write, which is an increasingly uncommon talent nowadays.
Thanks for that. Much appreciated. Unfortunately all of my writing takes place during the brief few moments of free time between work and studying so I don’t get much space to craft it. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back to more leisurely times when I get through the next year of studies and exams.
rossioncoyle
To be honest, and I really do feel sorry for the English people (the poor of course) that they will have to face another Tory abattoir of their state, but I’m afraid that Corbyn was not ruthless with the blairites when he should have been, and he betrayed Chris Williamson, or rather, acquiesced to his betrayal. I can see why much of his base has lost the genuine enthusiasm that there was. The msm are also guilty as sin for the immense suffering which is coming.
Wolfe tone
He’s starting to look like a gatekeeper; a bit like Bernie sanders.
Corbyn is a gift to the Tories. And to the Lib-Dems. And to the SNP.
gendjinn
I’d hold off on that prediction until the week before the election. The tides are running against the Tories and there are several scandals in the pipe that will blow up between now and then – the Arcuri interview for example. Recall Labour’s trajectory during the campaign of GE 2017?
It’s not done and dusted yet.
On NI though I think it could get very interesting and playing with predictions there’s a chance, in a perfect storm, of 8 DUP, 7 SF, 2 SDLP, 1 APNI. Will have to see LucidTalks’ constituency polls the week before election to see how likely that scenario is.
PaddyT
Corbyn 1970’s old-style Labour Party appears to have collapsed since 2017, he was always a critic of the EEC/ EU, the Brits in the main seem keen to jump into the economic wilderness under the guise that the Empire will somehow return. Not sure that the Tories will win a big majority, as the SNP will pick up a lot of their seats in Scotland.
In 2015 the SNP secured 56 out of 59 of the Scottish seats with 50% of the vote.
In 2017 the SNP secured 35 out of 59 seats with around 36.9% of the vote.
Two years on it is anticipated that the SNP vote and share of seats will match or exceed 2015
Moreover polling data suggests that Scotland if asked to vote on the EU would return a significantly higher Remain vote than the 62% delivered in 2016.
Brings into sharp focus the futility of voting in Scotland with its democratic mandate disregarded.
A bit like the old gerrymandered statelet of NI before the Troubles.
Against this background
I hope that the SNP will landslide it again but the Tories seem to be seeing a modest uptick in the admittedly flawed Scottish sampling. Mostly at the expense of the Brexit Party-UKIP camp – and Labour.
The DUP’s paramilitary friends obviously don’t realise how counter-productive their scurrilous poster/banner campaigns could prove to be.
From the Indo about yer woman in the Wexford by-election:
To what extent Fine Gael vetted Ms Murphy is unclear. “I’m sure there was vetting,” a source said. “But stupidity is often hard to detect in its early phases.”
One of the best lines I’ve read in a long time. 🙂
I haven’t read the Labour Party’s manifesto, but going by media reports it sounds radical to say the least. Whether what the manifesto promises would or could be delivered is open to debate, but it certainly sets Labour miles apart from the other parties which, to my mind at least, is to be applauded. And this is from someone who has absolutely no time for Jeremy Corbyn.
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home » computing » Free Microsoft Office 365 for non-profits
Free Microsoft Office 365 for non-profits
Microsoft New Zealand took advantage of this week’s TechEd conference to announce Office 365 for Nonprofits.
The charitable programme will see the company give qualifying charities and non-profit organisations free subscriptions to the cloud version of its Office software. It’s a world-wide initiative, which Microsoft NZ managing director Paul Muckleston says stems from company founder Bill Gate’s belief that technology can be used to make a real difference.
Muckleston says the Office 365 offer includes Exchange, Sharepoint, Microsoft’s Office web apps and Lync.
Lync love at non-profits
That last application turns out to be top of mind for at least two of the organisations that will benefit from the offer.
At a press conference to announce the programme, Sue Jury, national fundraising manager for The Child Cancer Foundation says her organisation saved $60,000 just from using Lync.
Plunket’s Craig Le Quesne, who is the organisation’s IT manager, says workers communicate with each other using the technology every other day. He says: “Lync brings people together” Le Quesne says there’s an obvious saving on air travel costs and the large amounts of time people spend travelling.
Plunket now has three video conferencing rooms which Le Quesne says were equipped for less than $3,000 and are fully-booked all the time.
Cloud important too
Both speakers mentioned how using cloud apps is important for their organisations. Jury says the CCF doesn’t have internal IT staff and relies instead on external contractors. She says although those contractors work for the charity at cost, being able to reduce even that bill matters: “We are a business, but we need to be mindful of spending money”.
Muckleston says Microsoft and the Ministry of Social Development ran a trial in Christchurch where 50 non-government organisations were given a three-day assessment. As a result, two-thirds of the participants moved workers to the cloud.
New Zealand has 27,000 registered non-profits and 180,000 workers. Another 400,000 volunteers work for the sector. Muckleston says the Microsoft offer can extend to volunteers. At the moment some 5,000 New Zealand organisations are registered with Microsoft for technology donations. The company expects this will now increase significantly.
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Republished editorial: Elite athletes' survival advantage
Exercise medicine highlights from the BMJ
Adrian E Bauman1,
Steven N Blair2
1Professor, School of Public Health, Sydney University, NSW 2006, Australia, adrian.bauman@sydney.edu.au
2Professor, Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina, USA
http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2013-e8338rep
▸ This article is an abridged version of a paper that was published on bmj.com. Cite this article as: BMJ 2012;345:e8338
Could be shared by all through physical activity
Two linked papers examine longevity in former Olympic athletes and reach different conclusions.1 2 Clark and colleagues analysed data on 15 174 Olympic medallists from nine countries that have enjoyed success in Olympic Games. The athletes had participated in at least one Olympic Games between 1896 and 2010.1 The study found that Olympic medallists had a relative survival advantage of 8% compared with matched controls, which translates into 2.8 extra years of life. The second and smaller study by Zwiers and colleagues examined data on 9989 people who competed in Olympic Games between 1896 and 1936.2 They reported no increase in survival among those who competed in aerobic sports and higher mortality in those who participated in collision and contact sports, including power sports. Indeed, mixed epidemiological evidence pervades this literature, with many studies identifying a lower risk of mortality in previously elite athletes, especially those competing in aerobic events.3 By contrast, …
Competing interests See the version on bmj.com.
Provenance and peer review Commissioned, not peer reviewed.
References are in the version on bmj.com.
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Is Black History Month Just a Brutally Honest White History Month? [a reblog]
Posted on February 28, 2017 February 7, 2017 by kelley
White people are just as sick of black history month as black people are, for the same reasons. You see, to a black person, black history month is full of what white people done to black people. To a white person, it’s the same — it’s white people doing things to black people. So, in knowing that, wouldn’t Black History Month be a brutally, radically honest element of white history?
via Is Black History Month Really Just a Brutally Honest White History Month? — AfroSapiophile
Tags: Africans, BlackHistoryMonth, Blackinamerikkka, klancestors, slavery, truth, whitewashingCategories: Black history, history, life, real questions
21 thoughts on “Is Black History Month Just a Brutally Honest White History Month? [a reblog]”
Great post Sistah. I remember last year I said that America uses essential 5 Black prominent figures as easy answers. 1. Dr King. 2. Rosa Parks. 3. Oprah. 4. Michael Jordan. 5. Michael Jackson/Beyonce. It’s sad because I’m the one that’s always like “Uhhh so Huey P. Newton anybody? Marcus Garvey?” Those 5 figures are usually the EASY way to icebreak racial topics due to their inclusiveness within the dominant society. Kind of a scapegoat if you will.
Kushite Prince says:
I agree. Very good point Tareau.
Definitely, Tareau! I’d add Oprah as well. These people are easy because they’re not only visible but their stories are “safe”. But many of the powerful, game changing Black historians go overlooked. I’m still learning of some that I’ve never heard of in my LIFE! Not a peep.
Thanks for tuning in! You make a great point.
eddiestarofficial says:
Black History month exposes white guilt and I love it. The figures that get brought up during black history month are usually icons of “black exceptionalism”, or the anomalies who broke through the cracks to become successful. These luminaries are lauded as an example of what all blacks can become if we work hard enough and “go along to get along”. This is the reason you have many Trump supporting bigots thumping the “Up from Slavery” book around, praising Booker T. Washington. Great re-blog, I am now following this gentleman.
Very true, Eddie!
Sarah Light says:
Hmm very interesting post. I want to say I see it differently; I want to say I see it as us blacks, celebrating what we have overcome but then again, we wouldn’t have anything to celebrate if white people treated us the same from the start. In a way, it all comes back to white people doing things to black people. Great post.
Thanks for your feedback, Sarah. We definitely have plenty to celebrate that was accomplished before whites even existed and before our ancestors even encountered them. But it seems that the stories and historians that receive glorified recognition year after year are the ones who overcame adversities due to white people/racism. And we have to think about who “allowed” a Black History Month to even become a thing. With such a big, rich history, we have so much to learn outside of 28 or 29 days. So much of our past has nothing to do with white people and I think that is partially what the writer was attempting to convey.
Thanks again for tuning in.
nidotopianwarrior says:
It’s no wonder they gave it the shortest month of the year.
That too..
JSLEFLORE says:
Its kind of crazy, because at a young age I remember questioning why are we only learning about the same people over and over again. Great post
That’s what I’m saying! Thanks for tuning in and your spot on comment!
truereflectionsweb says:
The fact that ‘black history month’ exists is yet another form of racism in itself.
Racism is – SYSTEMATIC OPPRESSION.
The Uk and US sat down and said, what can we do to make it look like we celebrate other cultures? Let’s talk about the history of these people but we need to keep control of it because we don’t want it to get out of hand because if black people start to figure out how great they are then we ‘the white man’ may be over ruled. So let’s allocate them 1 month out of year so people think we care when in actual fact we’re still steering the ship.
You guys in the US got the raw end of the deal on top of that, given that it’s celebrated in February….the shortest month of the year. At least we (UK) get a full 31 days in October
You’re spot on, sis! Our history was full and rich before they tainted our existence. And it stretches far beyond what can be learnt or taught in 28 or 31 days.
Thanks so much for reading and your insightful response.
Original-Dante says:
Black history month is a front….all it does is facilitate division by making younger generations conscious of the idea that black people are different. Why not have a white history month if we’re all living in “harmony”?
Worse off, its a month…its a subtle way of pacifying black people who are unaware and think the whole thing is for our benefit…The third eye always has to stay open when dealing with matters of this world.
True story. Every race or ethnic group should have a month if we’re living in harmony. BHM shouldn’t exist in a “post-racial America, right?
Thanks for your honest take, Dante.
lexydragonfly says:
Thank you for this! We don’t celebrate Asian Month or how about Refugee Month? In fact, at least in my town, we do a lot of divisional celebrations: Lebanese Festival, Italian Festival, Greek Festival, etc. When I moved here (Buffalo NY) I was shocked by the neighborhood divisions. It’s getting more integrated for sure but still, I simply don’t understand how, in this day and age, people can still be racist, bigots, etc. It’s appalling. We are all humans on this one planet. I seem to be in the minority with my thinking though.
You’re so welcome.
I don’t know if the events are intended to be divisive, but I see how they can be. It could be a learning opportunity for the non-Lebanese or non-Greek, but I’m thinking many of us wouldn’t even consider attending. But we’ll go to Rome and..
As for the segregated neighborhoods, I think some people live where they are comfortable, ofttimes amongst people that look like them. Sometimes it’s not by choice but by plan.
afroglory says:
Being black British and being a black American are just very different experiences I think. I often wonder what it would be like to have been born in American society as a black woman. I do agree with your statement here that as a collective, people just don’t like black history month anymore. I imagine it used to be like recognition of black peoples existence but now… it kind of feels insulting. Right?
It’s a bit of a pacifier. Like look, we’re celebrating you so be quiet.
sarro100 says:
Agreed!!! – but what we are taught as “Black history” in itself is not a holistic representation of our history. Rather slavery is often cited as if that was the only substantive factor that demarcated our position in the past. However, black history extends far beyond slavery and the figures that are perennially quoted as the bastions of change within society.
Exactly! But we’re taught one thing and it’s the gospel according to every high school history class. We must remain diligent in uncovering and telling our own histories.
Thank you for your spot on comment!
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“Chauranga”… A gently hypnotic drama about fiery issues
Why watch Chauranga when a lot of what it’s about – pig-herding, love across caste lines, the constant tensions between Dalits and the people who won’t treat them as equals, the young boy who decides enough is enough – was already seen in Nagraj Manjule’s Marathi drama Fandry? One reason could be the mood the director, Bikas Ranjan Mishra, conjures up. The film weaves a quiet, hypnotic spell. If Fandry was a volcano, Chauranga is an idyllic picnic spot that invites us to spend some ninety minutes with these characters. It doesn’t set out to grab us by the collar till we choke with indignation at what is still the reality in rural India. It just tells a story, which begins when Bajrangi (Riddhi Sen), a Dalit boy who’s studying in the city, returns home because his school has closed down for a few days. The reason for the school-closing is right out of a short story. The principal’s daughter is getting married. The guests need a place to stay, after all.
You’d think Bajrangi, with his books, is destined for a different life – but this is a film with a few surprises. One of them is that for some people, no matter what steps they take, there’s no guarantee that they will rise. Whatever happens to them, it’s just a matter of dumb luck – sometimes, it’s just being able to run fast enough to catch a train. This shot echoes an earlier one where a boy (Bajrangi’s brother Santu, played by Soham Maitra) attempted to board a moving vehicle but kept failing. There’s another effective echo. Early on, when Bajrangi falls at the feet of the upper-caste Dhaval (Sanjay Suri), the village headman, the latter moves backwards so that Bajrangi’s hands don’t actually touch his feet. But later, when he suspects Bajrangi of wrongdoing, his feet land squarely on the lad. Concepts like untouchability do not matter when you’re in the mood for a little oppression. Or a little extra-marital sex. Dhaval keeps trysting with Dhaniya (Tannishtha Chatterjee), mother of Bajrangi and Santu. But this isn’t just a Dalit thing. It’s a woman thing too. Dhaval’s wife (Arpita Pal) ends up equally exploited. Or maybe it’s worse. The man who exploits her is an old, blind priest (a ghoulish Dhritiman Chatterjee).
That the priest is blind is probably some sort of symbolism. Here’s another, having to do with the film’s title. Bajrangi whips out a pen that writes in four colours. Colour is varna, which also refers to caste. And when Bajrangi says he’ll write Santu’s love letter (to an upper-caste girl) in red, Santu replies, “Lekin woh to khoon ka rang hota hai na?” But none of these Drama 101 devices derail the movie. The director has a firm hold on the proceedings – and the volume knob. Someone dies of snakebite. The body is dropped unceremoniously into a lake. You expect a furore around the missing person. But… nothing. Sometimes, at picnics, people wander off. It’s like that. You’d think Dhaval’s wife might throw a tantrum or two about his infidelity. Again, nothing. The only time the film gets dramatic is towards the end. It has to do with that love letter. It also has to do with Udaan. Only, this flight to freedom doesn’t come with a crescendo on the soundtrack. Who knows what lies ahead?
With better casting, Chauranga may have been a vastly better movie. Suri isn’t bad, but there’s something missing. It probably has to do with the innate gentleness and goodness the actor always projects. Dhaval may be the first feudal chieftain in Hindi cinema who’d rather be watching Aastha TV. But casting, sometimes, is a question of who’s producing the film (Suri is a co-producer), and I was glad Chauranga got made – if only as a show-reel for the director. He gives us tradition, superstition, caste wars – everything that Benegal gave us in the 1970s. He gives us Katrina Kaif, Salman Khan, and a discussion about breast development in the most scholarly possible language – if sex education began airing on Doordarshan’s news channels, this is how it would be. And he sprinkles a bit of magic over all this. Water from a hand pump dries up, as if in punishment. And there’s a snake, which hasn’t been good news for humans ever since the first two encountered one. It all comes together – a little in the heart, a little in the head. You leave the theatre not educated, not whipped into righteous fury, but with the feeling that you’ve closed a book you rather liked.
chauranga = four-coloured
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21 Responses ““Chauranga”… A gently hypnotic drama about fiery issues” →
Gautham Jayan
Hey Rangan, can you review Malayalam movie Charlie starring Dulquer Salman and Parvathy. At least a bullet point one will do. Its one of the best movies released recently. I’m sure you are gonna love it, for me it was far better than Ustad Hotel. Watch out for the excellent art work, dop and a wonderful storytelling.
Off-topic – any chance you would be reviewing “Killing Veerapan?” I am hearing that it’s a good comeback vehicle for RGV.
Ram Murali: Not unless it gets a theatrical release. Maybe I’ll write a column about it otherwise…
BR, Chariie seems to be running in multiple halls in Chennai
Its one of the best movies released recently
There were such positive reviews for Charlie which was what led us to watch it in a huge group over the holidays. But we were disappointed. The colourful visuals and the clever cinematography (it looked like a Kerala tourism documentary) did not make up for what felt (to us) like a lack of a story, unbelievable characters and over-acting (he just has the same dumb looking smile all the time) from the male lead. ‘Charlie’ has kinda put me off (I hope it is temporary) not just the “New Generation” Malayalam movie but even (never thought I’d see the day) Dulquer Salman.
We felt betrayed by the good reviews, even thought perhaps that they had been bought. But then again, maybe not. Because this is the second comment I’m seeing in this blog praising Charlie. Sigh. Each one of us do see a completely different movie.
Tonks, When a thief storms into Charlie’s home, Charlie scares the s**t out of him and then offers a drink and out of craziness goes out to rob with him. This quirkiness and the way he do things is what it attracted me.
Charlie’s a guy who wants to bring a smile on other peoples face. He doesn’t say it plainly but shows throughout the movie.
And yes everyone has their own opinions.
Oh ok. Admittedly I did really like the bits with the thief in it. And the graphic comic usage was novel. But for the rest of it, it made me restless and a little bored.
tonks, not all that glitters is gold. not all the “new age malayalam cinema” is good. Ustad Hotel, to me, was a confused, directionless, cliched movie. you knew the ending from the hero intro scenes itself. Diamond Necklace too, was good only for the twists towards the climax, otherwise predictable and mundane. 1983 was very good though.
Oh I don’t know about that. I absolutely loved ‘Ustad Hotel’. And to a huge extent ‘Diamond Necklace’ too (its a movie that teaches a moral : the dangers of living beyond your means, without being in the least preachy, I thought). And ‘1983’ for its nostalgia (and also we really identified with bits of it because we have a member in the family who was seriously into cricket in school). So as a rule I love these new age movies, in that these days we have such a wide variety of themes. ‘Charlie’ was the exception : great movie visually, but the characterisations failed to move me.
