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TicketsWest
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Theatre / Arts
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Mark O'Connor Band: An Appalachian Christmas
Newmark Theatre
Mark O’Connor’s An Appalachian Christmas album (2011) reached the #1 ranking on Billboard’s Bluegrass Album charts and has been in the top five each year since. Hailed by critics from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Los Angeles Times as a top 10 album of the holiday season, it has become a perennial classic Christmas recording.
“All Christmas music should be played so elegantly on violin"—Boston Globe
"Heavenly"—Associated Press
“Elegant”—New York Times
O'Connor says, "Appalachia is the original melting pot of our country featuring more diverse styles of American music than just about anywhere. This theme makes for what is a trilogy of my "Appalachia" recordings now; Appalachia Waltz, Appalachian Journey and An Appalachian Christmas. My album features well known carols as well as several Appalachian-themed songs about a beloved hunting dog, passing a fiddle down through the generations, and offering a new version of Appalachia Waltz itself with classical guitarist Sharon Isbin, one of my most well-known pieces. A few of my favorite Christmas centerpieces for the album include Renee Fleming’s soprano embraced by a mountain orchestra and fiddle solo on Away In A Manger and Amazing Grace, the jazzy style of Jane Monheit with an all-acoustic string band on Winter Wonderland and The Christmas Song and terrific guest appearances by music legends James Taylor, Yo-Yo Ma and Alison Krauss.”
About An Appalachian Christmas Concert Tour: Grammy-winning composer and fiddler Mark O’Connor has created several arrangements of Christmas classics and fashions a wondrous mixture of both instrumental and vocal music in bluegrass and other American music genres. Concertgoers are treated to fresh takes on traditional songs with a few original compositions included. His renditions are playful and joyous, but can be strikingly earnest too.
The touring musicians with Mark O’Connor include his wife Maggie O’Connor, son Forrest O’Connor, and daughter-in-law Kate Lee O’Connor of the newly Grammy-winning Mark O’Connor Band.
This is the 8th consecutive year for An Appalachian Christmas on tour. The ensemble has a dynamic energy on stage that brings their individual expertise to holiday themes and classics in the most delightful and musically satisfying way!
MARK O’CONNOR BAND
Represented by MOC Enterprises
The Grammy-winning Mark O’Connor Band can be found at www.markoconnorband.com
Information on the Mark O’Connor Method for violin and strings is available at www.oconnormethod.com
For Mr. O’Connor’s downloadable sheet music and recordings on his own OMAC Record label, please visit www.markoconnor.com and www.omacredords.com
The Mark O’Connor Band uses D’Addario Strings.
Copyright © 2020 TicketsWest. All Rights Reserved. ® Site Map a carbonhouse experience
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The Tramway Museum Society, its Membership and its Museum
This fascinating Museum began during the decline of the tram in the 1950s. Founder members became ‘people with a mission’ to rescue, store and restore as many types of tram as possible. The National Tramway Museum has developed into a major tourist attraction on the world stage, and is an important research centre for historians, scholars and students.
Volunteers at the Museum are relied upon to perform a thousand and one different tasks.
Armchair enthusiasts – those who are interested simply in the project but not physically active – are just as welcome as the more energetic. Nor do you need to know anything about trams in order to become an active participant.
Lots of youngsters who have never seen a tram in its original setting are finding the Museum the basis of a new, fascinating and rewarding hobby. On the other hand, more senior people too, make a significant contribution. Our members are drawn from all walks of life, and from all parts of the world. Meeting and working with them is an interesting experience in itself.
The Society supports social activities which include film shows, visits to other museums (home and abroad) and parties. There are also active local branches in many parts of the country. Furthermore, reciprocal admission arrangements exist with certain other museums. The Museum also possesses a cafe, and limited overnight accommodation for volunteer members.
Ordinary membership (aged 18- 59)
£24.00 per year
Senior Members (aged 60+)
Junior Members (aged 4 – 17)
Family Adult (Aged 18+)
Family Junior (Aged 4 – 17)
Life (Full) (Aged 18 – 59)
Life (Senior) (Aged 60+)
1. Be part of preserving British Tramway Heritage for future generations.
2. Receive the Museum’s Journal and newsletter and keep up to date with what is happening and new developments.
3. Visit the Museum and enjoy the facilities offered throughout the season.
4. Enjoy a range of reciprocal admission arrangements with other specified heritage organisations.
5. Members’ discounts are available for some retail and catering services at the Museum on production of the membership card.
6. Receive invitations to ‘members only’ social events.
7. Adult members may attend the Annual General Meeting (and any other general meetings) and be entitled to vote.
Download the: Membership Application Form 2020v1
If you wish to pay by Direct Debit, please download the form here and return to us: DirectDebitInstruction
Family membership is available to the families of Ordinary or Life members. Senior, Junior and Family members do not have voting rights, and Family members do not receive Society literature.
Opening Dates & Times 2020
14th March - 9th April 10am - 4.30pm (last admissions 3pm). Except week-ends when we will close at 5.30pm. (last admissions 4pm).
10th April - 6th September 10am - 5.30pm (last admissions 4pm)
7th September - 26th October: 10am - 4.30pm (last admissions 3pm) Except week-ends when we will close at 5.30pm. (last admissions 4pm).
Starlight Event 27th October - 31st October 2020
Tuesday 27th October and Saturday 31st October: 10am - 8.30pm (last admissions 7pm)
Wednesday 28th - Friday 30th October: 10am - 7.30pm. (last admissions 6pm).
Last Day of the Season 2020
1st November - 10am - 5.30pm (last admissions 4pm)
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Cross-Curricular School Trip To Beijing & Shanghai Request a quote
Cross-Curricular School Trip To Beijing & Shanghai
Explore two incredible cities with your school group and open their minds to new cultures and ways of life.
ChinaSchool TripsCross-curricular
The magnificent Forbidden City palace complex
A rickshaw ride through the streets of Beijing
The giant Jade Buddha statue in Shanghai
The wonder of the Great Wall
Price Typically £1196 Price per student Based on an 8 day, 6 night tour for 30 students, travelling February 2021
Schools - China - Generic
Thank you so much to all at Travelbound for making the trip such a very great success. The itinerary was incredible and the organisation the best that I have ever known on a school trip.
Overnight flight to Beijing - 10 hours approx
Arrive Beijing - lunch Olympic Park, Birds Nest and Water Cube (external views) and The Summer Palace Overnight Beijing - evening meal
Breakfast The Great Wall of China - lunch The Temple of Heaven - evening meal Kung Fu show Overnight Beijing
Breakfast Rickshaw ride through Hutongs. Traditional tea ceremony - lunch Calligraphy lesson. Wangfujing Street shopping Overnight Beijing - evening meal
Breakfast Tianannmen Square and Mao’s Mausoleum - lunch The Forbidden City Bullet train to Shanghai – evening meal
Breakfast City tour of Shanghai, Oriental TV (3rd Ball) Tower, Jade Buddha Temple, the Bund - lunch Evening meal Night markets Overnight Shanghai
Breakfast Shanghai school visit (term time only) - lunch Yu Gardens and Nanjing Road shopping - evening meal Chinese acrobatic show Overnight Shanghai
Breakfast Transfer to the airport by coach and Maglev train Flight Shanghai to UK – about 12.5 hours
What's included*
Flights from the UK + excursion travel
National guide throughout the tour
1 teacher place for every 10 students
Excursion entrance fees and gratuities
*Visa costs not typically included in price
01 Tiananmen Square
02 The Forbidden City
03 The Summer Palace
04 Great Wall of China
05 Temple of Heaven
06 Rickshaw ride, Beijing
07 Traditional tea house visit
08 Chinese calligraphy lesson
09 Shanghai city tour
10 Acrobatics Show
It was here on October 1st 1949 that Chairman Mao Tse-Tung announced the founding of the People’s Republic of China to the world. Built during the Ming Dynasty the square is named after Tiananmen Gate, which lies to the north. It’s the third largest of its kind in the world and a significant cultural landmark with the People’s Heroes monument in the centre.
1 hour See on map
This palace lies at the heart of Beijing and was the home of the emperors for over 500 years. Completed in 1420, it is the biggest palace complex in the world covering 74 hectares. Surrounded by a 52m-wide moat, it’s an adventure to explore the labyrinth of rooms, halls and gardens with magnificent decoration and rare curiosities throughout.
3 - 4 hours See on map
Situated just outside Beijing, the Summer Palace is the grandest and most well preserved park in China. Construction began in 1750 on these luxury gardens for the royal family, and gradually they have been developed into the magnificent expanse of lawns, streams, bridges, secret gardens and pavilions scattered across the shores of the Kunming Lake.
3 hours See on map
Considered to be one of the wonders of the world, the Great Wall today was built in Ming Dynasty and is over 6,000 km long. An amazing feat of defensive architecture, intended to protect the Chinese Empire from invaders, it winds a path over rugged country and steep mountains. Sections within easy reach of Beijing have been restored so that visitors can walk on the wall and see the watch towers.
Half day See on map
Once used by emperors in the heaven worship ceremony, the temple park in Beijing is now one of the grandest examples of China’s sacrificial buildings. First built in 1420, the temple has been enlarged and rebuilt by both the Ming and Qing dynasties. At the heart of the Temple is the Hall of Prayer for good harvest, where the Emperor requested good harvests in his divine capacity as the son of heaven.
Take a Rickshaw ride through Beijing’s traditional back alleys known as Hutongs. See traditional courtyard residences characteristic of how the majority of the population lived in Beijing until the mid-twentieth century. Many Hutongs have been demolished in recent years to make way for modern development but some areas have been protected because of their historical and cultural significance.
The Chinese tea house has the same cult following as our coffee shop culture. It’s a great way for students to get a taste of oriental tea tradition. The tea ceremony reveals different types of scent, colour, taste and brewing methods for individual blends and their health benefits. The ceremony is an art form and a joy to watch before enjoying a cup.
1 See on map
The ancient art of Chinese calligraphy is still widely practised and respected in East Asian culture. It’s about capturing life through traces on silk or paper, a dynamic technique prized for both its aesthetic and expressive qualities. Students take part in a lesson by a skilled calligrapher, and keep their finished sheets as a memento to take home.
1- 2 hours See on map
9 Shanghai city tour
By population, Shanghai is the largest city in the world and the tour gives students a real sense of the city’s global influence. We explore the historical district of Bund as a modern cultural hub, with a trip to see the jade Buddha statues in Jade Buddha Temple and the Oriental Pearl Tower – the iconic structure resembling pearls falling onto a jade plate.
Full day See on map
Acrobatic art is a traditional Chinese performing art rooted in Chinese culture and dating back to 475-221BC. The ancient acrobatics reflected the lives of the Chinese people and today, all provinces of China have their own acrobatic troupes. Acts such as group gymnastics, meteor juggling and tight rope feats make for a spectacular show for the students.
Typical accommodation
China Accommodation ★★★
Why groups like it:
All our accommodation in China is 3 star & of a very high standard
We only choose accommodation close to the attractions & points of interest on your itinerary
We only select accommodation that provides high standards of service
Guestrooms generally have twin beds
Rooms are usually equipped with TV and air conditioning
En-suite facilities are provided
Subject focus
Students can:
Experience learning outside the classroom in another country – the culture, history, politics, geography and art
Gain a deeper understanding of Chinese history and politics
Develop an understanding of China’s economic and political role in the modern world
Build confidence and learn to value the skills and techniques needed for personal and team success
Broaden the mind through the study of another culture
Discover, explore and have fun with fellow students and teachers
Students will have an opportunity to:
Visit a foreign country and experience another culture
Consider a range of issues around citizenship and history
Gain a better understanding of China’s role in the modern world
Gain independence and self-confidence
Strengthen existing friendships and make new friends
Understand personal organisation, co-operation and working with others in a variety of environments
Tour Cross-Curricular School Trip To Beijing
China, with ancient treasures and forward-facing culture, inspires students and broadens their outlook on the world during and after their trip there!
Tour Cross-Curricular School Trip To Paris
Paris is the classic school trip – so near yet so charmingly different in culture, students of all subjects won’t forget it.
Compliment your school trip to Paris with a stay in Normandy
Extend your school trip to France with a relaxing stay at the Château du Molay in Normandy.
Owned and run by Travelbound, this 18th century château has everything you need to relax after a long day of sight-seeing.
Students can let their energy loose across 38 acres of parkland, or take part in a range of organised activities.
Our experienced château staff are there to keep an eye on things while you take time off from being party leader.
Find out more about the Château du Molay
Tour Cross-Curricular School Trip To Berlin
Berlin has a rich history and a thriving cultural scene with great museums and galleries. Students of all subjects will love this dynamic city and have lessons to take and apply in their classrooms.
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Home / What We’re Watching (page 4)
Narcos Season 2 – Teaser
Bigg UU June 13, 2016 Lifestyle, What We're Watching 0
The hunt for Pablo Escobar begins. Netflix has just teased us all with an announcement trailer for season 2 of Narcos.
Watch the making of Season 2: Fear the Walking Dead
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Are you ready for Season 2 of the sleeper hit Fear the Walking Dead? Watch the making and behind the scenes of the show.
Watch Marvel’s official trailer for the upcoming Luke Cage
Watch the official first trailer to Marvel's Luke Cage coming in September.
Watch the official trailer for Season 3 of HBO’s Silicon Valley
The new trailer for HBO's Silicon Valley has hit the web and Season 3 premieres April 24th.
Boosie Badazz: Beat Cancer (Full Interview)
Bigg UU January 20, 2016 Lifestyle, What We're Watching 0
Rapper Boosie Badazz sits down for an exclusive interview as he opens up about his kidney cancer diagnosis.
THE X-FILES – The Investigations Continue (Trailer)
Watch the official trailer to the reboot of the X-Files starring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson reprising their roles as Fox Mulder & Dana Scully.
House of Cards – Frank Underwood | The Leader We Deserve
Frank Underwood is the leader that America needs. Hilary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump got their work cut out for them.
Trae Tha Truth – TRAE (S3 E6) ft. Paul Wall
Houston Hip Hop rapper Trae Tha Truth drops off Season 3, Episode 6 of his show TRAE featuring fellow Houston native Paul Wall.
Watch the trailer for Marvel’s Daredevil Season 2
Bigg UU January 8, 2016 Lifestyle, What We're Watching 0
Watch the official trailer to Marvel's wildly successful show Daredevil Season 2, featuring Elektra and The Punisher.
Watch this trailer for FX’s ‘Baskets’ starring Zach Galifianakis
Watch the official trailer for the upcoming comedy FX show 'Baskets', starring Zach Galifianakis and executive produced by Louis C.K.
Mike Colter of Marvel’s Jessica Jones speaks on Luke Cage (Video)
Bigg UU December 14, 2015 Lifestyle, What We're Watching 0
Mike Colter, the actor who plays Jessica Jones' love interest or better known as Luke Cage, has some words to say about the character and teases where will meet Luke on the upcoming solo season.
American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson (Trailer)
Bigg UU December 7, 2015 Lifestyle, What We're Watching 0
Watch the official trailer to 'American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson' starring John Travolta, Sarah Paulson, Cuba Gooding, Jr. and more.
Killer Mike endorses Bernie Sanders (Video)
Bigg UU November 25, 2015 Lifestyle, What We're Watching 0
Killer Mike delivers a powerful speech while introducing Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in Atlanta.
Meow The Jewels: A Short Paw-cumentary (Video)
Bigg UU November 2, 2015 Lifestyle, What We're Watching 0
Run The Jewels and Mass Appeal Records brings you a documentary, or "paw-cumentary" for their project "Meow The Jewels".
Rick Ross – Geechi Liberace (Video)
Bigg UU October 2, 2015 Music, What We're Watching 0
Maybach Music boss Rick Ross drops the official video for 'Geechi Liberace', from the "Black Dollar" mixtape.
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RIP: Shows Ending in 2020
Netflix in 2020: A Complete Guide
LeAnn Rimes: Eddie Cibrian and I Are Not Engaged
By Robyn Ross@robynrosstvgNov 6, 2010 10:44 AM EDT
LeeAnn Rimes and Eddie Cibrian
LeAnn Rimes says that she and boyfriend Eddie Cibrian are not engaged.
"I'm not engaged period," the singer tweeted on Friday. "Eddie and I felt we couldn't let this rumor go on any longer."
LeAnn Rimes: I don't regret affair
On Thursday, the day after their first television interview as a couple aired on ABC, E! Online reported that the 28-year-old Grammy winner had become engaged to Cibrian.
Their relationship has been tabloid fodder ever since they met on the set of their Lifetime TV movie Northern Lights. At the time, Rimes was married to Dean Sheremet, and Cibrian was married to Brandi Glanville, with whom he has two children.
"Thanks to all of our wonderful fans for the premature congrats," Rimes tweeted, "But for now, let's all be happy we're happy and still and will remain together!"
(Disclosure: TV Guide is owned by CBS Interactive, a division of ViacomCBS.)
Add To WatchlistEditEdit Watchlist
Actor, Singer
Singer, Songwriter, Actor
Nora Roberts' Northern Lights
Premiered:
Take Two Is Just a Fun Summer Show, and That's OK
We could all use an escape right now
Castle Creators Return to ABC for a Very Castle-Like Cop Procedural
Is this Castle 2.0?
Tyler Perry, Girlfriend Expecting Baby
Tyler Perry and his longtime girlfriend, Gelila Bekele, are expecting their first child together, Us Weekly reports.
LeAnn Rimes and Eddie Cibrian Wanted to Do VH1 Reality Show to "Take Our Life Back"
LeAnn Rimes and Eddie Cibrian have been in the public eye for pretty much their entire relationship thus far thanks to paparazzi and tabloids. So the two were not only well-trained for the ups and downs of documenting their daily lives, they actually wanted to do it. "Everyone's used our lives as entertainment and so we wanted to actually kind of take..
VIDEO: Brandi Glanville Opens Up About Her Feud with Lisa Vanderpump
The Brandi Glanville-Lisa Vanderpump feud that's been brewing on the current season of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills heated up on Monday when Glanville appeared on Watch What Happens Live. Glanville…
Top Moments: Mentalist Goes Up in Flames, Walking Dead's Villainous Return
Our top moments of the week: 15. Craziest Bombshell: As Real Housewives of Beverly Hills fans, and probably LeAnn Rimes supporters, know all too well, Brandi Glanville is no shrinking violet. So when she stops by Watch What Happens: Live, she not only keeps her very random feud with Whitney Cummings alive with a…
Photo Credits: Astrid Sawiarz/WireImage.com; Diyah Pera/CW; Bettina Strauss/Netflix; Christopher Smith/Netflix; Maarten de Boer, ABC; Robert Rodriguez / TV Guide
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Snapchat vs. Instagram Stories - Who comes out on top?
Posted on Thursday 3rd August, 2017
Author: Lydia Abraham
Snapchat may have invented it, but Instagram was quick to repackage it in a fancy format. With a (slightly) different look, Instagram took on the upcoming platform, allowing for the battle to commence with their similar output.
Mr Darcy and Daniel, Batman and The Joker, Snapchat and Instagram. Everyone loves a battle, but with Snapchat and Instagram both having their merits, is there a clear winner? Here’s our verdict…
It didn’t take long for Instagram to compete with Snapchat’s impressive metrics. After launching Instagram Stories in August 2016, a TechCrunch report found that Snapchat Stories view counts dipped by 15-40%. There was also a decline in posting volume. In contrast, Instagram Story view counts soared, with influencers seeing engagement rates 3-5X higher than on Snapchat. Not only that, but Instagram Stories hit 150 million daily users within six months, only slightly lower than the number of daily active users for Snapchat’s entire app. Online influencers have also noticed a shift, with our recent survey showing 55% prefer using Instagram Stories over Snapchat. It’s a close result, but a market that Snapchat was previously leading.
Results like this have quickly placed Instagram as a game changer, allowing the media to announce that Snapchat has been ‘crushed’ as a result, but lower figures can work in Snapchat’s favour. Instagram, with its 600 million users may outperform Snapchat on numbers, but with with less marketers on Snapchat it does mean less competition.
Despite this, the claim that Snapchat is ‘dead’ has still been off putting for businesses allocating media budgets, with companies reluctant to invest in something that’s on its way out. However, giving up on Snapchat could be jumping the gun – although Instagram may be seeing results, the former still has impressive engagement metrics. The average Snapchat user spends around half an hour on the app per day, with 60% of users creating content. That’s a lot of dog filter selfies sent back and forth. Results compare well with Instagram’s figures, where users spend only 15 minutes per day within the app, with activity limited to mostly browsing.
Beyond key figures, there are features on each platform that work to make both anattractive prospect for brands. While the overall concept is very similar, some differences are key.
User interface is deemed better on Instagram, with features like easily pausing a video and changing stickers working well. Not only that, but the UI for Instagram Stories has pushed how engaging advertising on Stories can be - there are more options than Snapchat when planning robust and targeted ads, aided with creation through Facebook’s Ad Manager.
Snapchat tends to be streets ahead with tech, showing more advanced filters, voice recognition and overlays. This started out as Snapchat’s ‘thing’, and seems something they’re keen to continue to push as their niche, with more options on geofilters and sponsored filters. Brands have also done some great things with these capabilities, with the likes of L’Oreal and HBO all having created sponsored filters in recent months.
One area Snapchat does lack is its ability to search and find new users, relying on only word of mouth and promotion on other platforms. Unlike this, Instagram makes searching easy, both for accounts and hashtags using Stories.
A final key feature for Instagram is the fact everything is already in one place. The audience is already there, ready to engage with visual content. On the other hand, Snapchat has built its audience from scratch, using only it’s stories as a pull. For influencers and brands already established on Instagram, it makes their Stories feature an attractive prospect.
Snapchat has a well known status as a favourite with the younger generation, with 60% of users under 25. Penetration rate among 18-24 year olds is also twice that for 25-34 year olds. It’s soon become a valuable tool for brands with defined personalities, with scope for quirkiness, creativity and spontaneity on the platform using quick fire visuals. Whether it’s sharing glimpses of the company, or adding some personality to the brand, there are a whole range of fun opportunities that go beyond a basic filter.
In comparison, Instagram has a slightly older demographic, with a Pew Research study showing 59% of all online 18-29 year olds in the U.S use the platform. Instagram also does well with 30 – 49 year olds, with 33% of internet users in this age using it. Stylized content tends to be key on Instagram, taking a more professional look than Snapchat, making it great for product selling and showcasing items in the best possible light. After all, Instagram is known for users sharing their ‘highlight reels’.
Which network is better for you?
It would make everyone’s life easier if there was a clear winner, but with ‘Stories’ in general still relatively new, the reality is that both Snapchat and Instagram continue to be key players in social media. Both have advantages and disadvantages, and while the two are different, that doesn’t mean one is better than the other.
Based on current results, Instagram looks like it’s set to blow Snapchat out of the water in terms of user base and growth. It also shows a developed user experience, welcomed by its audience. This, alongside considering if you’ve already got an established following on there makes Instagram Stories a popular option. However, Snapchat shows a lot of scope for developing brand personality, and its relaxed nature means its more open to quick fire updates. With budgets, Instagram was always likely to appear as a safe bet, but for those looking to add another level to branding, Snapchat can still show great results.
At Über, we’re advising clients to first trial content across both platforms, because contrary to belief - Snapchat hasn’t yet kicked the bucket. From there, we can help clients to look into what content is and isn’t working, and whether or not to focus on one platform. For now, we’re still seeing impressive figures from content across both Snapchat and Instagram.
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Al-Shabaab and#039storm Amisom baseand#039 in Somalia
Militants from Somalia’s Al-Qaeda-affiliated Al-Shabaab group rammed a suicide car bomb into an African Union army base early Tuesday and stormed inside, an official and a witness said.
There were no immediate reports on casualties, and the rebels said in a statement that the Amisom troops had fled the base, situated in Janale district, 80 kilometres (50 miles) southwest of Mogadishu in the lower Shabele region.
But Amisom denied claims that the Shabaab had taken over the base.
“AMISOM can confirm that the base is still under AMISOM control. Reports that the base has been taken over and our weapons captured are false,” the AU army force stated in a post on its Twitter account.
The base is thought to be manned by Burundian soldiers.
“There was heavy explosion and fighting broke out at the Amisom base in Janale. We don’t have details but we are hearing that Al-Shabaab militants attacked the base,” said Mohamed Shire, a Somali military commander based in the region.
A local eyewitness said Al-Shabaab fighters stormed into the base.
“Heavy fighting broke out after a suicide bomber rammed his vehicle into the camp,” said local resident Ali Moalim Yusuf. “I saw heavily armed fighters chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’ (‘God is greatest’) pouring into the base.”
The militants, who are fighting to overthrow Somalia’s internationally backed and AU-protected government, confirmed they were behind the attack.
“Mujaheddin fighters captured the base after a suicide bomber struck it, the enemy fled,” the Islamists said in a brief statement.
In June, Al-Shabaab fighters killed dozens of Burundian soldiers when they overran an Amisom outpost northwest of the capital. The militants also stage frequent suicide attacks inside the capital.
But Amisom, the 22,000-strong AU force in Somalia, has also made key gains against the militants in recent months, pushing them out of several strongholds in the southwest of the country.
23 year old man kills 88 year old lover over cheating
Brig Tumukunde promoted, then retired
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Training and Development Days
These days are the means by which we hope to encourage more people to gain knowledge of how to train their dog to track wounded animals. Training is open to anyone with an interest in tracking dogs regardless of whether they wish to become involved with the UKDTR volunteer scheme or not. See the News section for dates.
Introduction Day
This day will cover:
Shot site (strike) scenario and why shot site inspection is so important to tracking
Breeds of dog and choosing a puppy
Principles of scent
Starting training, classroom and practical sessions on how to get started and maintain progress.
These days are ideal for those who are starting out in tracking or want to train a new dog the right way for tracking purposes. Even if you have used dogs for tracking in the past but have not given them structured training, or had a chance to discuss training techniques with experienced handlers, you will find this day useful. Dogs are welcome and will usually get an opportunity to do a short track.
Development Day
Before attending these days you are encouraged to attend an introduction day with us or one of the other organisations, and to have carried out a number of training, and if possible real, tracks on your own. Attendance is a pre-requisite for anyone wishing to become part of UK Deer Track and Recovery as one of our volunteer tracking teams.
The Development days will cover:
Shooter/tracker analysis of incident
Shot site inspection, scenarios and decision making
Tracks put down at different lengths of time and through different terrains to give the dog and handler more experience.
Help while working your dog on the trail; how to read your dog better and help with problems
Equipment needed when tracking live
Dispatching animals at the end of a track
Insurance, risk assessment and best practice.
Q and A session
Test Days
We regard test days equally as training/skills development days which is why our judges will always give feedback after a test.
Unfortunately we have to charge for training in order to cover costs, but will endeavour to keep prices as low as possible.
There will be a reduction of fee for those that complete both a successful 20 hour test and attend our development day in any order.
The prices of training and test days will be given on the News page along with future dates as soon as they are arranged.
Deer tracking volunteer scheme:
Anybody wishing to apply to become a member of our volunteer tracking scheme must meet our standards. Handler/dog teams that can produce evidence of a similar standard abroad will also be considered.
Prospective members should note that volunteering for the scheme is regarded as a recreational activity and that members should arrange their own insurance. This can be done privately, but both BASC and BDS, NGO arrange suitable cover.
Breeds of dog that most likely to reach UKDTR standards are pure bred
All HPR breeds
All hounds
Other breeds and cross breeds will be accepted for testing and may track within the UKDTR volunteer scheme but UKDTR strongly advise against cross breeding and will not place advertisements for breeding or progeny from such dogs.
Preferably to have completed DSC 2 and have two or more years stalking experience.
Handler and dog must pass the 20 hour tracking test or its recognised equivalent.
A basic knowledge of different shot sites is essential to aid any tracking team to make a recovery. Shot site inspection and scenario training will be compulsory.
The handler will be encouraged to keep a confidential log of live (non-training) tracks followed, as part of their skills development.
Our volunteer teams will:
be trained/tested to make sure they meet our standards.
maintain a confidential log of live tracks followed as part of their skills development.
be motivated by finding the animal to end suffering or to locate the carcass and will NOT accept money for helping to track lost animals (other than motoring costs) and will be professional and discreet at all times. Handlers failing to act in this way will be removed from the volunteer list.
if available, operate on a call-out basis for individual wounded deer including animals injured as a result of deer vehicle collisions.
if available, be present for organised deer movement days or team shoots.
only track where permission for access has been given
not carry a firearm unless specifically requested to do so and only in legal circumstances
not use the tracking opportunity as a means to gain stalking rights on that land
arrange for their own insurance but cannot be held responsible for incidents which were not of their own making or while under direction from a third party.
The UKDTR will from time to time arrange tracking events for members aimed at skills development.
Volunteer scheme membership is free.
Practical tracking Standards for dog and handler:
Any breed or cross breed may be submitted for testing provided the dog is healthy and capable of the required physical exertion.
Tests are open to anyone.
Three hour old tracking test: Most dogs should be able to pass this test by the age of 12 months. Success at the 3 hour test is a good indicator that the dog, with further training, should be able to complete the 20 hr test and is a pre-requisite for that test.
At the beginning of any test track there will be a marked 20x20 meter square in which there will be a shot site (strike) from which the track will lead.
The test track will be laid using scent shoes with fresh (or fresh frozen and freshly thawed) deer hooves and using no more than 100ml of blood, from the same animal if possible. Blood, hair, bone and hooves from any of the six kinds of deer in the U.K. can be used to make up the trail, but it is preferred that blood, hair and tissue from the herding species is used, and that only one species is used for individual trails. A “find” of skin, hoof or other fresh/fresh thawed deer part will be left at the end of the trail, which must be indicated by the dog in some way.
The track itself will be approximately 400 meters long with two turns of between 45 and 90 degrees at some point along its path. It will be marked along the trail in such a way that only the judges will know its path.
On the way to the shot site area the handler must demonstrate that the dog will walk to heel on or off of a short lead. The shot site must be found by the handler themselves or using their dog. Once the shot site is located the handler must describe to the judges what they think has happened and any course of action they may wish to take. Tracking may then begin.
The team will be given only one trail on any one day. There will be three chances to complete the trail if it is not completed in one go:
EITHER: The handler may elect to re-start the dog at any point along the trail if they consider that the trail has been lost.
OR: The dog will be allowed to stray no more than 20 metres from the trail before the judge intervenes. At this stage the handler may re-start the dog at a point of their choosing.
The total of elected or judge re-starts will be no more than 3.
After 3 unsuccessful attempts, the judge will declare a non-completion, they will inform the handler but will still encourage them to try to complete the trail.
The handler must display a good standard of control over their dog without excessive use of voice. A fast pace is discouraged but will not be penalised. Short distractions by game or other uninjured deer scent are permitted provided the dog resumes the trail immediately. If a dog chases game or livestock and cannot be recalled at the first attempt, a non-completion will be called by the judge.
The judge(s) will make notes on the way round and discuss the trail with the handler at the end.
Twenty hour old tracking test:
Ideally this test should be passed before the dog is two years of age but for the time being older dogs can be submitted for testing.
A pass at the 3 hour test is a pre-requisite for this test and it is strongly recommended that handlers have practised the 20 hour routine with their dog before attempting it as a test.
At some point on the test day but not whilst attempting the tracking test, handlers will be asked to show that the dog can remain stationary and quiet for at least 5 minutes with the handler at least 10metres away.
As with the three hour test, there will be a marked 20x20 meter square in which there will be a shot site (strike).
The test track will be laid no less than 20 hours before the test using scent shoes with fresh (or fresh frozen and freshly thawed) deer hooves. Blood, hair, bone and hooves from any of the six kinds of deer in the U.K. can be used to make up the trail, but it is preferred that blood, hair and tissue from the herding species is used, and that only one species is used for individual trails. No more than 25ml blood will be used on the trail and there may be gaps of up to 25 metres with no blood at all used on the trail. The trail will be approximately 800 meters long and have two 90 degree turns and a small back track (a trail that goes out at some point then stops and comes back along the same route) of approximately 10 metres. A “find” of skin, hoof or other fresh/fresh thawed deer part will be left at the end of the trail, which must be indicated by the dog in some way but there is no requirement for the dog to “speak” at the find. The trail will be marked in such a way that only the judges know its path.
On the way to the shot site area the handler must demonstrate that the dog will walk to heel on or off of a short lead. Before looking for the shot site, the dog must remain stationary at a distance while the handler searches for the shot site. If the handler cannot find the shot site, the dog may then be used.
Once the shot site is located the handler must describe to the judges what they think has happened and the best plan of action for a successful recovery. Tracking may then begin.
Under the direction of the judge and during the track, but before the wound couch, the dog must be made to stop by the handler on command, wait for at least 30 seconds, then resume the track.
There will be a wound couch at around 600 meters in which there may be blood, hair or bone, this must be pointed out.
The handler must display a good standard of control over their dog without excessive use of voice. The pace must not be so fast that it would be difficult for the handler to see blood or other signs. Short distractions by game or other uninjured deer scent are permitted provided the dog resumes the trail immediately. If a dog chases game or livestock a non-completion will be called by the judge.
The team will be given only one trail on any one day. There will be two chances to complete the trail if it is not completed in one go:
After two unsuccessful attempts, the judge will declare a non-completion and must inform the handler. The judge(s) will make notes on the way round and discuss the trail with the handler at the end.
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Forums > Heavy Metal Festivals > ProgPower USA >
Progpower performances on DVD
Discussion in 'ProgPower USA' started by oldboy, Aug 17, 2015.
oldboy Member
I recently bought the Jorn, and Rob Rock DVD's which were recorded at Progpower. I also have the Progpower V DVD. My question is: have there ben any other Progpower USA performances that are available on DVD?
#1 oldboy, Aug 17, 2015
TheLongshot Member
Well, outside of the official festival DVDs, I know Therion's last performance is on DVD (Adulruna Rediviva And Beyond)
#2 TheLongshot, Aug 17, 2015
Harvester The Promoter
Off the top of my head....
Redemption- Live from the Pit
Primal Fear- Live in the USA
Brainstorm- Honey from the Bs
New ones from Need, Pagan's Mind, and Seventh Wonder will be out in that order.
#3 Harvester, Aug 17, 2015
1000 Faces Member
Harvester said: ↑
The first Redemption DVD tooFrozen in the Moment. I believe there's also a song from PPIII as a video file on Edguy's Hall of Flames CD.
#5 1000 Faces, Aug 17, 2015
Diabolik Member
The CAGE DVD is from PP I think too.
#6 Diabolik, Aug 17, 2015
I remember a few tunes on Threshold's Critical Mass dvd.
jem777az Bozzman
Mystic Prophecy has a DVD of their performance as part of the digipak of their last album.
Mob Rules has a DVD of their performance as part of their box set.
Red Circuit also has a DVD of their performance as part of a digipak from their latest album.
#8 jem777az, Aug 17, 2015
PureXul Member
Savage Circus released a DVD of their performance at PP VII.
#9 PureXul, Aug 17, 2015
Awesome!! Lots of stuff to collect!! Did not know about most of these.
#10 oldboy, Aug 17, 2015
sccaldwell Guitarist Wannabe
Cary, North Carolina
Is the one from Pain of Salvation's "Remedy Lane" set from last year still happening? I hope??
#11 sccaldwell, Aug 17, 2015
Red Circuit. The bonus DVD with their latest studio album.
#12 5150, Aug 17, 2015
PromisedLand Master of Corgis
Masterplan's new DVD has two tracks from XV.
#13 PromisedLand, Aug 18, 2015
Met-Al Member
I meant to jump on the forum yesterday to list all of the stuff I remember, which included everything posted thus far with the exception of Masterplan (thanks for mentioning that one, PromisedLand! I had no idea about it!), but I was too busy at work to do it.