Tonks, i sort of agree with you about charlie. even though it was visually great and the concept was very novel, i just couldnt get into the spirit of the narrative or the characters. it was quite boring
Premam was the ultimate new gen smash for me. It represented everything that was good (and maybe some things that are bad) about the new gen malayalam cinema. I have never seen a Malayalam film so many times (liked it) recently as i did that film.
Yes, absolutely agree about Premam, I loved it too. Curious as to what the factors you thought bad in it are.
Chauranga – talk about the priest ‘getting his goat’ “on” – squirmed and then chuckled at the directors’ audacity (producers approval) to add those small details. If this is still feudal India, that’s millions of oppressed people – that’s a book that needs closing.
Tonks, oh I was referring to the the showcasing of excessive drinking smoking and drug usage which is like the trademark/bane of the the new gen cinema
Yes they did glamorise that.
@ Tonks– “Charlie’ was the exception : great movie visually, but the characterisations failed to move me”..
don’t watch/understand South movies but read bits skimmed thru anusrinis ? note, thanx —
in general, they are more innovative..& ‘original’ ?
& I find the concept of ‘Charlie’ quite interesting ..caught my eye–May watch it..
A girl trying to piece together an unknown guy from bits n pieces …
Apex, I am not sure about all South Indian movies, but the Malayalam movies lately are definitely all well made and original. Each one seems to have a different theme. There are a lot of Malayalis who prefer the older, more realistic and traditional, family drama type of Malayalam movies (my husband and many of my cousins do so). They feel there is an artificiality, a westernisation about the newer movies that is not true to Kerala culture (which to some extent is true : they are perhaps more glamorous than reality) but I like their varied themes. And perhaps so will non Malayalees. You can definitely try them. I suggest “Bangalore days” , “Premam” and “Ustad Hotel” to begin with 🙂 .
Sutheesh Kumar. P. S.
Charlie i thought was shallow and pretentious apart from the decent music by Gopi Super and excellent camera work by Jomon. T. John, and it doesn’t help that it is directed by Martin Prakkat who hitherto has worked only with Mammooty and Dulquer Salman. This film blatantly looked like an attempt to build a cool image for Dulquer Salman, trying to mystify the character played by him and as an extension Dulquer himself. There is also this punch dialogue where Charlie/Dulquer says that turning back and walking in slo-mo after delivering gravity defying punches, where the baddies are dispatched to the different corners of the screen and punch dialogues are not his cup of tea. Now, how meta is that? All the characters around him are in constant awe of him and speak reverentially about him, almost deifying him, there is this song which actually goes ‘Devasuthane nee’ which translates to Son of God. Now that leaves me wondering if Dulquer is the son who is God?
Thanx Tonks 4 the recommendations haven’t seen it, jus came to know the one line brief– but I liked the ‘concept’ of Charlie —
The heroines good but the lead actor could’ve been better… needed more charisma .. (Perhaps a holly or bollly remake should correct that…)
I maybe wrong but there are shades of ‘Amelie’ here ..
Apex, you are spot on about Amelie, the quirkiness and goofiness seems an influence except that it feels forced here.
Thanx Sutheesh– haha caught em, but seems a well concealed inspiration (rather than a rip off)
Btw imo Parvaty Menon is good….
“Chauranga”… A gently hypnotic drama about fiery issues - Kahwa Entertainment →
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A Prof Debunks Standardized Testing & Pearson Strikes Back
A Prof Debunks Standardized Testing & Pearson Strikes Back:
Mute the Messenger
When Dr. Walter Stroup showed that Texas’ standardized testing regime is flawed, the testing company struck back.
Rebellions sometimes begin slowly, and Walter Stroup had to wait almost seven hours to start his. The setting was a legislative hearing at the Texas Capitol in the summer of 2012 at which the growing opposition to high-stakes standardized testing in Texas public schools was about to come to a head. Stroup, a University of Texas professor, was there to testify, but there was a long line of witnesses ahead of him. For hours he waited patiently, listening to everyone else struggle to explain why 15 years of standardized testing hadn’t improved schools. Stroup believed he had the answer.
Using standardized testing as the yardstick to measure our children’s educational growth wasn’t new in Texas. But in the summer of 2012 people had discovered a brand-new reason to be pissed off about it. “Rigor” was the new watchword in education policy. Testing advocates believed that more rigorous curricula and tests would boost student achievement—the “rising tide lifts all boats” theory. But that’s not how it worked out. In fact, more than a few sank. More than one-third of the statewide high school class of 2015 has already failed at least one of the newly implemented STAAR tests, disqualifying them from graduation without a successful re-test. As often happens, moms got mad. As happens less often, they got organized, and they got results.
Texas Education Commissioner Robert Scott, long an advocate of using tests to hold schools accountable, broke from orthodoxy when he called the STAAR test a “perversion of its original intent.” Almost every school board in Texas passed resolutions against over-testing, prompting Bill Hammond, a business lobbyist and leading testing advocate, to accuse school officials of “scaring” mothers. State legislators could barely step outside without hearing demands for testing relief. So in June 2012, the Texas House Public Education Committee did what elected officials do when they don’t know what to say. They held a hearing. To his credit, Committee Chair Rob Eissler began the hearing by posing a question that someone should have asked a generation ago: What exactly are we getting from these tests? And for six hours and 45 minutes, his committee couldn’t get a straight answer. Witness after witness attacked the latest standardized-testing regime that the Legislature had imposed. Everyone knew the system was broken, but no one knew exactly why.
Except for one person. Stroup, a bookishly handsome associate professor in the University of Texas College of Education, sat patiently until it was his turn to testify. Then Stroup sat down at the witness table and offered the scientific basis behind the widely held suspicion that what the tests measured was not what students have learned but how well students take tests. Every other witness got three minutes; it is a rough measure of the size of the rock that Stroup dropped into this pond that he was allowed to talk and answer lawmakers’ questions for 20 minutes.
A tenured professor at UT with a doctorate in education from Harvard University, Stroup isn’t frequently let out of the lab to address politicians in front of cameras. He talks with no evident concern that he might upset the powerful, and he speaks so quickly that his sentences have to hurry to keep up as he darts down tangents without warning. He taught in classrooms for almost a decade—it must have been a nightmare for his students.
Everyone knew the system was broken, but no one knew exactly why. Except for one person.
But his testimony to the committee broke through the usual assumption that equated standardized testing with high standards. He reframed the debate over accountability by questioning whether the tests were the right tool for the job. The question wasn’t whether to test or not to test, but whether the tests measured what we thought they did.
Stroup argued that the tests were working exactly as designed, but that the politicians who mandated that schools use them didn’t understand this. In effect, Stroup had caught the government using a bathroom scale to measure a student’s height. The scale wasn’t broken or badly made. The scale was working exactly as designed. It was just the wrong tool for the job. The tests, Stroup said, simply couldn’t measure how much students learned in school.
Stroup testified that for $468 million the Legislature had bought a pile of stress and wasted time from Pearson Education,the biggest player in the standardized-testing industry. Lest anyone miss that Stroup’s message threatened Pearson’s hegemony in the accountability industry, Rep. Jimmie Don Aycock (R-Killeen) brought Stroup’s testimony to a close with a joke that made it perfectly clear. “I’d like to have you and someone from Pearson have a little debate,” Aycock said. “Would you be willing to come back?”
“Sure,” Stroup said. “I’ll come back and mud wrestle.”
But that never happened. Stroup had picked a fight with a special interest in front of politicians. The winner wouldn’t be determined by reason and science but by politics and power. Pearson’s real counterattack took place largely out of public view, where the company attempted to discredit Stroup’s research. Instead of a public debate, Pearson used its money A Prof Debunks Standardized Testing & Pearson Strikes Back:
Illinois law allows schools to demand students' Facebook passwords - CNET
Illinois law allows schools to demand students' Facebook passwords - CNET:
Illinois law allows schools to demand students' Facebook passwords
Technically Incorrect: Conceived to combat cyberbullying, a new law in Illinois may result in schools demanding social media passwords, even if the posting was not done at school or on school computers
Illinois can't seem to decide whether it's the home of midwestern gentlefolk or of the most draconian humans this side of Moscow.
One of the state's newest laws, for example, may have goodness at its heart. However, it may have something else in various of its extremities.
The law, which went into effect on January 1, is designed to curb cyberbullying, but it also could encourage schools to pry into students' personal lives.
KTVI-TV reported that the law was already making some parents deeply uncomfortable. That's because one of its stipulations is troubling.
ndeed, this week Illinois parents began receiving a letter from school authorities informing them that their children's social media passwords may now have to be handed over, as part of school discipline.Motherboard reports that it obtained one of these letters. It reads, in part:
School authorities may require a student or his or her parent/guardian to provide a password or other related account information in order to gain access to his/her account or profile on a social networking website if school authorities have reasonable cause to believe that a student's account on a social networking site contains evidence that a student has violated a school disciplinary rule or procedure.
You might imagine that this stipulation only applies to school computers and activity on school premises. It does not. The schools may ask for passwords and search on the basis of any posting by a student at any time and in any place.
And who will decide what is reasonable cause? Leigh Lewis, superintendent of Triad Community Schools Unit District 2, told Motherboard that if someone didn't cooperate, there might be trouble. Not detention, criminal charges.
Those of sharp eyes and, perhaps, parenting experience, will wonder just what private information the schools might encounter as they search for their alleged evidence.
As one parent who had received the latter, Sarah Bozarth, told KTVI: "It's one thing for me to take my child's social media account in there and open it up for the teacher to look at (...) but to have to hand over your passport and personal information to your accounts to the school is just not acceptable."
I have contacted Illinois' Board of Education to ask how educators justify what seems like the potential for a considerable invasion of privacy. I will update, should I hear.
What if, in performing a search, the school discovers that a student is involved in, say, criminal activity or a sexual relationship? What if it discovers that the student has a particular medical problem?
Will it pinkie promise not to tell? I contacted Lewis to ask her views and will update, should she reply.
The whole idea of an authority being able to demand social media passwords has undergone some challenges over the last couple of years. This year, Oregon became the latest state to decide that colleges and employers would be forbidden from demanding social media usernames and passwords.
It's one thing for authorities to observe what employees, students or suspects are posting on social media. It's surely another to think that they have the automatic right to simply demand what is quite obviously personal information. In Illinois, it will all likely come down to the idea of reasonable cause. (No case has yet emerged of a school exercising its alleged right to ask for a password.)
Three years ago, however, 12-year-old Riley Stratton sued her Minnesota schools district after she claimed she'd been coerced into revealing her Facebook password. Last year, the case was settledIllinois law allows schools to demand students' Facebook passwords - CNET:
Florida House approves controversial bill to divert district funds to charter schools | Tampa Bay Times
Florida House approves controversial bill to divert district funds to charter schools | Tampa Bay Times:
Florida House approves controversial bill to divert district funds to charter schools
TALLAHASSEE — Without a word of debate Friday, the Florida House approved a controversial proposal that could require school districts to share tens of millions of dollars in construction funds with rival charter schools.
The bill was one of four high-profile education proposals that won the support of the Republican-dominated House to end the week. The others would:
•Ease the penalties for schools that fail to comply with the constitutionally mandated limits on class size.
•Create a pilot program to give principals more control over hiring and budget decisions.
•Encourage school districts to adopt mandatory school uniform policies for children in grades K-8 by offering incentive money.
All of the Democrats in attendance voted against the charter school bill, HB 7037. But none debated the measure on the floor.
Democratic leader Mark Pafford of West Palm Beach said the 75-35 vote spoke for itself.
"I think that sends a pretty clear message that there's a major problem with the bill," Pafford said. "It directs dollars away from public schools."
The proposal would create the Florida Institute for Charter School Innovation to help new charter schools. It would also make it easier for top-performing charter schools to replicate themselves in high-need areas and specify that charter schools receiving back-to-back Fs would be automatically closed.
The bill found little opposition at first — until House Education Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Erik Fresen, R-Miami, added the contentious provision about construction funding.
Charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately managed, have long sought a stable revenue stream for construction and maintenance. Unlike traditional public schools, they cannot levy property taxes for that purpose. But school districts oppose sharing their tax dollars because most of the money is earmarked for debt service. What's more, they point out that many charter schools are housed in privately owned facilities that do not revert to the public if the school closes.
The bill that passed Friday would ensure charter schools receive about 40 percent of the amount traditional public schools can raise for construction and maintenance, Fresen said.
If the state does not provide enough money in the budget, as it has done in recent years, the school districts would have to make up the difference with their tax revenue.
That Fresen sponsored the amendment was controversial. His firm has helped build several charter schools, and his brother-in-law runs Academica, the state's largest charter school management company.
Fresen said he did not consider the amendment to be a conflict of interest because it would not increase funding for charter schools.
"There's already money for capital outlay," he told the Times/Herald. "All this does is create a predictable framework for this capital outlay money to be expended."
Democrats also raised problems with the measure itself. Several voiced their concerns during a caucus meeting earlier Friday.
"The deal with charter schools was supposed to be that they operate on a shoestring budget," said state Rep. Richard Stark, D-Weston. "They didn't need the capital outlay funding."
Still, the proposal won over all but one member of the Republican caucus, which strongly supports school Florida House approves controversial bill to divert district funds to charter schools | Tampa Bay Times:
Teacher Talks Truth - Badass Teachers Association
Badass Teachers Association:
Teacher Talks Truth
By: Kathleen Jeskey
Originally posted on her blog http://www.teachertalkstruth.com/
This is my first blog post and kind of the reason I decided to create my own blog: to keep people updated on what is going on with my request, as a teacher, to be allowed to opt out of administering the flawed Smarter Balanced Assessment. Last month, my local association stood before our school board to say that as a group, we are opposed to the Smarter Balanced Assessment. I spoke at that meeting and stated that I object to administering it and asked to be excused from administering based on my professional and personal objections.
On March 9th, I had not yet heard a response to my request and sent this email to the school board, our superintendent, and my principal.
“As you all know, at the February 19 school board meeting I declared my strong objections to the Smarter Balanced Assessment and asked to be excused from administering the assessment based on those objections. The statement I made to the school board is attached.
I have objected to this system of test and punish since it's original implementation in 2001 with NCLB. I knew at that time that a requirement of 100% proficiency by 2014 would result in exactly what has happened in Washington state, where their legislature turned down the Race to the Top waiver and they remain under NCLB: 100% of schools are in "failing" status. There is virtually no goal or standard that can be set, including breathing without assistance, that every child in the nation can meet on the same day at the same time.
I attended a presentation by ODE and saw how their representatives are misleading parents about the SBAC. It made me sick and angry. I feel horrible about trying to put a smiley face on this for parents, and most of all for my students. I know that some of them will be okay. I know that most of them will be frustrated and feel stupid. Even in the best case scenario described by ODE, only 30% will do well. In the case of my students, I feel that will be much lower. ELL students who have taken similar Common Core tests in English around the country have passed at a rate of 3% to 4%, and this is taking away an entire week of instruction that those students would benefit from. If we consider that Migrant Summer School is only 3 weeks long, that puts the significance of that week in stark perspective.
I have not yet received an answer as to whether I will be excused from administering SBAC based on my strong philosophical objections. When I stated in my original letter that this was weighing heavily on my conscience, I was very serious. It keeps me up at night sometimes.
I am scheduled to administer on April 6th through 10th. I would truly appreciate an answer to my question about whether I will be required to administer or not. I would also like to know, if I were to refuse to do so, what the consequences would be for me. I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm just trying Badass Teachers Association:
Special Nite Cap - Catch Up on Today's Post 3/28/15
Special Nite Cap
#DUMPRAHM
Señor Chuy Garcia race not just about Chicago #VoteChuyGarcia #fox32debate #IMWITHCHUY | Cloaking Inequity
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Man sentenced to life in prison for killing Indian engineer
Adam Purinton pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the shooting of Srinivas Kuchibhotla.
In Kansas, the racist sack of shit who opened fire last year in a suburban Kansas City bar, killing an Indian engineer, was sentenced Friday to life in prison. 52-year-old Adam Purinton pleaded guilty to the charge of premeditated first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of Srinivas Kuchibhotla.
Life in prison for murder of Indian engineer at bar; feds' hate crime case pending
Witnesses said Purinton, who is white, yelled racial slurs at Kuchibhotla and his friend, Alok Madasani, who were enjoying an after-work drink at Austin's Bar and Grill in Olathe. He was asked to leave but eventually returned and yelled "Get out of my country!" before firing at the men, killing Kuchibhotla and wounding Madasani. A third man, Ian Grillot, was wounded when he tried to intervene.
Purinton was apprehended several hours later at an Applebee's restaurant in Missouri, where a bartender called 911 after he reportedly admitted that he'd shot and killed "two Iranian people in Olathe."
Kuchibhotla and Madasani immigrated to the U.S. as students and were working as engineers at GPS-maker Garmin at the time of the shooting. According to court documents, Madasani told detectives that the Purinton asked the men if their "status was legal" before pulling the trigger of his 9mm semi-automatic handgun.
In addition to the murder charge, Purinton pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted first-degree murder for shooting Madasani and Grillot.
Under terms of a plea agreement, Purinton was sentenced to the maximum sentence on each of the three charges, and ordered to run them consecutively. Purinton was given two sentences of about 14 years for wounding the two men and wouldn't be eligible for parole for 77.5 years. He will likely die in prison.
Rot, asshole.
Purinton still faces federal hate crime charges for the shooting and is scheduled to enter a plea on May 21.
None of the victims or their family members attended Friday's sentencing, but the district attorney read a statement by Kuchibhotla's widow, Sunayana Dumala, directed to Purinton. She shared about how she met her husband, their dreams for their life together, and how hate had shattered her family's future.
"He was only enjoying a glass of beer with his friend," Dumala's statement read. "I wish you had the ability to see beyond my husband's skin color and the beautiful and kindhearted person underneath it."
"My Srinu had never hurt anyone and only had love and respect for others, but he had to lose his life because of your hate. It is because of only those values that he had instilled in me that I am able to write this. I hope in the years that you must spend in the jail you will one day realize the magnitude of your mistake and work towards your penance."