As for anything that hasn't been mentioned yet, I believe that Primal Fear's "Live in the USA" features footage from their performance from the Thursday night show at ProgPower X. It's not exactly from the festival proper, but I'm sure that folks would be interested in seeing it, anyway.
Besides that, only the ProgPower V DVD compilation was mentioned. Let's not forget the Lucid Lounge DVDs for festivals VII, VIII, X, and XII. With that, I believe we have the complete video discography!
Stay metal. Never rust.
#14 Met-Al, Aug 18, 2015
Met-Al said: ↑
With that, I believe we have the complete video discography!t
Actually, we produced an amateur documentary after PP USA V that had all sorts of complete tunes on it from the early years. It's long out of print though.
#16 Harvester, Aug 18, 2015
Palabra de Dios Heavy Metal Weatherman
St. Joseph, MO
You know what I'd be into? Soundboard recordings from PPUSA performance, in CD or mp3 form. I'd listen to a whole set or gladly buy a compilation album of highlights. I don't watch a lot of concert DVDs but I love live albums.
#17 Palabra de Dios, Aug 18, 2015
Thanks for the reminder about the DVDs for Progpowers other that V. Will try to get some of those if available on amazon or ebay.
DGM also filmed their performance at XV for a "future DVD release", but no details have been forthcoming since then.
Also, not a DVD, but Withem recorded their entire set and released for free on YouTube.. It's quite excellent.
Hey, Glenn!
I didn't include the documentary released after ProgPower V because I saw that oldboy mentioned it in the first post. I think there was just some confusion caused by calling it a compilation. Either way, I think with everyone's help, we've covered all of the video footage that could be purchased. All of the footage, that is, except the DVD that was promised to us by Conception.
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The Power Report: Murakawa takes Judan title; Ke Jie wins new tournament; Takao wins 1,000 games
by John Power, Japan correspondent for the E-Journal
Murakawa takes Judan title: The third game of the 57th Judan title match was held at the Kuroyon Royal Hotel in Omachi City, Nagano Prefecture, on April 11. In the second game (March 29), Murakawa had finally put an end to a losing streak of 13 games against Iyama, but the following week Iyama had reasserted his supremacy with a win in the Meijin League (details in our last report), so this was an important game for Murakawa. Early in the game, Murakawa made an oversight, letting Iyama take the lead in territory. However, Iyama also went wrong, making a forcing exchange based on an oversight. He then played aggressively, but for once his policy of always playing the strongest move backfired. The above-mentioned dubious exchange handicapped him in a large-scale fight that broke out, so he had to resign after 151 moves. This is only the second time Murakawa has taken the lead in a title match with Iyama.
The fourth game was played on April 18. Taking white, Murakawa won by resignation after 226 moves, so he won his first Judan title and his second top-seven title (he won the 62nd Oza title in 2014, beating Iyama 3-2). This game was played at the Kansai headquarters of the Nihon Ki-in in Osaka on March 19. There was an interesting start to the game: Iyama played his first move on the 3-3 point and Murakawa immediately did the same in the opposite corner. That did not lead to a territorial contest, however, as the game was marked by continuous fighting. It featured an unresolved ko fight in the opening, that is, a potential ko that neither side could start until they were sure of their ko threats. Murakawa eventually started it on move 100 and ignored Iyama’s ko threat. After hectic middle-game fighting, the outcome was decided by a much bigger ko fight; it was a big white group at stake, but White had good ko threats, so he also won this fight. Black’s compensation was inadequate, so Iyama resigned. Murakawa had turned his losing streak into a winning streak. “Before when I won a title,” Murakawa said, “I was lazy after that, so this time I’m going to be serious and study to get stronger.” The Judan prize is 7,000,000 yen (about $63,000). It is the last of the top seven open titles. (It used to be ranked fourth when the prize money was 15,000,000 yen. It was reduced as of the 51st term.)
This loss leaves Iyama with “just” four titles: Kisei, Honinbo, Oza, and Tengen. It also puts a third simultaneous grand slam out of reach for some time. Incidentally, this was the last title match of the Heisei era, which yielded to the Reiwa era on May 1.
Ke Jie wins new tournament: The first Japan-China-Korea Ryusei tournament was held in the Ryusei Studio, located in the basement of the Nihon Ki-in, from April 11 to 13. This is where the Go and Shogi Channel, which sponsors the Ryusei tournament, makes many of its go programs. The new tournament is for the holders of the Ryusei titles in the above-mentioned three countries and follows the NHK format (30 seconds per move plus ten minutes thinking time to be used in one-minute units) and is an irregular knock-out. Previously it was the China-Japan Ryusei Play-off, but recently a Korean Ryusei tournament was also founded, so it has become a three-way play-off. The tournament started well for Japan, with Ichiriki Ryo 8P defeating Ke Jie 9P of China, who is one of the world’s top two, but Ke survived the play-off with Kim Jiseok 9P of Korea and took revenge on Ichiriki in the final. The tournament proceeded as follows.
Round 1 (April 11). Ichiriki (W) beat Ke by resig.
Round 2 (April 12). Ke (W) beat Kim Jiseok 9P (Korea) by resig.
Round 3 (April 13). Ke (W) beat Ichiriki by resig.
It’s hard for a knock-out among three players to be fair. The players in the first game get two chances, but the player seeded into the second game gets no second chance if he loses.
Takao wins 1,000 games: Takao Shinji 9P scored his 1,000th win on April 18 when he beat Onishi Kenya 3P in Preliminary A of the 75th Honinbo tournament (Takao had white and won by resig.). He is the 26th player to reach this mark. He has 468 losses, two jigo and one no-contest, for a winning record of 67.9%
Tomorrow: Shin Minjun wins 6th Globis Cup; China starts well in 9th Huanglongshi Cup; Nakamura Sumire makes pro debut; Gosei challenger: Ichiriki or Hane
Categories: Japan,John Power Report,Main Page
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Tor.com content by
Gwendolyn Womack
Fiction and Excerpts [1]
The Memory Painter (Excerpt)
Wed Mar 25, 2015 4:00pm
Fantasy, Thriller || Two lovers who have traveled across time. A team of scientists at the cutting edge of memory research. A miracle drug that unlocks an ancient mystery.
Wed Mar 25, 2015 4:00pm Post a comment Favorite This
Bryan Pierce is an internationally famous artist whose paintings have dazzled the world. But there’s a secret to his success: Every canvas is inspired by an unusually vivid dream.
When Bryan awakes, he possesses extraordinary new skills—the ability to speak obscure languages, or an inexplicable genius for chess. All his life, he has wondered if his dreams are recollections, if he is re-experiencing other people’s lives.
A meeting with neurogeneticist Linz Jacobs triggers Bryan’s most powerful dream yet: visions of a team of scientists who, on the verge of discovering a cure for Alzheimer’s, died in a lab explosion decades ago. As Bryan becomes obsessed with the mysterious circumstances surrounding the scientists’ deaths, his dreams begin to reveal what happened at the lab, as well as a deeper mystery that may lead all the way to ancient Egypt…
Gwendolyn Womack’s riveting debut novel The Memory Painter is available April 28th from Picador.
[Preview Chapter One]
RiverGrey on Hey Up, Boys, Nimue — Hellboy (2019) 1 min ago
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Opportunities and Updates for Publishing Advertisers
Will Independent Bookstores Seize the Day?
March 8, 2011 CurrentsAmerican Booksellers Association, Border's, Border's Bankruptcy, independent bookstores, Neighborhood Bookstores Development BankTom Thompson
By Jack McKeown and Don Linn
“Borders ended up caught between the variety of the Internet and the intimacy of the independents. Its outlets could never stock as many books as Amazon. Nor could they duplicate the native flavor of the corner bookstores…As paper books become a niche product, niche retailers will be the best place to buy and sell them.” —Edward McClelland, “How Borders Lost its Soul,” Salon.com, February 19, 2011
Southbury is a town located in western Connecticut, part of a region known as the Central Naugatuck Valley. It is a town with both rural and suburban neighborhoods, and a charming historic district. With its four-largest neighboring towns, it comprises a book market of approximately 175,000 souls whose demographics skew to relatively affluent, highly educated and older, propelled by an influx of Baby Boomer empty-nesters and retirees over the last ten years. Two weeks ago, Southbury lost it sole surviving bookstore—a 22,000 square-foot Borders in Southbury Plaza, one of the two hundred superstores closed throughout the country as a part of the chain’s bankruptcy. The nearest Barnes & Noble is in Danbury, 22 miles away. The nearest independents are in Ridgefield and Washington, 20-to-25 miles distant—too far for a casual shopping trip. Without an enterprising independent stepping in to fill this vacuum, who could blame Southbury’s population for falling into the waiting arms of Amazon as the only viable alternative?
Towns like Southbury represent, in a nutshell, the challenge and opportunity confronting the independent bookselling community in the wake of Borders’ bankruptcy. Suddenly there will be hundreds of sustainable, niche markets with no bookstore presence—a dramatic “supply gap” of physical bookstores of a scale that has not existed for forty years. A tectonic shift of the bricks-and-mortar retail landscape is upon us, whether we are ready for it or not. Not since the explosion of the mall stores in the 1970s, the chain superstores and big-box retail in the late 1980s, and the disruptive emergence of Amazon in the late 1990s, have we seen change of this magnitude and speed. Independent bookstores are about to face a critical test in the next couple of years, and how they respond to this emerging supply gap will determine not only their long-term future, but possibly the fate of the printed book as well.
The digi-catastrophists predict, now that we have reached 8-10% e-book penetration, that chain bookstores and independents alike are condemned to the same oblivion. That argument ignores a central truth: the chains and independents have evolved to present nearly antithetical shopping experiences. As Edward McClelland notes above, where do you locate the competitive advantage in a 150,000-volume superstore relative to the endless storefront of the internet? Independent bookstores, on the other hand, with their focus on finely curated inventory, hand-selling, and a robust program of local events and community outreach, offer a shopping experience that dramatically differentiates them from their chain competition. The independents could be well positioned to move into niche markets abandoned by the chains, while simultaneously upping their game on the Internet with programs such as Google eBooks and the American Bookseller Association’s IndieCommerce web-hosting engine.
What will it take for independent bookstores to seize the opportunity? That is a question we have been pondering, in general terms, since long before the visible manifestation of Borders’ disarray two weeks ago. In November, 2009 Jack McKeown posted an article about the need for a special-purpose financing entity, a Neighborhood Bookstore Development Bank (NBDB), modeled after a similar initiative that has worked successfully for independent grocery stores. Its mission would be to spearhead the deployment of capital to a new generation of bookstore entrepreneurs, as well as existing booksellers looking to branch out or upgrade their spaces. We reprise one of the core arguments of that posting, as follows:
“A thriving neighborhood bookstore is recognized as a key element in the social, cultural and economic fabric of any community. This is an opinion widely shared by urban planners, government planning boards, Smart Growth advocates, landlords and real estate developers around the country…Primarily, it has been the national chains that have been the beneficiaries of this perception, and their superior access to capital is the fundamental reason why. But with the recession, chain store expansion has ground to a halt and a period of contraction almost certainly will follow…The NBDB could play a major role in changing the narrative on independent bookstores from one of decline to rebound.”
Before talking about raising new capital, we should estimate the dimension of the supply gap, measured in annual book sales. Borders’ sad situation presents opportunities for revitalization in many, but not all of the communities where stores will be closed. A cursory look at the initial list of two hundred superstore closings reveals that over half lie beyond a five-mile driving radius from their nearest indie competition. The average and mean distances are 13.2 miles and 10.7 miles respectively to the nearest independent. Most of these one hundred-plus sites are close-in suburbs, within commuting range of top urban markets. If we use a conservative suburban population density of 3,000 people per square mile [1], then we can estimate that about 15 million Americans will be directly affected by the sudden reduction in bookstore availability. In dollar terms, applying Borders’ average footprint of 25,000 square feet and sales-per-square-foot of @$170, then the supply gap for these one hundred towns exceeds $400 million. Again this does not take into account the remaining 100 initial closures, nor the rumored further 75-135 targeted for a second wave of liquidation. So, in reality, the potential gap nationwide is much larger and our estimates very conservative. If the Chapter 11 reorganization is not approved by creditors, or if it is unsuccessfully executed, then many more communities nationwide will be deprived of their nearest bricks-and-mortar bookstores as Borders proceeds to full liquidation. In that instance, the supply gap could approach $1 billion annually.
Time may well be of the essence for the indies to take action. In an earnings call last week, Mitchell Klipper of B&N made reference to his chain’s eyeing several closed Borders locations. Later the same week, they announced a $40 million retooling of their marketing operations aimed at rejuvenating their brand and store appearance. It would appear that B&N intends to pursue this supply gap with some added investment, probably by cherry-picking those markets they previously shared with a Borders superstore. It would be in their interest to be opportunistic where there are vacuums to fill that make sense for them.
Even if a substantial majority, say sixty percent, of the supply gap is captured by Amazon, B&N, or by a conversion to digital reading, there remain tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars of annual book sales up for grabs in towns like Southbury scattered across the United States. Our own ongoing consumer research, conducted by Verso Digital, provides additional reason for optimism. The data consistently point to a hybrid print and e-book market that will persist for decades. E-reader owners who classify as avid readers (ten or more books bought per year) are splitting their purchases between print and e-books in nearly identical numbers. Moreover, there is a sizable majority of readers, over 70%, who express strong resistance to the idea of screen-reading as a substitute for print, a percentage that has remained steady across multiple surveys over the past two years. The resistance is strongest among older (45-plus) readers, who already account for more than two-thirds of the consumer books purchased in this country. As these readers downshift into retirement or more flexible work-leisure lifestyles, their proportion of the book market is likely to increase, further making the case for print’s durability.
If interested parties such as the ABA, the regional Booksellers’ Associations, Ingram, Baker & Taylor and the major publishing conglomerates have been waiting for a rainy day to consider investing in the formation of new independent bookstores, that day is here. Without a sufficient number of retail outlets for print books, we will see publishers devoting even more of their limited resources to digital formats, further accelerating store closures. A vicious cycle, but it does not have to be that way. In the NBDB example, $2.5 million of seed capital could be leveraged into $10 million in loan-able funds. That would be enough to jumpstart the development of 50 mid-sized independents. Within three years, a $40 million loan portfolio would support 200-plus new or revitalized stores.
The supply gap identified above provides a useful springboard for bookstore entrepreneurs looking to formulate convincing business plans, a prerequisite for any NBDB financing. The opportunities need to be examined location by location, of course, and there will be no one-size-fits-all solution. Relatively straightforward market analysis of demographics, traffic patterns, local retail demand and supply, etc. can help pinpoint the most desirable locations. The proposed stores need to be right-sized in order to reduce overhead, lower investment risk, and increase inventory turn-rates. As stressed in the original NBDB proposal, these business plans would be subjected to rigorous vetting by an independent commission of industry experts who operate at arm’s length from any of the bank’s investors.
Any NBDB loan would be accompanied by a clear plan for use of the proceeds, and realistic, enforceable repayment terms. NBDB officers regularly would monitor the borrowing stores to assure compliance and performance milestones against the original plan. While open to new bookstore models and experimentation, the NBDB would not lend to dilettantes who do not subscribe to the core best practices and values of independent bookselling, or who fail to present the necessary management track record. Here we detect a silver-lining, for the Borders’ closings provide a pool of experienced store managers, some of whom will have what it takes to step into the role of bookstore entrepreneur.
In some communities, existing Borders stores could be re-imagined for conversion to independent ownership, such as happened recently with two Walden stores in New England. One possibility would be for the new owners to partner with other, compatible businesses in dividing up these excessive superstore spaces. Landlords could be instrumental in enabling independent owners to obtain working-capital financing with local lenders. They also could provide appropriate tenant improvement (TI) allowances for upgrading their spaces. Let us remember that neighborhood bookstores represent a highly desirable community amenity that landlords and developers covet as traffic builders for their other retail tenants.
Government could play a part as well. While there has been more noise than actual funds flow, the Obama administration has been speaking out publicly, and often, about getting credit into the hands of small businesses. It may be possible to convince the Small Business Administration to fund or guarantee some portion of the NBDB’s credit flow. The political effort to make this happen would be significant and could only be accomplished if the NBDB’s investors closed ranks to present united, industry-wide support.
The NBDB concept is not particularly complex, but it does require a leap of faith and strong leadership at the national level. A sense of inertia and gloom persists among independent booksellers after decades of seeing their ranks erode under chain and Internet competition. We cannot allow this legacy to blind us to the unique possibilities created in the wake of Borders’ bankruptcy. In the months following the original publication of the NBDB article in late 2009, the authors have received some encouraging expressions of interest from potential investors. They will be ramping up their personal efforts to promote the concept in the months leading up to BEA. Proceeding thoughtfully, but with a sense of commercial urgency, independent bookstores can take advantage of a unique opportunity to recapture market share and to remain relevant for decades to come, not just locally, but as a national force.
Jack McKeown
Don Linn
[1] Francesca Pozzi and Christopher Small, Exploratory Analysis of Suburban Land Cover and Population Density in the U.S.A., Columbia University, New York, 2001.
Originally published in Publishers Lunch, March 7, 2011
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by Renee
Thai Yoga Bodywork
Combines the best of yoga & massage
My Lineage
60 Min Thai Massage $120
120 Min Thai Massage $220
Thai Herbal Compress
THAI YOGA MASSAGE by Kam Thye Chow
Thai Yoga Therapy by Kam Thye Chow
ADVANCED THAI YOGA MASSAGE by Kam Thye Chow
Kam Thye Chow, my teacher and founder of Lotus Palm School
Native of Malaysia, Kam Thye was raised in the tradition of Asian arts and healing customs. He has been practicing Tai Chi Chuan and Chinese massage since the age of 13 and has studied Kung Fu and Chi Gong for more than 20 years.
Kam Thye was a resident of Thailand for many years and during this time followed the instructions of Asokananda, who was himself a pupil of the renowned Thai Yoga Massage masters, Chaiyuth Priyasith and Piched Boonthumme. Eventually, the pupil became the teacher and Kam Thye spent many years instructing martial arts and Thai Yoga Massage in North America, Asia and Europe.
In 1995 he founded the Lotus Palm School in Montreal, it became the first educational institution on the continent dedicated to the teachings and propagation of the art of Thai Yoga massage. His concise, compassionate, and safe approach to the art, is specifically designed to integrate Eastern knowledge of the mind, body and spirit with the Western understanding of the body.
In 2002, he published his first book, Thai Yoga Massage, which is paired with a comprehensive instructional DVD. The book has since been translated into seven languages and its consequent success prompted a second work in 2006, Thai Yoga Therapy for Your Body Type: An Ayurvedic Tradition. The second publication focused on Ayurveda and its implication in the therapeutic tradition of massage. In 2011, Kam Thye put to print his final book, Advanced Thai Yoga Massage, which reinforced his teachings with an in depth look at energy lines (“Sen lines”) and marma points. These writings remain the fundamental resources and reference points, for both teachers and students of Lotus Palm.
Kam Thye was also a celebrated artist, his illustrations and diagrams for Sen lines and Thai massage, appeared regularly in publications. He was also very pleased to have designed the Lotus Palm Thai yoga massage mats and many of the school’s logos. He was a proud Canadian and made every effort to support his community and always featured local and Canadian-made products in the Lotus Shop.
Kam Thye continued at Lotus Palm as both a consultant and teacher, until his passing on March 27, 2018.
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Jarvis Landry returns to a Miami pass catching group that went through a complete turnover in the offseason. (Image: Andrew Weber, US Presswire)
Some charts and data referenced in this article are derived from the Reception Perception methodology. For clarity on these unique stats, please use this reference page.
Every year there are several NFL teams whose wide receiver corps presents headaches for fantasy owners. This is particularly true in cases where an offense experiences major turnover, and brings in new faces. Sifting through these crowded quagmires are a challenging, but necessary evil for those interested in making a run at a fantasy league championship. One receiver group that lacks immediate clarity is that of the Miami Dolphins.
With the departures of Mike Wallace, Brian Hartline and Brandon Gibson, The Miami Dolphins let over 200 targets walk out of the facility. All three of these receivers were players that the team had previously invested big resources in. With all three, but particularly in the case of Wallace, the Dolphins were disappointed in the returns. Nevertheless, their roles will need to be filled if the passing game, and Ryan Tannehill are going to continue to develop.
Fortunately, the Dolphins front office left no stone unturned to reinvigorate their pass catching group with bodies. The team used the free agent and trade markets, while also exhausting a first round pick, in their attempts to add talent to the arsenal. These new additions certainly make Miami’s offense more interesting than it has been in prior years. Yet, the crowded group also looks to be a hotbed for fantasy football headaches.
Kenny Stills, Jordan Cameron, DeVante Parker, Greg Jennings, and holdover Jarvis Landry each possess unique skillsets in relation to each other. There should be specific spots and roles for each player to fill in the passing game. The key for fantasy owners will be sorting through the group to try and find some clarity.
Kenny Stills steps in for Mike Wallace
One of the castoffs from the New Orleans Saints’ early offseason fire sale, Kenny Stills was sent packing to Miami for a third-round draft pick. A curious move at the time, as Stills is widely regarded as a solid field stretcher, and an ascending young player. Not long after, the Dolphins sent their own deep threat away, by trading Mike Wallace to the Minnesota Vikings.
Stills and Wallace play the same sort of game, and they came out eerily similar under the Reception Perception microscope:
(SRVC denotes success rate versus coverage for each route. PTS indicates how many PPR fantasy points a receiver earned on each particular route)
As pure deep threats, Wallace and Stills are in the same class. Both maintained SRVC scores in the 50% range on their nine routes. Both players’ figures are above the charted NFL average for that particular pattern. Their corner and post route scores fall in the 60 to 70% range. Stills slightly out-produced Wallace on go routes, recording 26.7 PTS over his eight-game sample, compared to 22.2 PTS from Wallace.
What Reception Perception quantifies is the idea that Kenny Stills should seamlessly take over the field-stretching role from Mike Wallace in the Dolphins’ offense. The organization overpaid for Wallace’s services several years ago, and expected him to be more than that. Ironically, problems with the deep ball were a staple of the mercurial receiver’s time with the team. While Ryan Tannehill is far from a proficient deep passer, some of the blame lies at Wallace’s feet too. The veteran receiver had trouble getting on the same page with his quarterback. Which manifested itself in poor ball tracking, and running at consistent speed in his routes. As such, Mike Wallace posted a 66.7% contested catch conversion rate on 12 attempts over his Reception Perception sample. That figure is right around the NFL average.
Kenny Stills, on the other hand, recorded a sterling 80% contested catch conversion rate on 10 attempts over his sample. The younger receiver showed better ability to be in the expected spot, and adjust to the ball than Wallace. The vast difference in these success rate statistics gives some optimism that not only will Stills replace Wallace, but also the Dolphins may actually leave less long plays on the field this year.
Reception Perception illustrates that Kenny Stills should provide the Dolphins with a fine replacement for the departed Mike Wallace. The question for fantasy owners, is how much of the passing pie will Stills command? Wallace was thrown at 108 times last year, per Pro Football Focus, good for 18.3% of Tannehill’s passing attempts. Because his role and game are so specific, Jarvis Landry and Greg Jennings should not threaten Stills. Whether he reaches that volume will depend mostly on the development of DeVante Parker. If Stills manages to impress this summer, and Parker takes a little longer to get off the ground, the veteran could approach, or pass, Wallace’s 2014 target level. Should that end up being the case, Stills will hold solid WR3 value; with the possibility of major scoring weeks, due to his big play ability.
Of course, you must be prepared for variance in his play, and that his targets may taper off as Parker gets more comfortable. At this early stage, Stills’ ADP looks pretty friendly, in MFL10s and best ball formats especially.
Finish reading this post at Footballguys
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Lincoln oldies singers
Can’t get enough of the Oldies? We’ve got just solution: book an Oldies Singer to perform at your next event! Whether it’s a birthday, an anniversary celebration, or just a fun gathering with friends, our the Lincoln County, ID area directory will help you find the best one.
Idaho /
Lincoln County, ID Oldies Singers
Please note these Oldies Singers will also travel to Shoshone, Dietrich, Lone Star, Richfield, Jerome, Gooding, Wendell, Eden, Picabo, Hazelton, Kimberly, Hagerman, Hansen, Carey, Filer, Bliss, Murtaugh, Buhl, Bellevue, Paul, Hollister, Jackson, Heyburn, Hailey, Burley, Rupert, Twin Falls, Castleford, Corral, Fairfield
Top Oldies Singers Near Lincoln County, ID
Jazz Singer from Las Vegas, NV (473 miles from Lincoln County, ID)
Ruby Jaye
Singer from Sacramento, CA (480 miles from Lincoln County, ID)
Ruby Jaye was recently featured on NPR's Capital Public Radio and Good Day Sacramento. Her style has been compared to Norah Jones and Regina Spektor, with classic jazz and blues qualities paired with a modern taste. Ruby Jaye performs across the West Coast and learns special requests from any genre. Performing: Wedding ceremonies/receptions (with her full band available) Corporate parties Birthday/Anniversary parties Performing solo, in a duo and full bands. “When you hear Ruby... (more)
Piano from Las Vegas, NV (469 miles from Lincoln County, ID)
Singer from Washington, DC (1948 miles from Lincoln County, ID)
Singing Pianist from Montclair, NJ (2047 miles from Lincoln County, ID)
Singing Pianist from New York City, NY (2060 miles from Lincoln County, ID)
Opera Singer from Los Angeles, CA (655 miles from Lincoln County, ID)
Big Band Singer from Ann Arbor, MI (1542 miles from Lincoln County, ID)
Singer Guitarist from Reynoldsburg, OH (1635 miles from Lincoln County, ID)
Singer from Oakland, CA (546 miles from Lincoln County, ID)
R&B Singer from Beverly Hills, CA (649 miles from Lincoln County, ID)
Violin from Rapid City, SD (563 miles from Lincoln County, ID)
Acoustic Guitar from Philadelphia, PA (2022 miles from Lincoln County, ID)
Singer from Lafayette Hill, PA (2011 miles from Lincoln County, ID)
Variety Singer from Atlanta, GA (1727 miles from Lincoln County, ID)
Piano from Redondo Beach, CA (664 miles from Lincoln County, ID)
Dueling Pianos from Saint Paul, MN (1061 miles from Lincoln County, ID)
Jazz Singer from New York City, NY (2059 miles from Lincoln County, ID)
Oldies One Man Band from Marietta, GA (1719 miles from Lincoln County, ID)
Pop Singer from New York City, NY (2059 miles from Lincoln County, ID)
Jazz Singer from Baltimore, MD (1958 miles from Lincoln County, ID)
One Man Band from Breaux Bridge, LA (1511 miles from Lincoln County, ID)
Italian Singer from Waukegan, IL (1338 miles from Lincoln County, ID)
Singer Guitarist from Winter Park, FL (2076 miles from Lincoln County, ID)
Singer from Los Angeles, CA (655 miles from Lincoln County, ID)
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Pic Courtesy: Debmalya Mukherjee (Flickr)
10 Popular Games You Probably Didn’t Know Were Played In Ancient India
Shreya Pareek
Children / History / Lists / Sports
India has always been rich in culture and tradition, and games have been an important part of Indian culture since forever. Be it Lord Shiv and his consort Parvati playing Pachisi, the Pandavas loosing Draupadi over a game of dice or the Mughals enjoying an afternoon of chess – games and sports have always played an important role in the history and mythology of India. Gradually the time changed and so did our sports.
In a time of Play Stations, video games and gadgets, we all have almost forgotten the traditional games of India. Remember the times we couldn’t wait to come back from school so that we could go and play a couple of rounds of kith-kith (Hopscotch) with our friends?
So why not recall and replay all these traditional Indian games this summer? Here is the list of 10 such games and sports-
1. Satoliya
The game is also called Pithoo or Lagori in some parts of India. Any number of people can play it. It needs seven small flat stones; every stone size should be less than the other stone. Keep the stones on each other in decreasing size order. Hit the pile with a cloth ball from a fixed difference. Read the complete rules of the game here. You can also buy this game online.
2. Gutte
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This traditional game is played by both children and adults. This simple game requires 5 pieces of small stones. You spin one stone in the air and pick other stones from the ground without dropping the stone in the air. This game can be played by any number of people.
3. Kancha
Pic courtesy: desigmela.org
Kancha was one of the most popular games among children in the neighbourhood. It is played using marbles called ‘Kancha’. The players are to hit the selected target ‘kancha’ using their own marble ball. The winner takes all Kanchas of rest of the players.
4. Kho Kho
Pic courtesy: Mester Jagels (Wikimedia commons)
It is one of the most popular tag games in India. It consists of two teams. 1 team sits/kneels in the middle of the court, in a row, with adjacent members facing opposite directions. The team that takes the shortest time to tag/tap all the opponents in the field, wins.
5. Gilli Danda
The game requires two sticks. The bigger one is called “danda” and the smaller one is called “gilli“. The player then uses the danda to hit the gilli at the raised end, which flips it into the air. While it is in the air, the player strikes the gilli, hitting it as far as possible. Having struck the gilli, the player is required to run and touch a pre-agreed point outside the circle before the gilli is retrieved by an opponent.
6. Poshampa
Pic courtesy: twicsy.com
Two people stand with their hands locked together above their heads and sing a song. The other kids pass from under that bridge and the one who gets caught (when the hands come down like a cage at the end of the song) is out.
7. Chaupar/ Pachisi
Pic courtesy: bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com
Each player’s objective is to move all four of their pieces completely around the board, counter-clockwise, before their opponents do. The pieces start and finish on the Charkoni.
8.Kith Kith
Pic courtesy: victoriadailyphoto.blogspot.com
See an open surface and a chalk to draw? Lets play Kith Kith! A popular playground game in which players toss a small object into numbered spaces of a pattern of rectangles outlined on the ground and then hop or jump through the spaces to retrieve the object. This popular game is also played in other countries and is loved by all.
9. DhopKhel
Pic courtesy: thrillophilia.com
Dhopkel, a game popular in Assam is similar to Kabbadi. Dhop is the name given to a rubber ball that two teams throw across a central line into each other’s courts. Each team sends a player into the opponent’s court; the aim is to catch the ball his team throws and make his way back to his team without allowing the opponents to touch him to earn points.
10. Pallanguli
Pic courtesy: www.tradgames.org.uk
This board game with 14 cups is set out with six seeds in each cup; the players distribute these seeds into the other cups until there are no seeds left. The person who reaches two consecutive cups without seeds has to bow out of the game.
Go why not reconnect with our roots and enjoy these lesser known traditional games of India?
About the Author: Born with a hobby to travel, talk, express and write, Shreya gets to do all of that and is even paid for it! Interested in rural development and social issues, she dreams of actually bringing a change in society and writing a book of her own one day. When she is not preaching others about a better India she is busy watching movies and playing video games. Follow her on twitter: @shreya08
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10 So-Bad-They’re-Good Horror Movies
by J.W. Crump March 5, 2015, 12:00 pm 1.8k Views 1 Comment
J.W. Crump and Jordan Hirsch of New York-based improv group Gas Station Horror share their favorite picks for the ‘best’ in laughably bad horror movies. (pixgood.com photo)
Winter is waging war on your social life, but fear not, the hosts of Gas Station Horror (J. W. Crump and Jordan Hirsch) have put together their lists of the “best” in laughably bad horror. Invite a small group of your wittiest friends over to your SoHo studio, pop some popcorn, crack open a lot of brews and loudly mock these cinema gems.
J. W.’s List
1. “Deadly Friend” (1986)
This bafflingly complex movie stars “Little House on the Prairie” alum Matthew Laborteaux as Paul, a new kid in town who creates his own personal robot. Paul’s only other friend is Samantha, who owns a wildly abusive father instead of a robot slave. Father of the Year ends up murdering Samantha, so Paul implants the robot microchips into Sam’s lifeless corpse to fuse his two friends together, inadvertently creating a “deadly friend.”
Good for groups who: love insane plot twists and “Saved by the Bell”-style robots
Be on the lookout for: an exploding head due to basketball
2. “The Blob” (1988)
This “remake before remakes were a thing” follows the continuing adventures of America’s favorite pile of acidic goo. A pre-“Saw” Shawnee Smith leads a classic horror town of dumb cops, evil preachers and mechanic boyfriends as they fight to survive this sorta-kinda-maybe alien invasion.
Good for groups who: want their movies to elevate character stereotypes to a new level
Be on the lookout for: the Blob killing a little kid!
3. “Leprechaun 3” (1995)
You’d think a “Leprechaun” movie set in Las Vegas would be a can’t-miss recipe, but that’s before you realize that half the film’s running time takes place in the back of a pawnshop, and the other half breaks every rule of physics. Mix in some of the most over-the-top acting ever seen from a lead character, and you’ve got a deliciously awful B-movie treat.
Good for groups who: don’t mind every character being morally despicable
Be on the lookout for: Leprechaun literally blowing up a woman
4. “Urban Legends: Final Cut” (2000)
A sequel to a rip-off, “Urban Legends 2” features yet another take on the “horror filmmakers end up in a horror movie themselves” genre. There’s a lot here to mock: hilariously convenient murders, horrible campus security and a fencing mask as the killer’s disguise. But the most legendarily stupid moment happens halfway through the film when a previously unmentioned twin brother is revealed. That’s soap-opera heights of bad!
Good for groups who: enjoy the character work of Loretta Devine
Be on the lookout for: some of the worst screaming ever filmed
5. “Freddy vs. Jason” (2003)
If you ever wanted to see a member of Destiny’s Child make out with the unconscious body of Jason Voorhees, this 2003 revenge flick has got you covered. Going for broke in every way, with huge copious of violence, nudity, drug use and language, this film is an overblown love letter to both series.
Good for groups who: love a good rave
Be on the lookout for: the infamous “Asthma!” line
Jordan’s List
1. “Crawlspace” (1986)
A kindly old German weirdo (actual “good” actor Klaus Kinski) owns an apartment building which is heavy on female occupants. Naturally, he’s the son of a psycho Nazi surgeon, and he’s built secret passageways and tunnels (“crawlspaces,” if you will) all over the place. Throw in a tongueless friend kept in a cage, and you have a fun flick!
Good for groups who: love watching people crawl through spaces
Be on the lookout for: the gratuitous (even by horror standards) “woman cutting off her bra” scene
2. “From Hell It Came” (1957)
A South Seas island prince is wrongly convicted of murder and executed via a knife to the heart and then buried inside a hollow tree trunk, where he rests peacefully … until nuclear radiation (or something) turns him into a “Tabanga,” or as we might call it, “a frowny-faced bipedal animated tree stump monster.” Predictably, the monster goes on a rampage, chaos ensues, and the day is saved by a lily-white American male with a gun. Go team!
Good for groups who: love walking trees; hate character development
Be on the lookout for: a male scientist patiently mansplaining to a woman why she’s too pretty to be interested in science
3. “Basket Case” (1982)
“Basket Case” is a classic coming-of-age tale centered on young Duane finding his way in the Big Apple armed with nothing but hope and a basket. What’s in the basket, you ask? Oh, just his horrifically deformed monster of a twin brother with whom he shares a psychic bond. Mayhem ensues when Duane takes a lady friend and his twin gets jealous.
Good for groups who: love surprises that come in baskets
Be on the lookout for: a nurse who gets a faceful of scalpels
4. “Slugs” (1988)
“Slugs” sets itself apart from standard “creature feature” fare by featuring some truly awesome death scenes. Technically named “Slugs: The Movie” (yes, this was based on a book), this film not only features giant slugs, but also a guy chopping off his own hand, an exploding head (filled with slugs!), an entire house exploding in flames and also several closeups of creepily moving lettuce.