More here: Statement from Sunayana Dumala, widow of shooting victim Srinivas Kuchibhotla
FILE UNDER: crime, get out of my country, hate crime, kansas, murder, shooting
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Posted January 3, 2015 by Content Team - iimjobs.com1 Comment on “Our strategy is to market great content and recognize the users”, says Amit Ranjan, Co-founder & Director of Operations, Slideshare Boss Series
“Our strategy is to market great content and recognize the users”, says Amit Ranjan, Co-founder & Director of Operations, Slideshare
In conversation with Amit Ranjan, Co-founder & Director of Operations, SlideShare (a LinkedIn company)
How and when did you feel the need to start SlideShare? Was it based on a personal experience or did you simply see it as an existing gap in the market?
A casual conversation with my sister made us both realize that we wanted to do something of our own. We did not come from a background of business, had no idea how to run a company, but still decided to go ahead and ditch our jobs.
We built another product before SlideShare, it was an online research application called MindCanvas that had a narrow focus on design, user experience and usability. We launched it in 2006, and since its launch it started doing very well. But, what we realized was that this product was suited to the B2B consulting space and thus would scale with people and not technology. And that was something we did not want. So we started looking for other options.
Around the same time, we were instrumental in organizing the first Bar Camp at the Adobe office in Noida. A Bar Camp is like an antithesis of a conference where attendees interested in a particular topic come together and put up a show. This idea is very popular in the Silicon Valley and we were the first ones to organize this in India. We realized that our real interest lay in something which was more B-C than B-B so that’s when we started thinking of another product- and the SlideShare idea was born.
As the Bar Camp organizers we found ourselves sandwiched between two groups – presenters and attendees. We also made two very revealing observations.
The presenters wanted to share the presentations and
The attendees wanted to have access to these presentations.
So, pen drives were being exchanged and emails with attachments were flying across the Bar Camp. At the same time, there were a bunch of guys who had taken photos and videos of the presentations to put it up on YouTube and Flickr using the tag BarCampDelhi (these sites were quite popular at that time).
When we combined these two observations, we had a very key insight- There was no platform to share presentations as opposed to videos and photos. So, we started looking around if there was an online tool available to share presentations. Found that nothing existed, so that was the starting point for SlideShare.
We took out some engineers from our existing product (Mind Canvass) to build a prototype. Subsequently, we worked on this prototype and SlideShare was launched. It picked up big time, and was growing very fast. We saw that this as a much bigger opportunity and with a heavy heart, quite reluctantly, we shut down the other product. The entire team was moved from Mind Canvass to SlideShare- so there was a team in Delhi and two other founders in the US.
Rashmi Sinha & Jonathan Boutelle- Other two co-founders of SlideShare
There were some revenues from the other product which were put in SlideShare and in hindsight; I feel that this was the best thing which could have happened.
Could you give us a business overview in terms of the service, product, revenue and performance?
Yes definitely, I can share the broad picture with you. In 2012, at the time of our acquisition by LinkedIn, we were profitable as a company and had three lines of businesses– Advertising, Subscription- SlideShare pro, and Enterprise usage of SlideShare (for big companies).
We spent a lot of time, effort and resources building the advertising model in 2009, but after 2-3 years, found that it was successful only to a certain stage and could not be the only business model for SlideShare. This insight was based on the fact that ads are driven by page views and in case of sites like SlideShare & YouTube, a person would still be on the same URL irrespective of the amount of time he/she spends on the page, and therefore the page views don’t change. That’s when we looked at other options such as pro subscription businesses.
So at the time of the acquisition by LinkedIn, I would say that the advertising contribution was coming down, and subscription contribution was going up. Immediately after the acquisition, there was an increased focus on product growth and engagement rather than monetization. Now going forward, there is going to be far more focus on monetization.
How different is SlideShare’s model from others in the same segment?
Personally as an entrepreneur I feel that the most rewarding as well as challenging thing about SlideShare is the fact that we created this industry. When you are the first one in the industry and have created it, then in many ways the industry is you. The role of growing that industry and figuring out various aspects such as- how do you define this industry, what are the contours of this industry, what are the drivers etc. becomes your job.
So you have two jobs- one is to build the product and the other is figuring out an answer to these questions. This is very challenging. We were far more in control of SlideShare as a product, its growth and its usage, than in defining the second part.
There are other sites which have done similar stuff; Scribd is something we used to benchmark ourselves against. Then in 2010, we realized that there was a need to expand the user base of SlideShare, because if we just confined ourselves to presentations, we could only grow when the industry grew. So we started exploring other areas such as PDFs, Documents, Audio and Video. These were just experiments but eventually led to a great discovery and insight. We found that there are larger profits for businesses to do content marketing (fourth pillar of marketing). Incidentally by 2012, content marketing had evolved and that’s when we could figure out the real business model of SlideShare. By this time people had also realized that SlideShare was big.
In 2013, we introduced Infographics, which became very popular. Now, I feel that we have the entire arsenal that a content marketing group requires. We have different tools, formats, a hundred million unique users across desktop and mobile. And we still haven’t tapped the LinkedIn audience. So the plan for 2015 is to explore that market and see where it goes.
What is the best marketing move that you’ve initiated which sets you apart from your competitors?
Unlike YouTube, we are a static format, and a lot of people hate presentations. While explaining my decision to quit my corporate career to my wife, I said, “I can’t be making presentation for the rest of my life”, and like fate would have it, I started SlideShare two years later.
I do a lot of content work, so I have seen a lot of presentations in my life. PPTs are not perceived as a happy model- it’s perceived as very technical, and something that puts people to sleep. Average users don’t say positive things about PPTs. So ideally, I would have built a community around this product but since people are not very enthused about it, we first had to answer some very existential questions.
We launched and got a lot of traction. Our initial users – business users, teachers etc. uploaded their PPTs on SlideShare, and after a year of our launch, we noticed a particular kind of content that was gaining popularity- there were more views, more shares. We noticed that most of this content was well designed, was more visual, and was made by designers or ad agencies. This content was something on the lines of Infographics.
To demonstrate how good PPTs are made, we uploaded these PPTs on our webpage for others to see. People realized that PPT doesn’t have to be boring. We also used to send emails to these uploaders with the message- ‘We uploaded your PPT for millions of people to see, why don’t you share it amongst your network and blog about it’.
This was our marketing strategy- ‘Market great content and recognize these users’. Post this; there were 1000s of writers who wrote about how to get featured on the home page. Now there was only one fundamental question that needed to be addressed- how to get people excited about the product. We realized that it was much easier to communicate via visuals than text and hence were able to successfully ride that wave. We got Guy Kawaski as an advisor. In 2007, we ran a PPT competition (A yearly contest to reward the World’s best presentation, it’s like a PPT Oscar with audience voting and a well-known jury). The winners of this competition were given an opportunity to upload their PPTs onto our website.
What are some of the future trends in this sector that India should look out for?
We have realized that creating content on internet is very tough- it takes a lot of time and effort, and for sites like ours, content is the oxygen. Websites like Twitter and Instagram have done something powerful- they have introduced a shorter version of content creation. By enforcing constraints in the system- you drive the system in a certain way and both these websites have striked at the heart of content creation- they inspire us.
Another trend is mobile as a consumption device-the nature of consumption is changing as people are on the move all the time. The mobile transaction is fragmented and scattered. Now companies have to understand how consumption, distribution and engagement platforms are changing.
What has been your single biggest challenge in sourcing and retaining talent?
Talent anywhere and everywhere is the biggest challenge. Startup CEOs are glorified recruiters. The key thing one realizes is that you need good smart people- and when you are a small company getting these good people is difficult as they would much rather for the big giants than you. We started in 2004 when people didn’t know the word start up, when we were the only ones using Ruby on Rails in India, so we didn’t have many experienced people in our team.
Startups should be problem solvers- if there is a sticky situation, they need to come up with an innovative way of solving it. In our case, all the three founders used to write blogs and were popular amongst our respective fields. I feel that we were sharing our expertise and experiences honestly through the blogs. So the smart people reading our blog joined us, even though they had many options. This was because they saw honesty and sincerity. So most of our earlier employees who made SlideShare what it is now, were our blog readers. Our ethos has always been to be- as open as possible and share our experiences and content.
Later we picked up from there- we relied on three-four different channels of recruitment such as, internal referrals, job boards, requests received through SlideShare. My advice would be to not rely on one channel, but to explore different channels. All this helps in forming a heterogeneous group as opposed to a very homogeneous one.
What would be your piece of advice for new players entering this space in India?
With regard to the Consumer internet products- the best applications are built at the confluence of engineering, design and product management. These three skills come together and have to be present in the founders, so unless you crack these, it won’t be easy for you to build a good model.
Tell us more about your personal journey. How was your life prior to founding SlideShare? Did you always want to be an entrepreneur?
Honestly speaking, I am an accidental entrepreneur as this was something that happened by chance. But I also think that once it happened, it was the best thing to have happened to me. One of the lessons I learnt is to go with my gut instinct. I spent more than 10 years thinking and working towards something, but I made the greatest impact on people- when I didn’t plan. One should always be willing to be experimental, to go with the flow. This is not something which we have been taught since childhood, but it helps make a bigger impact. I have made a bigger impact this way. On a personal level- my biggest takeaway has been a shift in the mindset- startups are all about managing risk and ambiguity.
content, customer, customer care, development, employer branding, iimjobs.com, marketing, operations, presentation, retention, slideshare, Strategy, users, workforce, workplace
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“Orlando” is a must-see!
Posted by: Daniella Snyder
As a graduate assistant in Falvey, I’ve had the ability to see every theatrical production on Villanova Theatre’s stage for the last year. And in the past year, I’ve traveled from a southern church basement to a neighbor’s living room, to a Budapest “parfumerie.” I’ve journeyed the 1800’s and I’ve remained in present day. I’ve seen magic tricks and optical illusions. I’ve even seen a moving stage.
But Orlando?
Orlando took me everywhere, over the course of 300 years, in one single production.
Photo courtesy of Kimberly Reilly.
Using Woolf’s 1928 novel as inspiration for a modern look at identity, gender and desire, playwright Sarah Ruhl explores the multitude of possibilities contained within every human being. This timely, textured play examines the ways in which gender and identity have been rediscovered, challenged and transformed over the last decade. Thus, Orlando travels time as he changes genders, accompanied by a gender-bending cast who travels time alongside him.
Given this information, director James Ijames and the cast of Orlando did not have an easy show to put together. Ijames says that playwright Sarah Ruhl “demands the impossible of the people working on her plays.”
Yet, Ijames, the cast, and crew made the impossible, possible. In fact, not only did they make it possible…they made it magical.
Set Designer Parris Bradley created an open playing area that gave the actors access to old furniture, strewn-about set pieces, and an assortment of objects one might naturally find in a theatre, which allowed the cast to travel time and periods smoothly. Props Designer Sharri Jerue helped make a world where sheets of paper are banquet tables and antique trunks become Russian ships. Costume Designer Janus Stefanowicz took these ideas even further by incorporating evocative, interchangeable costume pieces that cast members quickly attach and remove, often right before our very eyes.
Ultimately, Orlando was an absolutely engrossing, fast-paced, and laugh-out-loud funny show that I could watch a second (and probably a third) time.
Don’t miss out: buy your Orlando tickets here.
Ever since Daniella Snyder, Graduate Assistant in the Communication & Marketing Department in Falvey Library, took a Virginia Woolf graduate seminar in the English department, her family and friends won’t stop buying her Virginia Woolf-themed gifts. She currently has a deck of Woolf-themed playing cards, a magnet, and even a candle.
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> Fiction
> Adventure
> Westerns
The Hopalong Cassidy Novels 4-Book Bundle : The Rustlers of West Fork, The Trail to Seven Pines, The Riders of High Rock, Trouble Shooter EPUB
by Louis L'Amour
Part of the Hopalong Cassidy series
There might not be a more fitting union of author and protagonist than Louis L'Amour, America's favorite frontier storyteller, and Hopalong Cassidy, the iconic cowboy introduced more than a century ago. Originally written under the pseudonym Tex Burns, The Rustlers of West Fork, The Trail to Seven Pines, The Riders of High Rock, and Trouble Shooter were L'Amour's first published novels, but they showcase the spirit of adventure and wonderful knack for character that would become his signature. Now these four classics are together for the first time in this thrilling eBook bundle.
THE RUSTLERS OF WEST FORK
When Hopalong Cassidy arrives at the Circle J to deliver a fortune in bank notes to rancher Dick Jordan, he discovers that a foolhardy band of outlaws has taken Dick prisoner, along with his daughter, Pam. Even if Hopalong can free them, he will have to lead the hostages across rough and untamed Apache country, stalked by the outlaws who have vowed to take him out. But Hopalong is no stranger to trouble, and before his gunsor his tempercool, he's determined to bring this gang to justice . . . dead or alive.
THE TRAIL TO SEVEN PINES
Outside the lawless town of Seven Pines, Hopalong comes across two menone dead, one badly wounded. He returns with help, but the survivor has been shot through the temple. Who would do such a thing? To find out, Hopalong hires on at the Rocking R Ranch, where more than a thousand cattle have been run off by crooks who also have their eyes on the monthly stagecoach shipments of gold. To save the Rocking R, Cassidy needs men he can trustbecause he's the target of a ruthless gunslinger in a fight for frontier justice.
THE RIDERS OF HIGH ROCK
In the cattle country just east of the California line, Hopalong discovers an old friend, Red Connors, holed up in a mountain cave with a bullet in his side and a story to tell. The local ranchers had been losing their stock to a savage killer named Jack Bolt, and when Red caught the rustlers in the act, they hunted him down, shot him, and left him for dead. Now Bolt's coming after the one man who stands in his way: Hopalong Cassidy. But he's about to learn the hard way that if you shoot down a man like Cassidy, you'd better make sure he never gets up again.
TROUBLE SHOOTER
A desperate call for help sends Hopalong to the aid of a fellow cowpoke. But by the time he arrives, Pete Melford has been murdered. In search of Pete's killer, Hopalong signs on at the sprawling Box T ranch and confronts a mystery as dangerous as it is haunting. The owner of the Box T has built his empire with shrewd determination, but behind his success lies a bloody trail leading to the strange and forbidding Babylon Mesa, a fortune in gold, and a showdown with a desperado who isn't afraid to cheat death.
Pages: 1024 pages
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Category: Westerns
Also by Louis L'Amour | View all
Louis L'Amour's Lost Treasures: Volume 2
Conagher
The Sky-Liners and Galloway (2-Book...
Also in the Hopalong Cassidy series | View all
Rustlers of West Fork
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← Paralysis by analysis
Bless your heart, AL.com →
July 3, 2018 · 11:00 AM
54-48, beyotch.
Lincoln Riley, your first mistake was going on Danny Kanell’s radio show. (h/t)
From OU head coach Lincoln Riley just now on @ESPNUonSiriusXM talking with me and @TaylorZarzour about how difficult it is to play defense in the Big 12:
"If you throw Georgia in the Big 12 every year there is no way they are a Top 5 defense in the country"
— Danny Kanell (@dannykanell) July 3, 2018
Your second mistake is thinking this matters. Enjoy those sour grapes, man.
🕵🏾♂️🕵🏾♂️🕵🏾♂️ whaaaaa https://t.co/o6CGDdTJHy
— Richard LeCounte III (@LilEasy_35) July 3, 2018
UPDATE #2: tfw you’re getting blowback.
That’s not a shot at Georgia….they were absolutely one of the best defenses last year…it’s a compliment to our league-
— Lincoln Riley (@LincolnRiley) July 3, 2018
UPDATE #3: This gets buttah and buttah.
Looking at last five years among Power 5 teams only, there are six @SEC teams in top 15 in highest percentage of big plays run and there are two @Big12Conference teams in top 15. Love the Big 12 offenses but any narrative that SEC doesn't have explosive offenses is just not true.
— SportSourceAnalytics (@SportSourceA) July 3, 2018
The reason this is a hot mess is because (1) Riley spoke imprecisely and (2) Kanell is an SEC troll.
32 responses to “54-48, beyotch.”
He sounds like Big Game Bob already.
If we give him that, where would UGA’s rushing offense rank?
If you wanted to look up the boxscore:
CAR YDS AVG TD LONG
Sony Michel 11 181 16.5 3 75
Nick Chubb 14 145 10.4 2 50
Take out a 75 yard run by Sony and he still averaged over 10 yards per carry.
Well, if you ask me, if Georgia with Kirby was in the Big 12, one team would be playing defense because they would figure out a way to do so instead of just assuming it wouldn’t happen.
Argondawg
I love bulletin board material in the off season.
There’s also no way we lose a conference game for several years, unless our RBs just get tired from scoring on 60 plus yard runs.
Let’s see how OU fares after a season in the SEC before they get too cocky. Several weeks of getting beaten up by SEC defenses might humble Linc a tad
I am sure it is hard to play D in the B12.
Just not as hard as it is against Georgia
This aggression will not stand!!
I bet Kanell wet his pants when Riley joined his one note SEC trashing meme.
“IF” can’t boldface in text. Also Lincoln, if you keep calling wide runs and jet sweeps when off tackle and straight ahead is working Big 12 defenses will improve.
Cpark58
I’ll say it again, you name me another team in the country that can come back and win in OT in the rose bowl vs the #1 offensive in the country and then fly across country and square up with the #1 defensive team and force them out of their comfort zone 7 days later.
Sorry – what did you say? I got distracted – I think Sony Michel just scored again
Can’t wait to see Riley without that jerk of a heisman winner making him look good
Got Cowdog
Fuck him.
ben bragg
Auburn##
A10Woody
Lincoln is right, but who cares….we don’t need fake juice.
The Quincy Carter of Accountants
If UGA was in the Big 12 it would still only have 11 members.
Let’s not forget, once Kirby made adjustments at halftime, Oklahoma scored one offensive touchdown the rest of the way.
And yet you couldn’t beat that defense with the #1 offense in the nation.
I would send Danny some Lincoln logs to play with but he appears to have found one on his own.
I think this is a good case for Oklahoma fans to say that they played the second half without a HC. Because he obviously didn’t see GA’s defense adjust to Oklahoma’s offense.
Who is Lincoln Riley?
Actually #1….Kanell is a dick.
And #3… LilEasy is a dgd!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Update: What is Stoops’ and Riley’s record in playoff games and BCS Bowls?
Texas Dawg
Ok, conversely can you imagine what Georgia’s rushing offense would look like in a Big 12 that has trouble even spelling defense. If UGA played Kansas, Texas Tech, etc on a weekly basis the 4th and 5th string backs would have 1000 yard seasons. What if Oklahoma had to play in the SEC where stout defense is pretty much a given? Don’t you think those gaudy numbers would take a huge hit?
In terms of raw totals, I do think the Big 12 apologists have a point about the style of offenses driving the numbers to some extent. The problem is that the advanced metrics that take that kind of thing into account also rate the Big 12 defenses (with a couple of exceptions) poorly.
Our Dawgs came back against TCU in a bowl game last year. Dawgs 2-0 over Little 12 in last two years…….
C’mon man!!!
Danny… Lincoln,
What would happen to Georgia’s offensive numbers if they played in the Big XII? I’ll hang up and listen.
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Home » Manuscripts » BL, Harley 4751
Category Archives: BL, Harley 4751
September 29, 2019 6:54 pm / 1 Comment on Pigs and Bagpipes: Geoffrey Chaucer’s Miller in Context
Geoffrey Chaucer drew on various medieval traditions surrounding pigs to characterise one of his most memorable characters in the Canterbury Tales: Robin the Miller.
A boarish fellow
In his Canterbury Tales (1387-1400), Geoffrey Chaucer brings to life a great variety of characters who set out on a pilgrimage to Canterbury. To pass the time, the pilgrims tell each other stories and, along the way, the audience learns about the pilgrims’ appearance, their behaviour and how they react to each other’s tales. Perhaps one of Chaucer’s most memorable characters is Robin the Miller, depicted here in the early-fifteenth-century Ellesmere manuscript:
Robin the Miller in the Ellesmere Manuscript (Huntington Library, EL 26 C 9; source)
Chaucer’s Miller behaves like a pig and his demeanour towards his fellow pilgrims is nothing short of boarish: he drunkenly interrupts the Knight and the Host and angers the Reeve by telling a bawdy tale about how a carpenter was tricked by a student (the Reeve used to be a carpenter). The Miller’s interests are also ungentlemanlike: Chaucer reveals in his General Prologue that Robin the Miller is “a janglere and a goliardeys, And that was moost of synne and harlotries” [a buffoon and teller of dirty stories, mostly about sin and deeds of harlotry] (General Prologue, ll. 560-561). Indeed, the Miller’s Tale is all about sex and obscenities. One of the Tale’s highlights is the moment a parish clerk accidentally kisses a woman’s arse (incidentally, the woman’s response, “Tehee!”, is the first recorded instance of the interjection “Teehee!” in the English language). The clerk, disgusted and out for revenge, pretends to return for another kiss and, after being farted in the face, shoves a redhot poker up the offending orifice. Robin the Miller certainly has a wicked sense of humour and a mind like a sow: full of dirty thoughts.
A sow in body and mind
Copulating boars in Le livre de chasse (1407; source) and a sow in London, British Library, Harley 4751, fol 20r (England, 13th century).
‘A mind like a sow’? Let me explain by first pointing out that the Miller, in his appearance, also resembles a female pig. The Miller is a stout fellow, full of brawn, who likes wrestling and has a big mouth; more importantly, the Miller’s red hair is explicitly linked to the sow:
His berd as any sowe or fox was reed,
And therto brood, as though it were a spade.
Upon the cop right of his nose he hade
A werte, and theron stood a toft of herys,
Reed as the brustles of a sowes erys (General Prologue, ll. 552-556)
[His beard was as red as any sow or fox, and also broad, as if it were a spade. On the top of his nose he had a wart, and thereupon stood a tuft of hairs, as red as the bristles of a sow’s ears.]
These two references to the sow are no coincidence. In the Canterbury Tales, animal imagery is often used to highlight certain aspects a character shares with these animals. The female pig is a good ‘spirit animal’ for the Miller since, according to medieval bestiaries, the sow represents dirty-minded, unclean people. The entry for ‘sow’ in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 764, for instance, explains:
The pig (porcus) is a filthy beast (spurcus): it sucks up filth, wallows in mud, and smears itself with slime. …Sows signify sinners, the unclean and heretics … Sows are unclean and gluttonous men … The pig is also the man who is unclean of spirit. … The sow thinks on carnal things; from her thoughts wicked or wasteful deeds result … (trans. Barber 1992, pp. 85-87)
Clearly, Chaucer’s red-haired Miller, rejoicing in sin and telling dirty stories, is like a sow in both body and mind.
A porky piper
One more intriguing detail links Chaucer’s Miller to a sow: “A baggepipe wel koude he blowe and sowne, / And therwithal he broghte us out of towne” [he well knew how to blow and play the bagpipes and with that he brought us out of the town] (General Prologue, ll. 565-566). Chaucer’s Miller shares his ability to play the bagpipes with various pigs that make their appearance in late medieval art. Porky pipers may be found on wooden misericords…
15th-century misericords in Ripon cathedral and Manchester cathedral (photos by author)
… hanging from the roof of Melrose Abbey …
Pig playing bagpipes on the roof of Melrose Abbey (15th century?)
… pilgrim badges …
Pilgrim badge (1375-1450) of a boar playing the bagpipes (clearly not a sow!). (source)
… and in medieval manuscripts:
Doodles in London, British Library, Sloane 748, fol. 82v (England, 1487)
Exactly what connects the bagpipes to the sow is uncertain: the form of the instrument (a bag with a pipe) might be interpreted as phallic in nature and the bagpipe, like the sow, was associated with sexual sin in the Middle Ages; it was an “impious instrument with sexual connotations” (see Planer 1988, 343). Alternatively, there may be a link between the sound of a screaming pig and the bagpipes (both unpleasant sounds?). Whatever the connection between pigs and bagpipes, we may assume that Chaucer and his audience were familiar with this artistic tradition since most depictions of these porky pipers stem from fourteenth- and fifteen-century England. What better instrument for the boarish Miller, with the body and mind of a sow, than the bagpipes?
Chaucer’s Miller truly is a pig, in more ways than one.
Planer, John H. 1988. “Damned Music: The Symbolism of the Bagpipes in the Art of Hieronymus Bosch and His Followers.” In Music from the Middle Ages Through the Twentieth Century: Essays in Honor of Gwynn S. McPeek, ed. C.P. Comberiati & M.C. Steel (New York), 335-356.
Barber, Richard. 1992. Bestiary: Being an English Version of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Bodley 764 (Woodbridge)
*This is a slightly adapted version of a blog post that was published earlier on the Leiden Medievalists Blog*
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Home » News » Brunswick establishes new aluminum boat group
Brunswick establishes new aluminum boat group
Brunswick Corporation (NYSE: BC) announced the formation of the Aluminum Boat Group (ABG), a further step in its systematic plan to fully leverage the scale of its boat business to drive operational excellence, create market-leading products and deliver continued operating margin improvement. ABG will be comprised of seven of Brunswick’s boat brands – Lund, Harris, Lowe, Crestliner, Princecraft, Cypress Cay and Thunder Jet. ABG Commercial operations will be based in Brunswick’s Mettawa, Ill. headquarters location.
“2019 is a transformative year for Brunswick, as we continue to sharpen our focus and vision solely on the global marine industry. The formation of the ABG is the latest in a series of important structural measures we have taken to improve the efficiency and performance of our overall boat portfolio, while strengthening each of these leading brands,” Brunswick’s Chief Executive Officer David Foulkes explained.
“The ABG will enhance brand performance through focused commercial teams, led by dedicated brand leaders who will be responsible for market facing activities. They will be supported by a group-wide operating organization with industry-leading functional capabilities leveraging our size and scale, and centers of excellence for pontoon and aluminum boat design and technology” Foulkes continued. “This will result in stronger brands, better customer service, enhanced quality, and improved profitability. Of course, all of these brands will also continue to benefit from Mercury’s market-leading propulsion systems and technologies.”
The formation of the ABG follows closely from the recent establishment of the Venture Group. This new organization within the Brunswick Boat Group is comprised of the Bayliner, Heyday, Quicksilver and Uttern fiberglass brands.
Over the past several months, Brunswick has implemented a comprehensive set of actions aimed at solidifying and advancing its position within the global boat market. These included: exiting the sport yacht and yacht segment (SYY) in June 2018; the creation of the Brunswick Boat Group Technology Center; and the establishment of the Integrated Manufacturing Center which expands production capacity and flexibility for high-running models and is facilitating increased insourcing and vertical integration.
“We are confident that these actions across our Boat portfolio, along with the recent appointment of strong and experienced Boat Group leaders in Finance and Marketing will further enhance our market position and business performance,” Foulkes concluded.
Aluminum Boat Group Brunswick Brunswick Corp. Brunswick Corporation 2019-09-05
Praying this Vertical Integration to conserve resources common to Mfg does not result in Chevrolet-Buick-Pontiac-Oldsmobile-Cadillac-GMC-Saturn,outcomes nor Bayliner/Maxim/Searay/Meridian/Trophy outcomes nor Spectrum-Monark-Fisher-Tracker Outcomes. Competition between brands difficult to retain when too much people & processes become commonality. But Independents will be able to chip away at Niches that commonality can leave unattended.
CARL WOLAVER
Vertical integration across many brands works best for specific departments such as accounting, HR, QC, manufacturing and purchasing to some level. It has fallen short when applied to areas of sales, marketing and distribution. The top names in the motor home and lawn and garden tractor industries are examples of where this approach has been successful.
Hope it works, Need to maintain or increase Dealer profit viability of product through right sales/marketing approach or competition couldl take overall share away in long term.
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Komodo Dragon Skull
SC-027 Group Product Info
Professors / Educators: If you would like to build a list to send to your procurement department, or to us at info@boneclones.com, use the "Add to Wishlist" button on the right. Once you've finished adding items, go to your wishlist, and use the button in the upper-right to email it.
BC-027 $255.00
Komodo dragons are the heaviest and longest of the world's lizards growing to a length of 10 feet and weighing upwards of 300 pounds. Their skulls are very similar to the extinct aquatic reptiles known as mosasaurs. Mosasaurs and monitor lizards are not closely related but belong to the subclass Diapsida with origins about 300 m.y.a. during the late Carboniferous Period. Monitor lizards are related to Lepidosauria, which emerged near the end of the Paleozoic 250 m.y.a. The genus Varanus first appeared 40 m.y.a in Asia. They migrated to Australia when it collided with Southeast Asia about 15 m.y.a. A second lineage evolved and moved throughout Australia and the Indonesian archipelago approximately 12 m.y.a. This lineage retains a prominent presence today. The Komodo dragon differentiated from its earliest Australian ancestors about 4 m.y.a.. They were able to migrate to their present range on the Indonesian islands of Flores, Rinca and Gila Motang and finally to Komodo Island about 10,000 to 20,000 years ago, when sea levels were lower during the last ice age. 2-part skull (separate cranium & jaw).
Licensed to Bone Clones by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, a portion of the sales goes to further their work.
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Varanus komodoensis BC-027 8 ¾" L x 4 ½" W x 3 ¼" H 22.3L x 11.3W X 8.2H (cm) $255.00
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S-81 ID: 10 ½" L x 7 ½" W x 8 ½" D $32.00
The Premium Carrying Case for Human Skull is a durable storage and carrying case for human and fossil hominid skulls, as well as small, disarticulated bones and many other animal skulls. This case is both attractive and resilient. It is constructed of sturdy plywood, lined with foam, and covered with tough vinyl. Chrome hardware on each corner provides first-rate reinforcement and metal buckle clasps and lock assures closure and security.
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S-91 ID: 9 ½" L x 8" W x 6 ½" D; OD: 11" L x 9 ¾" W x 8" D $105.00
Bone Clones® bag for skulls and skeletal parts, useful for carrying and storing any number of Bone Clones® products. Its roomy 12" x 18" size makes it suitable for most human, hominid, and primate skulls, as well as many other medium-sized Bone Clones®. You can even use it for transporting your natural bone skulls. The soft grey flannel offers gentle protection and the sturdy braided cord provides a secure closure. If you're unsure whether a certain product will fit, feel free to contact us to check.
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Articulated Komodo Dragon Skeleton
Komodo Dragon Claw
Gila Monster Skull
Tuatara Skull
Thoosuchus Skull
Sarcosuchus imperator Supercroc Skull
Mosasaur Platecarpus planifrons Skull
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Pope mistakenly Tweets support for U.S. 'Saints' football team
Oct 13, 2019; Jacksonville, FL, USA; New Orleans Saints running back Latavius Murray (28) runs the ball against the Jacksonville Jaguars during the second half at TIAA Bank Field. Mandatory Credit: Reinhold Matay-USA TODAY Sports - 13511311
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Some saints wear halos, other saints wear helmets.
The Vatican employees who manage Pope Francis’ official Twitter account in English confused the two on Sunday when Tweeting about five new saints he canonised in St. Peter’s Square..
“Today we give thanks to the Lord for our new #Saints. They walked by faith and now we invoke their intercession,” the Tweet read.
The hashtag #Saints used by the Vatican on the pope’s English account, however, had the Fleur-de-lis after it, which is the one used by an American football team, the New Orleans Saints.
The New Orleans Saints have 1.5 million Twitter followers and Pope Francis has about 1.8 million on his English account alone.
So the Tweet went viral as thousands of U.S. football fans reacted, with many New Orleans Saints fans jokingly giving thanks for the perceived blessing.
“Praise the Lord and pass the football,” one said.
For the record, the Saints, those from New Orleans, beat the Jacksonville Jaguars 13-6 on Sunday.
Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Robert Birsel
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Univision and TED launch TED en Español podcast to bring ideas worth spreading to Spanish-speaking audiences
Posted by: TED Staff
April 9, 2018 at 6:12 pm EDT
NEW YORK – APRIL 5, 2018 – Univision Communications Inc. (UCI), the leading media company serving Hispanic America, and TED, the nonprofit devoted to ideas worth spreading, announced today they have joined forces to launch TED en Español, TED’s first non-English podcast. The TED en Español podcast will make Spanish-language TED Talks available to the world for free in audio form. The podcast launches April 26.
The podcast is hosted by Gerry Garbulsky, curator of TED’s broader initiative to reach Spanish-speaking audiences, also called TED en Español, and organizer of the largest TEDx event in the world, TEDxRíodelaPlata in Argentina. It will premiere at a TED en Español en NYC event in New York City on April 26, a salon-style speaker event.
“TED is passionate about spreading powerful ideas to relevant curious audiences worldwide — and today we have more options than ever to do so,” said Garbulsky. “The TED en Español podcast taps the explosive popularity of podcasts, and is a natural next step in our commitment to making ideas free and accessible to the world’s massive Spanish-speaking community. Our partnership with Univision will combine the strength of the company’s brand equity with TED’s efforts to produce and distribute the best ideas around the world, no matter where you are, no matter what language you speak.”
“Univision is enthusiastic about the collaboration with TED to better serve and empower our community by giving them access to the ideas that are shaping the world, en nuestra idioma, in our language,” said John Buergler, senior vice president, Growth Initiatives for UCI. “Our reach will help bring leading voices and important concepts to inspire and awaken one of the fastest-growing communities in the world.”
TED presented its first Spanish-language TED Talks at the TED2017 Conference in Vancouver, BC, with presentations by Jorge Ramos, former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and Oscar-winning composer Jorge Drexler, among others. The non-Spanish-speaking audience at the event was able to experience the talks via real-time translation.
The partnership with TED is part of UCI’s continued expansion into the digital audio space, and will allow it to build on its catalog of high-quality podcast offerings available on the Uforia On-Demand platform. Additionally, the TED en Español podcast will be available for free on Apple Podcasts, TuneIn, Stitcher, Radiopublic, iHeartRadio, or wherever listeners get their podcasts.
Visit corporate.univision.com for more information on UCI, and follow @UCIPRTeam on Twitter and Instagram.
audioLanguagepodcastTED en EspañolUnivision
TED en Español: TED2017’s first-ever Spanish-language speaker session
on Mar 9, 2017
Haz clic para leer este artículo en español > For the first time ever, the annual TED Conference in Vancouver will feature an entire session of Spanish-language TED Talks, a bit of programming we felt called for celebration: We’ll be making the live session available for free online at live.ted.com on Tuesday, April 25, from 2:15 pm to 4:00 pm PT. […]
Live from TEDGlobal 2017
Language heroes: Meet the TED Translators we invited to TEDGlobal 2017
By TED Guest Author
At TED, speakers aren’t the only celebrities; some of the biggest heroes sit in the audience. Case in point: Our volunteer TED Translators, who donate their free time to translate TED Talks into their local languages, making the talks accessible to millions of people every day. Ahead of TEDGlobal 2017 in Tanzania, we invited these […]
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Operation IceBridge
Measuring the Ice From a Bird’s Eye View!
by Kirsty Tinto |October 22, 2010
DC-8 plane outfitted for measuring the ice
Operation IceBridge Antarctica ramps up for a second year of ice surveys. Originating from Chile, a series of airborne missions will be flown almost daily from the airbase in Punta Arenas. Using a DC-8 jet airliner, the flights will run up to 11 hours each as they cross Drake’s Passage and the Southern Ocean to reach their destinations of monitoring Antarctic sea ice, the Antarctic peninsula and the western edges of the continent, before returning back to Chile each night. Flights will include some low altitude (~1,500 ft.) flights, and a few high altitude flights (~35,000 ft.). For this season we will re-fly some of last year’s lines as well as adding some new locations to the flight plans. One area to be resurveyed is an area of ongoing change – the Pine Island Glacier. This year the project design includes flying further back over the major trunk of the glacial ice stream in order to better understand the broader glacier dynamics. The sea ice flights are also of interest to the science community since Antarctic sea ice, unlike Arctic sea ice, is actually growing in extent. Developing a better understanding of why this might be occurring is extremely important to understanding the full Antarctic climate dynamics.
The instruments on the plane include laser to map and identify surface changes (Laser Vegetation Imaging Sensor [LVIS] & Airborne Topographic Mapper [ATM]), radar to penetrate through the snow/ice and image below providing information on the bedrock support and internal ice characteristics, and gravity to measure the size and shape of any ocean water filled cavities at the outlets of some of the main fast-moving glaciers. Before embarking on the actual mission, test flights must be flown to check each instrument. The five-hour test flights cruise over and around the Mojave desert, with different flight lines planned to test different instruments. To me the most exciting was a ‘pitch and roll’ over Lake Mead for the LVIS scanning instrument to collect surface topography data. The pitch is like putting the plane on a seesaw and tipping it forward and backward – which feels very impressive, and shows up in the vertical acceleration felt by the gravimeter and the butterflies in my stomach! The roll maneuver involves flipping the plane side to side (although not all the way over), and looks very impressive out the window! The instruments performed well so we move on to Chile.