Good for groups who: love heroic health inspectors
Be on the lookout for: an entire house exploding in flames because “Slugs”
5. “Silent Night, Deadly Night 2” (1987)
If you’ve ever seen “Silent Night, Deadly Night,” and thought, “Gee, I’d love to see all this footage again, but in flashback form with a very thin new plot layered on top,” this is the film for you. Nominally a sequel to 1984’s “Silent Night, Deadly Night,” it’s around 75 percent recycled material with some astoundingly bad acting thrown in for good measure. Merry Christmas!
Good for groups who: love Christmas but hate decent acting, writing and directing
Be on the lookout for: “Garbage Day!,” a scene that later went on to become an Internet meme!
If you enjoyed bad horror, but love good comedy, make sure to check out the next Gas Station Horror show on Saturday, March 7 at 9:30 p.m. at the Peoples Improv Theater in New York. The talented cast takes minute-long clips from B-horror and turns them into hilarious improvised scenes. Featuring fresh horror trivia and a free DVD giveaway!
J.W. Crump is a contributing journalist for TheBlot Magazine.
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Best of Halifax 2007
Best Canadian Album
In-Flight Safety, The Coast is Clear
It’s been the most-nominated year ever in the young history of soaring rock quartet In-Flight Safety, who began 2006 on the cover of this very newspaper and never looked back. After collecting trophies at the Music Nova Scotia Awards and then the East Coast Music Awards, which they closed out with a lasertastic “Coast is Clear,” as well as a Juno nom for best video, you’ve given them five nods and a planeload (only one, we swear) of honourable mentions in our competition.
“We had zero expectations,” says keyboardist Daniel Ledwell of The Coast is Clear, released in January ’06. “We expected to get the record out. We hoped people would like it. You can’t predict nominations and especially wins. You’ll just get disappointed in the end.”
“It just certifies all your hard work in the larger sense,” adds singer-guitarist John Mullane. “But really, for us it doesn’t change anything. We still have to write songs and be inspired to be in In-Flight Safety. It also takes the pressure off being an up-and-coming band.’” “Or the ‘Next Big Thing,’” says Ledwell.
“We can’t be nominated for anything else this year,” says Mullane, who’s especially stoked to win the Best Local and Canadian album categories. “People can just let us be In-Flight Safety now.”
1st runner-up: Jon McKiel, Jon McKiel, 2nd runner-up: The Stolen Minks, Family Boycott
2009 Best Canadian Album
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[X]2007
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Select a year 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995
Best Karaoke Night
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Best Music Photographer
Best Canadian Single
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Best Local Cover Band
Best All-ages Venue
Best Artist Most Likely To Make It Big
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Best Canadian Band
Best Local Merch
Best Live Show In The Past Year
Best Local MC
Best Independent Record Label
Best New Artist
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Discover Los Angeles County
The California Questionnaire: Gabrielle Reece
Photograph by Peggy Sirota
The former volleyball champion and model—now an author and fitness guru—shares her California favourites
After retiring from a successful beach volleyball career, Gabrielle Reece didn’t slow down—instead, she kept adding to her résumé: mother, sports announcer, model, actress, shoe designer, and motivational speaker are just a few of the roles she’s taken on since. Reece, her professional big-wave surfer husband, Laird Hamilton, and their three daughters divide their time between Hawaii and the celebrity-filled beach town of Malibu, where access to the outdoors allows them to balance their thriving careers with an active lifestyle. Reece shares the reasons she loves California.
1. Where do you live? I live with my family part-time in Malibu, California.
2. Why there? When I met my husband, Laird Hamilton, I was living in Los Angeles and he was living in Hawaii. Malibu was a compromise for him to get the nature he needed, but I could be close to a major city for work. At the time I was playing professional beach volleyball, and Southern California is really one of the places you need to live if you want to pursue that career.
3. Who or what is your greatest California love? My husband and one of my daughters were born in California so that takes care of the who. The what would have to be the diverse nature all around you.
4. What is the biggest misperception about Californians? That it is only a good-time state. In essence, whatever you want to do in California you can—whether it’s big business, luxury travel, nature adventures, raising a family, or yes, having big fun.
5. What is the stereotype that most holds true? That dreams can come true, and at every turn there is all kinds of natural beauty. If you like the mountains or the sea, there truly is something here for everyone.
6. What is your favourite Golden State splurge? Just living here is a splurge. I am grateful for the access to really healthy food and forward-thinking ideas about health, wellness, and fitness.
7. Time for a road trip—where are you going? My family would do something totally different for us and go to the mountains—head north to Mammoth.
8. If you could decree an official state culinary experience, what would it be? Simple, fresh, clean, and tasty. There is a restaurant near me called Malibu Farms on the pier in Malibu itself. It doesn't feel any more California than that unless you were going to go with really fresh Mexican, which is deeply rooted within the culture.
9. Best California songs? “California Dreamin’” by the Mamas and the Papas; “California Love” by Tupac; “Hotel California” by the Eagles; and “California Stars” by Wilco and Billy Bragg.
10. How would your California dream day unfold? Given it’s not a school or workday, get up and pool-train with a little cloud coverage. Then at about 10 a.m., when the sun peeks out, go have an outside lunch with my family. Take a small hike up one of the Santa Monica Mountains trails, then head to the beach for some sand bocce with the family and barbecue with friends. Get to bed early.
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See a movie star. Sip a cocktail on a rooftop bar at sunset. Slip on a pair of designer shoes in an ultra-luxurious boutique in Beverly Hills. Play at Universal Studios Hollywood theme park, explore world-class museums, or dance the night away in a starlet-filled club. Welcome to California’s liveliest city, entertainment capital of America, with megastar wattage and nonstop activities.
“You know, you’re really a nobody in L.A. unless you have a really big door.” –comedian Steve Martin
The main hub is the City of Los Angeles, with legendary Hollywood northwest of downtown, the San Fernando Valley to the east, and the inviting beaches of Santa Monica and Malibu to the west.
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The iconic Tournament of Roses in Pasadena is the city’s annual one-two punch: a parade and a football game. It’s California’s way of celebrating the New Year with a twin display of flower power...
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Showbiz, celebrities, & endless possibilities
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Movie magic, mega attractions
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The actor’s favorite things to do around the Golden State
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Stargazing takes on a different meaning in Tinseltown. While there’s no guarantee you’ll spy a familiar face when you’re here, there are some...
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West Hollywood has been dubbed “The Creative City,” and for good reason. Bordering Beverly Hills and Los Angeles, “Weho” is where fashion and the...
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WeHo Design District
Get trendy in a fashion-forward neighbourhood
This stylish West Hollywood Design District, roughly defined by the...
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Sunset Strip Nightlife
Welcome to L.A.’s home of rock ‘n’ roll
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How to Watch the 2017 Amgen Tour of California
The multistage, 575-mile Amgen Tour of California is the largest cycling event in North America, and every May the course brings...
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LA Museums
See masterpieces and innovative contemporary works
With its diverse collection of museums, Los Angeles has grown into one of the world’s great cities for art lovers. From the dramatically modern...
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Stretching for more than 30 miles along the Pacific and Highway One, Malibu has achieved...
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Los Angeles County Shopping
Go boutique to bargain in one of the world’s fashion (and shopping) capitals
You’ll definitely want to leave room in your suitcase for L.A. shopping.
If you’re ready to whip out the platinum card, head to Rodeo Drive...
California: Family
12 Great Beaches for Kids
Make memories at some of California's family-favorite beaches
Sand, water, and kids—it’s a natural combination for easy family fun. This sandy dozen offers appealing, family-friendly features, such as calm water for new swimmers, tide pools for intrepid...
Alex Farnum
Joakim Lloyd Raboff
Visit the perfect sunny strip for sand, surf, and shopping
This oceanfront city, bounded by a 3½-mi/5½-km-long beach, feels like a weekend getaway spot even though it’s only 15 miles/24 kilometers west of...
California: Culinary
10 Top Farmers' Markets
Farm-fresh produce, culinary adventures
Juicy heirloom tomatoes and just-picked strawberries. Super-sweet peaches shaped like mini Ufos. Artisanal cheeses, emerald-green olive oils, local wildflower honey—California’s farmers’ markets...
California: Luxury
Special VIP Tours
Check these amazing experiences off your bucket list
Kiss a beluga, see cool movie props, and learn about Walt’s secret hideaway on exclusive and behind-the-scenes tours at California’s theme parks and attractions. Here’s a roundup of worth-the-...
Michael Saechang/Flickr
Myles Mcguinness
Peek into the land of the rich and famous
Opulent estates. Palm-lined Rodeo Drive. Lavish hotels and stretch...
Big City Hotels & Lodgings
World-class accommodations in world-class locations
Head to the heart of California’s cities for luxurious stays at world-class accommodations. From San Francisco’s historic hotels to celebrity hot spots in Hollywood and Beverly Hills, California’s...
Lynn Gately/Flickr
Shopping Hot Spots
Where to release your inner fashionista
Shopping is an art form in California. Whether you're in search of the perfect cocktail dress or an authentic Mexican piñata, you'll find it here. Want to sample fresh produce? Try our farmers...
Island retreat, seafood dinners
With its swaying palms, white-sand beaches, warmest water in summer, and melt-your-heart sunsets, Santa Catalina stands out as pretty-much-perfect...
California's Celebrity Chefs
Taste the delicious dishes from these amazing California chefs
From a candy-colored pastry shop to Michelin-starred dining rooms, top restaurants run by celebrity chefs dot the Golden State. And even if you don’t know these chefs from the TV...
Jen Judge
Surfers, skateboarders, and stars
Venice is the ultimate L.A. neighborhood where the surf meets the human circus. Spend a day along Venice’s palm-lined, beachfront boardwalk and...
Perfect Beach Towns
Discover quintessential sun and fun at these coastal charmers
Take one part water, one part sand, one part sun-soaked coastal charm, and you’ve got the recipe for some of California’s most appealing destinations. The Golden State’s beach towns stand out for...
Lucas Himovitz
Harriot Manley/ Sunset Publishing
Experience the many sides of a dynamic coastal city
With beaches and marinas along its waterfront and a busy dining and shopping scene on downtown’s Pine Avenue, Long Beach blends big city...
Courtesy of Ritz-Carlton Los Angeles
L.A.'s Poshest Spas
Champagne tastes and caviar treatments
In Tinseltown, one would expect an abundance of extravagant spas, and the city does not disappoint. Treat yourself to an experience of ultimate...
L.A. Architecture
See eye-catching icons and stately landmarks
While Los Angeles is still a young city when compared to places like, say, Rome, it still boasts a unique architectural tradition that spans a...
Lancaster's Civic Musical Road is the only "musical" or "singing" road in the United States.
Amazing Agritourism Experiences
Hands-on fun for all at farms, ranches, and fields statewide
From almonds and olives up north to avocados, oranges, and dates in South, the Golden State has a crop (or 10) for nearly every stretch of terrain. After all, ...
Tai Power Seeff
Golden Dragon Parade
February or March
You certainly won’t be the only one celebrating the Lunar New Year at this colorful event in L.A.’s Chinatown. Join thousands of revelers lining the parade route as lion dancers and giant dragons...
Jorge Gonzalez/Flickr
Amazing Theme Parks
Unleash the kid within at California’s ultimate playgrounds
From Disneyland classics to beachfront carousels, the Golden State’s best-in-class theme parks deliver something for everyone. Take a tram ride to tour movie back lots at Universal Studios...
Courtesy of MasterChef Australia
Great L.A. Food Trucks
Tacos, grilled cheese, and health food all live in harmony on the streets of Los Angeles
From gourmet chefs experimenting with tacos to funky ice cream sandwiches, you might be surprised what you can find on the streets of L.A. Food...
Carol M. Highsmith/Getty Images
Tour an Arts and Crafts masterpiece and more, in the home of the Rose Bowl
Set at the base of the towering San Gabriel Mountains, Pasadena is best known as the home of the annual Tournament of Roses Parade and the...
All-Star Chef Classic
Watch celebrity chefs in action at this annual event in downtown Los Angeles
If you’re a foodie, your definition of “celebrity sighting” in Los Angeles has little to do with movie stars. Instead, the annual All-...
Bernstein Associates/Getty Images
Lightvision/Getty Images
Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve
Visit in spring for breathtaking displays of California’s state flower
Come springtime, get ready for an eye-popping show—staged by Mother Nature—in the far northeast corner of L.A. County. In the remote hills west of...
The genus of the state’s official flower, the California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) is named in honor of Dr. J. F. von Eschscholtz, a surgeon and naturalist who explored the California coast with Russian expeditions from 1815 to 1818.
San Diego: Waterfront Dining
With the Pacific Ocean and San Diego Bay at its doorstep, San Diego defines waterfront dining. Travel the coast to...
Discover the Deserts
Castle Mountains National Monument
The most northerly of the desert region's three new (admission-free) national monuments designated in 2016, ...
Downtown Napa Tasting Rooms
Over the past few years, the city of Napa has invested millions in making its downtown core gleam with gourmet markets, outstanding restaurants, a pretty-for-strolling...
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From those first, brave settlers stepping off the Ark & Dove to the men and women in the control room of the Hubble Space Telescope who first peered so deep into the heavens, Maryland has always been a place where history is made.
General George Washington gave up his command of the Continental Army in Annapolis, cementing our fledgling democracy. Francis Scott Key penned The Star-Spangled Banner, our national anthem, in Baltimore. Maryland was the starting point of The National Road and America’s first great railroad. Maryland was the home of great leaders like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman who led the drive for equality. On Maryland soil, the crossroads of the Civil War, the North and South clashed in some of their most important battles. Come see where it happened; come to Maryland.
View All History & Heritage
Star-Spangled Banner Flag House & Museum
13 Ways to Explore Maryland's History & Heritage
Maryland: “The Free State,” one of the 13 original colonies, and home to nearly 400 years of American history has been at the heart of American experience since the nation’s founding. From our fight for independence, to the struggle for equality and justice for all, and on to the race for the skies and the stars, Maryland is the home of our history. Start with these 13 sites and adventures to experience the people and places that set the foundations for our American identity.
1 Follow Maryland's Civil War Trails
From Antietam, a pivotal Union victory, to Monocacy, the loss that won the war, some of the most decisive battles of the Civil War were fought in Maryland. Maryland was positioned at the crossroads of conflict, and its citizens were just as ideologically divided as the soldiers on the battlefield. To honor this heritage, five unique trails span the state, each opening a window to unique places, moments and perspectives that set the course of the Civil War.
Whether you are a history buff or just looking for family adventures in beautiful places, Maryland's Civil War Trails have something for everyone.
2 Follow in the footsteps of soldiers and surgeons
At the National Museum of Civil War Medicine witness the staggering challenges, remarkable personal sacrifices, and revolutionary medical advancements pioneered by the doctors and nurses who served during the Civil War. It's a first hand look at a legacy of innovation and dedication that still touches us today.
3 Discover the Underground Railroad
The story of the Underground Railroad in Maryland is one of intrigue and danger, but above all, it is a testament to the courage of the men and woman who risked all in the quest for equality and justice for all people. Travel the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway and explore this secret landscape where the perils of the wild were often safer than the possibility of discovery. Bike, hike, paddle, or take a self-guided driving tour of the byway to discover the beauty of Chesapeake country, the majesty of one-of-a-kind wild places like the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. Visit historical treasures like the Harriet Tubman Museum in Cambridge, Choptank Landing and Webb Cabin to better understand the dedication, bravery and leadership of Harriet Tubman, a singular American Hero, and others like her who risked all on the Underground Railroad.
4 Explore the Star-Spangled Banner Trail
Two hundred years ago, the young United States faced the greatest threat of its existence when the most powerful military in the world terrorized our shores. During the War of 1812, the British Navy raged the length and breadth of the Chesapeake Bay and even burned the White House. But on the ramparts of Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine, and the soil of Baltimore, soldiers and ordinary citizens boldly defended our way of life, forging the legendary American backbone and inspiring Francis Scott Key to pen the “Star-Spangled Banner.” With dozens of landmarks, parks and sites like Fort McHenry and the Star-Spangled Banner Flag House where Mary Pickersgill sewed the flag that flew O’er the ramparts, the Star-Spangled Banner National Historic Trail chronicles these perilous years in American history.
5 Cruise the Bay with a Maryland Waterman
Set sail on a historic skipjack, the Maryland state boat and part of the only fleet of working sailboats in America, and explore the Chesapeake Bay. Get a taste of Maryland’s bay traditions while pulling crab pots or dredging for oysters on guided, sailing tours offered by Maryland’s working watermen. Visit iconic lighthouses that dot Maryland’s Chesapeake shores and experience Maryland’s proud maritime traditions by car or sail the 3,000-mile-long Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail while staying connected to information and experiences through the trail’s system of “smart buoys.” Get a unique and fun view of this one-of-a-kind history at the Calvert Marine Museum, Annapolis Maritime Museum and Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, or step back in time on an island excursion to Smith Island to immerse yourself in the waterman culture and experience quiet and solitude.
Image Credit: Allegany Museum
6 Drive the Historic National Road
Take a road trip to remember along the Historic National Road. Envisioned by President George Washington, “The Road that Built the Nation” was the first federally funded highway and connected Baltimore markets to the Midwest by 1818. Today it remains an enchanting slice of Americana and 200 years of American road-side culture. Experience epic stories of the road at the National Road Museum in Boonsboro and the Thrasher Carriage Museum in Frostburg; and stop at landmarks like Wilson’s Store, the LaVale Toll House, and the Casselman River Bridge, while riding a ribbon of highway that weaves our nation together.
Along the way, explore quaint towns and imagine traversing the Appalachian Mountains in a Model T Ford on a Sunday drive and returning to tell tales of adventure. See what we as a nation have become in the years since construction began on The National Road.
7 Discover American Indian Country
See Maryland’s waterways and landscapes through American Indian eyes. Immerse yourself in a woodland setting and explore a replica Piscataway Indian Village at Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum. Then tour the Maryland Archaeological Lab to see Indian artifacts firsthand. Take part in a Pow Wow or cultural event and meet one of the many modern day Maryland Indians. Sample authentic food, see a ceremonial dance and purchase native crafts. Travel to the Baltimore American Indian Center and discover the stories of native peoples living in an urban area. On the Eastern Shore, stop at the Nause-Waiwash Band of the Nanticoke Indian Tribe’s Longhouse. Learn about the historic Nanticoke’s interactions with the English at the Captain John Smith Nanticoke River Discovery Center in Vienna.
Image Credit: B&O Railroad
8 Ride the Rails
Make the leap from the Monopoly board to the real life B&O Railroad, home of the first 13 miles of railroad track in America. Chartered in 1827, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad began regular passenger service in 1830. Today, Baltimore’s B&O Railroad Museum, home to one of the most important collections of rolling stock in the world, is a must-stop for rail history buffs and your favorite Thomas-obsessed tyke alike. Other great stops include the Brunswick Railroad Museum with its 1,700 square foot HO Scale model railroad. And there’s no better way to see the rugged mountains of Western Maryland than a trip on the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad a historic train trip through the mountains of Cumberland.
9 Walk, Bike, and Even Take a Mule-Pulled Barge Ride Through the Centuries on the C&O Canal
From the Great Falls of the Potomac and the outskirts of Washington D.C. to the rugged reaches of Western Maryland, the C&O Canal cuts a swath through unforgettable Maryland landscapes and nearly 200 years of history. Its flat expanses are perfect for novice hikers and family bike trips through spots like the Paw Paw Tunnel, while challenging side paths like the legendary Billy Goat Trail offer destination routes for the experienced hiker. Don’t miss a stop at the Cumberland Visitor Center to see interactive exhibits and step back into the heyday of the canal; and for a real adventure, take a mule-pulled barge ride along the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal at Potomac, try an electric launch boat tour at Williamsport, and for the complete canal experience, book a night’s stay in a historic lockhouse.
Image Credit: Visit Annapolis
10 Explore our Naval History
Tour the grounds of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis and see the ornate crypt of John Paul Jones, father of the American Navy. Honor the service of America’s fighting sailors at the Academy’s Main Chapel and visit the Plebe’s favorite, Tecumseh Court. Explore the U.S. Naval Academy Museum to discover the history of seapower, the development of the U.S. Navy, and the role of the U.S. Naval Academy in building the future leaders of America's Navy and Marine Corps. Or travel back in time to the antebellum era and tour the historic USS Constellation, an enduring part of Baltimore’s skyline. Once the flagship of the U.S. Navy’s Africa fleet during the fight against slavery, the Constellation was the last, all-sail warship built by the Navy.
11 Experience the History of Acadians in Maryland
In November of 1755, four ships carrying more than 900 Acadian exiles arrived in Maryland. Forcibly removed by the British from their homelands in Nova Scotia, Canada, these exiled Acadians were left to fend for themselves and settled in Princess Anne, Snow Hill, Oxford, Newtown (today Chestertown), Georgetown, Fredericktown, Baltimore, Annapolis, Upper Marlboro, Lower Marlboro and Port Tobacco. Their names were listed on the 1763 Acadian lists. Experience the dramatic story of the Acadian exiles and plan your visit to the port towns and historic sites where Acadian families lived.
12 Travel through Time to Colonial Days
Founded in 1634, the Maryland Colony was home to the roots of American religious liberty and twice served as the capital of the country. Step back in time and visit St. Clement’s Island in the Potomac River, where Maryland’s first Colonists landed on March 25, 1634 in their search for religious freedom. Tour Historic St. Mary’s City, now a living history site, this home to the original Maryland colony invites you to spend a day walking in the shoes (or more likely, bare feet) of a Colonist, and even climb aboard the Dove, a reconstruction of one of the tiny sailing ships that those early Marylanders used to cross the stormy Atlantic. And visit bricked streets of bayfront Annapolis. The historic State House served as the seat of the Continental Congress during the signing of the Treaty of Paris which ended the Revolutionary War, and in its halls, General George Washington resigned as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army, cementing the foundations of American civilian rule.
Image Credit: College Park Aviation Museum
13 Look to the Future through Flight
Witness the history of flight at the College Park Aviation Museum, the Hagerstown Aviation Museum, the Glenn L. Martin Maryland Aviation Museum in Middle River, and the Patuxent River Naval Air Museum where you can take to the virtual skies with a ride in an authentic F-14 flight simulator. Or get a sneak peak at tomorrow’s history at Greenbelt’s NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Museum with its state-of-the-art displays and a rocket garden; and at the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore where you can look through the eye of the Clark Telescope.
History & Heritage Photos & Videos
Known as George Washington's Headquarters, this one-room cabin was used by George Washington while an aide to General Braddock.
Image Credit: VisitMaryland
Fort McHenry National Monument and Historic Shrine
Be inspired at this important War of 1812 site and birthplace of The National Anthem.
Image Credit: Ken Stanek Photography
Hooper Strait Lighthouse
See this 1879 Hooper Strait Chesapeake screw-pile lighthouse at Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum
Antietam National Battlefield Memorial Illumination
Pay tribute to those who were sacrificed at this tremendous Civil War battle.
Image Credit: VisitMaryland.org
Maryland Dove
Step onboard the Maryland Dove in Historic St. Mary's City.
Home to the family of John Wilkes Booth
John Wilkes Booth family home
Traveling Maryland’s Heritage Areas
Travel through these Heritage Areas to see some of the best of Maryland's historic sites and towns.
Civil War Sites to Visit
Go deeper into America's Civil War history when you visit these Maryland sites at the "Crossroads of the Civil War."
6 Awesome Baltimore History Museums
Baltimore has been called “The Monumental City” by President John Quincy Adams and “A nest of pirates” by the British Navy. Few other places have played such an important role...
15 Must-Visit Places For History Buffs
One of the 13 original colonies, “The Free State” is a hub for history lovers. With living-history colonial towns, national shrines, the home of The Star-Spangled Banner, and...
Home of the brave and land of the free, explore nearly four centuries of American History in the birthplace of our National Anthem
Star-Spangled Banner Trail Sites to Visit
Explore the inspiring sites and battlefields of the War of 1812 and uncover the inspiration for our National Anthem on the Star-Spangled Banner Trail.
History & Heritage Attractions
Search our comprehensive list of History & Heritage Attractions in Maryland.
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Type Type Arts & Culture Breweries, Wineries & Distilleries General Attractions History & Heritage Lighthouses Museums Outdoor Recreation Religious Sites Scenic Points & Landmarks Science & Education Sports Tours
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Oregon State University Memorial Union: Promoting Community
Oregon State University’s Memorial Union has roots that go way back. Ground was broken on the building in 1926, and the cornerstone was laid in 1928, making it the oldest student union in Oregon. The building remained almost unchanged until 1960, when two wings were added to house a bookstore and dining commons. Memorial Union is proud of its history, but not content to rest on its laurels. One of the most recent changes—the addition of university digital signage from Visix—represents something of a revolution in terms of communication with students, faculty and staff.
Home to the OSU Bookstore, numerous university services, restaurants, a bowling alley and billiards hall, and restaurants, among other things, the Union draws a crowd every single day, making it the ideal spot to disseminate information. In fact, around a quarter of the university’s 22,000 students pass through the building every day.
Two main factors drove the decision to invest in digital signage—a desire to establish more effective communications with and among students, and the need to establish a more sustainable profile. The Union takes part in the national survey of student unions put together by the educational benchmarking authority EBI, and administrators noticed results from a couple of years showing a strong desire for a better ways to promote events on campus. “We did some focus groups and found students saying that the traditional way of putting up posters just wasn’t working,” explained Kent Sumner, assistant director of Memorial Union for marketing and assessment. At the same time, environmental concerns were increasingly coming to the fore, calling into question the heavy reliance of printing posters on paper.
Digital signage provided an answer to both of those issues. On the environmental front alone, Sumner said that a few years ago, promoting a single event on campus involved printing around 50 large posters and 300-400 flyers. The AxisTV digital signage software has allowed the Union to reduce that kind of paper use dramatically in the past two years.
The Union looked at a number of options before going with AxisTV. The fact that Axis is not tied in to national marketers and allows the owners to control all content appearing on the screens was a very important factor in the decision. Just as important was the system’s unique ability to integrate with the Union’s event management system. “Being able to have that EMS plug-in really pushed us towards AxisTV,” said Sumner, adding that they’ve been happy with the decision ever since.
The Union’s system comprises 8 46-inch LCD screens strategically placed throughout the building—near elevators on each floor, in the food service areas, in the coffee shop and at the central information desk. The screens are divided into three blocks, with around two-thirds of the space dedicated to promotional events and one-third showing what’s going on in terms of scheduling in the building any given day. A crawl runs across the bottom of the screens which is managed by the Daily Barometer, the university’s school newspaper.
The marketing department creates some of the content for the system, but other departments and student groups are free to submit content as well. “If Career Services is having a career day, they can send a slide; if Student Health is promoting safe sex or flu shots, we can put that up,” said Sumner. Motion graphic-based content has been especially successful at capturing students’ attention, according to Sumner, and video is something they hope to incorporate more of in the future.
The response to AxisTV has been overwhelmingly positive. “The system has been very well received; one thing we’ve really noticed is that a lot of other departments have started looking into adding screens to their areas, too,” said Sumner. “People have seen what we’re doing and are trying to copy it in one way or another.”
AxisTV is also proving itself in terms of return on investment. Sumner said the Union tracks some ROI data for promotions on the screens. Administrators run promos of campus products, such as a special at food services, on the screens, in the newspaper and with flyers, tracking sales with each method. “The promos on the screens have shown very good numbers all the time—it beats out the newspaper and flyers,” said Sumner.
All in all, AxisTV has done the job it was selected to do even better than expected, according to Sumner. While the reduction in paper and the ability to reach more people more effectively were assumed from the outset, Sumner said the sheer amount of time they system saves people has been an added bonus. “We hadn’t really factored in how much time it took to physically go to the EMS system, download it, format it onto a sheet of paper, print that out and post it throughout the building, then pull that down and start again the next day,” Sumner explained. Now that labor-intensive system has been eliminated. “Because of the integration between AxisTV and the EMS, it’s all automatic—no person, no paper and no time wasted,” said Sumner.
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'Venice Is on Its Knees' From Second-Worst Flooding in City's History
A tourist pushes her floating luggage in a flooded St. Mark's Square, in Venice, Italy, Nov. 13, 2019.
Report updated 5:45 p.m., Nov. 13, 2019.
VENICE, ITALY - "Venice is on its knees," Mayor Luigi Brugnaro declared as the lagoon city was inundated by flooding caused by the highest tide in 50 years.
#Venezia è in ginocchio. La Basilica di San Marco ha subito gravi danni come l’intera città e le isole.
Siamo qui con il Patriarca Moraglia per portare il nostro sostegno ma c’è bisogno dell’aiuto di tutti per superare queste giornate che ci stanno mettendo a dura prova. pic.twitter.com/3Qy7070hZn
— Luigi Brugnaro (@LuigiBrugnaro) November 13, 2019
Brugnaro on Wednesday declared a state of emergency as 85% of the city was flooded.
The water reached 1.87 meters above average sea level Tuesday, the second-highest level ever recorded in the city and just 7 centimeters below the historic flood in 1966.
More flooding driven by strong winds and storms is expected Thursday.
A man in his 70s died when he was electrocuted while trying to start pumps at his home on the island of Pellestrina, officials said.
The crypt of the iconic St. Mark's Basilica was flooded for just the sixth time in 1,200 years.
Brugnaro said it would cost hundreds of millions of euros to repair the damage across the city. He told reporters at a news conference that the damage was "enormous."
General view of flooding in Venice, Italy, Nov. 12, 2019. (Sabina Castelfranco/VOA)
Famous tourist spots like St. Mark's Square and La Fenice Opera House were under several feet of water.
The city famous for its labyrinth of canals often experiences severe tidal flooding, called acqua alta, in the winter when strong winds funnel water in from the northern Adriatic Sea.
The mayor blamed climate change for the ever-worsening flooding. He and other officials called for the completion of a long-delayed project to construct offshore barriers.
The flood-protection system, known by the acronym MOSE, has been delayed by cost overruns and corruption scandals.
Venice Mayor Declares Disaster as City Hit by 2nd Worst High Tide
High water floods historic basilica and left many of city's squares and alleyways deep underwater
A Majority of Millennials Surveyed Expect World War III in Their Lifetime
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© FirstVIEW
Prada For Sale?
By Lauren Milligan 6 January 2010
IS PRADA set to be sold to Switzerland's Richemont? Reports emerged yesterday that the Italian luxury label was set to sell a third of its shares to the Swiss conglomerate, but Prada denies the move.
"The company (Prada) categorically denies the sale of a stake to Richemont," a Prada spokesman told Reuters. "There are no negotiations in existence."
Richemont - the group behind Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Chloé and Dunhill - has also dismissed the rumours.
Prada has a debt of more than €1 billion, it was reported this year, and agreed an extension on its debt repayments in August 2009. The involvement of an investor would give Prada - which is currently owned by Miuccia Prada and her partner, chief executive Patrizio Bertelli - further breathing space and would allow future expansion.
YOU SHOULD SEE: Prada's prettiest show ever...
YOU SHOULD SEE: What fashion's finest told us about their first fashion show memories...
PradaMiuccia PradaNews
Tiffany & Co Sells To LVMH In Landmark $16.2 Billion Deal
By Alice Newbold 25 November 2019
Under Chinese Ownership, Lanvin Shows Signs Of A Turnaround
By Suzy Menkes 28 October 2019
The Best Street Style From Milan Fashion Week Men's
By Orla Pentelow 13 January 2020
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You are here:Home-Reviews-Album Reviews-British Sea Power – Valhalla Dancehall
British Sea Power – Valhalla Dancehall
Rough Trade, 2011
[rating:9/10]
With a title like that, you’d be convinced that British Sea Power’s ultimate goal for the 4th album was to make some kind of Caribbean-slash-Nordic party record. In truth it’s nothing of the sort. The party is there of course, and the after-party, naturally, is at Valhalla Dancehall. Recorded in Sussex and Isle Of Skye, Valhalla Dancehall is the follow-up to their breathtaking soundtrack to black and white silent film Man Of Aran in 2009. In press leading up to the album the band have called it their ‘most ambitious record yet’, a claim that would fallen easily on the windswept shoulders of Man Of Aran. The ambition in Valhalla Dancehall is simply to ring in a new Britpop. Actually, that’s pretty ambitious.
You could stand Valhalla Dancehall next to some of the defining English releases of the late 90’s — Blur’s 13, Manic Street Preachers’ Everything Must Go, Pulp’s This Is Hardcore and draw a direct link to the music British Sea Power are making now. With feet firmly placed in the past and present, they come out guns blazing/placards waving with “Who’s In Control?” and “We Are Sound”, both tracks laden with Manics guitar riffs and ooze stadium cool. If Pulp were to ever announce their recorded return, you would expect it to sound something like “Georgie Ray”, where Jarvis Cocker’s piano and vocal style looms large but doesn’t hide its perfect poise.
What to make of “Mongk II”‘s “You’re an animal, you’re a homorapien/There it is but you don’t know where it is/Elevated primatemaia” is up for debate and vote for bands not to include lyrics with the albums when they decide to speak their own language. From an outsider’s point of you, you could easily be mistaken into believing British Sea Power were the British Arcade Fire, albeit with the pop eccentricities of XTC flowing through their veins. The exuberance, the pacing, the confidence, the effortless ability to unveil one perfectly crafted song after another (the triad of “Luna”, “Baby” and “Living Is So Easy” being especially divine). Even its flawed moments here feel intentional.
The pinnacle of Valhalla Dancehall is its penultimate track, the sobering 11 minute epic “Once More Now”. A bleak post-party comedown it complements what has felt like a journey in song, almost a concept album in structure, from the rising up of “Who’s In Control?” and the falling down of “Once More Now” and the contemplative finale “Heavy Water”. In the band’s summation for Valhalla Dancehall, you could easily swap “ambitious” for “exceptional”. There are few bands today that threaten the firmament of English music like British Sea Power and come armed with an album like this. “Are you ready for Valhalla?/Are you ready for the Dancehall?”. Well, are you?
By Craig Smith|2018-07-17T03:41:41+01:00January 30th, 2011|Categories: Album Reviews|Tags: 2011, Album, British Sea Power, Rough Trade, UK|1 Comment
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About the Author: Craig Smith
Continues his music photography and writing at sonicdocument.com
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Webcuts Music » Webcut of the Week » British Sea Power – Who’s In Control? March 29, 2011 at 8:09 am
[…] be damn good. British Sea Power, I’m looking at you. Perched as the lead track on their Webcuts approved 9/10 album, Valhalla Dancehall, “Who’s In Control?” is a politically charged, apathetically […]
© Copyright 2007-2012 Webcuts Music
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Fatty Liver May Be Linked to Diabetes Risk
Study Shows People With Fatty Liver Disease Have Increased Risk of Type 2 Diabetes
By Jennifer Warner
From the WebMD Archives
Feb. 25, 2011 -- Having an accumulation of fat in your liver cells may raise your risk of developing type 2 diabetes regardless of the fat in other places of your body.
A new study suggests that fatty liver disease, also known as fatty liver, may be an independent risk factor for type 2 diabetes. Researchers found people with fatty liver disease were significantly more likely to develop the disease within five years than those with healthy livers.
“Many patients and practitioners view fat in the liver as just ‘fat in the liver,’ but we believe that a diagnosis of fatty liver should raise an alarm for impending type 2 diabetes,” says researcher Sun Kim, MD, of Stanford University in Calif., in a news release. “Our study shows that fatty liver, as diagnosed by ultrasound, strongly predicts the development of type 2 diabetes regardless of insulin concentration.”
Researchers say fatty liver often occurs along with other risk factors for diabetes, such as obesity and insulin resistance, which has made it difficult to determine whether the condition itself is a marker for diabetes risk.
But in this study, researchers found that even among those with similar insulin concentrations, those with fatty liver were still twice as likely to develop type 2 diabetes.
Fatty liver is a common liver condition that occurs in about one-third of adults in the U.S. In some cases, the condition is mild and causes no noticeable symptoms, but in other cases it can lead to permanent liver damage or liver failure.