The DC-8 carries 40 passengers and the seats are pretty big, so after a comfortable long-haul flight we spend Wednesday setting up the ground station – a hut where LVIS, ATM and gravity all have GPS antennae set up outside – and getting the gravimeter ready to measure. Our gravity team includes Jim Cochran, and me from Lamont and Kevin and Sean from the Sanders gravity group. Because the gravimeter must stay plugged in at all times, by NASA guidelines it must be monitored round the clock. We switch on and off this duty and every six hours swap generators and refuel. Easy. However the wind is blowing 76 km/hr, and gusting to 94 km/hr, so walking out to the plane is a challenge. The good thing about Punta Arenas is that there are not many things blowing around – anything not tied down blew away a long time ago!
climate changeEarth InstituteIce BridgeLamont-Doherty Earth Observatory
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Can't Bat, Can't Bowl, Can't Field: Is this the worst Australian cricket team ever?
Stuart Law. Darren Lehmann. Jamie Cox. Phil Jaques. Brad Hodge. Michael di Venuto. Chris Rogers. Martin Love. Tom Moody. Nine men who count as some of the unluckiest cricketers ever produced by Australia. Each of them scored more than 50 first-class centuries; none of them won more than a handful of test caps. They had the misfortune to be the contemporaries of the Waugh brothers, Ricky Ponting, Matthew Hayden, Justin Langer, Damien Martyn, Mike Hussey and so on. Such was Australia’s strength in depth in what Gideon Haigh neatly termed the Green and Golden Age that none of these nine ever commanded a regular place in the test team.
All of them would stroll into the current Australian side.
Of course they would. The Australians being clobbered in India right now may be the weakest XI ever privileged to sport the famous old baggy green cap. Suddenly the Australian Supremacy seems a long time ago. It rests with Ninevah and Tyre and all the other glories of a long-gone era.
Statistics can deceive, of course, but there comes a point at which the case they make becomes unanswerable. And this is the weakest Australian batting order I’ve ever seen and one which may well be the worst of all-time. Michael Clarke, the sole shining exception in a team of startling mediocrity, has worked miracles since assuming the captaincy. But Australia’s batting order is Hercules and the five dwarves.
Since sympathy is not a quality often associated with Australian cricket, it is hard not to enjoy this Australian discomfort. Schadenfreude may not be a noble sentiment but it’s mightily enjoyable. Even worse, from an Australian perspective, there is a risk this relish will curdle into something close to pity. That’s a humiliation too far.
Of course, the wheel will turn. It is hard to believe the Australians will be quite as hapless in England as they are in India. Ten back-to-back Ashes tests offer our antipodean friends a shot at redemption.
Which makes it all the more necessary to enjoy their woes now while we still have the chance to do so.
Nevertheless, a top order of Ed Cowan, David Warner, Phil Hughes and Shane Watson must be the weakest batting line-up ever assembled down under. Every one of the nine players mentioned above would be better than any of the quartet currently tasked with leading the Australian cause. Indeed, it’s hard not to think that Australia’s second XI from ten years ago would trounce their present first XI.
Averages are not the only fruit. The rate at which batsmen compile big scores matters too. Generally speaking, you’d wish each member of the top order to get to 50 once every three innings or so and make a century at least once every nine innings. So how do these Aussies masure up against that standard?
Rather poorly. Ed Cowan is a nice chap. Intelligent. Funny. Reads books. Has a test batting average of 31.5 and a solitary century in 25 attempts. David Warner is a 20/20 biffer and flat-track bully. But he can’t play spin and I fancy he won’t be able to play Jimmy Anderson either. He has three centuries from 30 innings and an average of 42. He’s a pauper’s idea of Virender Sehwag. Phil Hughes has talent, on that we all agree. But he’s also lost at test level as three centuries from 41 innings and an average of 33.25 suggest. And as for Shane Watson, well if he’s a test match number 4 then god help Australia. Two centuries from 72 innings and an average of 36.4 demonstrate that he’s a third violin, not a soloist.
Count that up and you reach a combined total of nine centuries from 168 innings. That’s one hundred every 18 innings. Or, in a five test series, about 2.5 centuries. Total. By way of contrast: Alastair Cook has made 23 test centuries from 154 innings.
So, sure, this may change. Perhaps the Australian batsmen will enjoy themselves against England. It’s not impossible that one or more of them will find some form. But the evidence of their own careers suggests we should not expect them to outperform their English rivals. Indeed, Clarke is the only member of the Australian top 7 who would be selected for a combined England-Australian XI.
As for the bowling? Well, Australia got the better of the Pattinson brothers and Peter Siddle is a good, big-hearted trier. The Mitchells – Starc and Johnson – also have something to offer (at least in English or Australian conditions). But Australia’s spin-bowling cupboard is bare (though one wonders what Steve O’Keefe has to do to be selected) and, again, any Anglo-Australian selection would be heavily loaded in favour of the men in the navy blue caps.
All this is oddly disconcerting. Not since the dark days of 1985 have the Australians looked so weak. That side was weakened by defections to a rebel tour to South Africa that deprived Allan Border’s side of, most notably, Terry Alderman. Similarly, the weak Packer-era Australians and the 1912 selection were crippled by political-squabbling that gave a false sense of Australian weakness. (Then again, the 1989 side were described as the worst ever and we know what happened next…)
There are no such excuses this time. Of course any side would find it difficult to replace the great men who dominated world cricket for so many years. On this tour of India, Mike Hussey’s absence has been especially keenly felt. In his place, Australia have selected bits-and-pieces players even though we’ve a century of evidence suggesting such cricketers rarely thrive in the test match arena. Picking three or four of them at one time is an invitation to catastrophe.
Nevertheless, you do wonder quite how it came to this and how Australia managed to, well, stuff it up so completely. Perhaps it is simply a coincidence. Perhaps it is just a cyclical turn. Yet one wonders if Cricket Australia have their priorities right. The attention given to the “Big Bash” 20/20 competition has further marginalised the dear old Sheffield Shield and one has the distant impression Cricket Australia knows the price of everything but the value of very little. Perhaps there was a measure of complacency too, an assumption that the talent tap would always be on and never run dry. If so, that complacency should have ended by now.
Australian journalists love to slate visiting English teams before they’ve even arrived. The boot, happily, is on the other foot this time. This mob – at least the lot presently selected – are the worst team in Australian cricket history. They can, surely, only be better come the Ashes but, really, even a substantial improvement should not be enough. At the risk of tempting Dame Fortune, a brace of English spankings should follow. After which, with the memory of the Australian Supremacy consigned to the history books, we can begin to feel sorry for the Australians. But not until then. The books of woe and catastrophe have not been balanced yet. Not yet, not at all.
Australia are just New Zealand in disguise (plus Michael Clarke and Ryan Harris)
India holds the cricket world to ransom; England and Australia agree to pay
A Carve-Up That’s Just Not Cricket
Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust, if Pietersen don’t get ya, the ICC must.
What kind of Englishman is embarrassed by beating Australia?
Massacre at the Gabbatoir
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Posted on December 28, 2019 December 28, 2019 by Editor
Climate Propaganda In Academia — Some Big Players
CLICK HERE, for an intro to the climate change scam.
CLICK HERE, for Disruptive Innovation Framework.
CLICK HERE, for humanizing transitions, energy justice.
CLICK HERE, for Max Boykoff’s article in Scientific American.
CLICK HERE, for Boykoff’s war on science, part I.
CLICK HERE, for Boykoff’s war on science, part II.
2. A Shoutout To Uppity Peasants
It’s only fair to cite the source of these articles, as in the person who shared them. They came from a Prairie Nationalist who’s frequently busy sharpening her pitchfork. Go check out Uppity Peasants for this and other topics.
3. Context For This Article
The topic of climate propaganda has been covered on this site several times (see links in Section #1). However, rather than doing a complete review for each of the remaining articles, a brief commentary will be added.
It’s downright creepy how the emotional manipulation and shameless hucksterism of climate change are treated seriously in academia. Rather than admitting there “may” be something wrong with climate research, the idea is to double down and look for alternative ways to sell the scheme.
Still, if plunging into the messed up world of climate propaganda appeals to you, then you have two options:
(a) Get professional help; or
(b) Keep reading more.
4. Heuristic Of Creative Destruction
Moving beyond the heuristic of creative destruction: Targeting exnovation with policy mixes for energy transitions Martin David Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZ, Germany.
Scholars looking at policy mixes for the energy transition and seeking to facilitate a move away from fossil-based structures are increasingly addressing the opposite side of innovation. To describe this, the article introduces the concept of exnovation, referring to attempts to end fossil-based technological trajectories in a deliberate fashion. It applies a framework that encompasses innovation and exnovation alike in order to investigate the policy mix of the German energy transition. Beside finding that energy transition policy mixes need to emphasize regulatory instruments more in order to bring about decarbonization, the article also describes some general aspects of the policy mix design required to govern the innovation-exnovation nexus.
Typically, most people want to ADVANCE their societies, but this one considers doing the opposite: leading the public down a less developed lifestyle in order to combat climate change.
5. Bringing About Disruptive Change
A heuristic for conceptualizing and uncovering the determinants of agency in socio-technical transitions Mert Duygana, Michael Stauffachera, Grégoire Meylanb
There has been a growing interest in transition studies on the role of agency in bringing about disruptive change. Previous studies have examined how actors perform institutional work to create legitimacy and transform institutions. In doing so, they have provided insights into specific practices and strategies that actors follow. This paper seeks to complement existing studies by elucidating the foundations of agency that transforms institutions through institutional work. Drawing on institutional sociology and organizational studies, resources, discourses and networks of actors are identified as key elements enabling institutional work practices. The agency of each actor is conceived of as dependent on the configurations it possesses with respect to these elements. A heuristic is presented that helps to determine the configurations associated with a strong agency in empirical settings and use Swiss waste management as an illustrative case example. The heuristic enables a systematic analysis of agency across different organizational fields.
Some research into methods and techniques for bringing about serious and disruptive changes in Western society deemed necessary for environmental protections.
6. Disruption & System Transformation
Disruption and low-carbon system transformation: Progress and new challenges in socio-technical transitions research and the Multi-Level Perspective Frank W. Geels
This paper firstly assesses the usefulness of Christensen’s disruptive innovation framework for low-carbon system change, identifying three conceptual limitations with regard to the unit of analysis (products rather than systems), limited multi-dimensionality, and a simplistic (‘point source’) conception of change. Secondly, it shows that the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) offers a more comprehensive framework on all three dimensions. Thirdly, it reviews progress in socio-technical transition research and the MLP on these three dimensions and identifies new challenges, including ‘whole system’ reconfiguration, multi-dimensional struggles, bi-directional niche-regime interactions, and an alignment conception of change. To address these challenges, transition research should further deepen and broaden its engagement with the social sciences.
This gem takes the BUSINESS concept of disruptive innovative framework which is meant to introduce new products and technologies into the market. It then tries to apply it to the CLIMATE CHANGE industry in getting changes made.
7. Fighting Opposing “Regime” Against Change
Regime Resistance against Low-Carbon Transitions: Introducing Politics and Power into the Multi-Level Perspective
Frank W Geels University of Manchester and King Abdulaziz Universit
While most studies of low-carbon transitions focus on green niche-innovations, this paper shifts attention to the resistance by incumbent regime actors to fundamental change. Drawing on insights from political economy, the paper introduces politics and power into the multi-level perspective. Instrumental, discursive, material and institutional forms of power and resistance are distinguished and illustrated with examples from the UK electricity system. The paper concludes that the resistance and resilience of coal, gas and nuclear production regimes currently negates the benefits from increasing renewables deployment. It further suggests that policymakers and many transition-scholars have too high hopes that ‘green’ innovation will be sufficient to bring about low-carbon transitions. Future agendas in research and policy should therefore pay much more attention to the destabilization and decline of existing fossil fuel regimes.
This paper views political and media types who are skeptical of the climate change industry as “resistance” and studies way around them. No real sense that they may bring up valid points. Instead, they are an obstacle to progress.
8. Humanizing And “Energy Justice”
Humanizing sociotechnical transitions through energy justice: An ethical framework for global transformative change
Kirsten Jenkins, Benjamin K. Sovacoolb, Darren McCaule
Poverty, climate change and energy security demand awareness about the interlinkages between energy systems and social justice. Amidst these challenges, energy justice has emerged to conceptualize a world where all individuals, across all areas, have safe, affordable and sustainable energy that is, essentially, socially just. Simultaneously, new social and technological solutions to energy problems continually evolve, and interest in the concept of sociotechnical transitions has grown. However, an element often missing from such transitions frameworks is explicit engagement with energy justice frameworks. Despite the development of an embryonic set of literature around these themes, an obvious research gap has emerged: can energy justice and transitions frameworks be combined? This paper argues that they can. It does so through an exploration of the multi-level perspective on sociotechnical systems and an integration of energy justice at the model’s niche, regime and landscape level. It presents the argument that it is within the overarching process of sociotechnical change that issues of energy justice emerge. Here, inattention to social justice issues can cause injustices, whereas attention to them can provide a means to examine and potential resolve them.
The social justice nonsense which universities push is about to get a new member, so-called “energy justice”. Consider this a bastardized child of cultural Marxism and the climate change scam.
9. Regime Destabilization, Pulp & Paper
Explaining regime destabilisation in the pulp and paper industry
Kersti Karltorp, Björn A. Sandén
A transition to a carbon neutral society will require a shift from fossil to renewable resources. This will affect the conversion of biomass and related industries such as the pulp and paper industry. The purpose of this paper is two-fold: first, to describe and analyse the transformation processes in the Swedish pulp and paper industry and the adoption of biorefinery options, and second, to demonstrate how conceptualisations from strategic management can be used to describe regime destabilisation. The industry’s adoption of biorefinery options has been modest so far, but there is development along two trajectories. The first centres on gasification and the second on separation and refining. Such diverging strategies in response to external pressure can be explained by differences that exist between firms. Signs of increasing firm divergence, or ‘regime fragmentation’, might indicate the entry into a phase of regime destabilisation, and a critical point in a transition.
Sure, let’s make the pulp and paper industry completely unprofitable and put all of those workers out on the street. Rather than finding better solutions, let’s sabotage what already exists. While it is true you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, this seems excessive.
10. Apply Pressure To Destabilize Industries
Sequence and alignment of external pressures in industry destabilisation: Understanding the downfall of incumbent utilities in the German energy transition (1998–2015) Gregor Kungla, Frank W. Geels
This article makes two contributions to the emerging research stream on regime and industry destabilisation in the transition literature. First, we replicate the multi-dimensional framework developed by Turnheim and Geels with a more contemporary study that has closer links to sustainability transitions. Drawing on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, we analyse the destabilisation of the German electricity industry, which faced multiple external pressures: renewable energy technologies, nuclear phase-out policy, the financial-economic crisis, and negative public debates. Second, we elaborate the role of multiple pressures in industry destabilisation, focusing in particular on their sequence and alignment. We inductively identify patterns such as the ‘masking effect’ of highly visible macro-shocks, ‘perfect storm’ pattern, a ‘killer blow’ effect, and spillover dynamics between external environments.
Not sure what to add to this. If industries are considered to be environmentally unsound, let’s apply various pressures in order to destabilize and destroy them.
11. Politically Accelerated Transitions
Conditions for politically accelerated transitions: Historical institutionalism, the multi-level perspective, and two historical case studies in transport and agriculture Cameron Roberts, Frank W. Geels
This article investigates the conditions under which policymakers are likely to decisively accelerate sociotechnical transitions. We develop a conceptual framework that combines insights from historical institutionalism and the Multi-Level Perspective to better understand the political dimension in transitions, focusing particularly on the mechanisms of political defection from incumbent regime to niche-innovation. We distinguish two ideal type patterns, one where external (landscape) shocks create a ‘critical juncture’ and one where gradual feedbacks change the balance of power between niche-innovation and regime. We also identify more proximate conditions such as external pressures on policymakers (from business interests, mass publics, and technologies) and policy internal developments (changes in problem definitions and access to institutional arrangements). We apply this framework to two historical case studies in which UK policymakers deliberately accelerated transitions: the transition from rail to road transport (1920–1970); and the transition from traditional mixed agriculture to specialised wheat agriculture (1920–1970). We analyse the conditions for major policy change in each case and draw more general conclusions. We also discuss implications for contemporary low-carbon transitions, observing that while some favourable conditions are in place, they do not yet meet all the prerequisites for political acceleration.
This is basically the same concept as before: gutting and destroying various industries. However, this one involves using political pressure in order to achieve it.
12. Plant Based Milk?
Rage against the regime: Niche-regime interactions in the societal embedding of plant-based milk
Josephine Mylana, Carol Morris, Emma Beech, Frank W. Geel
This paper engages with the debate on niche-regime interactions in sustainability transitions, using a study of plant-based milk and its struggles against the entrenched liquid dairy-milk regime, which has various sustainability problems. Plant-based milk isunder-studied, so our empirical contribution consists of an exploration of its diffusion in the UK. We make three conceptual contributions. The first calls for a bidirectional analysis that addresses niche-orientedactivities by incumbent actors, in addition to the outward-oriented activities by niche advocates presented in most studies of niche-regime interaction.The second contribution nuances Smith and Raven’s fit-and-conform and stretch-and-transform typology: using a societal embedding framework which distinguishes four environments, we suggest that hybrid patterns are possible in which innovations follow a ‘fit’ pattern in one environment but ‘stretch’ in another. The third contribution highlights th epotential role of cultural meanings in galvanizing transitions by eroding positive associations that support theregime and stabilise consumer purchasing.
Plant based milk?
Okay, hello unemployed dairy farmers.
13. Destructiveness Of This Agenda
Under the guise of “protecting the environment”, these academics conduct research in how to undermine and destabilize existing industries. There seems to be no concern for the workers and families who will be impacted if these efforts are successful.
Of course, there are many more authors doing this sort of work, but this is a fairly accurate representation of what is going on. Ways to impose their agenda on others.
These people are serious about it.
They really want to bring about the end of Western society.
CategoriesCanada, Corruption, Education/Health, Environmental, Europe, Globalism/International, World
Previous PostPrevious PPC Announces It Is Being Shut Down (Satire)
Next PostNext Guest Post: Civilian Intelligence Network’s Report On Canada Infrastructure Bank
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June 16, 2016 josh
Here we are again. Yet another mass shooting in America, this one setting a new record as the deadliest. This time the victims were primarily LGBT and primarily latinx. While geographically distant, it still hits too close to home.
What has changed since the first mass shooting I wrote about here–the murder of 20 children and 6 adults in Newtown, CT–in 2012?
Other than a bunch of other shootings happening between then and now, well, nothing.