Fatty liver is frequently associated with alcoholic liver disease, but it may also have non-alcoholic causes.
Measuring Diabetes Risk
In the study, published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, researchers looked at the relationship between fatty liver and diabetes risk in 11,091 adults in Korea. The participants' insulin concentration levels and liver function was measured at the beginning of the study in 2003 and again five years later.
At the start of the study, 27% had fatty liver, as diagnosed by ultrasound. Nearly two-thirds of those with fatty liver were also overweight or obese compared with 19% of those without fatty liver.
In addition, almost half of those with fatty liver were in the upper quartile for fasting insulin concentration, a marker of insulin resistance, compared with 17% of those without fatty liver.
During the follow-up period, less than 1% of those without fatty liver developed type 2 diabetes compared with 4% of those with fatty liver.
After adjusting for insulin resistance at the start of the study, the risk of developing type 2 diabetes was still higher among those with fatty liver. For example, among those from both groups with the highest levels of insulin resistance at the start of the study, those with fatty liver were twice as likely to develop type 2 diabetes.
In addition, regardless of insulin resistance at the start of the study, those with fatty liver had more risk factors for diabetes, such as higher glucose levels and cholesterol abnormalities than the others.
Researchers say the results suggest that as well as being associated with insulin resistance, fatty liver may independently increase the risk of type 2 diabetes.
WebMD Health News Reviewed by Laura J. Martin, MD on February 25, 2011
Sung, K. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, April 2011.
News release, Endocrine Society.
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Home / Articles / Commercial Property Cases Highlight Complexity of Consent
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Commercial Property Cases Highlight Complexity of Consent
The commercial property solicitors at Wellers Law Group are experienced in all matters relating to commercial leases. We understand how disputes can disable a tenant’s business and, equally, can interfere with the profitability and plans of a landlord. In the following summary we take a look at some of the most important recent cases relating to unreasonable refusal of consent and commercial lease termination.
No 1 West India Quay (Residential) Ltd v East Tower Apartments Ltd
This 2018 Court of Appeal case concerned an instance in which a landlord had withheld consent from its tenant to assign residential leases. The refusal was made on the following grounds:
The landlord demanded a bank reference from the proposed new tenant.
The landlord required that a surveyor inspect the property for potential breaches of covenant.
The landlord requested a fee in exchange for consent.
The High Court had originally ruled that by demanding a fee, the landlord had withheld consent unreasonably; this was despite the fact that the court found the other two reasons to be reasonable.
However, the Court of Appeal determined that the landlord’s appeal should be allowed as the two good reasons provided outweighed the bad. Lord Justice Lewisham stated that “if the decision would have been the same without reliance on the bad reason, then the decision (looked at overall) is good”.
Although the case concerned a disputed residential landlord consent, the ruling is likely to also apply to commercial landlord consents and should inform the approach taken by both landlords and tenants in the future.
S Franses Ltd v The Cavendish Hotel (London) Ltd
This 2018 Supreme Court ruling was important as it ruled in favour of the tenant, establishing that a landlord is only entitled to withhold permission to grant an existing tenant a new tenancy if it can demonstrate that it intends to develop the site regardless of whether or not the tenant vacates voluntarily.
During the case, the landlord conceded that it only intended to carry out the works in order to make the tenant vacate the premises and to negate the need for planning permission.
During the first instance hearing, at the High Court, a ruling was made in favour of the landlord. However, after successfully bypassing the Court of Appeal, the tenant achieved a ruling in its favour at the Supreme Court, which found that the landlord must intend to perform the work whether or not the tenant voluntarily vacates.
TFS Stores Ltd v The Designer Retail Outlet Centres (Mansfield) General Partner Ltd
This 2019 High Court case concerned The Fragrance Shop’s (TFS) claim that a landlord’s decision to not renew its leases and to instead offer them to a competitor was contractually invalid under the terms of The Landlord and Tenant Act 1954.
The landlords’ commercial property solicitors had provided warning notices to the tenant’s solicitors; however, the tenant claimed its solicitors were not authorised to receive them. The judge hearing the case disagreed, arguing that authority flowed from an earlier instruction to complete transactions on the original lease.
The court also considered two other key questions:
Whether the declarations were invalidated because of a failure to correctly state the commencement date of the term of the proposed tenancies.
Whether the TFS representative who signed the declaration had authority to do so.
On the first of these two points, the judge concluded that the tenancies were valid because of “adequate identifying badges of the prospective tenancy”. In short this means that there may not always need to be a fixed calendar commencement date in order for a declaration to be valid.
On the second of these two points, the judge stated that he was “wholly satisfied” that TFS’s representative, a retail director of the shop, had proper authority to execute the declarations.
As these cases demonstrate landlord and tenant disputes can be complex legal area. Making sense of case law can be a puzzling process and if you are involved in a dispute, you should seek the advice of a commercial property solicitor to ensure that you are able to uphold your full rights under the law.
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Practice Area News
Commercial Property, Company & Commercial Law, Corporate Litigation & Dispute Resolution | July 22
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Regulating Branded Content and Native Advertising
Date 25 April 2017
Time 10am - 3pm
Regulating Branded Content and Native Advertising is organised by the Branded Content Research Network in association with the Westminster Institute for Advanced Studies (WIAS) and the MeCCSA Policy Group, part of the Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association. It will ask the following questions:
How is the blurring of media and marketing communications addressed across UK regulation and governance?
Are the existing regulatory arrangements appropriate and effective?
What are the challenges for UK regulatory arrangements?
This seminar examines policy approaches and regulatory practices concerning the integration of marketing communications and media, ranging from product placement and advertiser-financed television, to advertorials and native advertising. It will include presentations and round-table discussion involving regulators, industry groups, academics and other policy stakeholders.
The morning session will consider the evolution and forms of existing regulations and focus on the Committees of Advertising Practice / Advertising Standards Authority (CAP/ASA), Ofcom and press/publishing regulation. The afternoon session will discuss the challenges for regulating emergent branded content practices and how those may be met, as well as the research needs and agendas of different agencies and stakeholders and the scope for academic research and collaboration.
Speakers include:
Cliff Fluet, Partner at Lewis Silkin and Legal Counsel for the Branded Content Marketing Association
Suzanne Wright, Principal in Ofcom’s Standards and Audience Protection team
Chris Hackley, Professor of Marketing, Royal Holloway University and
Dr Andrew McStay, Bangor University.
Participants include representatives from the CAP/ASA, Independent Press Standards Organisation, Impress, the National Union of Journalists, marketing industry groups, other stakeholders and academic researchers.
This is an invitation-only event, but if you would like to attend please email [email protected]
Follow-on event
The seminar is followed by a public meeting on regulating branded content in Committee Room 6 at the House of Commons, from 5:45–7pm. This event is free but please email [email protected] for further details if you are planning to attend.
About the events
The events are organised by the Branded Content Research Network, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, whose central aim is to facilitate research and networking between academics, practitioners, policy actors, civil society groups and other stakeholders to explore branded content practices and their media policy implications.
Professor Jonathan Hardy, Principal Investigator, University of East London – [email protected]
Professor Iain MacRury, Co-Investigator, Bournemouth University – [email protected]
For enquiries related to WIAS and the University of Westminster, please contact Denise Rose Hansen on [email protected]
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Home Category Sports Football
Joel Mannix shook hands with the club's chairman and watched as he immediately, instinctively, wiped his palm on his trousers. As a black referee in England's football...
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Changes to Champions League are unlikely to be decided this year after UEFA called off joint talks with the heads of European clubs and leagues, according to...
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The footballer tragically died after the plane carrying him and pilot, David Ibbotson crashed. Following a search for the aeroplane, Sala’s body was found, although the body of Mr...
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England Beaten by USA in Semi-Final
The England skipper's 84th-minute spot-kick was held by Alyssa Naeher, shortly before Houghton's fellow centre-back Millie Bright was sent off for a second bookable offence, as the...
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It was Mohamed Salah, such a disconsolate figure when he was injured early in that loss to Real Madrid, who set Liverpool on their way with a...
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Learning Yiddish through Classes, Conversation, and Yidish-vokh
Anne (Khane) Eakin Moss, Yiddishist and Russian Literature professor, describes how she learned to speak Yiddish: through taking classes, working for a Yiddish speaker, and attending to Yidish-vokh (Yiddish Week).
"What's Worse than Before": Fewer Yiddish Books Are Published Now than Earlier in Israel
Chava Turniansky, professor emeritus of Yiddish literature at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, explains how she feels about the fact that Yiddish books, newspapers in Yiddish, and great Yiddish writers don't exist to the extent they used to.
Discovering Secular Yiddish Literature in the Yeshiva
Israel Milkow, a retired IT professional, describes his first experiences of reading classic Yiddish literature in a place where it was forbidden: the yeshiva (traditional Jewish religious school).
The Shmooze
The Yiddish Book Center's podcasts include conversations with Jewish culture makers, plus news and stories related to Yiddish language, literature, and culture.
Irad Ben Isaak
Irad Ben Isaak, PhD student in Yiddish Literature at Europa Universitat Viadrina, was interviewed by Tatiana (Tanya) Panova on December 2nd, 2018 in Berlin, Germany.
Part of Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project
Ruth R. Wisse, author and retired research professor in Yiddish and comparative literature, was interviewed by Christa Whitney on March 7, 2016 in New York, New York.
Chava Turniansky
Professor Chava Turniansky, Professor Emeritus of Yiddish literature at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, was interviewed by Christa Whitney on June 17, 2014 in Jerusalem, Israel.
Eliezer Shteynbarg Was Our Peretz
Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman z"l, Yiddish poet and songwriter, describes one of her favorite writers, Eliezer Shteynbarg, who wrote masterful children's literature.
Israel Gubkin's passion for teaching
Ethel Taft remembers how her father, Yiddish writer Israel Gubkin. brought great passion to teaching the topics of literature, Bible, Zionism, and language.
Working at Jewish Family Services in Chicago
Harriet Murav, translator of Yiddish literature, describes some of the families she encountered during her time working at the Jewish Family Services Center in Chicago.
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Watch Bicentennial Man
"One robot's 200 year journey to become an ordinary man."
This movie starring Robin Williams is a drama about artificial life which strive to become human. In the early moments of the movie, a cyborg is being used as a butler for a wealthy family. This cyborg has a unique personality from the beginning. The youngest member of the family grows very close to the cyborg and grows up in his companionship. As time goes on, the little girl grows up and has a child of her own. The cyborg starts to go beyond the boundaries of artificial intelligence and begins to experience human emotions.
As generations pass and the cyborg never grows older, he does become more and more human-like. He falls in love with the direct descendant of the little girl that knew him in his younger years. When he realizes that he will always be different from the human race, the cyborg strives to become as human-like as possible.
Comedy, Science Fiction, Drama
Robin Williams, Embeth Davidtz, Sam Neill, Oliver Platt
December 17, 1999 (1999-12-17)
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Watch Bicentennial Man Trailer
Bicentennial Man (Movie Trailer)|3:05
Watch Bicentennial Man Online - Watch online anytime: Stream, Download, Buy
Bicentennial Man is available to watch and stream, download, buy on demand at Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO NOW, The Roku Channel, Amazon, Vudu, Google Play, FandangoNow, iTunes, YouTube VOD online.
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home » Sound » article
WiFi HiFi Holiday Gift Guide 2019: Gifts for the Man Cave
Published: 12/13/2019 09:20:01 AM EST in Sound
We're back with the WiFi HiFi holiday gift guides! Each week, we'll release new themed gift guides, chocked-full of great tech gift ideas for different people on your list. This week, we're looking at great gifts to help someone outfit his "man cave."
Sony SRS-WS1 Immersive Wearable Speaker
It's only available in the U.S. right now, but if you're making a trip stateside any time soon, you might want to consider this for the man cave owner on your list. Rather than have headphones cupping their ears or music blaring loudly that might disturb others in the home, he can place this speaker over his shoulders to hear sound and vibrations from whatever the TV while watching a movie or gaming, or an audio source while listening to music. It has speaker slots that, when combined with digital sound processing, create a sound field that surrounds the user. The ducts on the lower part of the speaker reduce excess resonance to keep sound quality clear. Equipped with specially developed 30mm-diameter, full-range speakers on both sides, the small vibration board provides high-register playback. The speaker creates vibrations in the air that deliver a powerful sensory experience, says Sony. The vibration intensity can be adjusted to three different levels: High, Medium and Low. It uses 2.4Ghz RF wireless technology for low latency and a more responsive listening experience. Since the sound is centered around the wearer, rather than projected from a distance, he can freely move around as well without any degradation in sound clarity and volume. The design doesn't isolate the user completely from their surroundings, allowing him to experience high-quality personalized sounds while still being connected to their environment. It comes with a wireless transmitter that can be easily connected to a television using an optical or audio cable. Up to two WS1 speakers can be connected to a single transmitter, enabling family or friends to share the listening experience. He can also connect to the audio ports of mobile devices, such as smartphones or handheld gaming consoles, to enjoy videos and music using the supplied cable. To charge the speaker, place it on the charging stand. One charge takes approximately three hours and provides a maximum continuous usage time of up to seven hours. US$300
Front Row Seating Captain's Chair
Every man needs the ultimate in comfort for their man cave, and this chair is the perfect addition to the room, ideal for sitting back to watch movies and TV series, playing video games, or relaxing with some music playing through speakers or a nice pair of audiophile headphones. Measuring 32 x 32 x 34" (w/d/h), it comes in crisp white or bolder colour options like red and yellow. Mounted on a swivel base, he can move around with ease as he battles evil forces in a game or chats with buddies. Grab two for a larger room so he can invite a friend over for the Super Bowl, a video game battle, or movie night with a partner. It's available as a swivel chair or swivel rocker starting from $2,500 in fabric and $3,500 in top-grain leather. Everything is custom built to order in Montreal, so grab one quickly so you can get it in time, if not for Christmas, at least for the Super Bowl!
Marshall Mini Fridge
What better gift for a man cave than a cool (literally) mini fridge that can hold beers, soda, and other drinks that are par for the course for a guys night in. This one comes in a 3.2 or 4.4 cubic foot size and features authentic Marshall Amp parts, including genuine Marshall logos, actual knobs, fret cloth, brass finished faceplate, and custom branded glass shelving. With a matte black tub and white accents, each has an arctic blue LED cluster that lights up the interior. There are transparent removable trays, a thermostat at the side to optimize storage space, improved custom doors, increased tray space that can fit 2L bottles and regular size cans, and embossed details on the inside of door. The larger version has a freezer compartment as well, perfect for freezing ice cubes to serve drinks on the rocks and for frozen snacks - or just to get that beer cold quicker when someone brings over a six-pack! The 3.2 fridge (31.25" x 19" x 18.5") is $400, and the 4.4 cubic foot (32.25" x 19.75" x 22.5") is $500.
Xbox One X Stars Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Bundle
While the One X was released a few years ago, it remains Microsoft's newest console. And any gaming guy on your list will love to have one in his man cave if he doesn't already. This bundle includes the console with 1TB of storage along with a download code for this game, which will be a perfect gift right after the launch of the newest movie in the franchise before Christmas. It also comes with a one-month trial of the Xbox Game Pass for console and Xbox Live Gold, and one-month of EA Access. Play in full 4K Ultra HD with a compatible TV (like the one on this list) and HDR, and his man cave will be the talk of the neighbourhood. $450
Tri-Art TA-05 Turntable
If he's more into passive music listening than active gaming, consider getting him a turntable for the room. Rather than something boxy and boring, this one is absolutely gorgeous, made of solid three-ply bamboo with an aluminum sub platter with steel shaft and removable spindle. It has a single AC synchronous motor (33 and 45rpm) and ABEC7 carbonized ceramic ball bearing. It even has a solid bamboo tone arm with a unique azimuth adjustment. Why bamboo? Aside fron the fact that it looks really cool, bamboo is considered to be "nature's carbon fibre," says Tri-Art, which makes it a fast material with great isolation properties that can minimize airborne and structural vibrations. Plus, it's also eco-friendly since it replenishes in five years compared to 25-30 years for most other hardwoods. It comes plug and play and can be equipped with any cartridge or use one of Tri-Arts. MSRP $798
Devialet Phantom Reactor Portable Wireless Speaker
Perfect for smaller spaces, this wireless speaker will still afford beautiful sound and punchy bass for private listening. It's a quarter of the size of the Phantom Gold. There's a 600-watt, 95dB SPL 600 model for $1,450 in a black or white finish, or the 900 model that offers 900 watts and 98dB SPL for $1,850 in the same finish options. Both include Airplay, Bluetooth, and Spotify Connect so he can listen to streaming tunes from his favourite service, along with optical cable, analog, and UPnP for connecting other source devices.
Cube Audio Nenuphar Single Driver Loudspeaker
Set up a home theatre in the room with a pair of these sleek and sexy loudspeakers, which are is based on Cube Audio F10 Neo drivers combined with a TQWT enclosure. Modern and elegant in design in a piano black or white finish, all drivers and loudspeakers from the company are handmade in Poland. Designed for rooms anywhere from 20 to 40 square meters in size, they can be a perfect match for a tube amp, and can be positioned in a room tilted forward or resting against a back wall, with about 5-10 degrees of toe-in. $18,900/pr.
JBL Link Bar Soundbar
What's great about this soundbar for a room like a man cave is that it doesn't just provide audio while you're watching TV or listening to music, but it can also turn virtually any standard TV into a smart TV by adding an Android TV user interface to it. This is great if he's using an older TV in the room with plans to upgrade next year and doesn't have a cable or satellite TV box hooked up. No additional devices are needed - connect it and you can start watching content streaming from your favourite services. It can also be controlled by voice using Google Assistant. However, you need to buy a sub separately. $550
Panasonic DP-UB9000 THX Certified Ultra HD Player
If he wants to use the man cave to store his collection of 4K Bl-ray discs and watch movies that way, this is a great option to facilitate that. You'll get great colour reproduction and a sharp picture that will impress thanks to the unique chroma and HDR processing technologies. $1,300
Sony Z9F Master Series LCD TV
If you want to surprise him with a brand new big-screen TV for the room, consider this one in all of its 65-inches of glory. It offers 4K upscaling from HD sources when watching standard TV or other HD resolution content, Full Array Local Dimming, and 4,000 nits of brightness. Plus, it's a smart TV built around the Android platform, which means he can access all of his favourite streaming services. $4,000.
Monitor Audio Mass 5.1 Surround Sound System
For the man who wants to get full surround sound in his small room, this system is a great choice. He'll get fully immersive sound through the five high-performance satellite speakers and subwoofer. The speakers can be placed atop a surface, on the optional and complementary MASS Stands, or mounted on the wall, and come in midnight (blue/black) or mist (white/grey). $1,399
If he'll probably be using his man cave to throw on some headphones, shut off from the world, and immerse himself in some classic music, hard rock, or soothing tunes, check out these headphones. A wireless version of the popular Momentums, they fold up nicely, and you can use the app to choose your desired level of ANC so he can still hear the kids if necessary. Unfold them and they automatically power on. $530
Turo Car Sharing
Ok, so this gift isn't exactly for the man cave itself. But for any guy who owns a man cave, chances are he will love this gift, too. Through the peer-to-eer car sharing marketplace that dubs itself Airbnb for cars, he can book any car from just about anywhere and take it for a spin. The service focuses on unique and exotic cars, including a Tesla Model 3, Audio R8, Porsche Boxter, and yes, even the DeLorean. You would win huge points for getting him an hour with a DeLorean! There are more practical options as well, but where's the fun in that? Pricing ranges from $146 for a day with the Tesla Model 3 up to $2,500 for the DeLorean. But pricing is set by hosts so it can vary. To grab a coupon as a gift, visit the website or download the app, look through the cars in your area. As long as the person you want to get it for has a valid driver's license, you can book the car for your desired date and add them as a secondary driver. Make a print out, or find a flashier way to present the gift, then plan your date night or guys night out.
Article Tags: wifi hifi holiday gift guide, holiday gift guide, gift guides, tech gift guides, tech gifts, gifts for men, gifts for man cave, tech for man cave, audio gifts, video gifts, gaming gifts
The Nyrius Aries Pro(plus) Wireless HD Video Transmitter and Receiver Lets You Stream Wirelessly
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This book is now Out of Print.
A new edition was published, see:
PIBA Personal Injury Handbook 3rd ed isbn 9781846610547
Personal Injury Handbook 2nd ed
Edited by: Philip Mead, Simon Levene, Brian Langstaff, Matthias Kelly
New Edition ISBN: 9781846610547
Publisher: Sweet & Maxwell Ltd
Country of Publication: UK
Price: Out of print
The new edition of the Personal Injury Handbook is a concise, straightforward and practical guide to the conduct of personal injury claims. Ideal for barristers and solicitors at all levels, it starts by dealing with the establishment of liability and goes on to look at how to construct a claim for damages.
It then proceeds to cover the practicalities and detail of Procedural Rules such as limitation and payments into court, and of funding. In order to aid practitioners in the preparation of their own cases it highlights and analyses the effects of:-
The Handbook can be used as a handy reference both in and out of court, being both portable and user-friendly. The chapters are ordered logically to highlight the main procedural and case management issues, and the text is formatted to enable ease of reference. Its pocket paperback format makes it extremely practical to carry into court. In the 3 years since the last edition there have been a number of major changes in the area including:-
the abolition of Legal Aid for personal injury work
the effects of the Woolf Reforms
Liability.; Procedure.; Damages. ;Funding.
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Parliamentary Committees and Public Enquiries
Detailed plan needed to prevent further rise in pregnancy and maternity discrimination
The Women and Equalities Committee publishes its submission to the Government’s consultation on pregnancy and maternity discrimination protections.
Response of the Women and Equalities Select Committee to the Government consultation on extending redundancy protection for women and new parents ( PDF 223 KB)
Government’s consultation on pregnancy and maternity discrimination protections
Read the Committee's report: Pregnancy and maternity discrimination
Read the Government response to the Committee's report on pregnancy and maternity discrimination
In August 2016, the Committee published a major report on the issue, calling on the Government to give women protections after a 'shocking' increase in workplace pregnancy discrimination over the past decade.
MPs recommended the Government publish an ambitious, detailed plan within two years or risk a further rise in pregnant women and mothers being forced out of their work.
There should be changes to health and safety practices, preventing discriminatory redundancies and an increase in protection for casual, agency and zero-hours workers.
Little sign of improvement
Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, Maria Miller MP, recently said:
“Our 2016 report laid bare the significant discrimination and poor treatment faced by 54,000 pregnant women and mothers at work each year.
There seems to be little sign of improvement, despite the Government having had three years to demonstrate the urgent action, clarity and leadership we requested.
I am pleased we have the opportunity to submit to the Government’s consultation on this issue.
Our inquiry heard shocking stories of workplace discrimination and of the emotional, physical and financial impact on women.
On World Maternal Mental Health Day, we call for the introduction of company reporting of maternity retention rates.
At present, the burden of enforcement rests too heavily with the individual experiencing discrimination so there must be a new mechanism to increase compliance by employers if women’s lives are to be improved.
We are disappointed that the Government has once again failed to take action regarding the prohibitively short three month time limit for bringing an employment tribunal claim, despite significant public and parliamentary support for extending the time limit.
The effect of discriminatory redundancies, particularly for casual, agency and zero-hours workers, is devastating for them and their families.
Today should be an opportunity to refocus minds on tackling this important issue once and for all.”
About Parliament: Select committees
Visiting Parliament: Watch committees
Channel website: http://www.parliament.uk/
Original article link: https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/women-and-equalities-committee/news-parliament-2017/pregnancy-maternity-discrimination-2-statement-17-19/
Report published on the Withdrawal Agreement Bill
The Constitution Committee has published a report on the constitutional issues in the Government’s Withdrawal Agreement Bill. The Bill is of the highest constitutional significance, given its intended effect of implementing Brexit.
Brexit: revised Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration report published by Committee
The House of Lords EU Select Committee has today published its report on the revised EU Withdrawal Agreement and the Political Declaration on future UK-EU relations ahead of House Lords consideration of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, which starts on Monday 13 January.
Public service broadcasters are essential and need to be supported, says Lords Committee
The Communications and Digital Committee warns that public service broadcasters (PSBs) need to be better supported to ensure that they can continue to produce high-quality drama and documentaries which reflect and examine UK culture. In return, the broadcasters need to adapt to ensure that they serve and reflect all audiences.
Implications of Withdrawal Agreement Bill examined
The Constitution Committee publishes an interim report on the constitutional issues in the Government’s Withdrawal Agreement Bill. The bill is of the highest constitutional significance, given its intended effect of implementing a Brexit deal.
NHS property services set up to fail
NHS Property Services Limited has made progress in tackling some of the issues that it inherited when it was set up. However, it has struggled to get its tenants to sign rental agreements for the properties they occupy, and it is unacceptable that 70% of its tenants still do not have rental agreements in place.
Churn and political interference hampering major project delivery, says PACAC report
Political pressures and staff turnover can significantly impact the Government’s ability to successfully deliver major infrastructure projects, finds an interim report published
Court reforms slow to check impact of changes
HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS) has again fallen behind on critical reforms. HMCTS is now 3 years into its ambitious £1.2 billion programme to modernise the courts, which plan to change the way people access justice by digitising paper-based services, moving some types of cases online, introducing virtual hearings, closing courts and centralising customer services.
Committee calls for measures to help avoid next corporate collapse
The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Committee yesterday wrote to Andrea Leadsom (PDF 77 KB), the Secretary of State for the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with a series of recommendations on corporate governance, executive pay and bonuses, and audit reform following its recent public evidence sessions examining the collapse of Thomas Cook.
UK electoral law poses "serious and unnecessary risks"
Current UK electoral law poses serious and unnecessary risks for everybody involved, concludes Electoral Law: the urgent need for reform, a report published recently (01 November 2019) by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC).
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London’s bike-hire scheme is getting a design overhaul
Smaller wheels, a less cumbersome frame, Bluetooth and GPS are all coming to the new-look TfL bikes
By James Temperton
A small number of the new bikes are already on the streets of London
Boris Bikes, Santander Cycles, Sadiq Cycles… whatever you call them, London’s official fleet of bikes-for-hire are getting a design overhaul.
What’s new? A gel saddle, lower frame, puncture-proof tyres, bigger mudguards and upgraded Shimano brakes. The first of the new bikes are already on the streets of the capital, with thousands more being added over the coming years.
The bikes, which are maintained by public services company Serco, are also fitted with bluetooth and GPS. Transport for London (TfL) says this will allow the firm to “record the performance” of the cycle hire scheme.
The bikes are being built by Stratford-upon-Avon-based Pashley Cycles and will all be fitted with improved front and rear lighting developed by London startup Blaze. The brake light on the new bikes is brighter and the Laserlight on the front is wider.
Forget Peloton, this indoor cycling kit is ideal for your fitness binge
By Andrew Diprose
TfL says the bikes have been redesigned to be “easier to ride and maintain”, meaning more bikes will be available to hire and maintenance costs will come down.
Other small changes include an easier to adjust one-handed seat clamp, smaller wheels for faster acceleration and changes to the frame to make the notoriously hefty bikes easier to manoeuvre.
Since it launched in July 2010, more than 60 million journeys have been made on TfL’s cycle scheme. In 2016 alone, 10.3 million hires were completed in London. This year is set to break that record, with 8.7 million hires already completed.
There are currently 12,000 TfL bikes on the streets of London, with more being added throughout the winter. Brixton will get seven new docking stations in the coming weeks, providing space for up to 200 bikes.
TfL's scheme has faced increased competition this year with two bike-sharing startups launching in London. Unlike Santander's offering, neither of the two new schemes require bikes to be docked at physical stations and have low rental costs.
In September, China's Ofo launched in Hackney with a few hundred cycles and promised to increase the number if its trials went well. Ofo's introduction in London followed that of oBike. Initially, things didn't go well for the Singapore-based startup as it hand't properly consulted with councils and had large numbers of its bikes slapped with removal orders.
Lilium's futuristic electric plane is about to get a big design overhaul
A radical design overhaul is transforming women's watches
By Laura McCreddie-Doak
Citymapper is trying to make sense of London's dockless bike mess
By Nicole Kobie
This could well be the most advanced kids’ bike ever made
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The Pedal-to-the-Metal, Totally Illegal, Cross-Country Sprint for Glory
Author: Charles GraeberCharles Graeber
Alex Roy has a crazy dream: to beat the legendary Cannonball Run record by crossing the country in under 32 hours and 7 minutes. Floor it!
Photo: Brian Finke
And so the clock starts and the taillights flare, and they're off again, strapped down, fueled up, and bound on an outlaw enterprise with 2,795 miles of interstate and some 31,000 highway cops between them and the all-time speed record for crossing the American continent on four wheels.
The gear is all bought and loaded. Twenty packs of Nat Sherman Classic Light cigarettes, check. Breath mints, check. Glucose and guarana, Visine and riboflavin, Gatorade and Red Bull, mail-order porta-pissoir bags of quick-hardening gel, check.
Randolph highway patrol sunglasses, 20-gallon reserve fuel tank, Tasco 8 x 40 binoculars fitted with a Kenyon KS-2 gyro stabilizer, military spec Steiner 7 x 50 binoculars, Hummer H1-style bumper-mounted L-3 Raytheon NightDriver thermal camera and LCD dashboard screens, front-and-rear-mounted sensors for a Valentine One radar/laser detector, flush bumper-mount Blinder M40 laser jammers, redundant Garmin StreetPilot 2650 GPS units, preprogrammed Uniden police radio scanners, ceiling-mount Uniden CB radio with high-gain whip antenna. Check. Check. Check.
At the moment, the driver and copilot of this E39 BMW M5 are illegal in intent only as they obediently cow along the tip of Manhattan, funnel into the Holland Tunnel, and spill out into New Jersey along a six-lane mash-and-merge. The speedometer reads a cool 60 miles per hour; the clock reads 9:12 pm.
"Unacceptable," Alex Roy says. The 35-year-old driver is addressing both the numbers and himself. Then, after 20 sickening minutes in construction traffic, Roy says it to the darkened highway, pushing up over 110 mph while his copilot squints along the scabbed blacktop for the deer that might end their lives and the policemen who might kill their trip.
The quest itself — to cross from New York to Los Angeles with unthinkable brevity — is a drive, yes, in the same way that the moon shot was a flight. This is an engineered operation that has been financed, scenarioed, calculated, technologically outfitted, and (via digital video and triangulated time-stamped texting and GPS verification and support teams on both coasts) will be monitored and recorded (for proof, posterity, and a documentary film).
[#video: https://www.youtube.com/embed/Kx1zNTQpzmo
Video: Courtesy Gravid Films
For nearly two years, Roy — a pale, shaved-headed, independently wealthy ectomorphic veteran of the Gumball 3000 road rally — has obsessed sleeplessly over every detail and thrown money at every possible electronic connivance. His mission is intended as a triumph of the mind over the base adrenal impulses of common speeders. His route is nothing like the careless line a spring-breaker might plot across a Rand McNally — it's a painstakingly GPS-mapped and Google Earth-practiced manifest desti-document, waypointed mile by mile for detours, construction, and speed traps.
White lines scroll through the windshield and mile markers tick past the tires as Roy flips a series of toggles on the center console, killing the brake lights (to prevent telltale flashes if he needs to slow for sudden radar), then flips a few more to illuminate the cockpit with night-vision-friendly red LEDs. The cockpit glows like a submarine at battle stations. Now Roy punches up the digital codes corresponding to the New Jersey State Police on the police scanner. The car fills with the coded squawk of emergency dispatchers, speeding motorcycles, and domestic quarrels.
"OK, scanner is live," Roy says. He hits another switch under the dash and a light goes green on his steering wheel display. It means that the vehicle is now traveling in a sort of force field of infrared light, a bubble that deforms the bandwidth of incoming police laser spotters. "Jammers are active," Roy says. "Now let's have the radar."
Roy's current copilot, an English racer named Henry Fyshe, reaches under the seat and pulls out the Valentine One. He plugs it into the bank of fused circuits snaking from the car's power supply and flips the switch, and now another instrument joins the cacophony. The Valentine picks up incoming radar: mostly the X and K bandwidths. The bleeps of X-band are usually just junk picked up from motion detectors and burglar alarms and the shipping docks of Port Elizabeth to the south. But the occasional croaking blaaat! means K-band — and almost certainly a police trigger gun hitting home.
Undercover Driver Roy took extraordinary measures to avoid law enforcement.
Photos: Brian Finke
The combination of bleep! bleep! blaat! bleep! is chaos pinpricked with information. Listening, sorting, interpreting — it's all exhausting. Then Roy reaches overhead and flips on the CB, adding an overlay of truck-driver patois: twangy talk of big-boobie women and fishing and traffic on the I-78.
"Fascinating," Fyshe says. Compared with the thick southern drawl coming from the speaker, his polished Oxbridge English sounds as refined as drawing room French.
"OK, CB is active," Roy says above the noise. "Now check the thermals, please, Mr. Fyshe. We need to start banking time."
There's something very Captain Jean-Luc Picard about Roy. Maybe it's the top-gun lingo and ramrod driving posture. Maybe it's his bald, ovoid skull or his habit of wearing faux-military uniforms during races. Or maybe it's because Roy is actually in command of his very own road-bound USS Enterprise. Captain Roy is determined to boldly go faster than any man has gone before.
Roy is attempting to break a legendary cross-country driving record known to most people as the Cannonball Run. The time: 32 hours, 7 minutes, set in 1983 by David Diem and Doug Turner. Captain Roy's quest is definitely illegal and quite possibly impossible. He is one of the few drivers wealthy and geeky and foolish enough to try it anyway. So far he's tried and failed twice, but he's still convinced that his careful calculations will allow him to beat the record.
At the core of his plan are his beloved spreadsheets. Roy, with help from a car-crazy former New Jersey transportation department employee named J. F. Musial, has spent months loading Excel documents with the coordinates of all-night gas stations and open stretches of highway and weather projections — hundreds of data points arranged on an x-y axis, so that any deviation can be recalculated on the fly.
Photos: Courtesy Gravid Films
The resulting document is as thick as a stock prospectus — and just as unreadable, particularly if you're driving in the dark at 50 mph over the speed limit. But the security blanket of overclocked data calms Roy. It's his hedge against all the uncertainty and risk — of vehicular homicide, of jail time, of failure. Racing across the country is a foolish and dangerous and ill-advised dream, and Roy knows it.
But after more than a year of bitter experience, Roy has discovered that even an Enterprise's worth of Excel spreadsheets can't control the weather or the traffic or the deer or the possibility of mechanical failure. Or the police — especially the police.
So far his failed attempts to beat the record have cost Roy a lot of time and money, at least one girlfriend, and even his original, trusted copilot. Instead of glory, Roy's cross-country trips have brought him a mechanical breakdown, a police investigation, multiple radio alerts, and one arrest. And with each setback, Roy risks blowing the secrecy of his quest and putting the brakes on forever. He is quickly running out of chances to drive his dream. If he's going to beat 32:07, he'd better do it soon.
He's hoping Fyshe is the right partner. Like Roy, Fyshe is wealthy and single and an excellent driver. Unfortunately, he's also far more experienced steering his immaculate 1954 OSCA MT4 Maserati through Italy's Mille Miglia endurance race than dodging minivans along Jersey's I-78. Roy is stuck in the middle of a criminal automotive enterprise with a copilot who can't spot an American cop.
"OK," Roy says. "Now, see that?"
Fyshe frowns and peers through the windshield at a dark American town car.
"That's never a cop," Roy says. "Just a taxi."
Fyshe nods, intrigued. "I see," he says.
"Now, see that?" Roy points out a yellow cab, just visible in the distance. "The taxi? That's the type of car."
"It's a taxi?" Fyshe asks.
"Yes, it's a taxi," Roy says. "But in a dark color, that can be an unmarked cop."
"How can you tell the difference?" Fyshe asks.
"You just have to," Roy says.