The same inaction in government. The same bullshit from the NRA and their brain-washed, gun-worshiping minions. The NRA, while spouting meaningless platitudes about their policy being “no guns for terrorists” continues to block any and all attempts to increase gun regulation, while stirring up fear in the masses and pushing the need for guns for self defense.
#2A Supporters: Contact your lawmakers and tell them to oppose any new gun control measures! https://t.co/KkGMXuujfI pic.twitter.com/ZJa7wlhjwd
— NRA (@NRA) June 15, 2016
In defense of self-defense https://t.co/Ul5sAap7dW #2A
When a politician uses a terrorist to take your god given right to protect yourself, you gotta ask what side are they on? #isis #filibuster
— Concerned Chicago (@concerned_chi) June 16, 2016
Despite the obviousness of the fact that having more guns per capita than any other country on Earth has not made us safer, they keep pushing for more and more guns, and people are eating it up.
In 2012, I eviscerated their ridiculous claim that more guns will make us safer and this all still holds true.
And gun nuts, without any evidence, repeatedly claim that gun control won’t work, that bad guys will still get guns and good guys will be defenseless. This claim isn’t based in reality:
Our neighbors to the north, Canada, have much tougher gun laws. According to the CBC, “It takes up to 60 days to obtain a firearm in this country, after registering, taking a course and going through background checks.” Oh, dear! By the NRA’s logic crime in Canada must be out of control! Is it? No. In fact, there were 598 homicides in the entire country in 2011! How about in the USA? According to the FBI that number was 14,612 last year! OK, to be fair let’s adjust for population differences.
Homicides per 100,000 population (2011):
Canada: 1.73
USA: 4.7
As of 2014 those numbers are down slightly:
Would-be heroes are most likely deluding themselves. In 2009, ABC News did an experiment based on actual mass shooting in Illinois, testing the theory that an armed student in the lecture hall could have intervened and stopped the shooter. The theory didn’t fare well. Even the volunteer with the most gun experience was “killed” in the mock-shooting. It’s worth a watch here.
Was this a perfect experiment? No, but it should nonetheless be an eye opener for those who think that untrained civilians with guns have a high chance of successfully intervening against a bad guy with a gun. The blog post I linked above has some anecdotes of failed attempts along these lines, for example:
In February, 2005 David Hernandez Arroyo Sr. opened fire (with a MAK-90 semi-automatic rifle) at his ex-wife and child, outside a courthouse! And courthouses, as the NRA correctly pointed out, are already protected by armed security. A civilian, armed with a pistol, attempted to intervene and was shot and killed. Arroyo was able to escape from a gunfight with police, including a trained sniper, and take officers on a car chase before eventually being taken down.
Will something finally change? I wish I could say I thought so. But I’m very skeptical. However, we’re seeing more movement than before. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) led a 15 hour filibuster on the Senate floor yesterday, with support from many of his Democratic colleagues:
Senate Democrats ended a nearly 15-hour filibuster early Thursday after Republican Party leaders reportedly agreed to allow votes on two proposed gun control measures.
Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, said that a compromise had been reached. Votes would be held on whether to ban people on the government’s terrorist watch list from obtaining gun licenses and whether to expand background checks to gun shows and internet sales, he added.
It’s a sad commentary on the state of our legislative branch that a 15 hour filibuster was needed just to get the point of permitting a vote on legislation.
If passed, will these measures be perfect? Will they fix everything? No, and no. The problem is so large, deeply-ingrained and multifaceted, it will be take a great deal of time and effort to really make a serious dent, but we have to start somewhere.
I won’t hold my breath, but I will keep my fingers crossed.
Rants, UncategorizedAmerica, crime, guns, NRA, politics
Previous Article And Then There Was One
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BSR Conference 2016
BSR University
Sustainability Tours and Events
About the BSR Conference
Sustainable Conference
More BSR Conferences
BSR20: Brooklyn, New York
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BSR15: Resilient Business, Resilient World
BSR14: Transparency & Transformation
BSR13: The Power of Networks
BSR12: Fast Forward
November 1-3 • New York
#BSR16
Breakout Speaker
Alice Steenland
Chief Corporate Responsibility Officer, AXA Group
AKSParis
Alice Steenland joined AXA as Chief Corporate Responsibility Officer in September 2008. Prior to that, she was Director of Research at Vigeo, a leading environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings agency, and before Vigeo, she worked in the business consulting division of Arthur Andersen, and acted as an independent consultant in the field of strategic planning for Save the Children USA. She currently sits on the boards of the UN Principles for Sustainable Insurance and of Admical, the French national association for philanthropy. She is also a member of the Yale School of Management’s Council of Global Advisors.
We Are All Tech Companies Now: Tech Sustainability Issues Across Sectors
November 2, 2016, 11:00 am-12:00 pm
More and more companies are integrating technology into the core of what they do. Industrial companies have rebranded as tech companies, athletic apparel companies have moved into fitness electronics, and toy companies are producing tablet computers, among other examples. As companies integrate technology into products and services, they must manage a raft of technology-related sustainability issues such as data privacy and product recycling. This session will give you a glimpse into the future and perspective on how companies can address the risks and opportunities of integrated technology.
Full Description Page
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BSR is a global nonprofit organization that works with its network of more than 250 member companies and other partners to build a just and sustainable world. From its offices in Asia, Europe, and North America, BSR develops sustainable business strategies and solutions through consulting, research, and cross-sector collaboration. Visit www.bsr.org for more information about BSR’s 25 years of leadership in sustainability.
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UK Artists
Australian/New Zealand Artists
Canadian Artists
Black Deer Festival
British Summertime (BST Hyde Park)
CMW – Country Music Week
Cornbury Festival
CMA Festival
The Long Road Festival
Quick Fired Questions
Country 2 Country Festival (C2C)
C2C Festival 2019
C2C Interviews 2018
Festival Stages 2018
After Party Artists 2018
Spotlight Stage Artists 2018
Post C2C events
Bluesville
Jazz Town
Music Is My Healer
We Need To Talk About ……
Places to stay/eat
When In Nashville….
Musicians and Songwriters
Live Music Gallery
Stories Behind The Songs
Stories Behind The Songs: The Live Version
Building Our Own Nashville
Bringing Music City to the UK
ERIC CHURCH– DARIUS RUCKER – LUKE COMBS HEADLINE C2C FESTIVAL
By hannahjessica31 on October 23, 2019 • ( Leave a comment )
C2C RETURNS 13 – 15 MARCH 2020!
THE O2, LONDON / 3ARENA, DUBLIN / THE SSE HYDRO, GLASGOW
ERIC CHURCH– DARIUS RUCKER – LUKE COMBS
THE CADILLAC THREE – OLD DOMINION – BRETT YOUNG
TANYA TUCKER – CHARLES ESTEN
RUNAWAY JUNE – JORDAN DAVIS
INTRODUCING NASHVILLE FEAT ABBY ANDERSON, ERIC PASLAY + TENILLE TOWNES
And many more to be announced
Hosted by Bob Harris OBE
Tickets on sale Friday 1st November at 10am
Country to Country; Europe’s biggest country music festival is back from Friday 13 to Sunday 15 March 2020. Returning for its eighth year, the festival is set to bring yet another incredible line up to The O2 London, 3Arena Dublin, The SSE Hydro, and venues across Europe.
CMA Award 2019 nominee, record breaker and one of the biggest names in contemporary country Luke Combs and multi-platinum Grammy award winning superstar Darius Rucker each headline C2C for the very first time with multiple CMA award winner and 2019 nominee Eric Church making his much-anticipated return to the festival.
Joining the headliners and making their main stage debuts are multiple CMA award winners and nominees The Cadillac Three, Tanya Tucker, Charles Esten, Runaway June and Jordan Davis. Making his return this year is award winning Brett Young alongside 2019 CMA award nominee Old Dominion following a major UK tour this year. For the very first time, international series Introducing Nashville will see artists including Abby Anderson, Eric Paslay and Tenille Townes take to the mainstage together for an acoustic set sharing stories behind their tracks. The C2C Spotlight Stage will also be back. Watch out for news of the full line up in the next coming few months.
The highly anticipated C2C 2020 line-up was announced at the official launch party at Cadogan Hall this evening, during the third annual Country Music Week in London with a very special message from the legendary Bob Harris OBE who said: “I am so proud to be part of the C2C family. I have been the main stage host at the O2 in London from the very beginning and have watched the festival grow to become one of the most important and iconic events in the global Country Music calendar. I am thrilled to once again be hosting C2C in London and broadcasting highlights on BBC Radio 2. I can’t wait to listen to the best music in the world, enjoy the fantastic atmosphere of the main auditorium, catch the excitement of the pop-up stages and meet the incredible Country fans that make C2C so special”
Chris York, C2C Festival promoter for SJM Concerts commented: “C2C Festival 2020 continues to build on the massive success of Country to Country in the U.K. and across Europe. We look forward to seeing all you passionate country fans in March once again. We would like to thank our partners at BBC Radio 2 and The Country Music Association and as ever thank you for your support.”
“We are thrilled to see the continuously growing Country fan base in the UK and for C2C to bring such a powerful line-up of artists to international fans,” says CMA Chief Executive Officer Sarah Trahern. “This year marks CMA’s eighth year partnering with C2C, and it has been so exciting to see this festival and the audience of passionate Country fans continue to get bigger and better each year.”
Tickets go on general sale at 10am on Friday 1st November and are available from:
• London – www.axs.com/c2c / 08448 244824 and www.gigsandtours.com / 0844 811 0051
• Dublin – www.ticketmaster.ie
• Glasgow www.gigsinscotland.com / 08444 999 990
C2C London ticket holders will have access to daytime live performances and other live events. Further details to be announced. C2C Amsterdam and C2C Berlin debuted in 2019 and will return on 7th – 8th March and 6th – 8th March 2020 respectively.
Country to Country has become a staple in the UK festival calendar and has brought country music to the UK and Ireland masses, with tens of thousands of fans attending each year. The festival continuously hosts the best in country music and entertainment; bringing over the world’s best country stars as well as emerging talent from Nashville, UK and Europe. In 2019, C2C welcomed over 70,000 fans, who enjoyed music from artists including; Keith Urban, Lady Antebellum, Chris Stapleton, Brett Eldredge, Hunter Hayes, Lyle Lovett, Cam, Dustin Lynch, Ashley McBryde, Chase Rice, Carly Pearce, Drake White & The Big Fire and more; as well as programming from the Festival Stages, BBC Radio 2 Stage, CMA Screenings, The Bluebird Café, Aftershows and C2C Sessions.
Website www.c2c-countrytocountry.com
Facebook www.facebook.com/Country2Country
Twitter https://twitter.com/C2Cofficial
Instagram @C2CFestival
Categories: Country 2 Country Festival (C2C), Latest
New Single: Philip Rambow “American Buffalo” Out Now
O&O DECLARE THEIR RETURN WITH ‘HERE WE ARE’ – BRAND NEW SINGLE OUT NOV 15th
https://youtu.be/If_8gHn_M4s
https://youtu.be/OQ500mA6c1g
https://youtu.be/ealMF7BCgdQ
Instagram Ourownnashville
This was a nice thing to wake up to. Can’t wait to hear it. @hootieofficial @dariusrucker out November 1st so get pre ordering folks.
Willow Bough Tea Rooms
Itunes Hot Country Songs
I Hope You’re Happy Now - Carly Pearce & Lee Brice
What If I Never Get Over You - Lady Antebellum
Even Though I'm Leaving - Luke Combs
Martha Divine - Ashley McBryde
New Year - The Shires
Sugar Coat - Little Big Town
I Hope - Gabby Barrett
More Hearts Than Mine - Ingrid Andress
Love Me Anyway (feat. Chris Stapleton) - P!nk
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Copyright © Building Our Own Nashville All Rights Reserved.
Musicians In The Spotlight: An Interview with drummer Elijah Wood on being an integral part of the Shania Twain Tour, the crazy and exciting stage production, advice to aspiring drummers and more
Twinnie Announces Debut Album ‘Hollywood Gypsy’ Out 17th April On BMG New Single ‘Type of Girl’ Out Now on BMG Announces March UK Tour
About that C2C Festival 2020 Line Up ........
THE LUMINEERS - release a trilogy of music videos exploring alcohol and drug addiction
Top categories: Latest The Shires
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INFO@CARGOSCREENINGK9.COM
833-CARGOK9
OPERATIONAL FOOTPRINT
K9 SELECTION
HANDLER SELECTION
TEAM CERTIFICATION
Certified Cargo Screening Facility – Canine is a Game Changer for Air Forwarders Industry
The tragic events of 9/11 sparked a revolution regarding security across many outlets of the United States systems. One system that was particularly paid close attention to was the airline industry and all of the passengers that use it daily. To protect against explosives, laws were enacted and as a result, the TSA created a way to screen people, as well as business cargo for explosives before it loaded airlines. Over time the programs have evolved and with each evolution came a progression in cost-effectiveness and efficiency. Starting as a small program, TSA has now created a network of screening professionals and even canine teams to protect the country and its people within the airline industry.
How Certified Cargo Screening Facilities Have Evolved
Over the course of our country’s life, one thing that has stayed consistent across the years has been a reliable defense system to protect the citizens. While that system has changed, many others have also been created to ensure that all parts of our complex world are covered. One of those areas is within our current system is the airline industry. After September 11th, 2001, concern grew over whether airports were as safe as they could be. In response, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was tasked with ensuring passengers were screened for a slew of dangerous items such as weapons and explosives before they boarded aircraft. This helped to instill some trust from the citizens in the airline industry again. Behind the scenes, more defensive tactics were being created to protect airlines and the people traveling through them.
Created as a response to the implementing recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007, a mandate was created to screen commerce that flowed through airports for explosives before they went onto passenger aircraft. The TSA 100% Cargo Screening Mandate was signed into law by President George W. Bush. It mandated the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to ensure that all air cargo being transported on passenger aircraft originating in the U.S. be screened by a 100 percent screening process such as the process passengers go through before boarding aircraft. The DHS put the TSA in charge of creating a program that met these standards.
The TSA then created The Certified Cargo Screening Program (CCSP). This program screened all cargo going through airports at a 100% piece-level screening process that utilized technology such as x-ray devices, explosive trace detection (ETD) devices, and electronic metal detection (EMD) devices. Although the technology helped screen cargo efficiently, there was simply too much cargo coming through airports for the CCSP to run with speed and efficiency. In combating the bottleneck that the growing economy created, the TSA extended the CCSP to create Certified Cargo Screening Facilities (CCSF).
A Certified Cargo Screening Facility is a third party, voluntary screening facility. In order to apply to become a CCSF, businesses must at the minimum deal with air cargo that goes directly or indirectly from an air carrier. Businesses this include are manufacturers, warehouses, distribution centers, third-party logistics providers, indirect air carriers, airport cargo handlers, independent cargo screening facilities, etc. Just like with the CCSP the CCSF must adhere to a strict set of screening guidelines set by the TSA. CCSP/CCSF must
Comply with safeguarding measures created by TSA’s Security program
Make sure there is no corruption of the cargo throughout the chain of custody
Permit onsite validations and periodic inspections
Screen cargo as individual items and not by palletized items
The third-party facilities lightened the burden on airport screening facilities and helped speed up the flow of commerce. One issue encountered by the CCSP and CCSF was in regard to one of the screening guidelines. Although machines were efficient for the most part, they could not screen mass cargo that was palletized. In order to screen palletized cargo to a piece-level screening, pallets had to be taken apart and arranged into portions that would fit screening technology, be screened, then put back together. This issue created another bottleneck in the system which needed to be fixed. The solution enlists the services of canine and handler teams, and so the Certified Cargo Screening Facility – Canine.
Why Certified Cargo Screening Facility – Canine is Happening
The point of the CCSP is to provide protection to aircraft passengers by screening cargo to ensure there is no chance of it being or holding explosives. The CCSF functions to increase that security while also increasing efficiency for airports and the global supply chain. After years of transformation to make the CCSP a better working system, the TSA hit a block when it encountered large cargo.
To counter this problem, the TSA sanctioned the use of canines for screening by creating the National Explosive Detection Canine Team Program (NEDCTP). After reviewing the costs of this program and the shortage of canine-handler teams, the TSA started to look for different solutions. The NEDCTP was housed publicly through the airport and the CCSP. It did not allow for private institutions to contribute to the effort because the TSA did not have a way to regulate the training that these teams had. In realizing that the NEDCTP could not produce the number of teams needed for the CCSP and its facilities, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) opened the floor to private parties as long as they went through TSA’s training guidelines.
The program created out of this was called the Third-Party Canine-Cargo (3PK9 or 3PK9-C) Program and started in 2018. It was a program that bridged the gap between the public and private sectors of canine-handler explosive detection teams and helped the CCSP regain speed and efficiency within its CCSF. Over the year of 2018, the 3PK9 program was tweaked and its most recent version is called the Certified Cargo Screening Facility-K9 (CCSF-K9).
The CCSF-K9 is an entity created with the understanding that another approved method was needed for third-parties to screen cargo to TSA standards while keeping costs minimal, and making time and place most efficient. Fulfilling requirements within sec. 1941 of the TSA Modernization Act, the K9 extension provides a method for screening cargo consistent with TSA’s authority under 49 U.S.C. 44901.
How K9s Will Help Air Forwarders Meet the TSA’s 100% Mandate
The TSA’s 100% Mandate was made to provide one key factor: protection. Not only was the country and airline industry being protected, but also were the passengers of aircraft in which possible explosive cargo would be boarding. The creation of the Certified Cargo Screening Program and the Certified Cargo Screening Facility was to relieve the pressure that airport screening systems were feeling when an influx of cargo started to come in after a rising economy emerged in the US. Meant as a solution, the facilities created a network of entities that could be utilized when things got busy. Unfortunately, a problem also encountered when things got busy was the issue regarding palletized cargo and the time and costs associated with taking apart and putting back together large cargo so it could be properly screened at an individual piece level. As the economy continues to boom, the flow of commerce also booms which means that the supply chain has to be at peak efficiency.
Canine (K9) teams were the next logical solution as their unique abilities with a scent made things more efficient. Within Certified Cargo Screening Facilities (CCSF) are various devices that screen cargo for explosives. Even if the issue of disassembly and reassembly was not a problem, the machines and the people in the facility cannot screen cargo as precisely and reliably as a canine can. Inside each canine snout is 320 million sensory receptors that allow a scent to be broken down into part per million (ppt). This ability allows them to distinguish what, and where a smell is coming from. Trained canines show even more heightened abilities. With a current efficiency rating of 97% compared to humans and machines, canines fill a hole in the efficiency of a system that only works if all its gears turn quickly.