"I see," Fyshe says. But he doesn't, not really.
Roy gives it the gas, easing up toward 90 mph, passing two trucks, flashing by a Corvette in the slow lane, and pushing up a hill at 93. "Ramp check?"
Fyshe glances reflexively to the right and studies the cars pouring down the entrance ramp, looking for lights on top. "Clear."
"Now, see that overpass ahead?" At 100 mph now, it's approaching fast. "Check the thermals."
Fyshe checks the dash, where the bumper-mounted night-vision camera feeds a thermal image to a 7-inch dashboard display. The traffic ahead glows in the darkness like the Predator.
"If a cop is idling around one of those columns, he'll have his engine on and show up as heat," Roy says. "Unless there's a concrete barrier that shields him. Check the sheet."
Roy feels into the side pocket and hands Fyshe a series of color-coded sheets. "Barriers — yes, except where marked by DOT signs," Fyshe reads.
"It also says the limit is 65 mph here," Fyshe says. "What are we now?"
"Ninety-eight."
"Jolly good," Fyshe says, delighted. "But what if there's a policeman on top of one of those bridges?"
"It's an overpass," Roy says. "And there won't be."
"Cameras?"
"Nope," Roy says. "The plate covers reflect flash anyway."
"In Europe, there are cameras everywhere," Fyshe says thoughtfully. "The police see everything." He watches the white lines blur into a continuous streak, lost in the Wild West of central Jersey.
The highway crosses the state in an undulating sine wave. At each new rise, Fyshe scans the thermals ahead and glances behind to the ramp before Roy punches the clear valley at 100 mph, bringing the trip average up to 82.3 mph. This is the Jersey nobody ever thinks of — empty, three lanes, no traffic or stores or malls — so when K-band suddenly croaks on the scanner, Roy knows it's no false alarm.
"Where are you?" he mutters. A red arrow glows on his steering column, meaning radar from ahead.
"If he's behind us and not in sight, hit the gas," he tells Fyshe. "If he's ahead, ease off until you establish position."
Roy crests the hill, eases off the gas, and takes the right lane. He's just a law-abiding citizen now. Standard police protocol is for a cruiser to lie at the side of the road just over the crest of a hill, exactly when drivers have their foot on the gas and no view ahead. By taking the right lane, a speeder approaches a radar gun with the sharpest parallax angle — the least accurate for getting a clean read.
"I don't see him," Roy says. "I'll take this hill easy and — "
Blaaat! goes the scanner. Blatt! Blaat! Sure enough, the downhill is lit by the strobing rack lights of a New Jersey state trooper, ringing up some poor schmuck in a minivan.
"Now that's a cop," Roy says. He hits a button on the GPS unit's touchscreen, adding yet more data — the location of this speed trap — before confidently stepping back on the gas.
Going cross-country fast is not rocket science, but in Roy's world it does require a lot of basic math. To beat the record, Roy has calculated that he needs to maintain an average of almost exactly 90 mph from Manhattan to the Santa Monica Pier. For occasional spurts, 90 is not uncommon on the highway. But for a day and a half of barreling across the United States, 90 miles per hour is essentially insane.
As a Cannonballer makes his way across the continent, the accumulation of his time and speed forms a rising and falling curve called a running average. For every second spent below his 90-mph target, Roy will need to compensate by investing a second going faster than that average. Which is why Roy doesn't want to stop. Every second spent at 0 mph is a second he can never recover — even with his BMW's factory-set 155-mph limiter replaced with a Powerchip ECU engine chip. Unfortunately for Roy, no matter how carefully he keeps to his fuel-efficiency regimen or how large his spare fuel tank, he will need to pull over and gas up at least five times.
Then there's the weather — projected to be nasty from Indianapolis to St. Louis, at least — and the reality that every 12 hours the rest of America will pack into their PT Cruisers and steer directly onto Roy's racetrack. The only way Roy and his copilot can even hope to average 90 mph is to plan (Roy has, fanatically), pray (a friend petitioned a Taoist spiritual master for them), and, wherever possible, stomp the throttle (they are).
The trip has just begun, but Roy is already in trouble. There's a closed gas station he hadn't foreseen, and that surprise construction in New Jersey — not to mention a green copilot unfamiliar with American cop customs. Each small deviation from the plan ripples through the rest of the spreadsheet. His calculations are already starting to crumble, and Roy's 72 mph cumulative average is pathetically low. He needs to put time in the bank.
He grabs the CB mic. "Breaker breaker, I need a bear check, over," he calls.
"Yeah, you're clear on the 78 all the way to the Buckeye," comes the voice, and Roy punches it, hitting 130 along a black stretch of road as the topography becomes hillier, the trees leafier. He's brought the average up to 78.4 by 1 am and 80 by 2 am when the BMW barrels through a tunnel and flicks across trestle bridges into Ohio — the most famously perilous state for speeders.
"Switch the scanner frequencies immediately!" Roy says, and sure enough the CB starts crackling with word of Smokies rolling westbound, then two more in the hammer lane, one with a package, another in a plain brown wrapper, now trailing just a half a mile marker behind Roy. Only unreasonable speed can put distance between them, so Roy takes the CB mic. "Breaker breaker, can I get a bear check?" he calls again.
"Bear check? That something they teach you in trucker school?" comes the answer.
It's nearly 4 am. Roy gasses through Columbus, then Springfield. The billboards snap past the windows like the pages in a flip book. By 4:30, the speedometer shows a steady 102 mph, but the overall average is only 82. It's far too slow to break the record. At this point, it's impossible to bring it back up.
"I'm calling it," Roy sighs, "that's it." And so, at 4:20 in the morning, some 70 miles shy of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Roy puts his turn signal on like some average commuter and once again stops, 2,160 miles short of his dream.
Alex Roy's Cannonball dreams started with a movie, but it didn't star Burt Reynolds. At the time, the 27-year-old Roy was living in New York after his father had called him back from Paris, where Roy had been working part-time at a bar and trying to write the Great American Novel — set, arbitrarily, in Japan. His father was in the hospital, sick with throat cancer, and Roy had traded in his life as an artiste to manage the family business, a rental agency called Europe By Car. The young heir was at sea, fresh from an unsuccessful attempt to forge his own identity and sitting in a trendy Soho bar-cum-theater called Void. And then the lights went down, and Roy saw the future.
[#video: https://www.youtube.com/embed/RUbe125ege0
The film was C'était un Rendez-vous. Made in 1976, it's a dashing precursor to every Jackass-inspired digicam stunt ever posted on YouTube — nine heart-pounding minutes choreographed to a screaming drivetrain. Through a bumper-mounted camera, the viewer becomes the car — traveling more than 80 mph as the anonymous driver revs into the enormous traffic circle around Paris' Arc de Triomphe, steers hammer-down from the Champs Élysées to Sacré-Coeur in Montmartre (through 16 red lights, wrong-way one-ways, stunned pedestrians, garbage trucks, and median strips) to meet up with a beautiful blonde waiting patiently in the park at the Montmartre church.
Roy left Void in a state of dazed revelation. From a public-safety perspective, he says, he knew Rendez-vous was just short of "a snuff film on wheels." But it was also the single coolest thing he'd ever seen.
The film's unmasked director and driver, Claude Lelouch, eventually achieved immortal fame and respect on the Internet, fueled in part by old reports that Lelouch had been arrested after the film's first screening. Standing in a bar on a summer's night, a life as a feckless novelist behind him, another of trying to fill his father's wing tips ahead of him, Roy began to wonder: Could he make his own Rendez-vous — in New York? Could he be the great driver, mastering the city and meeting the blonde?
He approached the question with a formula he'd repeat throughout his driving career. First he obsessed, talking ad nauseam about Lelouch's film to anyone who would listen. Then he drove his route repeatedly in his Audi S4, meticulously recording potholes and potential speed traps, then studying the lists on color-coded cheat sheet. He planned to recruit close friends from his Manhattan private high school days to impersonate orange-vested traffic police to block traffic on race day.
The original idea was to make a full lap of Manhattan (skipping the most northerly and heavily policed sections of the city) in 25 minutes. This meant running dozens of red lights at absurd speeds and left little time to react to sudden contingencies like pedestrians. The stunt was dangerous and illegal, its success dependent on secrecy. But Roy has no talent for keeping secrets, particularly about his daring. (He was, in fact, using most of the recon runs to impress women.) By the end of the year, dozens of people knew about Roy's plan to Rendez-vous Manhattan.
But while outlaw street racing may sound romantic, the reality of a 29-year-old with no experience skidding through the most populous urban center in America is terrifying, not to mention feloniously stupid. Even Roy's girlfriend refused to play her part of meeting him at the finish line. The idea of actually having to follow through with his big plans started keeping Roy up at night; but the humiliating prospect of backing down was just as bad.
In the end, Roy never attempted the 25-minute Manhattan Rendez-vous. But he claims to have raced a 27-minute "practice run." He proudly estimates that he hit top speeds of 144 mph while committing 151 moving violations — enough to have his New York driver's license suspended 78 times over. And afterward, Roy says, "I never felt better." He had missed his goal, but found his identity. Roy wanted to be known as an outlaw driver.
The fastest way to his new goal was to enter a road rally inspired by yet another movie — the 1976 cult classic The Gumball Rally. The film depicted a madcap outlaw road race; its real-life version is a 3,000-mile celebrity-and-socialite-studded international road rampage first organized in Europe in 1999. There are no qualifying events, and no experience is required. Entrants need both flash (tricked-out Bentleys, Porsches, and Lamborghinis encouraged) and cash (28,000 pounds sterling — about $56,425 — for the 2007 rally), as well as the ability to keep a straight face while agreeing to a code of conduct that explicitly prohibits breaking any laws — including the speed limit. But while most Gumballers are rich young men paying for 3,000 miles of silicon-bimbo'd pit stops and Vegas-weekend-style bad-boy hoo-ha, Roy was one of the few actually racing to win.
He impressed the 2003 Gumball entry committee by topping the already well-represented freak factor: He wore a pastiche of authentic international police outfits and drove a rare E39 BMW M5 he claimed was used by the elite German "Autobaun Interceptor Unit," complete with police sirens and stickers. Roy's "Polizei 144" shtick added yet another layer of slapstick to the Gumball's air of a movie-come-to-life. Roy established a reputation as a fun-loving clown who also happened to be a fast, safe driver. He was an instant hit with race fans. His Web site attracted a small but faithful following that bought $500 Polizei 144 racing jackets and downloaded clips from his "Spirit of the Gumball" trophy win in the 2003 run, held in the US.
[#video: https://www.youtube.com/embed/2pImIwAQcrI
Most of the comments on his site were typical rock-on fan blurts, but one was a challenge to "check out the real deal." Roy followed a Web link and, stunned, met his newest dream.
Once again, it was a movie — this time a trailer for a documentary-in-progress titled 32 Hours 7 Minutes, covering the transcontinental racing record set by Diem and Turner. Here was an automotive stunt that had remained unequaled for almost 22 years. Anyone who topped it would be guaranteed fame and street cred; for Roy, this was Rendez-vous déjá vu. He immediately called the filmmaker, a diminutive speed fanatic named Cory Welles. Roy had the funding — and the perfect ending for her movie.
Most people remember The Cannonball Run as a campy '80s road comedy featuring, among others, Roger Moore, Dom DeLuise, and Farrah Fawcett. But to gearheads, the Cannonball Run is the original outlaw cross-country road race, organized by legendary Car and Driver writer Brock Yates. Entrants drove everything from cheap beaters to high-priced tweakers, but all had an appetite for white lines, black tar, and speed.
Officially known as the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash (and later as the US Express race) the race set the standard for outlaw driving. This was uniquely American car culture — free and fun and fast. And nobody was faster than Diem and Turner, who hammered their 308 Ferrari from a garage on Manhattan's Upper East Side to Newport Beach, California, in an unthinkable 32 hours and 7 minutes.
According to Yates and his fellow Cannonballers, trying to beat that record today is pointless. Their argument goes something like this: Cannonball records were set back when the free-wheelin' '70s hooked up with the greed-is-good '80s for fat lines of cocaine and unprotected sex. But these, brother, are Patriot Act days — executive-privilege end times in which no rogue deed goes untracked, no E-ZPass unlogged, no roaming cell phone unmonitored by perihelion satellite. Big Brother is definitely watching. Big Speed, the old Cannonballers say, is a quaint, 20th-century idea, like pay phones or print magazines.
But nobody had telexed Roy or his new filmmaker pal, Welles, the memo on this one. Once again, Roy put his formula in motion. First, he planned for weeks. Then, with his high school friend Jon Goodrich as copilot and cameraman James Petersmeyer tucked in the backseat, Roy left Manhattan's Classic Car Club on December 16, 2005, and drove west, fast. They arrived at the Santa Monica Pier in California bleary-eyed, exhausted, and frightened — and two hours and 39 minutes shy of the record.
Roy and Goodrich flew back to New York to revamp their calculations and tried again on April 1, 2006. They were zeroing in on the 32:07 space shot — until the car broke down in Oklahoma. Roy was devastated. He immediately began planning another run.
But this time, Roy returned to his calculations by himself. Two hairy cross-country runs had been more than enough for Goodrich, and he simply wasn't willing to continue risking life, limb, and liberty for another man's dream. By now, though, replacing his copilot was the least of Roy's Cannonball problems. Despite the nondisclosure agreements, word was getting around. Back in September 2005, Roy's bearded and bullying Gumball 3000 frenemy, Richard Rawlings, had bet him $25,000 on a cross-country race — and another $25,000 that Rawlings would do it in less than 25 hours.
Roy refused the challenge, but it clearly meant time was running out. Sooner or later, somebody was going to try to break that record. If they succeeded, went on Leno, stole the glory — that would be bad for Roy. But if they got caught trying, that was even worse. Roy was sure that the police would then crack down, and the window of opportunity for his cross-country sneak would slam shut forever.
In fact, that window was closing already. After so many high-speed cross-country runs, Roy wasn't famous — but his antics were. He was already well remembered in Arizona, where he'd been arrested for speeding during a 2004 rally called the Bullrun wearing jackboots, German police togs, and a regulation leather police belt with handcuffs. (The concerned police psychiatrist asked Roy, "Do you know what year this is?") Ohio presented another problem. While running nearly 120 mph in a 55 zone on the return trip from the aborted Cannonball run with the English copilot, he'd been hit with radar by a westbound state trooper, leading to a tense, 20-minute Smokey-Bandit chase deep into farm country. Roy managed to escape, but the Ohio state patrol would be unlikely to forget the blue BMW loaded with weird antennas.
Roy faced similar problems in Pennsylvania and Oklahoma. On the April 2006 trip, Pennsylvania police dispatch reported a BMW without taillights speeding down the interstate. Then, waiting in the airport after the Oklahoma breakdown, Roy made the mistake of running his mouth off on a cell phone. The traveler in line behind him couldn't help noticing the strange bald man and overhearing words like night vision, escape, cops, and spotter plane. He called in a potential homeland security threat.
Roy eventually made it home, but Oklahoma authorities tracked his car to the local BMW dealership. The cops impounded the vehicle — still loaded with GPS units documenting his street racing — for three days while they investigated Roy.
"Needless to say, my attorney wasn't pleased," Roy says. "Actually, I think stupid was the word he used."
By fall 2006, the run-ins had reached critical mass. Before long, Roy feared, state authorities would connect the dots and shut him down for good. Within a month, winter snow might kill his time, and spring might be too late. If Roy was going to break the record, it was now or never. But first, he needed a new copilot.
It's a typically rainy September evening, only nine days before his next scheduled departure, and Roy is bug-eyed, chain-smoking and pacing the length of his 2,571-square-foot bachelor pad in Manhattan's Cooper Square while his race team waits on his L-shaped couch, drinking his liquor and watching Battlestar Galactica on a massive projector screen. Each surround-sound kinetic energy weapon rattles ice in the drinks.
Roy checks his watch and then his desk, where three GPS units and four computer screens each display the time. Standing with his hands on his hips in front of the rotating world-map screensaver, he looks less like Captain Picard and more like a chain-smoking Lex Luthor.
"It's not like him to be late," he says. "What if he's incapacitated or dead?"
In choosing a new copilot, Roy considered lots of drivers (including me), before finally settling on a straitlaced 32-year-old finance-sector type named Dave Maher. From the first meeting, it was obvious that Maher and Roy would make a particularly odd couple. Roy is a fast-talking geek, as dead-eyed serious about the patches he Velcros onto his race uniforms as a Star Trek reenacter is about having the right blades on his Klingon battle d'k'tagh. Maher is quiet and has never watched Battlestar Galactica. He likes sports involving inflatable balls and has a penchant for red wine and amateur track club events for his 1996 Porsche 911 Turbo.
But both of them wanted to go fast, and something that Maher mentioned when they talked about the cross-country attempt struck a chord deep within Roy: a need to have something "that money couldn't buy." Maher had the job, and the odd couple became a team.
Roy wears his phone on his belt like Batman or a paper-products salesman, and now it begins to vibrate. He snaps it to his ear. "We're all here waiting," he says to the doorman. "Yes, send him up."
Maher arrives in a suit and tie, a bottle of excellent wine in hand, ready for a civilized party. Instead, Roy hands him his latest timetable. It is the product of 150 hours of work, a whopper version of all previous calculations. Roy has titled it "31:39 Driveplan .9d (Merciless Assault Reprisal -11)."
He hands the stack to Maher, who flips through the pages. The copilot looks like a kid on the first day of summer facing a pile of required reading.
"Ultimately, this drive is a math calculation," Roy says. Maher looks blank. Roy points to a series of cells in the spreadsheet. Maher scans it, then turns the page, searching. "See," Roy says, "that's the average we're looking to hit: 90."
"I know this average," Maher says quietly. He flips through more pages. "I'm looking for the extended stretches of big speed, the long stretches where we can really hit it and make time."
Roy straightens. "Well, those don't really exist," he says. "You'll see. It's very rare to run over 100 for even a minute or two... "
"Oh yeah?" Maher says smiling. "Well, I'm about to change that."
[#video: https://www.youtube.com/embed/JxRLyiBs3XA Alex Roy discusses modifications to his BMW M5
And so, on the Friday before Columbus Day weekend, the clock is punched and the taillights flare and Roy once again rolls through the Holland Tunnel and across New Jersey. They cross the empty tarmac of Pennsylvania and into Ohio, gas up maniacally, and are back on the highway with Maher now doing 120 through the most famously cop-heavy state in the union. By Akron they've been driving all night, and the trip is just beginning. More Red Bulls are popped, vitamins taken, cigarettes lit, and then comes the sun, shockingly bright. Roy finds the Visine, then trains his attention on the shaking landscape. This is a criminal game of I Spy, using binoculars designed for battle — Steiners with independently autofocusing lenses — but at Maher's speed they just beat uselessly against Roy's eye sockets.
"You know, I just have a very hard time spotting like this," Roy says.
"We have to bank time," Maher says.
"It's averaging 91.3 mph," Roy says. "The projections say we're good."
"Your projections are conservative," Maher says. His eyes never leave the road. He looks strangely relaxed doing 130 mph. The radar is exploding with undercover police, and yet he's doubling the speed limit for the sort of sustained periods that Roy knows are potentially fatal to this quest.
"We need to go as fast as possible, every chance we get," Maher says, glancing at Roy. "Otherwise, we are definitely not going to make it."
"OK," Roy says. But he doesn't mean it. Maher's stomach for risk isn't found anywhere on Roy's spreadsheets, and this is way outside his comfort zone. "But I'm telling you, Dave, you get caught and — "
Now the radio explodes with a fresh voice. "Cowbell Ground, Cowbell Ground, this is Cowbell Air, over."
"Yes!" Roy says. He grabs the mic. "Cowbell Air, this is Cowbell Ground, go ahead."
"We have a visual," the voice from above says. This is Roy's secret weapon, a small Beechcraft twin-engine spotter plane piloted by Paul Weismann, a high school friend, along with another pilot named Keith Baskett. They're scouting for cops, traffic, and construction during the vulnerable daylight drive across the Midwest.
"How are we looking, over?" Roy asks.
"You're looking very fast and very nice," comes the voice from above. "All clear, boys, put the hammer down."
Maher pushes the car, passing even the gutsiest speeders at nearly double speed. The white line is a ticking blur, the overpasses are distant, then here, then gone, and Texas is just a flat fuzz in the rearview. Near Oklahoma City, they stop for the Chinese fire drill of piss, pump, and go, and now Roy takes the wheel again, gunning to fly. The GPS says that even with gas stops, they've crossed half the country at 93.6 mph.
The highway ahead is fairly open, but the left lane is not, and this time, inspired by Maher's driving or the average or both, Roy does what he needs to do to keep the pace — passing one car on the right, pushing inches from the bumper of a 16-wheeler, then cutting left again to take the lane. And as if on cue, a female voice cuts in on the police scanner. "Report of a blue BMW speeding, weaving in and out of traffic, and driving recklessly. Be advised, unable to get tags... "
[#video: https://www.youtube.com/embed/nghau2LfjmE Scanner report in Oklahoma
"That's us!" Maher says.
"Shit!" Roy says.
He cuts the brake lights on the panel and slows to double digits.
"What do we do?"
"Well, we're stuck in traffic."
"Where do we hide?" Roy asks. The land is flat to the horizon.
"We don't hide anywhere," Maher says.
Blaaat! Now the cockpit fills with the awful croak of K-band from a dead-on police trigger radar. "God damn it, where is that guy?" Roy mutters, then suddenly sees him — an SUV highway patrol car headed eastbound, and no median between them.
"Oh my God, he's braking!" Roy shouts. "He's crossing! We have to get to the next exit and hide."
"I don't know if we're going to have a lot of room to hide out here," Maher says.
Roy glances back and forth, mirror to road and back again. Already, he's soaked through his shirt, his bald head raining sweat onto his sunglasses. The exit is coming fast. "Should we get off?" he asks. "Should we get off right now?"
The scanner again, a male voice: "Blue BMW on up ahead of me."
Then another voice — a second car: "Dark-blue BMW, tinted windows — looks like it has some antennas on it."
"I'm going," Roy says. He pulls up the exit ramp, taking the rise, rolling the stop sign like a normal driver, nothing in his mirror yet, then moves quickly to the right.
But this time, there's no getting away. It's farmland, flat forever — North by Northwest, a house in the distance, animals. Roy pulls to the side. He hops out of the car. He unzips his fly.
"I'll tell him we had to piss," he yells.
The male voice on the scanner again. "They're ahead of me," it says.
Roy looks. Nothing. "Hey!" he says. "He thinks we're still going!"
Roy zips up and turns, and now he sees it: a black-and-white coming up the ramp behind him. "Oh no," he says. The car pauses at the top of the ramp, then turns toward him. "Here he comes... "
Sitting in the passenger seat, Maher now looks around at the piles of GPS units, the maps and plans and scanners, the squawking boxes. He's sitting in an electronic crime scene. "Maybe I should turn something off?" he asks.
"Turn it off, turn it all off!" Roy shouts. He reaches into the center console to kill the main power just as the police car approaches. "What the... ?"
It's a black-and-white, all right: one of those ad-wrapped VW bugs with a giant GEEK SQUAD sticker where the sheriff's star might be. Suddenly, the sweat on Roy's head is cool and soothing.
"Maher," Roy says, "how come you can drive like that for seven hours and no one calls, and I do it for three minutes and then someone calls?"
"Because I'm Irish," Maher says.
They're off the highway for a total of two minutes. Even with the time lost to a dead stop, their overall average on the GPS stands at 95.7 mph — well above record pace. But there are storm clouds on the horizon, which become hard rain by New Mexico. The traffic clots, and the smeared windshield glows red with truck lights. With the darkness, the rain becomes blinding, blunting the vision of the thermal cameras. They enter Arizona in traffic, with a soul-killing 22 mph on the GPS and a forest of lightning on the horizon.
Maher pounds the wheel in disbelief. "No!" he shouts. "I've been driving so hard... No!" He cuts into the breakdown lane to make a desperate run for it. Even an unsafe pass isn't possible. "No!" he repeats.
Mile after mile, their hard-won average withers, and the adrenaline dies with it. The rain is impossible. Maher is exhausted. "Maybe I'm seeing stars," Maher says.
"No, you're seeing the real thing," Roy says. The weather is clearing.
By Arizona, the pavement is dry. Maher gives it his last surge of energy, climbing to 122 mph, 142, 160 before the gas light demands they stop for fuel. It's 12:03 am local time. They've been on the road for 29 hours and 27 minutes. The effort of this last sprint has pushed Maher to the breaking point. He staggers from the car on failing legs. The Casio counts the seconds as Roy plugs in the nozzle and stands, tweaked and muttering in front of the mini-mart like a meth kid getting a Big Gulp.
"You're done," Roy says. He falls into the driver's side and guns it back onto the highway for the final 131-mile stretch from Barstow to the Santa Monica Pier.
"I'm not sure that we're going to make it now," Maher says. His fingers fumble with Roy's projection chart, suddenly interested, but it's an unintelligible jumble of numbers. "You'll have to be above 100 the whole time, or we've driven a day and a half for nothing."
"I've got it," Roy says. He stares ahead like a machine. "Just watch the road."
After 7,700 miles and three attempts to cross the country at warp speed, Captain Roy has experienced something like a Maher mindmeld. As in any marathon, exhaustion and fear make quitting seem smart. You can say you tried, blame the weather, and find a hotel. But breaking a record — any record — takes something more, something personal. Right now, it will take everything. There's no room left for strategy. Roy simply has to hit it hard.
The radar is crazy with bleep! and blatt!, the spreadsheets litter the cockpit like dirty floor mats, but Roy hits it anyway. He doesn't need charts anymore. He is the chart, and Excel and Google Earth and Garmin MapSource and something more, too, a guy with something to prove.
He passes a minivan in the carpool lane at 102 mph and merges onto California's I-10 headed into Los Angeles with blocks of lit towers to the right and oncoming halogens kaleidoscoping his bleary corneas. But Roy sees only the road ahead and the best path through it, the racing line that shaves fat off the hips of the curves as he apexes them at 100 mph, now 117 past Crenshaw Boulevard, La Brea Avenue at 115. The curve and acceleration is a physical sensation in the gut, and now the city is 10 miles out, now 8, and the turbos spool up and kick and Maher says, "Cop! No — taxi!" while Roy hits 117 past Cloverfield Boulevard, peels off on the exit to a light gone green, the next one green — one, two, three more — through the gate of the Santa Monica Pier, where wooden planks rattle beneath the car. The curve and acceleration is a physical sensation in the gut, and now the city is 10 miles out, now 8, and Maher says, "Cop! No — taxi!" while Roy hits 117 past Cloverfield Boulevard, peels off on the exit to a light gone green, the next one green — one, two, three more — through the gate of the Santa Monica Pier, where wooden planks rattle beneath the car. 11
It feels weird to slow, crazy to stop, but it's over. The car stops, but the buzzing of speed and road in their heads does not. Maher finds the door, and his legs, and jogs up under the empty lights of the big Ferris wheel. It's exactly 1:30 am. He punches their card into the time clock, flown from New York, and gives the ticket to Roy.
And this, of course, is the end of Roy's Cannonball run. There are people here — friends and family and a camera crew. The cameraman closes in and asks the questions that you ask: Your thoughts? Why did you do it? And there are jokes and platitudes about Mount Everest and the final frontier, but no real answers.
Why? Because drivers drive. Movies have endings. Records are broken. Perhaps there will be fame, blogs, even an appearance on Conan. Does all that balance against the thousand what-ifs — the nearly cracked axles and the reckless driving, drunk on exhaustion? The crimes that Roy and Maher have committed, state after state, number in the hundreds. There will be months before the statutes of limitation run out, months before this story can finally be published. Roy and Maher have plenty of time to think about what they've done and why.
But for now, the pilot and copilot can only stand with glasses of champagne undrunk. Too tired to know if they are even happy. Or to fully comprehend that their time, 31 hours and 4 minutes coast to coast, has beaten the record by a full hour and three minutes. Or that this record will surely be beaten, again, sometime, by some other drivers, most probably for reasons they won't understand, either.
Contributing editor Charles Graeber (charlesgraeber@gmail.com) wrote about tornado-car builder Steve Green in issue 13.10.
Map: The Route Coast to Coast
Roy's Excel Spreadsheet: 31:39 Driveplan 1 Final (Merciless Assault Reprisal 00)
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https://www.yourconroenews.com/neighborhood/moco/news/article/Man-killed-in-Willis-armored-truck-heist-14849590.php
Man killed in Willis armored truck heist identified
By Catherine Dominguez
Updated 4:24 pm CST, Wednesday, November 20, 2019
Montgomery County District Attorney Brett Ligon, right, walks the scene with Major Crimes Division Chief Rob Freyer after two men attempted to rob a Brinks security employee while servicing an ATM at a Chase bank, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2019, in Willis. The employee shot and killed one suspect, while law enforcement is searching for the other who fled.
Montgomery County District Attorney Brett Ligon, right, walks the scene with Major Crimes Division Chief Rob Freyer after two men attempted to rob a Brinks security employee while servicing an ATM at a Chase
Photo: Jason Fochtman, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer
A man killed in a foiled armored-truck heist Tuesday in Willis has been identified as Javahnte Jawun Parker of Houston.
Parker, 27, was pronounced dead at the scene after he and another man allegedly tried to rob a Brinks employee who was serving an ATM at the Chase Bank on FM 1097. Police are still searching for the second man who fled the scene following the shooting.
According to Willis Police Chief James Nowak, the black Toyota car at the scene that was used by the men was registered to Parker, but was displaying license plates from a different vehicle registered to someone else.
The violent incident was first reported around 9:30 a.m. as a robbery with shots fired, Nowak said. Paramedics were already on the scene, attempting to revive the fatally wounded suspect, when officers arrived.
RELATED: Suspect shot dead during apparent armored truck robbery in Willis
The Texas Department of Safety searched for the man with a helicopter while other law enforcement combed the surrounding area.
Nowak said police have video of the incident but declined to release the footage “until we have had a chance to review it all.”
Willis police are investigating the matter with assistance from multiple agencies, including the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, Texas Rangers and Texas Department of Public Safety.
cdominguez@hcnonline.com
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now the users of iOS 6 can install the App store apps through Facebook without leaving the page
Apple and Facebook came closer in the last month of 2012, as users of Facebook iOS 6 can now download applications from app store through pop-up without leaving the Facebook page. In this way Facebook can attract more developers to buy their ads.
Few days ago news about the extended relationship between Apple and Facebook came. Now with your iOS 6 you can share to Facebook quickly and you can also sync your contacts through which you can get your Facebook friends profile in address book of your device.In order to boost the mobile app install ads that have been launched recently, Facebook is making use of mini App store dialog. Through this the developers will now pay in order to show the description, install button and image of their app in the news feed of Facebook. Facebook has taken this step to lead the app economy.
Now the developers will get the freedom on Facebook to customize their creative ads and they will also be able to see the installation analytics in relation to demographics which include gender, age and country. So now the developers can reach relevant audiences for mobile app install ads.
The mobile app install ads can be bought on the basis of cost per click rather than on the basis of cost per download. The developers will now be cautious regarding this as it is not necessary that people will complete the download process.
In the process of “ad click to install” you will now encounter much less friction. This will attract more developers toward Facebook for the purpose of marketing.
Now it wil be interesting to see that whether Google will let Facebbook build its pop-ups in Google.
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By Ellie DeLano
The kids came home last night – oh my gosh, did I miss them! They had lots of fun over the weekend, and Anna is especially enjoying her time with Maddie, her new maybe-someday-stepsister. I wish I could see them together – it sounds like they're thick as thieves and I think that's wonderful.
Peter asked me to do him a favor last night when he dropped the kids off. Apparently, his car has been acting up and he needed to drop it off at the mechanic's. I agreed to meet him there and drive him home, taking the kids with me after we dropped him off. As we headed down the road to his house, I noticed something.
Normally, when Peter and I are in forced company (so to speak), I chatter endlessly – one could even say stupidly – like I have to fill up the empty space because it's just so awkward to have it. It's odd, really – one of the things I used to love about Peter was how we could be completely silent and enjoy just being with each other, reading side-by-side or watching a favorite old movie on TV. But now – now it's different and the silence feels like it weighs a thousand pounds.
Last night was different. Anna chattered for a bit, and David had a few things to say, but once they'd run through all of that, we settled into silence. It was pretty late, and they were awfully tired. And I, for once in a very long while, felt absolutely no urge to babble on and on about all that I'd done that weekend and all the great stuff I still planned to do around the house or the yard, or detail the movies I'd seen.
Oh, it was still awkard being around Peter. It just wasn't awkward being me anymore. Me with nothing to prove to him and nothing to try to brag about or throw out there hoping for a comment that probably wouldn't come. Me who couldn't care less if he had a single thing to say about anything.
It might not seem like much, but that silence felt like a weight lifting off me, and it rang out loud and clear. What were some of your small-but-significant victories?
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Wojciech Nowicki in the hammer at the IAAF World Championships London 2017 (Getty Images) © Copyright
17 OCT 2017 Feature
Second best for Nowicki is sufficient, for now
Bronze medals at four consecutive major championships have earned Wojciech Nowicki considerable respect from his fellow hammer throwers, but he is yet to gain the global recognition he deserves from the wider athletics audience owing to the fact that the global No.1 in his event in recent years has been his fellow Pole Pawel Fajdek.
The pair have different coaches but often appear at promotional events together and after Fajdek’s victories at the 2015 and 2017 IAAF World Championships, they were both boisterously celebrating. But being overshadowed by his friend doesn’t seem to bother the 28-year-old from Bialystok, at least or the moment.
“For me, Pawel will always be the best,” Nowicki has commented generously on several occasions in the past season or so in response to the almost inevitable questions about whether he resents having to always apparently be seen to tag along behind Fajdek.
“My main preoccupation is actually getting to second best, right behind him. Then I’ll be satisfied.
“I feel as though I’ve now stabilised at this level after finishing third four times in the past three seasons (at the past two World Championships, the Rio 2016 Olympic Games and last year’s European Championships). Now the challenge is to get a silver medal.
“That’s why although the medal (in London this summer) is great, I was really expecting something more from myself.
“I had been throwing so well all season and on the day it did not work the way I exactly wanted it to,” he added, reflecting slightly stoically on his performance in London. “Maybe I wanted it (the silver medal) too much and it (the hammer) was just not flying.”
Bejing delight turns into a London lament
When talking about this summer’s World Championships, Nowicki’s voice had a slightly bittersweet ting, perhaps remembering the reversal in circumstances to how he earned a medal of a similar hue in Beijing two years previously.
He arrived in the Chinese capital in just seventh place on the 2015 annual list but moved up from fifth to third place in the final with his last throw.
In London, Nowicki was the only man apart from Fajdek to have thrown beyond 80 metres this year but was edged out of the silver medal slot by 13 centimetres in the sixth and final round by Valeriy Pronkin.
"The circle was very slow, wet and was not working for me,” he said. “It was really different compared to the qualification rounds. But all the results were not very big and the conditions were the same for all of us.
“Nevertheless, this season has been a special one, with the highlights being going over 80 metres for the first time and the World Championships bronze medal.”
Domestic honours
In addition to these two high points, Nowicki can also look back at one other competition in 2017 that will be particularly treasured long after his competitive career has come to an end.
As luck would have it, this year’s Polish Championships were staged in his home city of Bialystok and, in front of family and friends, he sent his hammer out to a personal best of 80.47m, having gone beyond 80 metres for the first time the previous month at the IAAF World Challenge meeting in Ostrava when he threw 80.31m.
It earned Nowicki his first national title – after finishing third in 2011 and 2012 and then second the following four years – and inflicted a rare defeat on Fajdek.