Learn more about how Cargo Screening K9 is helping air forwarders speed up their screening process and save money at the same time by downloading our Executive Information Packet.
If you would like to learn more about the 3PK9 program or to schedule a canine services appointment with an approved CCSF-K9, please contact jjohnson@cargoscreeningk9.com today!
Eric Dunn2019-11-01T12:41:42+00:00
Cargo Screening
Cargo Screening K9
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Instability vortices along a jet stream axis
September 28th, 2009 | Scott Bachmeier
GOES-12 6.5 µm water vapor imagery
AWIPS images of the GOES-12 6.5 µm “water vapor channel” (above) revealed a pair of vortices immediately poleward of a well-defined jet stream axis that was moving over the southeastern US on 28 September 2009. It was initially thought that these vortices may have represented either a type of Kelvin-Helmholtz instability (which can occur when there is sufficient velocity difference across the interface between two fluids) or a type of Rayleigh-Taylor instability (which can occur along an interface of two fluids of different densities) — however, a more likely explanation might be that these vortices were a result of barotropic instability, where the waves grew by extracting kinetic energy from the shear flow from which they were embedded.
If a horizontal circulation developed due to barotropic instability being forced by the horizontal wind shear, this could result in the formation of the vortex structures seen on the water vapor imagery. The warm/dry spot on the images (exhibiting brightness temperature values as warm as -11º C, darker orange color enhancement) was probably a pocket of warm/dry air that originated from the poleward edge of the moisture gradient — once the vortex formed, the warm/dry air in the center could not escape, and its properties would be preserved. (Thanks to Jordan Gerth, Justin Sieglaff and Chris Rozoff at CIMSS…and Michael Morgan at UW-AOS for providing valuable inputs and helping to provide an explanation)
Overlays of parameters from the 45-km resolution CRAS model at 12:00 UTCÂ (below) showed the presence of a 50-60 knot jet axis just south of the primary dry-to-moist gradient on the water vapor image, along with a ribbon of 500 hPa vorticity and a 500 hPa wind shear axis over the region where the water vapor vortices were forming.
CRAS45 maximum wind speed, 500 hPa vorticity, and 500 hPa shear vectors
A comparison of the 1-km resolution MODIS 6.7 µm water vapor image and the 4-km resolution GOES-12 6.5 µm water vapor image (below) show the advantage of improved spatial resolution for displaying the structure and gradients associated with the leading vortex around 18:15 UTC.
1-km MODIS vs 4-km GOES-12 water vapor images
Examining the GOES-12 imager water vapor weighting function profiles at 00:00 UTC for Charleston SC (located in the “dry” portion of the sharp water vapor image gradient) and Jacksonville FL (located in the “moist” portion of the sharp water vapor image gradient) shows that there would be a pronounced downward shift in the altitude of features displayed on the water vapor image in the region of dry air located poleward of the jet stream axis.
GOES-12 water vapor weighting function profile for Charleston SC and Jacksonville FL
A northwest-to-southeast oriented vertical cross section using GFS40 model fields (below) displayed a minor intrusion of potential vorticity (the colored image portion of the cross section) downward into the upper troposphere immediately poleward of the jet stream core (which was located between the 200 and 250 hPa pressure levels). The wind speed shear axis was located at a much lower altitude (between the 400 and 500 hPa pressure levels), closer to the altitude peak of the water vapor channel weighting function in the region of drier air.
GFS40 model cross section
Posted in GOES-12, MODIS, What the heck is this? | Comments Off on Instability vortices along a jet stream axis
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NFL Preview: AFC South
Posted on September 8, 2009 by Weller Ross
For those of you that realize the first game of the 2009 NFL season is less than 48 hours away from kicking off you will probably be wondering how I expect to be able to finish the rest of these division previews. I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a good question but I think I can pull it off. The game on Thursday is between the Titans and Steelers, so by doing the AFC South today and the AFC North tomorrow I’ll have those teams out of the way. On Thursday I will likely do two, those being the AFC East and the NFC North. On Friday I will again do two, the NFC South and the NFC East. Saturday brings UCLA to Knoxville to face my Volunteers and I highly doubt that I’ll be posting anything that day. So on Sunday morning and early afternoon I will churn out the NFC West, because all of the NFC West teams kickoff at 4:15 ET on Sunday. So if I actually manage to pull this off, that’s how it’s going to happen.
On to the AFC South. This is the division I know the most about because this is the division that contains my Colts but I’m going to try to keep this one shorter (yeah right) than my 1400-word AFC West post. The teams in the AFC South this year will be facing the AFC East and the NFC West. This should provide for some interesting matchups, the most intriguing of which is the always anticipated Colts vs cheaters patriots game, which takes place this year on November 15 in Indianapolis.
The Houston Texans were the bottom of the division for the first few years upon entering the league in 2002. The time has come though that they have built a solid team and I would expect to certainly finish above the Jacksonville Jaguars. The team hasn’t had a winning season since becoming the newest expansion team, though they have finished 8-8 each of the last two years and even relinquished their bottom-dwellers title last year when the Jags went 5-11. The Texans have been a popular sleeper pick to make a push for the playoffs this year but it’s going to be tough with the Colts and Titans in their division. They’re 1-13 all-time against the Colts and 3-11 against the Titans. Those aren’t promising numbers. The Texans offense, led by wide receiver Andre Johnson, did rank third in the league last year in total offense though and they’re returning all of the main components from that unit. The defense however were ranked with the sixth worst scoring defense in the NFL. That needs to be fixed by defensive coordinator, Frank Bush. The biggest loss this offseason for the Texans was cornerback Demarcus Faggins, who went to the Titans, but the Texans shouldn’t miss him too much. They also seem to have finally found a reliable running back in Steve Slaton who was a stud last year as a rookie. The defense also added some key players: defensive tackle Shaun Cody should provide some quality depth behind Amobi Okoye, Antonio Smith from the Cardinals who has taken of the starting left defensive end spot, Connor Barwin who was their second round pick out of Cincinnati and is Mario Williams backup and right defensive end and Brian Cushing their first round draft pick out of USC who will be starting at strongside linebacker. Look for this team to at least get their first ever winning record. My prediction: 9-7.
Bob Sanders
The Indianapolis Colts. Oh yes, the Indianapolis Colts. It has been a crazy offseason for my team. The head coach retired, one of the greatest wide receivers of all time was released, we brought in a new defensive coordinator and special teams coordinator, the offensive coordinator and offensive line coaches retired and then came back, and our infamously worst position is now one of the deepest spots on the roster. We have won at least 12 games in each of the last six seasons, we haven’t missed the playoffs since 2001, we had won the division for five straight years until last year when Peyton Manning played injured for the first part of the year and we still only finished one game back behind the Titans. We have had as smooth of a transition as a team can hope for when your head coach retires and we still have Peyton Manning. We have some great, young wide receivers in Austin Collie and Pierre Garcon, rookie running back Donald Brown looks very good, we picked up defensive tackle Ed Johnson in free agency and drafted Fili Moala in the second round who is also a defensive tackle. Jacob Lacey and Jerraud Powers are both rookie cornerbacks who look very promising. We have great competition at the linebackers positions. We return both of our starting defensive ends who were both in the Pro Bowl last year. We have a rookie punter in Pat McAfee who can bomb the ball. Our offensive line is much healthier than last year and we might have the best group of tight ends in the league and the same could be said for our safeties. Look out. This team is going to be good. My prediction: 13-3.
Maurice Jones-Drew
The Jacksonville Jaguars have fallen off quite a bit. They had 11 wins in 2007 and made the playoffs but last year they went 5-11 and looked absolutely dreadful. They had a ton of injuries along the offensive line and throughout the defense. To help with their problems they hired a new defensive coordinator, Mel Tucker and they also made a lot of moves in free agency and drafted some solid players. The Jags drafted Eugene Monroe and Eben Britton in the first and second rounds respectively and will be the teams two starting offensive tackles; Monroe at the left tackle spot and Britton on the right. They also signed free agent Tra Thomas as a backup offensive tackle from the Eagles and brought on Torry Holt, the former Ram, to lead the receiving corps. On the defensive side of the ball they signed two safeties, Gerald Alexander who will be the backup free safety and Sean Considine who will be starting at strong safety. The also drafted two defensive players in the third round, Terrance Knighton a defensive tackle from Temple who will provide some needed depth and Derek Cox a cornerback from William & Mary who is currently listed as a backup. While these acquisitions will help, they also lost some key components. Running back Fred Taylor is gone, leaving Maurice Jones-Drew to carry the running load by himself, something I’m not sure he’ll succeed at. Also four wide receivers are now gone from last years team: Reggie Williams, Jerry Porter, Matt Jones and Dennis Northcutt. That’s a lot of receivers to lose. Offensive tackle Khalif Barnes is also now elsewhere and while Monroe and Britton are talented, starting two rookie offensive tackles would make me nervous. On the defensive side middle linebacker Mike Peterson, who was the leader of the defense for so long is now in Atlanta, defensive tackle Tony McDaniel is gone and defensive end Paul Spicer has left. All in all this could be the makings of a good team in Jacksonville… for the future. Right now though I think they’ll likely struggle. Though I suppose any team with John Henderson stands a chance for two reasons: 1. He went to Tennessee and 2. He does this before every game. My prediction: 6-10.
The Tennessee Titans had a great run last year but I wasn’t impressed with the teams that they beat when they beat them and this thought was reinforced when they lost their first game of the playoffs. They beat the Ravens when the Ravens were struggling early in the year, they beat the Colts when the Colts were struggling early in the year with an injured Peyton Manning, and they beat the Steelers late in the year when the Steelers had already pushed the cruise control button for the playoffs. This year they will be starting a 36-year-old Kerry Collins at quarterback, which doesn’t exactly provide a lot of promise. Backup quarterback Vince Young has shown signs that he won’t be able to develop into a quality NFL starter, even if he has the physical tools, he has too many mental break downs, both in decision making and emotional levels. On top of that, stud defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth is now gone and so is Jim Schwartz who left to take over the head coaching job in Detroit. The running game will still be stout but the defense is questionable. The Titans did try to help give their quarterbacks more weapons by signing Nate Washington away from the Steelers who is now a starting wide receiver and drafting Kenny Britt in the first round out of Rutgers who is currently their number three receiver. On defense they signed Jovan Haye, a former Buccaneer but is only a backup and they drafted Sen’Derrick Marks out of Auburn but is only a third string defensive tackle on their depth chart. Neither player will really cushion the blow of losing Haynesworth. My prediction: 10-6.
Division standings prediction:
1. Indianapolis Colts
2. Tennessee Titans
3. Houston Texans
4. Jacksonville Jaguars
Filed under: NFL | Tagged: AFC, Albert Haynesworth, Amobi Okoye, Andre Johnson, Antonio Smith, Austin Collie, Bob Sanders, Brian Cushing, Colts, Connor Barwin, Dallas Clark, Demarcus Faggins, Dennis Northcutt, Derek Cox, division, Donald Brown, Dwight Freeney, Eben Britton, Ed Johnson, Eugene Monroe, Fili Moala, Frank Bush, Fred Taylor, Gerald Alexander, Houston, Howard Mudd, Indianapolis, Indy, Jacksonville, Jacob Lacey, Jags, Jaguars, Jerraud Powers, Jerry Porter, Jim Caldwell, Jim Schwartz, John Henderson, Jovan Haye, Kenny Britt, Kerry Collins, Khalif Barnes, Mario Williams, Marvin Harrison, Matt Jones, Maurice Jones-Drew, Mel Tucker, Mike Peterson, MJD, Nate Washington, NFL, Pat McAfee, Paul Spicer, Peyton Manning, Pierre Garcon, Preview, Reggie Wayne, Reggie Williams, Sean Considine, Sen'Derrick Marks, Shaun Cody, South, Steve Slaton, Tennessee, Terrance Knighton, Texans, Titans, Tom Moore, Tony Dungy, Tony McDaniel, Torry Holt, Tra Thomas, Vince Young |
« Some Interesting Numbers College Football Awards »
Giants Football Blog » Tyree to Ravens? | baltimorer.com, on September 8, 2009 at 7:59 pm said:
[…] NFL Preview: AFC South NFL Predictions 2009 Living in the Shadow of Rex 2009 NFL Predictions LOTD: Why The Pittsburgh Steelers and Their Fans Suck […]
VolHawk, on September 8, 2009 at 11:02 pm said:
I had to chuckle at the Poll Results after my vote. Colts! Colts! Colts!
whitsport, on September 10, 2009 at 2:27 pm said:
Don’t necessarily agree with the records, or the Titans at all for that matter (I smell an exodus, welcome back Vince Young), but good stuff nonetheless.
-http://whitsport.wordpress.com/ultimate-nfl-preview-2009/
NFL Preview: AFC North « Weller and Bryan’s Sports Blog, on September 12, 2009 at 4:00 am said:
[…] and I’ll just have to be a week late. You can also check out my previews for the AFC West and AFC South. This is an interesting division because it consists of two great teams and two, well, to put it […]
sports & natta, on October 5, 2009 at 4:02 pm said:
Two great teams with a mission
Leave a Reply to sports & natta Cancel reply
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Shop2005Beautiful Existence
Beautiful Existence
Joe Morris Quartet
Jim Hobbs (as), Joe Morris (g), Luther Gray (d), Timo Shanko (b),
Beautiful Existence quantity
SKU: CF050.
TagsJim HobbsJoe MorrisLuther GrayTimo Shanko
We were affraid that Joe Morris didn’t make up with his guitar, but fortunately “Beautiful Existence” show us that peace is restaured. Morris may be a good double bassist (even if he only started playing it five years ago!), but with the guitar he’s much more than good, he’s an original, aplying techniques coming from the more filigree Delta blues to free bop. Between the two orientations is obvious that everybody wanted the return of the finger-picking improviser. Anyhow, even when playing the six-strings Morris acts with the bass in mind, and that’s the reason why he choose young Timo Shanko for his new quartet – this is a wonderful musician that knows perfectly how to interact with the band leader. Everything goes around the axis formed by the electric guitar and the bass violin, sometimes even seeming there’s just one instrument. They function almost by telepathy. The drums of Luther Gray are on one side, keeping things vibrant with a polyrhythmic attack, and the alto saxophone of Jim Hobbs is on the other, adding density and painting strokes to the pointillistic work provided by the others. Just beautiful, with everyone on their places but knowing how to avoid predictability. Here is what Joe Morris told about his side musicians: “They’re not really interested in a lot of the things that have been going on, which to me makes them more interesting because they’re different.” Check how different…
Be the first to review “Beautiful Existence” Cancel reply
Townorchestrahouse
Epileptical West – Live in Coimbra
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JRSS Systems Administrator
For 30 years, clients in the private and public sectors have relied upon SOS International LLC (SOSi) for critical operations in the world’s most challenging environments. SOSi is privately held, was founded by its current ownership in 1989, maintains corporate headquarters in Reston, VA, and specializes in providing logistics, construction, training, intelligence, and information technology solutions to the defense, diplomatic, intelligence and law enforcement communities.
All interested individuals will receive consideration and will not be discriminated against on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, or protected veteran status. SOSi takes affirmative action in support of its policy to advance diversity and inclusion of individuals who are minorities, women, protected veterans, and individuals with disabilities.
5-181207-8139: JRSS Systems Administrator
Location U.S. - Arizona - Fort Huachuca
Open Date 12/13/2018
SOS International LLC (SOSi), is seeking a Sr. JRSS Systems Administrator to support the US Army in Ft. Huachuca. The Systems Administrator will provide operational and technical system administration services to support the U.S. Army Network Enterprise Technology Command (NETCOM) and all Army networks.