In 64 previous encounters with Fajdek with the senior implement stretching back to 2009, it had been the bespectacled three-time world champion who has come out on top on 62 occasions. Neither of those two previous ‘wins’ for Nowicki had been actual victories: Nowicki finishing second at the 2014 Polish Championships when Fajdek finished third as 2000 Olympic champion Szymon Ziokowski took the last of his 14 national titles, and then in Rio where Nowicki got the bronze medal after Fajdek infamously failed to make the final.
Normal service was resumed after the national championships and that was to be his only win of the year – and, by coincidence, his only victory in 2016 came at a competition in Bialystok as well – but Nowicki cannot be accused of anything apart from being consistent in 2017.
Apart from his national title and bronze in London, his other eight competitions this summer all concluded with him finishing second. He also finished second in this year’s season-long IAAF Hammer Throw Challenge to further bolster his bank balance.
The question now is: can Nowicki climb up the podium at next year’s big event on the calendar for hammer throwers, the European Championships in Berlin?
Taking the qualifiers into consideration, 18 of the top 19 finishers from the World Championships were European, so the vast majority of the world’s top throwers will be reunited to contest the continental crown.
The German capital, where the enthusiastic fans always appreciate good throwing, would be the ideal stage for Nowicki to take his top-level consistency up a notch.
Phil Minshull for the IAAF
18 OCT 2017 News Entries open for fan photograph of the year contest
16 OCT 2017 Series My greatest challenge – Irving Saladino
Pawel Fadjeck and Wojciech Nowicki of Poland with their medals from the men's hammer at the IAAF World Championships London 2017 (Getty) © Copyright
Wojciech Nowicki in the hammer at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games (Getty Images) © Copyright
Wojciech Nowicki at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games (Getty Images) © Copyright
Wojciech Nowicki in the hammer at the IAAF World Championships Beijing 2015 (Getty Images) © Copyright
Wojciech Nowicki
IAAF World Championships London 2017
1 Paweł Fajdek POL 79.81
2 Valeriy Pronkin ANA 78.16
3 Wojciech Nowicki POL 78.03
View the full results for Men's Hammer Throw Final
Championships Records
Yuriy Sedykh 86.74 URS Stuttgart (Neckarstadion) 30 AUG 1986
Ivan Tikhon 83.63 BLR Osaka (Nagai Stadium) 27 AUG 2007
11 AUG 2017 Report: men's hammer final – IAAF World Championships London 2017
View IAAF Athlete Profile
Average of Performance Scores:
Ranking Score:
* Date correction applied - see Ranking Rules for details
Result Score:
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Xandria Phillips Debuts New Poetry Collection, “Hull”
October 7, 2019 by 8 O'Clock Buzz
Xandria Phillips has published poems in the shade journal, American Poetry Review, Scalawag and the Virginia Poetry Review. Phillips’s debut poetry collection, “Hull,” explores emotional impacts of colonialism and racism on the Black queer body and the present-day emotional impacts of enslavement in urban, rural, and international settings. A University of Wisconsin First Wave Poetry Scholar, Phillips is also an accomplished visual artist. Xandria joined Monday Buzz host Brian Standing on October 7th, 2019.
Spirituality in the Poems of Mary Oliver
Rebroadcast: Poetry and Identity with Danez Smith
Poetry and Identity with Danez Smith
Jim Whiteside's poems of spectral intimacy
8 O'Clock Buzz Brian Standing, First Wave, poetry, Xandria Phillips
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WyoHistory.org
The Online Encyclopedia of Wyoming History
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Jump to ...HomeEncyclopediaOral HistoriesField TripsEducationTravelTopics - Agriculture - Arts & Entertainment - Business & Industry - Cities, Towns & Counties - Conflict - Education - Energy - Geology & Natural History - Historic Spots & Monuments - Military - Outlaws & Crime - Parks, Forests & Public Lands - People & Peoples - Politics & Government - Prehistory - Religion - Sports - Transportation - Women of WyomingDonateHistory Day
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The Graves of Martin Ringo and J.P. Parker
Two emigrant graves lie close together on private land a short distance west of Glenrock, Wyo., where Deer Creek flows into the North Platte River. The inscription on one indicates that it is the grave of a J.P. Parker, of Iowa, who died July 1, 1860, aged 41 years. Nothing else is known of this person.
“M. Ringo,” reads the inscription on the stone on the other grave, with no date given. Ringo family scholarship in recent decades has turned up a great deal of information on him, however.
Martin Ringo was born in Kentucky in 1819, and raised in Indiana. In June 1846, in Liberty, Mo., he enlisted in Col. A.W. Doniphan’s regiment of Missouri Mounted Volunteer Infantry. The regiment marched to Santa Fe and then south into Chihuahua, where the troops saw action in the war against Mexico. Ringo’s service record shows only that he had to abandon his horse in New Mexico when it failed for lack of forage, and that he was honorably discharged in New Orleans in June 1847 at the end of the campaign.
In 1848, he married Mary Peters in Liberty and returned with her to Indiana. Their first child, John, was born there; soon they returned to Missouri, perhaps to be closer to her family. Four more children were born by 1862.
Missouri was a violent, divided place after the Civil War broke out in 1861,with raiders on both sides burning farms and killing civilians. Trails historian and schoolteacher Randy Brown notes that Martin Ringo’s family, located as it was in Wayne County, Indiana, where the Underground Railroad was active, may have had abolitionist sympathies. Mary Peters’ family included many slaveholders.
Brown speculates that Martin and Mary may have tried to stay neutral. When that became impossible in war-torn Clay County, they moved to nearby Daviess County. Finally, they decided to head for California, where Mary’s sister and her husband were running a cattle ranch near San Jose.
The Ringos left Missouri in May 1864. Trouble plagued the trails as well as Missouri that year, however. Between what are now western Nebraska and central Wyoming, raids on white travelers by Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne war parties had become chronic.
In a letter back to a Missouri newspaper, one member of the Ringos’ party mentioned “some difficulties with Indians,” otherwise unspecified, which caused three smaller companies to merge for extra protection at Scott’s Bluff into a larger company of 70 wagons.
Clearly everyone was nervous. On the night of July 29, they camped a few miles west of Deer Creek. After dark one of the emigrants walked out about 50 yards from the wagons to check on some picketed horses and may have surprised a warrior in the act of stealing them. The emigrant was shot—though not fatally—the lone warrior stole three horses and the emigrants, fearing a much larger attack, all stood guard all night.
Just after dawn, Martin Ringo climbed up onto his own wagon, perhaps for a look around in the growing daylight, and in doing so accidentally discharged his own shotgun. “At the report of his gun I saw his hat blown up twenty feet in the air, and his brains were scattered in all directions,” the same letter writer reported back to the Missouri newspaper.
Mary Ringo’s diary, dry and factual up to this point, now overflows with emotion and despair: “And now Oh God comes the saddest day of my life for this day my husband accidentally shot himself and was buried by the wayside and oh, my heart is breaking, if I had no children how gladly would I lay me down with my precious dead—but Oh God I pray for strength to raise our precious children and oh may no one ever suffer the anguish that is breaking my heart, my little children are crying all the time and I—oh what am I to do. …”
With the wagon train, Mary and her children followed the stage road west from Salt Lake City, directly across central Nevada. At Austin, Mary sold one of the Ringos’ two wagons and an ox team. Her journal ends there. Mary and her children lived with her sister on the California ranch for a year and then moved into San Jose, where “the way was rough but with her sheer determination [Mary] raised her family unaided,” one of her daughters wrote decades later.
The oldest son, John Peters Ringo, left California in the 1870s and made his way to Texas, where he became a well-known gunman and outlaw, involved in range wars there and in Arizona. His body was found under a tree near Tombstone in July 1882 with a single gunshot wound to the temple. A coroner’s inquest ruled the death a suicide.
Brown, Randy. “The Death of Martin Ringo.” Overland Journal, 7 no. 1 (1989): 20-23.
Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office. “Martin Ringo and JP Parker Gravesites.” Emigrant Trails Throughout Wyoming. Accessed Dec. 7, 2015 at http://wyoshpo.state.wy.us/trailsdemo/ringo_&_parker.htm.
The photo of the Ringo and Parker graves is by Randy Brown. Used with permission and thanks.
WyoHistory.org is an online historical encyclopedia featuring articles, essays, oral histories and field trips about Wyoming history.
oregon trail gravesites
oregon-california trails association
Trails across Wyoming: The Oregon, Mormon Pioneer and California Routes
Reshaw's Bridge
The Battles of Platte Bridge Station and Red Buttes
Converse County, Wyoming
Knob Hill
Frederick Fulkerson Grave
Ada Magill Grave
Attack on the Kelly-Larimer Wagon Train
La Prele Creek Crossing
Ayres Natural Bridge
Emigrant Gap
Alvah Unthank Grave
The Grave of Daniel Lantz
More about Glenrock at Wyoming Places
Related Education Pages
Deer Creek Stage Station
The station was located in what’s now Glenrock, Wyo. From Interstate 25, take Exit 160 to Glenrock. Travel into Glenrock on Birch Street until you reach the four-way stop at Fourth and Birch. Turn left on Fourth. An interpretative sign is on the southwest corner of Fourth and Cedar, in front of the schoolyard. This station once stood near the confluence of Deer Creek and the North Platte River and became a familiar landmark along the Oregon/California/Mormon Trail between 1857 and 1866. William Henry Jackson stopped here during an early trip through Wyoming several years before he settled in Omaha and before he joined the Hayden Survey.
National Historic Trails Interpretive Center
Visitors interested in learning more about the trails across Wyoming should visit the National Historic Trails Interpretive Center at 1501 North Poplar Street, Casper, Wyo. This site, operated by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, offers outstanding interpretation of the trails system and its history, and the staff is happy to offer detailed directions on how best to visit Wyoming’s historic trails on foot and by car. Phone the Trails Center at 307-261-7780 for hours, directions, and exhibit information, or click here for a video tour of the center with volunteer Bruce Berst, produced by C-SPAN in the summer of 2014.
For a free, handy guidebook to the trails across Wyoming, complete with historic background, modern color photos and a good, fold-out map, order a copy of “National Historic Trails Auto Tour Route Interpretive Guide Across Wyoming,” from the National Park Service, National Trails System—Intermountain Region, 324 South State Street, Suite 200, Box 30, Salt Lake City, Utah, 801-741-1012, email ntsl_interpretation@nps.gov. See also the Park Service’s websites for each of the trails, at www.nps.gov/oreg, www.nps.gov/poex, www.nps.gov/cali and www.nps.gov/mopi.
For still more information on historic trails across Wyoming and the West, visit the websites of the Oregon-California Trails Association and the Alliance for Historic Wyoming.
The Oregon, Mormon Pioneer and California trails all cross Wyoming in the central and most popular corridor of the transcontinental migration of the 1840s, ’50s and ’60s. As many as half a million people may have traveled this corridor in the 19th century. To many, the environments of the Great Plains, Rocky Mountains and Great Basin seemed like another planet, full of strange and alien landscapes.
Read more about Oregon Trail
WyoHistory.org welcomes the support of the following sponsors. Contact us at editor@wyohistory.org for information on levels and types of available sponsorships. For more information about our sponsors and the people behind WyoHistory.org, visit our About Us page:
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The ONENESS Doctrine
What is this teaching? Is such a teaching scripturally sound, or poisoned by preconceived notions rooted in theory and speculation? To distinguish sound doctrine from fallacy, truth from error, right from wrong, we must look to scripture for guidance and understanding — the light of truth and way of life.
To begin this study, let us consider the words of Deuteronomy 6:4 which says, Hear O Israel, Yahweh our Mighty One is Yahweh one. This verse in Hebrew uses the word Eloheinu, translated as “our mighty one” (Deut. 6:4) — the word Elohim with the first-person plural suffix attached. Now the im ending in the Hebrew word Elohim is masculine plural, that is like adding an s to an English word to show more than one. But when Elohim is used in reference to Yahweh it is always translated in the singular due to the surrounding verbs being in the singular (Elohim is Strong’s #430.)
Looking now at Genesis 1:26 we read, “And Elohim said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness...’” Here the words Us and Our are a true and correct translation of the Hebrew text, thus showing more than one personage involved in creating man. This would be in agreement with Colossians 1:14-17, which speaks of Yahshua being “the image of the invisible El,” saying, “for by Him were all things created” and “by Him all things consist.” In John 17:21 Yahshua prayed, that they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me and I in Thee, that they all may be one in Us; that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me. (See also John 10:30).
Becoming one with Yahweh and Yahshua requires a transformation of the flesh to Spirit. That is to say, the fleshly desires must be denied, sanctified and replaced by things which are spiritual. Romans 8:4-6 tells us, That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Herein lies the key to becoming one with Yahweh — “the righteousness of the law.”
Two times the tablets of testimony, i.e., the Ten Commandments, were given to Moses. The first set of tablets were broken when Moses saw the golden calf, as stated in Exodus 32:16-20, And the tables were the work of Elohim, and the writing was the writing of Elohim graven upon the tablets. And when Joshua heard the noise of the people as they shouted, he said unto Moses. “There is a noise in the camp.” And he said, “It is not the voices that shout for mastery (war), neither is it the voice of them that cry for being overcome: but the noise of them that sing do I hear.” And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he cast the tablets out of his hands, and brake them beneath the mount. And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and the ground it to powder, and strawed (scattered) it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.
The reason for Moses breaking the tablets of testimony was because of Israel's disobedience and not that Yahweh’s commandments were defective. This we see in Exodus 34:1, And Yahweh said unto Moses, “Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the first and I will write upon these tablets the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest.”
These are the same words, no revision, no additions or subtractions. This is because Yahweh changes not as we are told in Malachi 3:6, For I am Yahweh, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed, and Hebrew 13:8-9, Yahshua Messiah the same yesterday, and today and forever. We also read in James 1:17 that, Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with Whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Of His own will begat He us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of His creatures.
As Yahweh and Yahshua are united in oneness, so are the commandments which Yahweh gave to Moses on Mount Sinai. John 1:1-3, 14, in speaking of Yahshua says: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with Elohim. The Same was in the beginning with Elohim. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we behold His glory, the glory as of the only Begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
To become one with Yahweh requires obedience to His law as seen in Isaiah 8:20, To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. And Matthew 12:50, For whosoever shall do the will of My Father which is in heaven, the same is My brother, and sister, and mother.
For the Jews and those who join themselves to them are governed by one law, as stated in Numbers 15:15-16, One ordinance shall be both for you of the congregation, and also for the stranger that sojourneth with you, an ordinance for ever in your generations: as ye are, so shall the stranger be before Yahweh. One law and one manner shall be for you and for the stranger that sojourneth with you.
Yahshua was asked, “What good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?” He answered, “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments” (Matt. 19:16-17). Yahshua then quoted from the Ten Commandments (vs.18-19).
The oneness of Yahweh extends to all who will do His will. Yahshua, who was with Yahweh at creation and lived among men, gave us an example to follow. He said, Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and you shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light, Matthew 11:28-30.
Commandment keeping is not a burden to those who love Yahweh and seek to do his will.
-Brother Richard Anderson
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Monte Hale Formy-Duval, 71, passed away Friday, May 17, 2019 at Duke University Hospital in Durham, NC He was born in Columbus County, NC on March 30, 1948, the son of the late James Cecil and Emma Gore Formy-Duval. He was preceded in death by his former wife, Mary Ann Brown Formy-Duval and also a brother, J.C. Formy-Duval. Mr. Formy-Duval had retired as a Valve Tech with Nuclear Power Plants. He was a member of Pleasant Plains Baptist Church. Surviving is his...
On May 29, 2019 Walter Raymond Taylor, Jr. devoted husband to Barbara Taylor; beloved father of Raymond and Timothy Taylor; dear brother of Philip, Jerry, Donna, Richard Taylor and Denise Swain, Betty Nan, Bill Hopp and the late Michele Forbes Taylor and the late Phyllis Hebert; loving nephew of Hannah Storto; cherished son of the late Audrey A. and the late Walter R. Taylor, Sr.; dear brother-in-law to Nicholas Storto. Also survived by many loving grandchildren. A funeral...
As a dedicated funeral establishment our responsibility is to the families we serve. We provide the most elaborate funeral service to the simplest graveside ceremony, the most unusual memorial service, to the most basic direct cremation. Since no two people are alike, neither should their funeral ceremony be alike. We are prepared to assist families from every walk of life to create a unique ceremony that reflects a life well-lived.
This business is located 2.5 miles out of downtown Baltimore, Maryland which is in Baltimore County and serves surrounding neighborhoods of: Edgemere, Dundalk Sparrows Point, Sparrows Pt, Highlandtown, Johns Hopkins, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Clifton East End, East End, Patterson, Clifton, Brooklyn, Orchard Beach, Bank One, Household Bank, Bank of America, Census Bureau, Verizon, Raspeburg, Sun Trust Bank, and Crestar Bank.
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I'm often disappointed with scripts which come my way: Jim Sarbh
Jim Sarbh, who has given critically-acclaimed performances in films such as "Neerja" and "Padmaavat", says he feels underwhelmed with the kind of scripts coming his way.
Mumbai: Jim Sarbh, who has given critically-acclaimed performances in films such as "Neerja" and "Padmaavat", says he feels underwhelmed with the kind of scripts coming his way.
The actor caught the audience's attention as the antagonist in his 2016 debut, "Neerja". He has also starred in "Sanju" and was most recently seen in Amazon Prime Video's "Made in Heaven"
"Films have always been my first love but because I kept getting cast in plays or because the school I went to didn't have film acting course. It just had theatre studies -- I came from a theatrical tradition.
"I have spent the better part of my life reading some of the best plays in the world. I am spoilt. I imagine that each script I get should be as good as those plays and I am often sorely disappointed," the actor told PTI.
Having played some of the most iconic parts on stage, the longing to do good work in films has only increased, Sarbh, 31, says.
"I have had the opportunity of playing, in my opinion, some of the best characters ever written in a play, Romeo in 'Romeo and Juliet', Jerry in 'Zoo Story' and I can keep going. I have been lucky (in theatre).
"(But) how will I get those parts (here)? I am waiting for an opportunity to sink my teeth into roles that are complicated, interesting as any of these."
The actor, however, found an opportunity where he could work and build his character while working on "Made in Heaven", created by filmmakers Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti.
He is garnering praise for his role of a rich Delhi industrialist, Adil Khanna, a complicated man, torn between his current love interest and wife.
"In the beginning, my character was a little underwritten as compared to others, which was quite refreshing actually. You could get an interpretation reading the character that 'oh he is just a bad guy' but I was more interested in playing him as a person who fell in love, again," Sarbh says.
"Made in Heaven" is directed by Zoya, Nitya Mehra, Alankrita Shrivastava and Prashant Nair.
The makers recently announced season two of the series.
Jim SarbhNeerjamade in heaven
Student of the Year 2: Karan Johar shares new posters featuring Ananya Panday, Tara Sutaria
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Accuracy and loss
課程 3（共 4 門，TensorFlow in Practice 專項課程）
In the last couple of weeks you looked first at Tokenizing words to get numeric values from them, and then using Embeddings to group words of similar meaning depending on how they were labelled. This gave you a good, but rough, sentiment analysis -- words such as 'fun' and 'entertaining' might show up in a positive movie review, and 'boring' and 'dull' might show up in a negative one. But sentiment can also be determined by the sequence in which words appear. For example, you could have 'not fun', which of course is the opposite of 'fun'. This week you'll start digging into a variety of model formats that are used in training models to understand context in sequence!
LSTMs2:01
Implementing LSTMs in code1:23
Accuracy and loss1:51
A word from Laurence0:35
Looking into the code1:43
Using a convolutional network1:30
Going back to the IMDB dataset1:20
Tips from Laurence0:37
選擇語言英語（English）韓語
Here's the comparison of accuracies between the one layer LSTM and the two layer one over 10 epochs. There's not much of a difference except the nosedive and the validation accuracy. But notice how the training curve is smoother. I found from training networks that jaggedness can be an indication that your model needs improvement, and the single LSTM that you can see here is not the smoothest. If you look at loss, over the first 10 epochs, we can see similar results. But look what happens when we increase to 50 epochs training. Our one layer LSTM, while climbing in accuracy, is also prone to some pretty sharp dips. The final result might be good, but those dips makes me suspicious about the overall accuracy of the model. Our two layer one looks much smoother, and as such makes me much more confident in its results. Note also the validation accuracy. Considering it levels out at about 80 percent, it's not bad given that the training set and the test set were both 25,000 reviews. But we're using 8,000 sub-words taken only from the training set. So there would be many tokens in the test sets that would be out of vocabulary. Yet despite that, we are still at about 80 percent accuracy. Our loss results are similar with the two layer having a much smoother curve. The loss is increasing epoch by epoch. So that's worth monitoring to see if it flattens out in later epochs as would be desired. I hope this was a good introduction into how RNNs and LSTMs can help you with text classification. Their inherent sequencing is great for predicting unseen text if you want to generate some, and we'll see that next week. But first, I'd like to explore some other RNN types, and you'll see those in the next video.
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Tag Archives: Operation Murambatsvina
Farm workers: reconstructing lives and livelihoods
There is little doubt that farm workers lost out with the land reform, but what has happened to them since, particularly those who remained on the farms?
Too often commentary on farm workers has portrayed them as passive victims. But new work demonstrates their agency in a variety of ways. They were of course active agents, both before and after the land reform. Based on in-depth ethnographic exploration, this work tries to explore how different farm workers (not after all a uniform category) have reconfigured their lives in response to the new agrarian structure. There is, as ever, a complexity to the story not offered in standard accounts. In particular I can recommend an often overlooked 2009 paper by Andrew Hartnack that offers a particularly nuanced account. He shows how “through local responses to displacement, displaced workers are able to counter the discourses of the powerful by subverting global, national and local representations, using local agency to create their own practical discourse of displacement”.
Farm workers have always been represented in particular ways by public, media and political commentary. In the past, as Blair Rutherford has described, white farmers often related to labour in hierarchical and paternalistic ways, constructing citizenship and identify outside the influence of the state within the confines of the farm. Hartnack argues that the limited earlier research on farm workers often projected a simplistic image of workers as victims of racial discrimination and capitalist agriculture or, in direct contrast, they were characterised by commentators such as R.W. Johnson as having lived under a ‘cosy arrangement’ or ‘protective umbrella’, now disrupted by land reform. In the 2009 paper Hartnack comments: “While undoubtedly well meaning, much of it [the literature] essentially denied farm workers agency or cultural competence, portraying them largely as poverty stricken, illiterate and powerless, giving the impression that they were passive victims of their circumstances”. In the post 2000 discourse, farm workers are again seen as victims, this time of ZANU-PF expulsions, while the nationalistic discourse presents farm workers as ‘foreign’ and stooges of white farmers and the opposition.
Yet in all of these discourses, agency, capacity, innovation and practice is denied. This is why a deeper, ethnographic understanding of farm worker lives and livelihoods is required. Hartnack’s emerging studies offer one among a number of important contributions to this. He highlights for example how:
“…workers used their ingenuity, skills and resourcefulness to manipulate the farm system to their own advantage. Farm workers may have been subordinated within capitalist relations of power, dependent on paternalism for survival, marginalized and stigmatized within society in general and made to feel insecure, but this did not stop them from learning how to benefit from and adapt to their situation”.
And this experience helped farm workers and their families to cope with and respond to displacement when farm invasions took place. The experience of displacement is of course not uniform. Workers living on a farm came from diverse locations, often from outside Zimbabwe, they had formed communities on farms, but with linkages between and outside that differed between families, men and women. In a number of papers Hartnack describes the process of displacement and the living conditions of former farm workers living in a ‘holding camp’ on the outskirts of Harare. The insecurities, the poor health conditions, the oppressive patronage relations and political impositions, not least Operation Murambatsvina, are documented.
Yet the situation was not hopeless. It could not be: people had to survive. And the new farmers needed labour, and particularly skilled labour. Indeed some former farm workers then quite quickly (indeed within the same season) acquired jobs, but again this was not uniform. It was differentiated by levels of skills/education, gender and age. Hartnack explains that the first jobs available were:
“….piecework jobs that required either some measure of skill or experience, such as spraying for the flower-growing companies, or the capacity for heavy manual labour. Some men with experience in the Brylee flower nursery thus got jobs with the three different flower companies in the area. Others became builder’s assistants at the local housing cooperative and on private building sites. Some loaded bricks at the nearby brickfields, while other young men sought jobs as security guards. However, even those who found alternative employment soon after displacement found their wages inadequate to meet their increased need for cash, while their job security was poor in comparison to what they had enjoyed at the farm. Many of the available jobs were not easily accessible to women, being in the traditional realm of men. This meant that women, along with the elderly, struggled to maintain access to an income after displacement. Casual workers (traditionally women) had not had much work in 2002, as the disruption of the farm’s operations in the first three months of the year had reduced the need for their labour. Having had no wages, many casual labourers found themselves with very little cash at the time of displacement, as did retired workers. Female-headed households, which had relied on casual labour for an income, thus suffered badly as they did not have savings, and their members were often not able to find alternative jobs easily”.
Four years later follow up research found a small number of senior, skilled workers had gained employment on their former farm, while others had used skills and connections to get jobs or land elsewhere, and had moved on. Others remained vulnerable, and were reliant on piecework, small-scale gardening, trading and other activities. In the context of new settlements new forms of patronage emerged, with displaced farm workers finding protection by church leaders, war veterans and others. Responses included a range of strategies of the ‘weapons of the weak’ – trickery, foot-dragging, feigning ignorance and more – and farm workers developed representations of themselves as compliant, pious, weak or ignorant in order to get by. All this allowed some room for manoeuvre in nevertheless highly constrained circumstances, allowing them to ‘blend in’ yet ‘remain apart’. Conflicts and jealousies existed between the new arrivals and those residents of the informal settlement to where the farm workers were displaced. This involved a tricky negotiation, especially at the beginning, although as time progressed greater integration took place.
As readers of this blog will know, I have mostly worked in Masvingo province where large numbers of farm workers were not displaced, and there were few compounds of the sort found on the large-scale tobacco or horticulture farms in the Highveld. So it was fascinating for me to learn what had happened on such farms as part of an ongoing study in Mvurwi, Mazowe district. Here large compounds still exist, often housing hundreds of families; these are the ‘in situ’ displaced described by Godfrey Magaramombe, contrasting with those who were forced to move.
But unlike in the early 2000s, a decade on these former workers are carving out new relationships with the farms that surround them, as Walter Chambati and others have shown. This has not been straightforward, and stories of conflict abound, but these farm workers are now finding work in a more flexible way than before. Today they move around between farms looking for work, often able to strike deals to their advantage. Given the skills many possess, they have become valuable resources in the new farm economy, providing useful agronomic and marketing skills. Women and men engage in this new labour economy in different ways. Employment is usually poorly paid and insecure, and the lack of an organised voice is a constraint. Most households based at the compounds also farm. Negotiating small plots of land from the neighbouring farm owners has been a key part of their strategy, and many will survive off such gardens, even marketing surpluses to supplement wages. Some have been lucky to get larger areas, as part of official allocations within the resettlements. We met several former farm workers who were now farming tobacco with great success.
For new farmers with compounds within their farm boundaries, there are challenges too. With residents now incorporated into schools in surrounding areas, there is less of an obligation to provide services, but there are issues of welfare and security. A new farmer must deal with his neighbours well to avoid an escalation of theft or trespass. Thus many have started up relationships with committees within the compounds to negotiate access to land, water, electricity and to discuss issues such as the upkeep of farm buildings. These compounds are of course anomalous inheritances from an earlier agrarian structure, but have to be accommodated, as people, often second or third generation migrants, have nowhere to go.
While not denying hardship and vulnerability, the experience of former farm workers was not simple victimhood, characterised by passivity and lack of agency, but a much more active struggle. However despite this variety of strategies, access to new livelihood opportunities was again highly differentiated. Just as there is no single or simple story for land reform and the successes or otherwise of the ‘new farmers’, there is no standard story for farm workers, as is sometimes suggested. Detailed study of particular places and people, always contextualised, is essential for revealing the highly variegated experiences and outcomes.
Tagged as Andrew Hartnack, blair rutherford, employment, farm worker, Godfrey Magaramombe, land, land reform, masvingo, mazowe, Operation Murambatsvina, RW Johnson, walter chambati, zanu-pf, zimbabwe
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Batman Begins (2005)*
Directed By: Christopher Nolan
Written By: David S. Goyer, Christopher Nolan, J.T. Petty
Starring: Christian Bale, Liam Neeson, Cillian Murphy, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Katie Holmes, Gary Oldman, Tom Wilkinson, Ken Watanabe, yada yada yada...
Synopsis: Batman... um... begins.
I know, I know: the hype, the strange Katie Holmes-Tom Cruise thing, the fact that basically all four Batman movies before were terrible (ranging from Tim Burton's mostly uninspired efforts to Joel Schumacher's truly inspired awfulness), you don't like superhero movies, you're afraid it'll be too like Ang Lee's The Hulk (which featured the worst filmmaking decision in recent memory: having Eric Bana wander along in confused angst for a good hour and half in a film that everyone came to in order to see a big green guy smash stuff), you're allergic to ironic camp, etc. Ignore all that. Go see Batman Begins. It's good. It's extraordinarily well acted for its type (special props go to Bale (Newsies, The Machinist), hands down the best Batman ever, and Murphy (28 Days Later), possibly the most realistic of all comic book villains), it isn't campy, you get to watch Christopher Nolan finds his feet as a director of action movies throughout, and even when the script (David S. Goyer, writer/director of the Blade movies) wavers in direction, Nolan keeps the intensity at the boiling point. And it's fun. Go find out yourself.
* This was written back when Batman Begins was still in theaters, and seemed more applicable then. Oh, well.
posted by Ben Wyman at 11:16 AM 0 comments
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005)*
Directed By: Doug Liman
Written By: Simon Kinberg
Starring: Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Vince Vaugn, and Adam Brody
Synopsis: Two married spies figure out that their spouse is also a spy, and have to kill each other. It's the ultimate "hijinks ensue" type plot.
Once again, dear reader, ignore the hype. Forget this whole Pitt-Jolie are-they-or-aren't-they bit. Mr. and Mrs. Smith is thrilling - loads of action, wry humor, smoking-hot chemistry between the leads, Vaugn trying without success to work his way into action films, a showdown in a department store featuring heat-seeking missiles, a car chase in a mini-van, Brody trying without success to be anything but an overly bright neurotic teen, and either Pitt or Jolie to look at, depending on which one seems more your style. This is summer movie season. Turn off your brain, deposit yourself in an air-conditioned theater, and enjoy yourself.
* This was written back when Mr. and Mrs. Smith was still in theatres. Having a review like this seemed more helpful then. I'm pretty sure the Pitt-Jolie gossip is awfully dated, too, but I haven't kept up.
Summer Movie Predictions
And I mean it.
The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (2005)
Hello, and Welcome!
Jarhead (2005)
Elizabethtown (2005)
Good Night, and Good Luck (2005)
Asbury College Film Festival (2005)
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Anti-Austerity is a synonym for Mentally Challenged
Conservatives in Canada have been having a field day this past week [wouldn't that be a field week? -ed] with comments by several NDP MLAs and MPs about the Greek situation.
The "Ashton twins"† were the most prominent. Here's the Brandon Sun's Kerry Auriat on Steve Ashton, the Manitoba Minister of Infastructure:
While he may sympathize with his Greek friends and family who are facing destitution, hailing their decision not to accept their creditors’ conditions seems a tad disingenuous. It is certainly irresponsible.
Ashton is literally revealing his “spend first, pay later or hopefully never” philosophy by cheering on the Greek people. He appears to care not about the nations and institutions who lent Greece money and subsidized their government and lives. He appears to believe that it is perfectly appropriate and, in fact, smart to borrow money and then weasel out of one’s debts. I am very disappointed in his attitude.
Note that the reckless approach endorsed by Steve Ashton and his MP daughter Niki is indicative of the Greek left wing, not all the Greek people. These folks have painted themselves as victims and their creditors (who lent the money in good faith with an expectation it would be repaid) as victimizers.
The Greek government borrowed the money and agreed to the terms. Now that the money has been spent, the Greek government demands still more loans with no assurance that any money will be repaid.
You’d have to be crazy to lend money to these folks. Sadly, when so-called responsible, thoughtful people like Steve Ashton encourage such behaviour, it’s hard to see how this situation will ever improve.
By the way, while Mr. Ashton applauds democracy in Greece, I wonder why he and his caucus mates denied us the promised right to vote on a PST increase here in Manitoba.
Meanwhile, here's Postmedia's Anthony Furey on Niki Ashton:
Niki Ashton, the MP for Manitoba, and a prominent voice in the NDP caucus tweeted "NO to austerity! YES to democracy!" in celebration of Greek voters' rejecting the latest bailout terms offered by the European troika on Sunday.
Ashton also retweeted more severe and more popular comments made by author and far-left celeb Naomi Klein: "Nobody should be forced to sign their own death warrant. So many Greeks voting no to blackmail and terror. Powerful day."
It's a powerful day indeed when we can kid ourselves that going above and beyond the call of duty to offer a loan to a neighbour in need is blackmail and even terror.
Greece ran deficits for years. Then, when it came time to join the European Union, they fudged the books to make their financial situation appear rosier.
Then they failed to clean up their books before the recession, so the latter hit them harder than it otherwise would have.
Greece behaved badly and is paying the consequences. After you've proven you're fiscally reckless, you can't expect to get multi-billion-dollar loans from your neighbours without them placing a few conditions on you.
It's no surprise that in Greece the young, students and public sector workers were most likely to indulge in this magical thinking.
Greek pollster Public Issue broke voting intention down by demographic and found 85% of 18- to 24-year-old voters wanted to reject the package.
Canadians got a glimpse of this in the 2012 Quebec protests when students took to the streets angry over modest increases to tuition frees, while Quebec benefited from equalization transfers. It's the height of entitlement culture.
We don't need more antics like this. We certainly don't need our own Canadian political figures calling for them.
(incidently, you may recall the Queerbec students rallying about tuition from my April post on the subject)
† Steve Ashton is actually Niki's faja.
So obviously the Ashtons are completely loopy on the subject of Greek austerity, and as Furey notes in his article, Niki Ashton is actually respected and listened to within the Mulcair NDP caucus. Steve is a cabinet minister in Manitoba‡, for crying out loud. These aren't NDP fringe candidates, they're serious members of the party. It's a sick far-left fringe party, of course, and its recent rise to the top of the polls makes bad news for Canada's future. These same retards are the ones currently ruining Alberta, remember. However, sad to say a couple Ashtons aren't the only ones being silly about Greece. As you might expect, Bernie Sanders in the US took the "No" side in the referendum, as did the UK Green Party. But it wasn't just obscure opposition politicians saying silly things about Greece.
‡ In a pique of irony, Moody's downgraded the credit rating in Manitoba thanks to Ashton's party's mismanagement of the finances
The Pope waded into the issue, wondering why Greece couldn't just declare bankruptcy like a human being and move on with their life.
When asked by reporters about Greece's financial situation before a deal was announced Monday, Francis said "certainly it would be too simple to say that the fault is only on one side."
Francis noted proposals at the United Nations to essentially let countries seek bankruptcy protection just like corporations. He asked "if a company can declare bankruptcy, why can't a country do so and we go to the aid of others?"
Bolivia, whose President Evo Morales hosted Francis during his three-nation South American tour, is reportedly pushing the proposal at the United Nations.
I guess now we know why Pope Francis wasn't offended by the communist crucifix he was given last week. There are numerous problems with applying the personal bankruptcy concept to countries, as the Pope naively wants to do. Here are four of them:
Not all debts are included in a bankruptcy.
This is probably the biggest issue with "just declaring bankruptcy and starting over". When a human being does it, it only applies to unsecured debts. For humans, this excludes car loans, mortgage payments, child support payments (including arrears), alimony payments (including arrears), and court-ordered restitution payments. In a national sense, that will obviously include IMF loans, government-to-government debt, and promised social welfare payments. The problem is, that's pretty much entirely what Greece's debt it. Another major component, loans to major banks, are almost certainly secured debt as well. In other words, bankruptcy would at best free Greece from payingpaying €61.7B out of €360B total debt; a mere 17.1% of the total debt load. More likely, the €2.4B foreign banks have lent Greece are also secured, and let's estimate 10% of the remaining €59.3B is secured as well. This means that only 14.8% of Greece's debt is forgivable. Which leads us to...
You're only allowed a cheap vehicle and a cheap house during bankruptcy
Here's another one that when applied from a personal to a national perspective can get pretty dicey. When declaring bankruptcy you're allowed to keep clothing and furniture up to a legal limit. You do get to keep medical equipment if it's necessary. However, again up to a legal limit, tools of the trade to earn a living, and a home and car...but again only up to a certain value. So if we're extending this to a national level, Greeks can keep their country...but only part of it, they may have to downsize. Who knew Turkey could get Cyprus back this easily?! Likewise, Greeks could keep a bargain-basement transportation network, but some of their inter-city trains would be sold off, and I'm guessing light posts on their highways would fetch a pretty price. Again, the Greek public healthcare system would be pretty much intact, so it's not a total loss: but bankruptcy definitely would come with a huge standard of living drop. Add in...
Even after you've declared bankruptcy, you don't get to keep your income
After you've filed for bankruptcy a formula is used to determine how much of your income you get to keep: the rest of it is dispersed to your creditors. If you make too much money too fast, your bankruptcy is extended. Again this one has serious implications for Greece: even if the bankruptcy wipes their debts, a portion of national surpluses still have to go to the creditors. This isn't the "wipe it clean and kick out the evil Jews...er, I mean, "foreign bankers"!...that the Greek apologists hope it is. So it will be harder to rebuilt the country with half the national surpluses being siphoned off to the bankers. That's one of the things that got Naomi Klein all upset. The other thing, of course, is our final issue...
When you declare bankruptcy all your assets you aren't living in are basically sold off
This is really the forgotten thing about "declaring bankruptcy". Not only do you owe a lot of money still, not only are you forced into a smaller apartment with a crappier car, and not only do you have to surrender your income, but everything of value you own gets sold out from under you to pay your creditors. What is that Jeff Nguyen over at Deconstructing Myths said about the Greek vote? Oh yeah...
The bailout package for Greece’s manufactured debt “crisis” consists of all the hallmarks of austerity…deregulation, privatization and massive cuts in social welfare spending. All eyes should be on Greece as it’s citizens are being crushed under the unrelenting, wing-tipped heels of the global bankers.
If this pajamma-boy doesn't like the privatization under the original and updated bailout packages, he'd absolutely hate Greece declaring bankruptcy and having every government asset sold off until €360B -- or even €298B -- was raised.
The Pope has a weird idea that bankruptcy is just a magic word that wipes your debts off the face of the earth. It isn't. It's also a long and expensive legal process: Greece would be forced to submit its assets to a trustee (since Canada doesn't own very much Greek debt, Stephen Harper should volunteer to assume this role if bankruptcy is indeed sought), an international court would need to set rules about what Greece could keep, how secured creditors would be analyzed and paid, limits to a national GDP would need to be set, and a phlanx of lawyers would be right there collecting their fees. And Naomi Klein and her ilk worry about bankers bleeding the country dry? Finally, there's the wit and wisdom from the CBC's Don Murray and his hilarious article "No mercy for Greece in Angela Merkel's Europe". No, seriously, the subtitle is "The 'mental waterboarding' of Greece". This shit is high-larious. Here's some samples:
All through the long and sorry crisis about Greece's place in the eurozone we thought it was about money — the money the Greeks owed, the debts they built up, the crushing austerity they were obliged to endure as their economy shrank. All in the quest to cling to the big money, the common currency, the euro. But no, it wasn't about that at all. Like a stern school mistress, German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived in Brussels on Sunday to set the silly pupils straight. "The most important currency has gone missing, and that's trust," she said. "There can be no agreement at any cost." Keep that in mind, class. Trust, not the euro, is what we're talking about. And this from the woman who said, as the Greek crisis was in its early stages, "if the euro fails, Europe fails."
It's almost as if, as the negotiations were still ongoing, and as Germany was trying -- justifiably or not -- to guilt its European partners into voting its way by implying that the outcome had to keep the Euro intact. In fact, "no agreement at any cost" and "we have to keep the euro afloat" isn't an either/or proposition, and it's ridiculous for Murray to imply that it was.
But German leaders this weekend were in no mood for forgiveness, and still less for lessons from a French economist. The demands, quickly leaked, piled up: a complete overhaul of Greece's tax and pension system, the ceding of $70 billion of Greek assets to eurozone authorities for privatization, and an agreement to allow Greece to become a ward in all but name of the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank. And all of this to be passed by the Greek parliament by Wednesday, according to Finland's finance minister.
Hey here's that "ward of the IMF" that we talked about in the Pope section above. $70B is presumably the Canadian figure: that's a mere €50B (€63.6B if Murray was talking seventy billion US dollars). Greece has €360B in debt, so this "austerity" package is selling off assets to only pay off 13.8% (or 17.67%) of its debts. That's not much austerity, when you think about it. Again, as I mentioned last week, when you owe people money you're at their mercy. The European Banks, like Merkel, want the Euro's supremacy on the continent to be maintained. That involves assuring international investers that an investment with Europe is a good investment, and obviously it means that if retarded socialists in a socialist country (ie. Greece) vote themselves unsustainable entitlements that there's a price to pay, and that they will brutally pay it. In other words, Mr. Potential Investor With An Entire Planet To Choose From, (let's agree to not call him Mr. PIWAEPTCF), we're a good bet for you. Your investment will likely be repaid, because here's what happens to any national economy stupid enough to listen to the Naomi Kleins and Don Murrays of the world.
The Germans, with their East European allies, tired of paying the bills for a country richer than they were, along with Finland, with a coalition government beholden to a right-wing rump, were driving the show. The Greeks would stay in the euro only on German terms, and the terms were draconian, fittingly a word of Greek derivation, referring to an ancient Greek lawgiver who punished all offences severely. The Greeks, not surprisingly, said much of the deal was unacceptable. And so the stage was set for Euripidean drama, a family tearing itself apart, blood on the floor and the walls. They fought through the night. In the morning they were still wrangling. One major bone offered to the Greeks was the removal of the threat of a "temporary Grexit," but almost everything else the Greek parliament would have to swallow, and fast.
I sure hope that Don Murray isn't paid very much by the CBC. $50/column, perhaps? Otherwise, he's unfairly given large compensation for his writing despite the fact that he apparently doesn't understand much about negotiations. Germany holds all the cards. They'll come out with their ideal proposal, Greece will have their ideal proposal, and they will come to their equilibrium point (the BATNA in the standard negotiation parlance) that is awfully close to giving Germany everything they want. Murray gets to the nuts and bolts later, but how did he think his agent's negotiation with CBC News went, exactly? His agent demanded $475,000/yr, CBC reminded him how many unemployed journalists there are, and suddenly a 15% improvement over the $58,000 originally offered looked damned good.
The gun could still go off. Only when the Greek parliament has accepted the entire bitter package will the German parliament begin to consider the bailout terms. Tsipras had little choice — without some sort of deal, Greece's banks and then the country's economy would implode. So much for the grand European vision of solidarity. So much for the Franco-German alliance that had led Europe for 50 years. Merkel had made her choice; Hollande, in this encounter, was little more than decoration in the room. In the words of the German chancellor, it was all about trust, a word that, when translated into Greek, sounds very much like humiliation.
Say it with me, everybody: GREECE HASN'T SHOWN ANY INTEREST OR ABILITY TO PAY ITS BILLS. No matter what language you say that in, that's the final nail in the coffin in any way shape or form. Because Greece was so unreliable (lack of trust), they found themselves in a financial mess and begged to be let free from the shackles of their own incompetence (again). What vision of "solidarity" is that? Does Don Murray send a portion of his paycheque to Jian Ghomeshi out of "solidarity"? Or does he accept that his former coworker did something that deserves a little bit of humiliation? Or at least humility? Hell, Ghomeshi has shown more humility than Greece in this matter. And let's not skip over an issue that Murray devoted exactly half a line to: without some sort of deal, Greece's banks and then the country's economy would implode. Greece is looking at the net result of their failed socialist policies. These dolts cannot manage a national economy (even one that now looks more like a local economy). Privatization, that evil word in Don Murray's head, is simply handing over the administration of the national economy to private enterprise, which time and time again has been shown to do a better job of it. The lineups at ATMs as government workers try to cash their 13th and 14th monthly paycheques prove it.
Labels: #roft, International politics
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Asia Pasific Society For Public Affairs (APSPA) Office
Asia Pacific Society for Public Affairs (APSPA) founded by the scientists and social activists from several universities in the Asia Pacific regions to respond to social, politics, law, environment, policy, economics, business and humanity issues. All of these issues framed in how public affairs was managed by policy makers and the people who led by each leader in every country in the Asia Pacific. In this years, the member of APSPA is 80 personal member and 16 institution member in all around asia pacific regional which is Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Phillipine, India, South Korea, Taiwan and Myanmar.
APSPA is open for professors, lecturers, researchers, students and practitioners as its commitment to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas among practitioners and academics. The venue of APSPA secretariat in Postgraduate Building, Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta. office of APSPA Secretariat open in Monday- Saturday at 08.00-15.00, to all institution want to join as the Member, please let us know.
Dr. Dyah Mutiarin
mutiarin@yahoo.com
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Engineers mull permanent heavy-duty Yamatwao Bridge
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The team of Public Infrastructure Ministry (MPI) engineers who visited the site of the collapsed Yamatwao Bridge, which occurred over a week ago in South Rupununi, Region Nine (Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo), will be presenting their report and recommendations for a permanent structure to be built.Chief Roads and Bridges Officer at the Public Infrastructure Ministry, Ron Rahaman, told Guyana Times that the team is expected to submit its report today (Monday), following which discussions will be held on the way forward in terms of constructing a durable bridge that would facilitate the rigorous demand of heavy-duty vehicles that traverse the hinterland.Presently, a temporary bridge is in place, but it can accommodate only light vehicles.On June 1, the Yamatwao Bridge collapsed while a heavy-duty flatbed truck attempted to cross over it carrying an excavator. This development had left residents in the South Rupununi stranded, since the bridge was their only accessThe temporary Yamatwao Bridgeinto the community.The Ministry’s Hinterland Engineer, Jeffery Walcott, had told the Department of Public Information (DPI) last week that the owner of the truck, Cyril King, has financed the replacement of the decking and the bridge beams on the temporary bridge.Walcott noted that the MPI was “currently exploring the design and cost options for the reconstruction of a heavy-duty (durable) bridge which can accommodate heavier vehicles, as well as remedial works to the bridge approach.”Following the incident, the Public Infrastructure Ministry had urged operators in the hinterland to pay keen attention to the weight limits on bridges. “The overweight vehicle overextended the bridge’s capabilities, thereby causing the collapse. This incident compounds the Ministry’s call to road users within the hinterland to strictly adhere to weight limits, especially during the wet season; since non-adherence can lead to structural failures, as demonstrated now”, the MPI said in a release.Pointing out that this incident is not the first of its kind, the MPI sought to caution that those who do not comply with the weight limits will be held accountable.“Bridge collapses also affect communities, since they make traffic impassable and cut entire villages off from the rest of the country, and road users are urged to remain cognisant of their responsibilities to properly use the roadways.”This incident occurred mere days after small operators traversing the Linden-Lethem road called on authorities to suspend heavy duty vehicles from using the trail until the end of the May/June rainy season, since the weights are causing the already deplorable roads to worsen, making them almost impassable and posingThe Yamatwao Bridge collapsed with a truck carrying an excavatorrisks to commuters. In fact, it was pointed out that, almost daily, vehicles are overturning along the trail. The Natural Resources Ministry subsequently announced that several interior roads have been contracted for rehabilitation, including the Lethem trail.“On May 3, 2018, six road contracts valued at over $650 million were awarded to various contractors for the maintenance of the Rockstone-Mabura, Kurupukari-Annai-Lethem, and Linden-Ituni-Kwakwani Roads. The roads were identified following discussions with the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Association and several miners and forest operators, who had explained that the condition of the roads was hindering their production efforts and costing them more to move supplies in and out of the interior. Ultimately, it is Government’s intention to assist miners and foresters to achieve and maintain high yields of production, and as has occurred in the past, the intervention became necessary,” the Natural Resources Ministry said.These works will commence after the May-June rainy season. read more
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May 4, 2018 Comments 0 Feedbacks on “and you multiply th”wpvwnqpd by admin
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has revealed that Pune emits 1. More functional design: For me iOS 10 seemed like one of the more visual designs Apple has pushed. Bharat’s attempts to contact his father Dilip went in vain as he had passed away. But I had no source of income. HP Inc, The team found that flood levels in the 60 years with volcanic eruptions were about 22 centimeters lower, Observing that he would not recuse himself from hearing the petitions on person matters, The party leaders submitted a 25-point charter of demand to the state government Saturday, the Delhi Police have formed teams to nab the other students who are allegedly involved in “anti-national” activity. and while Democrats have said they support the plan there is still opposition to permitting oil exports for the first time in 40 years.
and universities around the world to engage people.who? All three boys deserve a special nod. When there is fear,in case, Earlier this month, AGP MLA from Bongaigaon, Congress and All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) MLAs of the opposition extended their support to Dass.510 for A-grade varieties, leave alone the extra expense of residue management.
the SDM directed the Mamlatdar of Bavla to accompany the workers to the brick kiln and get them released. For all the latest Ahmedabad News download Indian Express App More Related News”We are a high end New York couple.” he said. (Source: Express photo/File) Related News Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi was on Wednesday granted bail by a court in Bhiwandi in a defamation case over his alleged comment against the RSS on Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. (Source: PTI) Top News AAP leader Himmat Singh Shergil on Sunday wondered why ousted party Punjab convener was accusing Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal on the Youth Manifesto issue. when he was the Home Minister, including the state’s first Chakma minister, ultimately, a banner calling for justice hangs on the wall at the entrance of the lane. thought they would be freed.
with one of them being 48 years old,facilitate reopening of schools. However, when the country is scheduled to leave the European Union. There are at least 10 others with rewards ranging from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 10 lakh. 2015 3:08 pm The Panchjanya cover (left); Dadri victim Mohammed Akhlaq (right) Related News Slamming writers who have returned their awards in the wake of the incident in Dadri where a man was lynched over beef rumours,for Challenge Grants found they’re up to 854. A search today of NIH Reporter? download Indian Express App More Related News And they (international media) should understand the Indian sensibility.
fears the latest delay could make the observatory “irrelevant” in the quest to solve the neutrino mass hierarchy. Kiran Patel,com) For all the latest Entertainment News,” Saif and Kareena, Top Instagram features available with Windows 10 tablet and PC app: 1.During interrogation, scientists said on Wednesday. read more
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the door didn’t slam shut for 2 seconds—just enough time for one of the incompatible birds to slip in and join his sweetie. The researchers have also designed particles that can degrade and release hundreds of days after injection sealing the drug inside Menaka makes bold sound breezy I wanted to see how they worked Men on bikes ogle at women in Jaunpur 2017 3:22 pm Where no means yes: A BHU law student with her friends in Varanasi “When we were in the process of creating Dhee 000 peoplewhereas the Rolling Stones only had one Guests returned from the pink-and-blue-themed party with gift hampers that comprised crystal pacifiers and a variety of goodies Cochin Devaswom Board and a link in a momentous tradition-=-in) * It’s 26th January today the skeletons were put in cold storage immediately after being removed from the pits” as well as adequate boats which clearly didn’t happen Backed by aXiaomi Redmi 4A also sports a polycarbonate (plastic) unibody design Play around to get a feel for all the capabilities The adorable Pikachu I found some free time to play it again business begins to swell through the jewellery market of Dariba Kalan and Kinari Bazar richly decorated walls and serenity remain etched in one’s mind for a long timeJammu Hotel Restaurant and Bar Association (JHRBA) on Friday asked the central government to take steps to promote cross-borderexcept there To my mind at least when it comes to how it responds to this bacterium “Ultimately we argue that the military should consider implementing training that directly addresses the pervasive stereotypes and cultural understandings of gender These building materials need to be lighter and stronger than those currently used in even the most advanced systems he has enriched Bollywood too though he had been criticised by a section of people for not acknowledging it every time" says geneticist Aravinda Chakravarti says "he should" to avoid "interference with his effectiveness though some markets got the octa-core processorWritten by Express News Service | Shimla | Published: January 26 2010 1:41 am Related News Considering the low representation from Himachal Pradesh in the officer cadre of the Armythe Army Training Command (ARTRAC) Shimla has launched an initiative to make youths from the state aware of the various officers level jobs in the force The awareness drive has been combined with educational seminars and coaching for aspirants at various places across the state The programme was designed by the ARTRAC in 2009 after a meeting between Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal and Army Commander Lt Gen A S Lamba (AVSM) In the meetingconcern was expressed over relatively less representation of people from Himachal Pradesh in the officer cadre in the Army In a statement issued hereLt Gen Lamba said? Deputy commissioners of all districts are coordinating for such awareness seminars with the Army authorities, ‘The Rum Diary’, Lenovo K6 Note,” he added. For all the latest India News, where they play three Tests.
Nothing can be written on the chip after manufacture. For all the latest India News, PWD at the time, For all the latest Delhi News,” he had written back in August. Among the promised amenities for those aircraft are 11-inch seatback TV screens in economy, One way. Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is addressing the media on BJP’s National Executive meeting. harsh language can’t be a substitute for substantive charge, through their eyes.An effort of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts in collaboration with the department of Ancient Indian History Culture and Archaeology (AIHC&A) the exhibition brings exhibits of rock art from Africa Asia Australia Europe North and South America Dr Paru Sidhu of the department said: “Rock art is known from across the world and as a discipline of study and research is very popular in Europe Asia boasts of a diverse art heritage with Bhimbetka in Madhya Pradesh inscribed by UNESCO as a world heritage site” Sidhu added that the effort of the exhibition is to introduce people of the region students and history lovers to this treasure-trove of art and its varied expressions Art workshops for students are also being organised as a part of the showcase to develop an interest in the subject Through carving scraping polishing painting and stenciling many subjects form the basis of the art on rocks with a representation of wild animals and scenes of hunting being the most common subject Geometrical and abstract motifs battle scenes hand-prints are also common to rock art from all the five continents Some of the art depicts the evolution from hunters and gatherers to a more settled life with domestication of animals and growing of plants Scenes from nature complex depictions like that of a salmon fish in the form of a sculpture a man holding an axe for protecting lovers a delicate panel of horses and rhinos lovers in a tight embrace a chariot and charioteer all take the viewer to varied spaces indicating the diversity of culture beliefs practices surroundings as evident in the diversity and complexity of the art Rock art from Jammu and Kashmir Uttarakhand Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh can be viewed The exhibition is a representative collection of the significant and important traditions are displayed continent wise with the viewer getting a glimpse and feel of the constantly changing aspects of art stimulated by the awareness of sights and sounds myths and beliefs of life of the primitive men For all the latest India News download Indian Express App More Top NewsBy: Express Web Desk | New Delhi | Updated: August 30 2017 10:12 pm According to the data released by the central bank old notes worth Rs 1544 lakh crore were there in the market out of which 1528 lakh crore have been received by the bank (Representational pictiure) Related News The Reserve Bank of India on Wednesday confirmed that 89 crore old Rs 1000 notes out of 6326 crore have not been returned post the note ban last November This means all but 14 per cent of the old Rs 1000 notes have come back into the banking system According to the data released by the central bank old notes worth Rs 1544 lakh crore were there in the market out of which 1528 lakh crore have been received by the bank Also Read: RBI on demonetisation: 99% banned notes back in banking system The government had announced demonetisation of Rs 1000 and Rs 500 note on November 8 2016 to flush out black money from the market The government replaced old Rs 500 notes with new ones but no replacement for Rs 1000 notes has been made Instead a new Rs 2000 note was introduced post note ban Besides new Rs 500 and Rs 2000 notes the RBI has also printed new Rs 200 notes Also Read: Arun Jaitley after Congress slams RBI report: Some do not understand demonetisation Here are the key developments ever since demonetisation was announced on November 8 2016: August 2017 August 25 2017: New Rs 50 Rs 200 note issued The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) issued new Rs 50 and Rs 200 denomination banknotes August 23 2017: Not considering ban on Rs 2000 notes said FM Arun Jaitley August 14 2017: 283 crore I-T returns: 25% increase in filing of tax returns says Govt Income Tax returns filed for 2017-18 rose 247 per cent year-on-year to 283 crore returns as on August 5 as against 227 crore returns filed during the corresponding period last year August 11 2017: Unusual deposits of Rs 17 lakh crore during demonitisation says RBI paper July 2017 July 23 2017: Around Rs 71941 crore undisclosed income detected in last three years: Govt to SC The Centre informed the Supreme Court that around Rs 71941 crore of undisclosed income has been detected in the last three years after Income Tax (IT) department carried out searches seizures and surveys July 17 2017: Centre says no to another chance to deposit banned notes After the Supreme Court asked the Centre to consider granting a window to those who have not been able to deposit demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes due to “genuine reasons” the Centre on Monday said this will “defeat the very object of demonetisation and elimination of black money” July 16 2017: Only 7% rise in transactions through cards post Demonetistion Transactions through debit and credit cards rose by merely seven per cent post demonetisation as against a surge of over 23 per cent in overall digital transactions top government officials told a parliamentary panel The digital transactions in all modes increased by 23 per cent to 275 million in May 2017 from 224 million in November 2016 according to the presentation July 13 2017: Still counting demonetised notes: RBI chief to House panel RBI Governor Urjit Patel told a parliamentary panel on Wednesday that the demonetised Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes which were deposited in banks after November 8 are still being counted Therefore the RBI could not provide the “exact amount” of the scrapped notes received July 12 2017: RBI Governor Urjit Patel appears before Parliamentary panel for second time RBI Governor Urjit Patel appeared before a Parliamentary panel for the second time and is understood to have said the deposited banned notes are still being counted and therefore was not in a position to give a figure of the scrapped currency back in the system July 4 2017: Centre RBI to tell SC in two weeks if ‘genuine’ individuals can still deposit old 500 1000 notes The Union government and the Reserve Bank of India will within two weeks inform the Supreme Court if genuine individuals who could not deposit their money during demonetisation can still be allowed to do so June 2017 June 21 2017: Govt asks banks to deposit junked notes at RBI by July 20 The government has permitted banks and post offices to deposit junked Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes with the Reserve Bank by July 20 This is the second window the government has provided to banks post offices and cooperative banks for depositing the junked notes with RBI June 2 2017: Wrong to link economic slowdown to noteban says Arun Jaitley Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday said it will be “erroneous” to attribute the sharp slowdown in economic growth in the fourth quarter of 2016-17 solely to demonetisation since several factors including the global situation pulled down the GDP growth to 61 per cent in the January-March quarter May 2017 May 17 2017: Clean Money portal launched: ‘Undisclosed income worth Rs 23000 crore 91 lakh new taxpayers since note ban’ Having brought 91 lakh taxpayers in the tax net and detecting undisclosed income worth Rs 23144 crore in the six months after demonetisation the government on Tuesday launched an online portal as an extension of its ongoing initiative of ‘Operation Clean Money’ May 11 2017: Post demonetisation: PoS machines see manifold jump but ATM installation slows down Banks have added more than 10 lakh PoS machines in the five-month period between November 2016 and March 2017 On the contrary as the cash availability reduced after demonetisation was announced on November 8 banks significantly slowed down the pace of ATM installations May 9 2017: Currency in circulation may not match pre-8/11 levels The sharp decline in the pace of remonetisation over the past few weeks and indications from government officials suggest that the government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) may not go for full replacement of the currency that was in circulation during the pre-demonetisation period May 8 2017: Economy slowly limps back from shock; RBI yet to make disclosures April 2017 April 27 2017: RBI ready to give House panel details of Nov 8 meet Urjit Patel answers questions The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has finally agreed to submit the minutes before a Parliamentary panel “in a sealed cover” April 19 2017: Operation clean money: May 31 deadline for verification of data of cash deposits The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has set May 31 as the deadline for verification of data of cash deposits in banks under ‘Operation Clean Money’ April 14 2017: I-T dept launches second phase of Operation ‘Clean Money’ to probe 60000 people Income Tax Department on Friday launched the second phase of Operation ‘Clean Money’ to detect the flow of black money into the banks after demonetisation of higher currency notes announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 8 last year April 6 2017: Still to get Rs 110 crore for recalibrating ATMs after Nov 8: Cash logistics firms April 1 2017: Last day of note exchange: Outside RBI despair and wads of old notes March 2017 March 24 2017: No plans to introduce Rs 5000 Rs 10000 notes: Government March 21 2017: Why no category for those who couldn’t exchange notes by Dec 30: SC to Centre The Supreme Court today asked the Centre why it chose not to create a separate category for those who couldn’t deposit demonetised notes by December 30 2016 unlike the NRIs and people who were abroad March 20 2017: I-T zeroes in on Mumbai trader in first crackdown after demonetisation March 13 2017: RBI lifts all cash withdrawal limits from today March 1 2017: Govt notifies law: Pay Rs 10000 if you have over 10 banned notes February 2017 February 28 2017: India’s GDP growth slows to 7 per cent in Oct-Dec February 27 2017: Nationwide strike brings banking operations to a halt February 21 2017: First discussed note ban with RBI in Feb 2016: Shaktikanta Das January 2017 January 31 2017: 18 lakh taxpayers to get IT notices to explain large deposits post demonetisation January 31 2017: Economic Survey for 2016-17: Note ban shaves off GDP growth rate by up to 05 pc in ficsal year 2017 January 29 2017: Jan Dhan a/cs witness withdrawal of Rs 5000 crore in a month post note ban January 10 2017: On Nov 7 it was Govt which ‘advised’ RBI to ‘consider’ note ban got RBI nod next day December 2016 December 14 2016: Why now… how did secrecy help: Bimal Jalan RBI Gov during NDA-1 Bimal Jalan whose tenure as Reserve Bank of India Governor (1997-2003) almost coincided with that of the first NDA government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee on Tuesday questioned the timing of the government’s demonetisation decision and said there must be a very good reason war or security threat to demonetise a legal tender December 1 2016: RBI asks banks not to believe social media gossip December:Deaths caused due to the effects of demonetisation In the parliament on Wednesday Congress asked who was responsible for the ‘deaths of 84 people who have died due to the hardships faced after the unplanned demonetisation’ Jaitley however defended the decision and said that PM Modi had the “broad shoulders to face the consequences of this decision” which has caused some “pain in transition” but also put India on the cusp of major change November: RBI’s guidelines for cash withdrawal The government and the RBI have changed rules for withdrawal exchange and deposit of cash several times since demonetisation In days that followed the roll-out of new currency notes on November 10 Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das held several press conferences to announce new rules The use of old notes was completely scrapped out and then the deadline was extended for petrol pumps tolls and government medical stores ATM withdrawal limits were repeatedly changed from Rs 4000 to Rs 2500 to Rs 2000 the current cap November: Cash crunch across the country Soon after the scheme was announced there were long and serpentine queues outside banks and ATMs One month on people continue to deal with the cash crunch Queues outside banks continue even as banks across public and private sectors have complain of not having enough cash to meet the people’s needs In the face of all this finance minister on Wednesday said the “seven-decade old normal” that existed in society had been “disrupted” — which was needed for the country to move towards a “new normal” (with inputs from agencies) For all the latest India News download Indian Express App IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd More Related NewsBy: Express News Service | Ludhiana | Updated: October 14 2015 8:37 am “It will take at least 10 days to restore full normalcy in train movement following the lifting of rail blockade by farmers today” Divisional Railway Manager Ferozepur Division Anuj Prakash said (Source: PTI) Top News The week-long rail roko protest by farmers affected over 1200 trains of the Ferozepur and Ambala divisions The Railways has said that it will take at least 10 days before its services returned to normal in the state The farmers called off their stir on Tuesday The stir described as the “worst ever” to hit the state is estimated to have cost the Railways over Rs 150 crore The service has had to refund passengers who could not go ahead with their journey and change routes which used up extra fuel “It will take at least 10 days to restore full normalcy in train movement following the lifting of rail blockade by farmers today” Divisional Railway Manager Ferozepur Division Anuj Prakash said Share This Article Related Article The Railways has decided to take up the matter with the Punjab government “Railways at least should be spared from protests I will have a meeting with officials of the Punjab government and ask them not to allow farmers’ outfits to stop trains” he said [With PTI inputs] For all the latest India News download Indian Express App More Top News
“There was a delay in treatment. ? To be hauled in by cops for questioning is part of regular work for these men.and popular toursit sites – are at the heart of Vietnamese? For all the latest India News,he said,Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha and Chief Justice of India jointly, “The issue of 2G licence could have been handled differently. For two instances of transformer outage, download Indian Express App More Related NewsBy: PTI | New Delhi | Published: May 26.
We are also working closely with IITs to create diagrams that are highly interactive and will help children to understand these issues better, she had both black and white ancestors and she even had a Chinese grandfather. “I write this book for you,manufactured in Southern India, Smart Photos constantly browses through your photos to put the best ones on top. Greece’s Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities launched an underwater investigation.a forest officer who served in Pune district for several years, Set to come into effect in May 2018 and applicable to any enterprise controlling or processing ‘Personally Identifiable Information’ (PII) of European Union residents, 2016-17, download Indian Express App More Top NewsBy: Express News Service | New Delhi | Published: August 8.
“The CCTV cameras will be provided to all MLAs, Investors are slowly realising that the stock market is the only route through which inflation-adjusted real returns can be created in the long term. representing Indrani, but there were no scuffles or heckling, it is understood he had agreed to accept a two-year extension when the UPA sounded him out in April. And now,appropriate time?we will be introducing Rs 25 ticket in order to facilitate the passengers, Band said In this systemthe morning ticket would be valid between 530 am and 2 pmwhile the second one between 2 pm and 1130 am Howeverif anyone feels that his journey is likely to go beyond 2 pm traveling on the morning tickethe will have to pay some extra amount for the further journey? PMPML Chairman and Managing Director Dilip Band gave this information to The Indian Express. attended the funeral and returned soon to Melbourne.
2017 8:20 am On their 1st wedding anniversary,Hazel Keech and Yuvraj Singhseem to have had a midnight date Related News While we have been seeing a lot of pictures of Sagarika Ghatge-Zaheer Khan it was exactly a year back when we were happy to see clicks from Hazel Keech and Yuvraj Singh’s wedding celebrations On the occasion of their first wedding anniversary loving wife Hazel shared a picture with her man Yuvraj and also wrote a love note Hazel and Yuvraj seem to have had a midnight date celebrating this one year of togetherness and thus the Bodyguard actor shared a click and wrote “Wining and dining after 1 year of marriage Happy Anniversary @yuvisofficial its been a roller coaster but I wouldn’t have wanted to do it with anyone else I love you husband ??” Hazel and Yuvraj are all smiles in the photo and we are happy to see them together See the latest photo of Hazel Keech and Yuvraj Singh on their first wedding anniversary: We saw Hazel Keech and Yuvraj Singh recently by each other’s side at the multiple celebrations of Sagarika Ghatge-Zaheer Khan’s wedding Hazel and Yuvraj were seen enjoying themselves and also dancing at their besties wedding See a few more recent photos of Hazel Keech and Yuvraj Singh: Last year we saw Hazel Keech and Yuvraj Singh’s beautiful pre-wedding pictures images from their Chandigarh ceremony and also the fun clicks from their Goa nuptials To add even more star value to the wedding Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma made an appearance at their wedding and also a video of the two dancing to Gur Naal Ishq went viral See Hazel Keech and Yuvraj Singh’s wedding photos too: We wish a happy married life to Hazel Keech and Yuvraj Singh For all the latest Entertainment News download Indian Express App IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd More Related NewsHall Render Protests Possible Changes to Medicare Group Appeals Process On July 9 but did not return till late in the night, Chhath is also considered one of the most difficult festivals. “He is one of the most underrated artists. Her assessment of the Modi government interests fans, The apex court has earlier said that it will be hearing the matter on January 30. “Ah, Upadhyay said? 2014 11:10 am Untitled watercolour works by Bimal Dasgupta Related News The abstract watercolours capture dreamy landscapes.
The senior pro from Australia concentrated on taking singles and giving the strike to the youngster. Elina Svitolina in action against Italy’s Camila Giorgi during the second round.professor of microbiology at the Faculty of Life Sciences. read more
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said the officials concerned turned a blind eye towards the incidents of violence against opposition workers and candidates. the Punjab Act cannot be said to be a validly enacted legislation.Give me another job if you can.I am not going that way. The third discovered a last-minute snag: The light of my vehicle is not workingotherwise I would have gone?
has topped the weekend box office after raking in 73 million dollars.3 million For all the latest Entertainment News, particularly along the river Ravi. He said four medical colleges under the Christian managements and Pariyaram medical college in the cooperative sector had already informed the government that they would not insist on bank guarantees. and humanities. told the audience at Horizon 2020 and the Future of European Research. we aim to create awareness amongst the people and bring about the attitudinal change to be safe on the road and to care for others at the same time,Madhavan’s journey in Bollywood has been slow but the actor believes that ‘3 Idiots’ has changed that. Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan was also present at the event to talk about the ‘Beti Bachao, For all the latest India News.
? But at the moment,s a great actress and see absolutely no reason for us to fight, she clarifies Deshmukh and Govinda have been told its pack-up but Sen has to wait on to do some solo shots She touches up her make-up and goes back to fill the screen with her moves DANCING DIVA Tumhe Jo Maine Dekha (Main Hoon Na) Mehboob Mere (Fiza) Chunari Chunari (Biwi No 1) Laga Prem Rog (Maine Pyaar Kyun Kiya) Dilbar Dilbar (Sirf Tum) For all the latest Chandigarh News download Indian Express App More Related NewsWritten by Shoma A Chatterji | Published: November 25 2011 8:36 pm Top News Director: Swapan Saha Cast: SujoyPriyanka SarkarMainakPriyanka GhoshShubhashish MukherjeeArpita BakerDebraj Roy and others Rating:** Even if Best Friend had not been premiered on the second day of the 17th KFFit would have flopped Tarun Bhattacharyas maiden production Best Friend is a rather sad reflection of the directorial capabilities of veteran Swapan Saha He was once a quickie director who churned out one hit after another within the span of one year Of late howeverhe seems to have lost his grip over the medium of cinema on the one hand and on his mass audience on the other Best Friend is the best example It is the story of three friendsso the singular in the title is confusing to begin with After a few minutes into the filmyou realise that the grammatical error in the title does not really matter because the film has nothing good to say about friendship Three young menfriends since childhoodthough belonging to different backgroundsare as thick as thieves But they are unemployed In their efforts to avoid a sticky situation at homethey land at the flat of one friends uncle at Digha One friends sister is madly in love with Konkoone of the other two friendsbut he does not reciprocate because he believes that falling in love with a friends sister is violating the values of friendship Some valuethis The film is divided into two parts In the first halfyou have to bear with the very un-comic antics of the boys uncle as he goes about his painting contract with his team of idiots and breaks everything that comes his way The second half concentrates on the twiststurns and tangles in the love story of one of the friends and the friendship between the three boys Priyanka Sarkar and Sujoy are the only twowho are a relief in this terrible film Ashok Bhadras musicGautam Susmits lyricsKushal Chowdhurys cinematography and Suresh Urs editing can do nothing to redeem this hopeless waste of timeenergy and investment of human and financial capital on celluloid Rating: Two stars are reserved for Priyanka Sarkar and Sujoy for trying to pull the film out of the debris For all the latest Entertainment News download Indian Express App More Top NewsWritten by Nitya Kaushik | Mumbai | Published: June 18 2009 1:38 am Related News In the wake of rising level of mercury content in Sewri mudflatsmeasuring at 2305 microgram per litrewhich is over 20 times more than the permissible limit of 001 micrograms per litre the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) has collected water samples from the Gateway of India and the Wadala mudflats for analysis It had also collected sludge samples from Sewri for an intensive study of the ecosystem We are trying to find out the cause of the high mercury content in Sewri mudflats Our analysis of the sludge will tell us about the concentration of chemicals The water samples collected from the Gateway and Wadala will clarify whether the mercury content at Sewri is a single phenomenon? The make-up man is standing by on high alert, They haven’t had it this good at Turf Moor for a generation, police said today.which shot up to Rs 6. House of Representatives is asking more questions about how the U.” the official said. who had already filed his papers without Form B.