ESSENTIAL JOB DUTIES
Support the Army Enterprise Management (AEM) of CONUS network capabilities allowing information traversing Department of Defense (DoD) information networks to be continuously monitored to ensure response time as well as throughput and performance standards
Provide the Army Enterprise functions to include fail-over, diversity, and elimination of critical failure points as a means to assure timely delivery of critical information. The AEM of CONUS network capabilities consists of a suite of equipment that performs firewall functions, intrusion detection and prevention, proxy and enterprise management, VRF, and provides a host of network security capabilities
Provide systems of systems (SoS) (Multiple dispersed, independent or intra-dependent systems elements performing a function (i.e. Operating System (OS), Hardware (HW), Data base, application) which are interoperable with other elements or systems to perform a function in context as part of a larger, more complex system) administration support. Architectures will change as all Top Level Architectures (TLAs) are consolidated into approximately 28 Army Enterprise services sites
Provide System Administration (SA) and Information Assurance (IA) compliance. Run system reports as required, document all changes to the current systems or associated servers, interconnecting hardware and the respective software in accordance with the Army Enterprise Configuration Change Release Management (CCRM) policy as required by US Cyber Command/US Army CYBER Command and NETCOM
Perform vulnerability scanning, remediation, reporting, and patch management for managed systems
Apply current Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIGs) and Security Requirements Guides (SRG) as mandated by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) to all Enterprise systems. Update all enterprise systems that require upgrades, reconfiguring or troubleshooting with the most current STIGs, up to and including completion of deployment support
Determine level of effort, identify problems and solutions. Request, receive, study, and translate vendor base Enterprise for routers, switches, load balancers, firewalls, IPS/IDS, and Army DoDIN/O&M/CND tools and applications within JRSS for Situational Awareness (SA)
Operate, monitor, sustain, and secure managed devices at each JRSS Army Enterprise network site. Provide support for router operations for routing devices within the Army JRSS boundary
Analyze and optimize network device performance, network VRF traffic flows, and utilization for routing devices within Army JRSS boundary
Develop scripts and utilities for routine task automation and connection to software Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) within Army JRSS boundary
Operate, monitor, sustain, and secure Army JRSS Security Systems which include the IPS/IDS, firewall, proxy, and routers
Leverage the capabilities of the Army JRSS Network Monitoring Tools to provide an effective, proactive security posture. Update existing tool set displays and dashboards, as needed, to meet the customer's requirements
Develop and Maintain the Knowledge and Lessons Learned repository of TTPs, migration documentation, change requests, product updates, architecture diagrams, and all daily/weekly/monthly reports
Complete initial DD form 2875s for systems accesses for local and CONUS usage of approved Enterprise tools and services for Government review and approvals
Active Top Secret/SCI clearance
HS + 7 years technical experience or AA/AS + 5 or BA/BS + 3
IAT-III certification required (CISSP, CASP, CISA, GCED, GCIH)
Senior CE certification (MCSA, MCSE, VM Ware ESX 5.0, PCNSE, CCNP, JNCIP-ENT, or equivalent)
Complete (Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Windows Server (minimum 2016) and Linux (Red Hat Enterprise distribution), Solaris platforms and other Operating Systems (OS) Administrators Course for all system administrators at the start of contract performance, and successful completion of the Joint Regional Security stack (JRSS) certification through the US Army within government requested time-frame
Expertise in Server Administration (Microsoft Windows environment, Microsoft Windows Server (minimum 2008) and Linux (Red Hat Enterprise distribution), Solaris platforms and other Operating Systems (OS)
Working knowledge and understanding of Enterprise network functionalities, Enterprise Army DoDIN/O&M/CND tools, procedures, and operational constructs to include Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)-based business processes
Documented experience in at least three of these skill areas: System Analysis and Design; Physical Disk Storage; Data Security; Backup and Recovery; and Change Control Management
Expertise configuring server hardware and OS software, as well as installing new software
Excellent working knowledge of Windows Domains, Active Directory, DNS and Database
Extensive experience using OS imaging and virtualization software
Solid foundation in Layer-2 and Layer-3 switching technologies
Experience working with Management Systems and SNMP
Experience in developing system documentation and process documentation
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI); CAC/Token integration experience
Experience with VMware vSphere ESXi 5.x - (Networking, virtual switches and virtual distributed switches); vCenter Server 5.x; and VMware vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA)
A working knowledge of Army or DoD Information Management and Security processes and procedures
Understanding of CISCO routing including TCP/IP topology, layer 3 routing, VRF and VLAN management
Information Assurance, Cybersecurity and Risk Management Framework (RMF) expertise and experience
Senior level expertise with Enterprise Class Relational Database Management Systems; recent experience with Microsoft SQL Server Database products; knowledge of MS Windows Server Operating Systems supporting Microsoft SQL Server
Senior level expertise in large scale applications in high availability clustering environment, demonstrated through experience with products such as MS SQL Server with Always On Clustering, IBM DB2, Oracle Real Application Clusters 11g with Grid Infrastructure Administrator, or Oracle Database 10g Real Applications Cluster
Standard office working conditions
May be required to travel up to 20% of the time
SOSi
Fort Huachuca, Arizona
JRSS Senior Engineer
JRSS SME
VTC Administrator - Intermediate
Intermediate Network Administrator
Senior Network Administrator (SME)
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Archive for the ‘EFFECTS OF INTERNET’ Tag
JOHN CHUCKMAN COMMENT: REFERENCE TO AMERICA’S CURRENT INABILITY TO HAVE INTELLIGENT POLITICAL DISCUSSION – IN FACT IT IS AN ILLUSION TO THINK THINGS WERE EVER MUCH DIFFERENT – HIGHLIGHTS OF AN EXTREMELY BRUTAL HISTORY – ADDED RESPONSE TO A LONG AND ANGRY COMMENT – SERIOUS MISUSE OF STATISTICS AND POINTS ON TRUMP 7 comments
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MICHAEL KREIGER IN RUSSIA INSIDER
“People Aren’t Having Intelligent Conversations Anymore, They’re Just Yelling at Each Other”
I agree with the tone of the article.
But the United States has never been a place where what the French call “politesse” featured. It is a myth for anyone to think so.
Going back to President Andrew Jackson, who horsewhipped an opponent and who regularly challenged men to duels, this plainly is the fact. Yet note that his image is honored today on the twenty-dollar bill.
You can never forget all those years of slavery – Jackson owned gangs of them (As did Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and others) – which entailed public auctions of slaves stripped of their clothes, including women who were sometimes bought by lonely rural farmers for “company.”
Slavery existed for the best part of a century in the formal United States, but of course it went back long before that in order to build the colonial society that would become strong enough to seek independence.
The culture and undertone of much of America were heavily colored for the future by this pervasive and poisonous institution. It was definitely was not one that encouraged conversations among either camps, supporters and opponents. There were violent disagreements and brawls by politicians over much of the era.
The fact that slave owners quite typically slept with pistols and/or hunting knives under their pillows or within easy reach, such was the constant paranoid fear of slave rebellion, explains a great deal about America’s violent gun culture down to this day and its relations between black and white citizens.
Slavery, de facto, continued for about a century after the Civil War (1861-5) in the South’s sharecropper system combined with Jim Crow Laws. You know, even when Franklin Roosevelt was President in the 1930s, lynching in town squares was common. It was even a practice, in parts of the South, to hold family picnics on the grass at a lynching.
Then for much of the same period, we had America’s treatment of Native people. Again, early on, the honored Andrew Jackson featured. He signed a bill called the Indian Removal Act which was to uproot tens of thousands of peaceful Natives belonging to about half a dozen tribes like the Cherokee in America’s Southeast, people who in many cases practiced agriculture, and drive them with the American Cavalry to what was then the remote west, Oklahoma Territory, a land that had no relationship to the places like Florida whey had lived and farmed for a long time. It was quite a different climate and physical geography into which they were unceremoniously dumped.
This forcible removal, named the Trail of Tears (1830s), caused the deaths of several thousand by hunger, exhaustion, and exposure. This was a big number in those days when military battles losses were often counted in hundreds. Their farms and settlements and resources in the Southeast were greedily seized by white Americans.
Years later, as American population grew and pushed West, we had the Indian Wars, which involved the American Calvary’s again driving Natives off their lands. Since these were not mainly settled farmers but migrating hunters on horseback, the tactics used against them were much harsher. Whole villages were burned down and all the people killed, just as though they were packs of wild animals being subdued. It was viewed about the same way as farmers shooting coyotes or wolves.
We have old photos of things like a Cavalry Trooper posed proudly with his boot on a man’s dead body, resembling an image from the film, “Planet of Apes,” and of long trench-like mass graves into which rows of bodies were flung, something resembling smaller, rural versions of Auschwitz.
As America continued to expand and drive westward, there was a constant sequence of such violent events, including the appalling and unwarranted Mexican War (1846-8) intended only to steal land from Mexico.
Still later in the 1890s, we had America’s seizure of the Hawaiian Islands, a place which had its own royalty and an established society. The Hawaiians were overwhelmingly opposed to Washington’s rule and sent a delegation to submit a petition signed by virtually everyone on the islands. No one in Washington would even speak to them. They were ignored and treated with contempt.
The ruthlessness and crudity weren’t limited to stealing land and killing natives. Americans practiced the kind of wholesale theft of what today is called “intellectual property” from Europe. Many mechanisms and machines, as for farming, were purchased in Europe, shipped to America, and then copied. This was done with anything you care to mention, even books. Charles Dickens got quite bitter about the way a new book of his would appear shortly after publication in London as a separate edition in Boston. He never saw a penny in royalties. It is ironic that today America feels so self-righteous about the Chinese, for example, in this regard. All they are seeing is their own history repeated.
Well, that’s just a part of the story, but a surprising number of Americans have no idea of the brutality involved in America’s growth. There was mighty little civility ever. America was, and remains, in many respects a raw place. G B Shaw joked that it went from barbarism to decadence without ever passing through civilization. The fact that we still laugh at the joke tells us something of its sharp truth.
A lot of what people complain of today in political discussion reflects some effects of the Internet. All the ugly thoughts and words that once were reserved for the streets and alleys now are put on view for anyone to share, and they do share them. And believe me, having grown up in Chicago in the 1950s, there was plenty of ugly stuff around. There was just no way to broadcast it, except graffiti, and there was plenty of that.
Look at Trump. You simply could not find a ruder, more careless-mouthed man if you tried, and here he is, as President, constantly sending out thoughtless, libelous, and brutal words. Maybe the incivility of much of the Internet helped pave the way for acceptance of his record-setting public crudity.
Candidates for President were once limited by something so simple as having been divorced. Although those kinds of limits were a social pretense, representing a lot of hypocrisy and dishonesty, we have dropped the pretense. And we have dropped the pretense about the rudeness and crude expression that was always there in private.
In many ways, Trump represents a large portion of contemporary American society. The words and thoughts are not new, but the method of widespread transmission is, as is the ready willingness to use it. And note that he is not ignored, by the mainline press or anyone else. His stupidities if unreported would have far less effect, but his words are reported and commented upon and copied daily.
I think it probably is creating something of a downward spiral in the public tone of discussion as people become accustomed to nasty language, ugly thoughts, and prejudice openly broadcast on the Internet, even by the President of the country. Experience suggests that any practice which becomes much repeated, one way or another, tends to drive things even further along. New norms keep being set.
By that, I’m not advocating any form of censorship, something to which I’m utterly opposed, but I am making it clear that we are unavoidably into a new era of public discussion, although I think “discussion” a wholly inadequate word, carrying, as it does, the connotation of calm and rational exchange of ideas.
Indeed, the whole discussion of notions like “fake news,” a Trump favorite with its pejorative and accusatory tone, is muddled and meaningless since all sides in the debate constantly engage in lying, distortion, and hypocrisy. That goes for The New York Times and Washington Post as much as it does for an outfit like Breitbart News.
Everyone wants to get their views “out there,” with little authentic regard for facts. Outfits like The Times still maintain a façade of tone and claim of respectability, but behind the façade, they have an immensely long history of dishonesty and promoting ugly establishment interests, supporting wars and coups and aggression and imperialism in polite words. I actually do not find that more attractive than what we are getting with the Internet. They are both repulsive for anyone who wants to understand some truth.
And I stress that the nastiness and brutality have always been there as an integral part of American culture, only lacking a mechanism of direct communication to large numbers and perhaps being tamped down somewhat by a desire to seem a bit less crude in public. An awareness that others in the world did not engage in quite the same way and responded badly to it may have played a role. But such niceties are lost today.
Traditional religious values may have played a role too in tamping down the public tone, but not only is traditional religion declining rather quickly, a good deal of what remains in America has morphed into bizarre forms with preachers in some cases having parishioners bring their guns to church services or preaching in fervent support of the kind of absolutely brutal violence we see in Israel. Ditto for invoking God’s blessings on “our troops” as they illegally invade yet another country and bomb more women and children.
Actually, the traditional press used to act as something of a filtering mechanism. A great deal of ugly stuff never made it out for anyone’s attention, but it was in fact still there in private. That same impulse to maintain an appearance of civility brought many dishonesties to journalism.
Americans never even knew facts like Roosevelt being wheel chair-bound or Kennedy being anything but a family man or Nixon, around the time of his resignation, putting his wife into the hospital with a serious beating.
And likewise, they never knew the lies and most of the horror of Korea or Vietnam or Iraq. The absolutely massive levels of brutality, as the fact that one-fifth of the entire population of North Korea was exterminated by three years of American carpet bombing. Or that America left Vietnam having killed 3 million souls with more carpet bombing and napalm and early cluster bombs, also leaving the land packed with landmines and soaked with Agent Orange to keep killing and crippling for decades.
Even earlier, there was journalism’s lies about things like “Remember the Maine” in the deliberately-engineered Spanish-American War, a false slogan which made its way into American grade school history books as fact.
The Internet puts much into plain view, but it also does so with a new confusion, a chaotic situation in which ugly fact and ugly myth and deliberate propaganda all come jumbled together. Only people who carefully read and assess and balance realize its potential for communicating truth, but such people always anywhere are a minority.
The chaotic nature of so much “discussion” in America is, just like the country’s brutality and crudeness, simply a part of America’s heritage.
Response some days later to someone who wrote a long and angry comment:
There’s an old saying you might profitably make note of.
It’s usually a good idea to know the words to the music before you get up to sing.
Nothing worse than using a statistic you’ve picked up somewhere to attempt characterizing a situation you clearly have no understanding of.
Only a few percent of Americans were slaveholders?
My God, it is only a few percent of any population that are criminal, but they influence us all every day of our lives.
They make police forces necessary. They make courts necessary. And prison systems and guards and wardens. They make an entire criminal legal system necessary with criminal lawyers, judges, juries, parole boards, the acts of politicians legislating, etc. Their acts fill our newspapers and broadcasting, causing much fear and upset in many ordinary people. Their acts are the topic of endless private and public discussion.
And just so slavery, perhaps even more so. I’ve read a good deal of serious history of the United states. Slavery and all of its related issues colored and affected everything from the way the Constitution was written to import laws to the courts and political arguments. It affected the careers of politicians, it affected law enforcement, North and South, it affected the courts and their decisions. It affected attitudes of people. Its pervasive and noxious influence never went away, having absolutely no connection with the number of slaveholders.
A person of any understanding knows that this is the case for a great many parts of human affairs. Today, we have the economic issue of the extremely lopsided distribution of wealth and income and the “one-percent.” And I suppose you think they do not affect almost everything in society because of their small number? Its politics and the candidates of its political parties? Its laws? Its wars and turmoil? Its taxation system? The government’s treatment of those less fortunate?
As for Trump, do you really think the approach of some corporate business people should characterize government? The ways of Google or Apple or Amazon or John D. Rockefeller or Henry Ford? There are many reasons for thinking that is a terrible idea. Such people already have inordinate influence on government and its policies., and astute observers on both the Left and the Right agree.
Running a company and running a government are two very different things. Different skills. Different understanding. Different expectations. And working under different sets of rules.
Trump is an exceedingly ignorant and impatient man, and he did not even write “The Art of the Deal,” of which he told us he is so proud. He paid a ghostwriter. And that ghostwriter has now spoken out several times about his private observations of Trump. He is an appalling man who listens to no one, is totally obsessed with his own opinions, and is rude and unpleasant. He, of course, only confirms the views of other outsiders who have worked near Trump and written about it.
And do you really think it is the job of a head of government to publicly insult various of its citizens? That is the behavior of an angry child, and a not very pleasant child. He is supposed to be president of all the people, not just some. Imagine Putin doing this in Russia? No, Putin only speaks to the kind of matters a President should speak to. He has what we used to call “class,” a quality utterly missing in Trump. You, know, some of his cheap-bully remarks, here or there, might seem funny at first to some because we’ve never heard their like before, but they do in fact lasting and long-term damage to society.
Again, the number of lynchings, which you obviously regard as small and try to minimize? What an asinine statistic to quote. It addresses nothing but your own ego. I am well familiar with it, but it has nothing to do with what I said.
By the way, from some of your remarks you show that you did not even understand what I wrote. Hard to know why you would want to comment then, but one detects in your tone that same Trumpian quality, a person ready to open his mouth, and loudly, without ever pausing to think.
Posted August 2, 2018 by JOHN CHUCKMAN in Uncategorized
Tagged with "FAKE NEWS" ON ALL SIDES IN AMERICA, A FACADE OF RESPECTABILITY, A PART OF AMERICAN HERITAGE, A RUDE TOUGHTLESS PRESIDENT TRUMP, A WHOLE ERA OF BRAWLS AND VIOLENT DISAGREEMENTS, AMERICA A RAW PLACE STILL, AMERICA AND NATIVE PEOPLE, AMERICA HAS DROPPED ITS PRETENSES, AMERICA'S "ONE PERCENT", AMERICA'S DRIVE WESTWARD, AMERICA'S EARLY WARS, AMERICA'S EXTREMELY BRUTAL HISTORY, AMERICA'S HISTORY OF STEALING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, AMERICA'S INDIAN WARS, AMERICA'S MARCH WEST, AMERICA'S MARCH WEST AND SOUTH, AMERICA'S THEFT OF HAWAII, AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE, AMERICAN INCIVILITY, AMERICAN THEFT OF EUROPEAN INVENTIONS, BEHAVIOR OF AN ANGRY CHILD, BRUTAL AMERICAN HISTORY, BRUTAL RECORD OF PRESIDENT ANDREW JACKSON, BRUTALITY AND DISHONESTY AND HYPOCRISY IN AMERICA, BUILDING THE AMERICAN EMPIRE, CHAOTIC NATURE OF "DISCUSSION" IN AMERICA, CHARLES DICKENS AND AMERICAN LITERARY THEFT, CHEROKEE AND AMERICAN SOUTHEAST, DE FACTO SLAVERY AFTER CIVIL WAR, DISCUSSION IN AMERICA, DISHONESTIES OF JOURNALISM, EARLY AMERICAN EMPIRE, EFFECTS OF INTERNET, FACTS AMERICANS NEVER KNEW, G B SHAW ON AMERICA PASSING FROM BARBARISM TO DECADENCE, GOD'S BLESSING ON OUR TROOPS INVADING ANOTHER PLACE AND KILLING WOMEN AND CHILDREN, HAWAIIAN ISLANDS, HIS STUPIDITIES ARE REPORTED DAILYINSTEAD OF BEING IGNORED, IN CHINA AMERICANS SEE SOME OF THEIR OWN HISTORY REPEATED, INCIVILITY OF MUCH OF THE INTERNET, INDIAN WARS AND CAVALRY, INTERNET PUTS MUCH INTO PLAIN VIEW, JOHN CHUCKMAN, KILLING INDIANS VIEWED AS SHOOTING COYOTES, KOREA AND VIETNAM HORRORS, LACK OF MANNERS AND COUTH, METHOD OF WIDESPREAD TRANSMISSION OF UGLY WORDS, MEXICAN WAR, NASTINESS AND BRUTALITY, NEW NORMS KEEP BEING SET, NEW YORK TIMES AND BREITBART NEWS PARALLELS, NORTH KOREA AND VIETNAM, OKLAHOMA TERRITORY, ONLY A FEW PERCENTARE CRIMINAL, OPPOSED TO CENSORSHIP, POLITICAL DISCUSSION TODAY REFLECTS EFFECTS OFINTERNET, PRESS AND MEDIA, PUBLIC ACCEPTANCE OF RECORD CRUDITY, READY TO OPEN HIS MOUTH WITHOUT EVER PAUSING TO THINK, RELIGION IS DECLINING, REMEMBER THE MAINE, RUNNING A COMPANY DIFFERENT THAN RUNNING A GOVERNMENT, SECRETS KEPT FROM THE AMERICAN PUBLIC, SHARECROPPERS AND JIM CROW LAWS, SLAVERY AND ITS EFFECTS, SLAVERY COLORED EVERYTHING IN AMERICAN HISTORY, SMALL RURAL VERSIONS OF AUSCHWITZ, SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR CREATED FOR THEFT, THE ROLE OF SLAVERY IN FORMING AMERICA, THE WEIRD IDEA OF "FAKE NEWS", THEFT OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, TRAIL OF TEARS, TRUMP BRINGS A NEW LOW STANDARD IN POLITICAL SPEECH, TRUMP REPRESENTS A LARGE PORTION OF AMERICA, TRUMP'S CRUDENESS, TRUMPIAN TONE
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