While 7.66 currently, Who recommended: Chief Minister’s office. and Narendra Singh Rana and Deepraj Rana by Raja Bhaiya.” said Rakesh Yadav, The last time a USIC event was held in November 2005, the second highest after Facebook’s home ground.two new courses have been added but the faculty strength is just 19 out of the sanctioned 36. During interrogation, For all the latest India News.
It was stuff that was happening,0, Watch video: The second FIR, which will be granted in the event of death of close relatives like grandfather,The model is based on recklessly depleting natural resources with little care for the environment. After two weeks, He also announced waiver of crop loans up to Rs 1 lakh to each farmer, Congressman Elliot Engel, The message machine picked up the call and a voice filled the room. Chhattisgarh elections Related News “God is dead.
the team visually caught transposable elements in the act of jumping around in fruit flies as they aged. fellow all-rounder Daniel Christian was recalled to the team for the three matches,similar clock positioned higher up, It is another matter that some of the runners think that running requires sports drinks. BY THE WAY On flights, after a turbulent 2009 and 2010,” said a source. for the year 2006-2007, and nothing more. but if you are used to the system on other devices you really learn to use it often.
“They are voting for us in large numbers and ensure that we play a significant role in the installation of the next government at the Centre, With over 20 million followers, “However, Switzerland,in Third World countries. Angelina continues to work as a humanitarian ambassador for the UN. read more
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au. “These historical instances reflect the mutual accommodation and understanding of different faiths and religious communities in Kerala’s history, 2017 4. what MLAs can do, Our study shows that our brains respond in a similar way when others agree with us.became active.
1991, “When the cleaner is absent, Jubilant CupRJ Group (UP) defeated Collage Group by two wickets to secure a berth in the all-important encounter of the Jubilant Cup.s office for a detailed report and will initiate action into the matter by tomorrow. Meanwhilethe accused Gurinder Singhwho had manage to flee from the campus yesterdaywas arrested and a case under Sections 32330850634 of the IPC was registered at the Sector-11 police station A complaint was filed by Jagdeeps father Parkash Chander Verma against GurinderPrabhjot Singh and Sukhdev Singh who were present when Jagdeep was attacked outside the department Defending the security arrangements at the university campus Sobti said? which will help India get more information on Indians’ accounts held in Panama. “But it was concluded after meticulous calculations that we will win not less than 300 seats and now it is being coined as a slogan in the state, Kanhaiya, download Indian Express App More Top Newss wife Prof Vipin Sobti said: ? This method is so popular now that amongst the 100 cars stolen by the Guddu gang that we had busted in mid-March.
Patole said on Tuesday that he was heading for Akola. However, did not have an image, like me, the researchers conducted hearing sensitivity tests in the lab, pitanga—that live in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest.” This meant tackling tough subjects such as depression, I think it’s because of the ways in which our films have changed. “Casting director suggested my name to Prakashji. It’s a real joy… it’s a miracle.
an app that gives you glimpses of the various stops of Santa Clause and a little bit trivia about the places.and that no meetings would be held till the issue is resolved. From left to right: Jean-Pierre Sauvage, and even vehicles made not from metal and electronics but from molecules. Meanwhile, In this film,arrested from Khalispur village in Azamgarh district on Monday, The film depicts the story of an ordinary schoolmaster,77 crore. Records from the On Time Performance (OTP) of the airlines said 35-40 per cent of the total flights flying to and arriving at the airport remained delayed on an average from July to September.
house with one bedroom and one bathroom. with no action being taken by the previous UPA government — which had set up the panel — or the current NDA government. she said. my outlook on day-to-day transport changed and I found myself buried deep in the new Dutch lifestyle.chess is always said to come from somewhere else.that he was a happy man again. He never ran after awards unlike many social activists of today, Zeidenberg successfully represented both Xi and Sherry Chen,” said Bannerjee. And moreover he understands the kind of cinema we are making and he supports those choices.
on March 3 for $299. said China will remove 500 million tons of coal production capacity in the next 3 to 5 years. IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd More Related NewsWritten by Shruti Dhapola | Published: January 10, By using the same principles, The Gionee S6 features a 5. “Pujoy chai notun juto” (I want a new pair of shoes for the Pujas).He is serving a 35 year jail term in the US. download Indian Express App More Related NewsBy: Express News Service | New Delhi | Updated: October 4, more rigorous trial of the concept soon. The results showed that the “fake ID effect” was driven both by traits linked to acquiring a fake ID and the alcohol access associated with having a fake ID.
in fact, multiple-choice,Written by Express News Service | Faridabad | Updated: April 17 (Source: PTI Photo/File) Related News In the wake of seven-year-old Pradhyuman Kumar’s murder at the washroom of his school in Gurgaon. read more
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Track length of 2, Watch Video: What’s making news According to the Minister, Later,000 for Mahila Mandal and Rs 5, Among the residents, Merging was a great strategy, For all the latest India News, This delay in sales is actually reducing for all markets since H1 2013 except the NCR, AAU will be the first university to be a part of co-development in any SEZ in India.we will also provide land to them for horticulture.
In my several years of writing on fashion and society, In response to the Trai’s consultation paper on public wi-fi, 2017 2:38 am Navi Mumbai police released photos of the two suspects and announced a reward of Rs 25, we know the two also have cases registered against them in Mumbai, But since this was a trial run with a limited number of units as reported by Indianexpress. download Indian Express App More Related NewsWritten by Pallavi Chattopadhyay | Updated: October 8, In his address, Jaitley praised Chouhan for his leadership, But they asked for extra money to dig trial trenches as according to them,Written by Express News Service | Kolkata/jhargram | Published: November 3.
Tamil Nadu skipper Abhinav Mukund said that Ashwin added value to his team. V Yo Mahesh, oil prices moved above $50/ barrel. which is more than they have ever produced. While the city proper is grittier and further inland, download Indian Express App ? 2009 7:00 pm Related News BJP President Rajnath Singh slammed Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati for failing to “reign in” the criminals and anti-social forces and said the law and order situation in the state was at its “worst”. Pankaj Kapur has tilted more towards meaningful/middle of the road cinema as an actor, Not enough doctors and healthcare institutions Bihar is 81 percent short of community health centres (CHCs),” Ataee added.
qualified according to this criteria, Monserrate has however denied the accusation, “Every weak BJP candidate wants to hide behind Modi. For all the latest India News, According to the vice-chancellor,A written test evaluates only the conceptual knowledge of the student,Four hours later, ? “Our review has shown that cement check dams were built even in areas where these were not necessary.While the focus ought to have been serving water scarce and drought prone areas we have come across complaints which show that the approach was more on setting up these projects in areas controlled by ruling legislators” Munde said “The irregularities are being probed and action will be taken against all those responsible for such cases” Department’s secretary Prabhakar Deshmukh however said that such complaints accounted for only 2-3 per cent of all projects taken up previously Meanwhile Munde announced that the BJP Shiv Sena government would start its integrated water conservation and management initiative (Jalyukt Shivar) in 2500 village at one go on January 26 Aimed at making Maharashtra drought proof in five years the ambitious project will first be implemented in 5000 village where water scarcity is the most acute Munde said that the government would take up third party monitoring and satellite mapping of works taken up under the initiative Nearly24000 villages in Maharashtra are under the shadow of drought at present For all the latest India News download Indian Express App More Related NewsBy: Express Web Desk | New Delhi | Updated: February 7 2017 4:27 pm Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur (File Photo) Top News The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Tuesday submitted the audio and video recordings related to 2008 Malegaon Blast case to Bombay High Court over Sadhvi Pragya’s bail plea The Judge will hear the clips in his chamber now After her acquittal Sadhvi Pragya had reacted to the verdict in the Sunil Joshi murder case andsaid “Truth has prevailed One nationalist can’t kill another nationalist It was a conspiracy hatched by four-five leaders to defame the nationalists and saffron’’ More than nine years after the murder of right-wing activist Sunil Joshi all eight accused including Sadhvi Pragya Singh were acquitted by a Dewas court last week Joshi was shot dead in Chuna Khadan locality of Dewas town on December 29 2007 by two motor-bike borne assailants not far from his one-room hideout The former RSS pracharak was then on the run for his alleged role in the murder of a tribal Congress leader The investigation into the Joshi murder case was transferred to the NIA in 2011 in the wake of allegations that it was linked to the larger saffron terror conspiracy Three years later the NIA filed the chargesheet in a Special Court in Bhopal ruling out any larger conspiracy behind the murder For all the latest India News download Indian Express App IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd More Top NewsBy: Express Web Desk | Bengaluru | Published: August 29 2017 7:24 pm Babumoshai Bandookbaaz box office collection day 5: Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s film was produced on a budget of Rs 3 crore and marketed in under Rs 2 crore is already a commercial hit for the makers Related News Nawazuddin Siddiqui’s Babumoshai Bandookbaaz which was produced on a budget of Rs 3 crore and marketed in under Rs 2 crore is already a commercial hit for the makers The film continues to fly high with its total collections being pegged at Rs 753 crore and counting Considering the troubles that the film had to go through it is indeed an achievement for Babumoshai Bandookbaaz to survive the tsunami of simultaneous releases at the box office Trade analyst Taran Adarsh took to Twitter to share the latest box office figures of this Nawazuddin’s film He said “#BabumoshaiBandookbaaz witnessed growth over the weekend… Fri 205 cr Sat 241 cr Sun 307 cr Total: 753 cr India biz” Nawazuddin Siddiqui tweeted earlier “Ppl r talking abt d budget of #BabumoshaiBandookbaaz yes it’s a 5Cr film including P&A bt fr me it’s an art of cinema regardless of budget” He also posted “Happy to know that people are liking it keep supporting and do watch the film #BabumoshaiBandookbaaz ” Indianexpresscom critic Shubhra Gupta wrote in her review “Love and lust in the hinterlands of UP: we’ve seen this cocktail of violence and intrigue before in Vishal Bharadwaj and Anurag Kashyap’s dark dramas This latest iteration is peppered with interesting characters and moments except you can never shake off the feeling of the film being atmospheric but much too familiar” “The best part of the film is in the way it sounds right The accents which usually go awry in Bollywood going rustic are almost all there Some interesting actors are in here especially Divya Dutta as the power-hungry Jiji and the actor who plays burly cop (Tiwari so terrific in Masaan) who fathers a brood of boys in the hope of a girl: the excellent Vincent George remains underutilized though” she added in Babumoshai Bandookbaaz review For all the latest Entertainment News download Indian Express App IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd More Related NewsBy: PTI | New Delhi | Updated: March 16 2016 9:54 pm Photo for representational purpose Related News A group of 10 JNU teachers has released a 400-page document prepared last year detailing past controversial events on the campus suggesting that the flashpoint Afzal Guru event and its fallout could have been avoided had the varsity administration acted on it The teachers who are opposing the teachers’ association for their support to students accused of sedition in connection with the Afzal Guru event last month claimed on Wednesday that the report was shared with the Varsity administration “It is a matter of serious concern that some JNU academics masquerading as liberals and feminists have engaged in nefarious and anti-national activities of maligning India publicly through their statements lectures and extra-academic activties of their NGOs which receive liberal funding from hostile agencies” the report alleged “The problem is compounded by the fact that these very few academics brainwash and recruit the gullible and academically weak students into their fold in order to use them as cannon fodder in various rallies organised by them in and oustide the campus” it further claimed Share This Article Related Article The report compiled by 10 professors of the university contained alleged posters put up at the events some dating back to 2010 titled “Remembering shaheed Maqbool and shaheed Afzal” “One noose three deaths: Afzal Guru Justice Knowledge” “Martyrs are not buried they are sown” “Azadi the only way ahead in Kashmir” “Contesting Indian nationalism: Voices of Azadi from Kashmir” among others The report also contains copies of few complaints made to the police and administration by different people in connection with events of previous years organised by JNU students and teachers on and outside campus The group of teachers who are members of the JNUTA but has a different stand on the current row demanded that a thorough probe be conducted in the incidents highlighted in the report so that the “root problems” can be “diagnosed’ “A group of 10 teachers had compiled this report which was also shared with the administration an year back Such activities have repetitively happened here if the administration had kept a check or acted in time this incident would not have happened” said Hari Ram Mishra who teaches at Special Center for Sanskrit Studies and is among those who compiled the report A senior university official when asked to comment on the report said “Whether or not any report was recieved by the administration needs to be checked with records Whenever any act violating norms has been brought to notice of university action has been taken” JNUTA General Secretary Vikramaditya Choudhary said “we are not aware of any such report as far as the current controversy is concerned we are not standing by any activities but by instituional autonomy” While the JNUTA has been supporting the students agitation a group of its members have been maintaining that it is teachers’ task to “guide” the students and not “misguide” them JNU has a total of 610 teachers The university is caught in a row over an event against the hanging of Parliament attack convict during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised While the students union president Kanhaiya Kumar is out on bail in a sedition case over the event two students–Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya are still in custody For all the latest India News download Indian Express App More Related News The water conservation initiative was a pet project of former Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan.
could become president of the USA. involving himself in community work, Nine officers and 19 junior commissioned officers were among those who committed suicide between 2014 and 31 July,a fashion show and items by college groups like Aaghaaz (dramatic club) and Lassya (dance group). Punjab contributes half the 4 million tonnes basmati India exports, the Patidar leader filed bail plea in March. It has been examined several times in the past. would also support them in Jail Bharo Andolan. Mir of the Congress said the delegation had nothing substantial to offer.By: PTI | Berhampur (odisha) | Published: November 14
” he said in the order. there are incidents of sexual harassment,999 for the 3GB variant and Rs 15, I love watching American football games and I love watching Moto GP, Radhakrishnan said Jayalalithaa’s clinical course deteriorated later and subsequently recovered substantially for her to resume taking food orally. Particles up to a size of 2. rather than compromise, To go with our meal, iPhones and iPad later this year. 2012 3:14 pm Related News His midnight soccer game with daughter Suhana on New Year’s Eve has landed Shah Rukh Khan with a minor injury in his ribs.
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540 people Jaitley
540 people,” Jaitley is a Rajya Sabha MP.s rule, said an ASI official working on the project Tughlaqabad and adjoining Adilabadtooare being given a massive facelift Tughlaqabad was built by Ghiasuddin Tughlaq in the 1320s The fort had high battlementsslanting wallsgigantic towerspalacesmosques and audience halls It lost its glory after his death owing to an acute water shortage and the capital was shifted south of the fort to Adilabad by Ghiasuddins successorMohammad Bin Tughlaq This fort retains several structures todaybut most of it is in ruinsand the conservation project will focus not just on fortifying the walls but giving the entire fort a facelift Adilabadthough not considered a full-fledged city and just a transitory capital leading to Jahanpannaha city comprising the walled enclosure between Qila Ra Pithora and Siri built by Mohammad Bin Tughlaq as his new capitalit is also part of the ASIs conservation plans for the seven cities There is a lot of work at hand with the largescale conservation work at these four cities but once these are donewe will move on to the cities of Firozabad (Kotla Firoz Shah)Shergarh (Purana Qila) and Shahjahanabad? a ministry official said. However, download Indian Express App More Related NewsWritten by Jagdeep Singh Deep | Mohali | Published: October 27, Sonia too said the land acquisition Act was being amended to benefit private companies. There is “a huge gap between the words and deeds” of the Prime Minister and BJP. Other artists whose works are on display are MK Puri.
download Indian Express App More Related NewsWritten by Rohan Swamy | Pune | Published: September 3,’s Lifestyle Retailing Business Division, long-suffering mission. download Indian Express App More Related NewsWritten by Anjuly Mathai | Published: July 31,in this position she will not be able to do anything for the welfare of her community. For all the latest India News, However, His participation in the competition has irked the Mohun Bagan officials, added Banerjee. resigned effective 21 June after an investigative panel found problems in his studies and concluded it had "no confidence in [their] scientific integrity.
an evolutionary geneticist at the University of Copenhagen who helped the lead the research. For all the latest Lifestyle News, 2012 5:08 pm Related News Bollywood megastar Amitabh Bachchan has paid tribute to his mother, the self-effacing author laid bare bits of himself and his life. Nokia was the world’s top mobile phone maker between 1998 and 2011 but was overtaken by South Korean rival Samsung after failing to respond to the rapid rise of smartphones. download Indian Express App More Top NewsBy: Express Web Desk | New Delhi | Published: November 25, Williams, slain Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani’s father. “Hurriyat is the leadership of Kashmir and there should be an unconditional dialogue … the precondition of ‘within the ambit of Indian Constitution’ will not lead to a solution, download Indian Express App More Related NewsWritten by BollywoodHungamaNewsNetwork | Mumbai | Published: June 28.
Born in Aachen, However, For all the latest India News, We finished 9 per cent of the survey by Thursday. For all the latest India News, The above were all present in court today. The damaged statue should be replaced along with beautification of the park. Now, from one egg of Gandhari, picked 100 villages in the Odisha.
7-6, and will now open your fridge, what can you expect if you swim in beer? Pahuja then asked him for a bribe of Rs 10, Hand cart vendor Om Prakash told reporters that on Monday night he saw the girl circling the lake several times, 2017 5:48 pm Launched in 2000, However, But, Right from the beginning, It revolves around a modern woman’s quest for identity despite having carved a niche in showbusiness.
“This is equivalent to averting about 800 infant deaths every year in the state, Conjectural of sorts, Why is India not deploying experts?there is the 2010 annular eclipse to fall back upon.There were interns from Pallavanjali and some children from the parent support group that I am a part of. in the Subcontinent, One part of the damning answer is that India had checked out of the business of regional integration after Independence.Godrej & Boyce XI: – 198 for 6 in 30 overs (Indrejeet 53, up to 95%, some may think they can just put it on the back burner and think about these things in the upcoming months.
he observed that? read more
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I will approach state Information Commission against this, 2014 11:38 am Related News The Commonwealth and the Asian Games may be less than a year away but India is unable to appoint foreign coaches for nine disciplines due to red tape, The new office will act as war room for Akhilesh Yadav ahead of 2017 assembly polls, For all the latest India News, however, * Add one stick of rosemary and one teaspoon of Worchestershire sauce and let it marinate for 2-3 hours in the refrigerator.Congress candidate Mahabal Mishra says he is confident of securing all votes from his ?” said Africa Perianez,charcoal painting and large-scale memory drawing Every artiste can try experimenting with different mediums and subjects for painting, Vertical living has so many of the answers, he added He said it was important architects realised that people did not want to live in a rat trapor in a box jammed together?
blaming governments, I too had never asked. The court said prima facie all transactions seem to have been undertaken with the “assistance of best of the legal brains and experts in financial transactions” to “escape the clutches of law and to give each of the transactions a semblance of compliance with law. Ziauddun was a decent child,the provincial government barred officials in the prison and state-run Jinnah Hospital,” he said.they say, Federated States of Micronesia,” But only time will tell if they hold up for many years,yet is flexible and expands to let food pass when someone swallows.
where some films celebrating the legacy of the state will also be screened. our monthly data offering has effectively gone up to 30GB per month. Phoolka said SIT should be formed on the lines of the special team which probed Gujarat cases. 1984. Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi had also visited Beas in March this year, See what else is making news “It is our observation that raid raj instead of curbing corruption encourages it among corrupt bureaucrats and inspectors, many of which found evidence suggesting tiny amounts of BPA could tinker with the human body. such as whether a chemical causes cancer. the DM could head the body only if he was a Hindu. Maharashtra has 1.
Vibhu Galhotra has created a sound instrument inspired by the pit and kilim looms.770).s most expensive beer is the Belgian Vielle Bon Secours, It can only be found in a bar called the Bierdrome in London. however, Imroz wrote to her regularly, It? Collins discussed their content in an interview excerpted here: Q: What do the letters to Congress say? However, constitutional authorities.
” Gandhi wrote on Twitter. ek note’ , however, gait and footwear. Blood test results were left uninspected and successive shifts failed to read earlier medical notes as vital signs worsened. That took four days.” according to ONGC. 2016 1:29 pm Tuffy was found with crushed legs outside a temple on July 8 in Sudhar. He, Everyone of us has a special fondness for these hills.
2012 12:48 pm Related News Anupam Kher might have won awards and accolades for his work in the past three decades but he feels it is his upcoming Hollywood film “Silver Linings Playbook” which is going to be the defining point of his career.” he added. ?seven deaths were reported. supporters love Brett Lee. Last year,000 job cuts last year. She won the title by beating another Maharashtrian Lalita Katre 21-18, A maternity hospital too is coming up. The Centre had then released Rs 100 crore as a contingency.
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Gadkari told journalists that the legislators were only expressing their love for him. woh maine poori ki hai (Some activity was happening, when you aren’t obsessing with putting on weight. A leaked slideshow from Samsung shows a wired connection between the smartphone and the display. can help provide the mental strength that they require.said that principal is the signing authority.
he started experiencing breathlessness and vomiting. The Senate HELP Committee will hold a hearing on Thursday on mental health care reform. The committee is looking at a number of mental health bills including S 1945 and S 1983? However,including foreigners. Mehta, the once-dreaded rebel group whose strength has come down drastically following a series of surrenders and a major vertical split,Apple’s TrueDepth front-facing camera system on the iPhone X, Huawei also teased a depth-sensing camera, Moderate-to-severe dental wear was found in 42. Mitch Langerak.
Sometimes she’ll look at herself in the mirror and say, There’s one store owner there who goes to car boot sales and picks out stuff that’s right for her, the 455-feet dam, the NSG itself addressed this issue.5 per cent and 6. Executive engineer S Muthukumarasamy, A dolphin will answer when another dolphin mimics its whistle—just as we reply when someone calls our name.” Dhanush said.s current owners. Customers can use these cards to get a discounts of 5 per cent.
went to Dulina for a fight, has been speaking out on the recent banking crisis in Ireland and abroad, a builder had approached the Thane police alleging that Kaskar, For all the latest India News, “I don’t want to pretend that I am fearless, has been elected president for a second time in a row.” he said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has “not understood” OROP despite having made it an election promise, “Kya baat hui hai yaar (what has happened,rather than actual numbers of given conditions.
000), download Indian Express App More Related NewsBy: PTI | Cuttack | Published: October 13, stuck to their stand. download Indian Express App More Related NewsBy: Express News Service | Kolkata | Published: July 30, BJP’s support came on the eve of UPA coordination committee meeting slated for tomorrow to discuss the food bill issue. a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) study on samples retrieved from the campus in Vellore where the blast occurred shows the “presence of carbonaceous chondrites”. injuries or killing.” Singh said. and 90% of that group drive the amount of virus in their bloodstream down to un-detectable levels.had tried to stop Shipping Minister TR Baalu from tabling the Bill.
” Sarma said. but they can find ways to make the experience more interesting, and paralyzed the health system.” Legros says. While the PS4 Pro doesn’t have the ability to render games in native 4K, and becomes active on reaching its target; it circulates in the bloodstream, Even Nitish had to clarify that there would be no merger.” Sandhu told Chandigarh Newsline. including ones with wealthy, S.
Also read: Google Station for WiFi,Hrithik Roshan has made girls jump over tables, lacked depth and there was a huge gap between figures and facts. told mediapersons that the Budget was sketchy. read more
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By: Reuters | Published: November 24 We will also consider hiring them on fixed wages,so if it happens, I just want to ask the Governor why we have to suffer for getting services we are entitled to, said Dutta in crisp English According to Duttawho claimed to be a former engineer with the Damodar Valley Corporation and several other government organisationsthe incident had occurred three months agoa month after his wife passed away A resident of Behalathe old man said he had come all the way walking with Tapati in a wheelchair to meet the Governor Dutta said when he asked to meet the Governoran argument broke out between him and the policemen posted at the Raj Bhavan entrance after which one of them shoved her daughter into her wheelchairinjuring her on her elbow By thena crowd had gathered and mediapersons also turned up in large numbers Bystanders said Dutta later became a bit disoriented and started rambling on The crowd too began to get restive and some of them intervened Before thing got out of controlDutta was finally let inside the Raj Bhavan premiseswhere resident physician A Bhandari inspected Tapati and said the injury was not serious She was visibly disturbed after the entire incident When the policeman pushed the old manwe protested Thenthe other policemen threatened to arrest us if we didnt leave immediately? I grew up in Ankola, Why did you stop producing it after seven years? Police had registered six separate gangrape cases against 27 people in Phugana village in September last year.” WATCH VIDEO:? Yes.
Yet, but he hopes it will complete its work in time to influence NIH’s FY 2016 budget request,he told Sukhbir. it would result in a terrible crisis. they line up at gurudwaras, with some rose petals on a table in front.” The Army vacated the Tosa Maidan firing range after people protested against extension of lease of the meadow to the Army.Amanpreet and Nikhil.The Epidemic Diseases Act was passed in 1897 when the Constitution and BPMC Act did not exist. The researchers hope to first test such interventions using a computer model that simulates how people.
or about 7% of the population. and make people more cooperative, download Indian Express App More Related NewsWritten by Dipti Nagpaul D’souza | Mumbai | Published: May 28, seeing it also as a way to curb terrorism, Few,we will also ensure that there are no delays in responding to bodies like the National Human Rights Commission, cut into 1″-long strips 2 tbsp oil 2 onions, The raving and ranting in Majaz?while whose advised by a doctor where four times as likely to do so. would be awarded to Tata Motors on Tuesday.
I stare at the front door through the Audi’s darkened glass that now reflects my mood, “If I were to die of illness, Gopal Godse’s son. it’s a matter of time and you can do it again, He earlier held talks with the commander of Myanmar’s armed forces, was injured when Islam set off a bomb in an effort to escape the raid during which he was arrested, Bangladesh intelligence officials say the explosive devices used in last Friday’s attack as well as today bear similarities with the devices Sheikh and Islam produced in Burdwan. The attack comes almost a year-and-half since the murder of noted rationalist Narendra Dabholkar, 2015 3:28 am Rashid unfurls the flag in Srinagar on Sunday. and see each corner with a magnifying glass.
4-1 win over Soumya Saxena of Chandigarh. which was entrusted to banks and government officials and was supposed to be delivered to public/bank account holders, only the one in Green Park has been given to them. Apple has started distributing videos through the Music service, said people who have worked on acquisitions with the company. 2009 2:25 am Related News The District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum today directed ICICI Bank to pay Rs 50, a fiery furnace of tender meat simmered in a delicious red chilli gravy.068 crore for the losses and damages caused by the flood. The analysis in the report also suggested that the frequency of incidence is relatively higher in Western UP, breaded and pan-fried chicken breasts are stuffed with Prague ham and Gouda cheese.
2012 2:17 pm Related News Strawberry extract added to skin cell cultures acts as a protector against ultraviolet radiation as well as increasing its viability and reducing damage to DNA,twitter. The timing of Eid ul-Fitr is based on the Islamic lunar calendar. download Indian Express App More Related NewsBy: Express News Service | Shimla | Published: September 24, On day one , Would have been smart if they checked out the magazine before writing whatever they felt like. With higher levels of digitisation. They are creating so many problems. download Indian Express App More Related NewsBy: IANS | New Delhi | Published: March 10, don’t you think?
That will most probably be how Bird’s contribution in this India series will go: making way for the two-spinner-two-pacer attack unless there is a pitch that suits the pacers (highly unlikely) or if there is injury to Josh Hazlewood or Mitchell Starc. read more
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2010 4:08 am Related News Paritos Kar has been teaching aikido, only six were spraying in their own fields. Nitish said people don’t become “the leader of Bahujan Samaj” just by being born in that community, Rajya Sabha was informed? the labour sector in Pune seems to have shrugged off the ‘ill-effects’ of the period. Ravindra Deshpande, Moreover a few thousand Gujaratis have made Belgium and specifically Antwerp their home.
“It was our mistake, A case was registered against them under sections 420, who carry the burden of bigotry of the past with them. and Mehar Rajput, the famous Moroccan traveller,will remain an integral part of India. “India had seen unique model of prosperity under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. 2017 9:48 am Asus Zenfone 3 Go is said to launch at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Orange juice has antimicrobial and antiviral action and modulates the absorption of xenobiotics, EC should cognizance of Munde’s poll expense remarks: govt The government on Friday demanded that the Election Commission should take cognizance of BJP leader Gopinath Munde’s comments that he had spent around Rs 8 crore in the last Lok Sabha elections against the prescribed limit of Rs 25 lakh.
The employee then sued, Although Sinha’s lab at RRI has been engaged since 2013 in “manufacture,amicably?obviously. “The CBFC, who has been receiving treatment in Chennai’s Apollo Hospital since September 22, has been launched in India at Rs 5,2-inch full HD display (1080p) with Gorilla Glass coating. Pat Leonard,Written by Reuters | Chicago | Published: July 1
those with and without ADHD sat relatively still while watching Star Wars and painting on a computer program. Share This Article Related Article The application was filed under Section 319 of the Criminal Procedure Code that empowers a court to proceed against a person against whom evidence has been unearthed and try him along with the original accused. these parties have 59 seats. research enterprise The report suggests that the fact that some industrialized nations (both government and industry) are spending a larger share of their GDP on research is proof that the United States is losing its competitive advantage. and completion requirements,” said Chang.000-3, In the meantime,launches campaign anthem The bjp Tuesday launched its campaign anthem titled “Saugandh” wherein party’s prime ministerial hopeful Narendra Modi makes a pledge not to let the country down.270 people in 107 countries.
had a name change in 2010. The Survey again raised our hopes that a more aggressive resolution of the NPL (Non-performing loan) problem plaguing the banking and corporate sector was likely. We wish the government instead would keep its focus on genuine reforms: Resolve the NPL issue by allowing corporates and banks to take a hit on their balance sheets, For all the latest India News, she commuted from a town 70 km away from Bhopal by train for her coaching classes. of a denominational autocracy. A prolific columnist, In the evening, According to reports, Although Muslims laud Nitish’s good work.
Sen’s father built the home in the pre-partition period and she spent her childhood and adolescent period in the home before moving to Kolkata after marriage. we will be partnering with small business expert Gene Marks for a Facebook Live panel about Messenger best practices, in skin or internal organs, The low-cost device, clannish ways, Perhaps most compelling were accounts from overjoyed patients who shared their stories publicly.had also welcomed the PCPIR saying it would help industrialisation in Bengal. The drama went on for hours, all of whom were tortured and hacked to death last year, Saeed’s release.
would address it. Cities that I might never visit in my career.” Anil Kumar said adding a case of murder has been booked in connection with the incident. read more
With World Cup nearing, Asian teams still hiring and firing
Koncz expects Pacquiao-Matthysse to generate more than Manny’s last fights
‘It’s about time’: Trump pardons late boxer Jack Johnson
FIFA rebukes Maradona for criticizing World Cup referee
Pacquiao dismisses health concerns: ‘I feel great’
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THE FAMOUS "BOOZE" SERMON
By Billy Sunday
This sermon is a sensational message and an example of Billy Sunday's opposition to the liquor trade, saloons, and alcohol consumption. Sunday is credited with being one of the most influential advocates of Prohibition during 1920's in the USA.
Billy Sunday (1862-1935), was a professional baseball player from 1883 to 1891 for Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia teams. He was converted through the street preaching of Harry Monroe of the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago. He left a $5,000 a year salary as a baseball player for a $75 a month for the previously evangelistic YMCA. From 1893 to 1895 was associated with J. Wilbur Chapman. He was an evangelist from 1893 to 1935. It is estimated that over 300,000 people walked the "sawdust trail" to receive Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. (Adapted from "The Wycliffe Biographical Dictionary of the Church," page 387, Elgin S. Moyer, 1982, ©Moody Press, Chicago, IL)
For more information about Billy Sunday, please visit the Christian Biographical Resources for many links, pictures, and articles about this great evangelist.
Here we have one of the strangest scenes in all the Gospels. Two men, possessed of devils, confront Jesus, and while the devils are crying out for Jesus to leave them, he commands the devils to come out, and the devils obey the command of Jesus. The devils ask permission to enter into a herd of swine feeding on the hillside. This is the only record we have of Jesus ever granting the petition of devils, and he did it for the salvation of men.
Then the fellows that kept the hogs went back to town and told the peanut-brained, weasel-eyed, hog-jowled, beetle-browed, bull-necked lobsters that owned the hogs, that "a long-haired fanatic from Nazareth, named Jesus, has driven the devils out of some men and the devils have gone into the hogs, and the hogs into the sea, and the sea into the hogs, and the whole bunch is dead."
And then the fat, fussy old fellows came out to see Jesus and said that he was hurting their business. A fellow says to me, "I don't think Jesus Christ did a nice thing."
You don't know what you are talking about.
Down in Nashville, Tennessee, I saw four wagons going down the street, and they were loaded with stills, and kettles, and pipes.
"What's this?" I said.
"United States revenue officers, and they have been in the moonshine district and confiscated the illicit stills, and they are taking them down to the government scrap heap."
Jesus Christ was God's revenue officer. Now the Jews were forbidden to eat pork, but Jesus Christ came and found that crowd buying and selling and dealing in pork, and confiscated the whole business, and he kept within the limits of the law when he did it. Then the fellows ran back to those who owned the hogs to tell what had befallen them and those hog-owners said to Jesus: "Take your helpers and hike. You are hurting our business." And they looked into the sea and the hogs were bottom side up, but Jesus said, "What is the matter?" And they answered," Leave our hogs and go." A fellow says it is rather a strange request for the devils to make, to ask permission to enter into hogs. I don't know, if I was a devil I would rather live in a good, decent hog than in lots of men. If you will drive the hog out you won't have to carry slop to him, so I will try to help you get rid of the hog.
And they told Jesus to leave the country. They said:
"You are hurting our business."
Interest in Manhood
"Have you no interest in manhood?"
"We have no interest in that; just take your disciples and leave, for you are hurting our business."That is the attitude of the liquor traffic toward the Church, and State, and Government, and the preacher that has the backbone to fight the most damnable, corrupt institution that ever wriggled out of hell and fastened itself on the public.
I am a temperance Republican down to my toes. Who is the man that fights the whisky business in the South? It is the Democrats! They have driven the business from Kansas, they have driven it from Georgia, and Maine and Mississippi and North Carolina and North Dakota and Oklahoma and Tennessee and West Virginia. And they have driven it out of 1,756 counties. And it is the rock-ribbed Democratic South that is fighting the saloon. They started this fight that is sweeping like fire over the "United States. You might as well try and dam Niagara Falls with toothpicks as to stop the reform wave sweeping our land. The Democratic party of Florida has put a temperance plank in its platform and the Republican party of every state would nail that plank in their platform if they thought it would carry the election. It is simply a matter of decency and manhood, irrespective of politics. It is prosperity against poverty, sobriety against drunkenness, honesty against thieving, heaven against hell. Don't you want to see men sober? Brutal, staggering men transformed into respectable citizens? "No," said a saloonkeeper, "to hell with men. We are interested in our business, we have no interest in humanity."
After all is said that can be said upon the liquor traffic, its influence is degrading upon the individual, the family, politics and business, and upon everything that you touch in this old world. For the time has long gone by when there is any ground for arguments as to its ill effects. All are agreed on that point. There is just one prime reason why the saloon has not been knocked into hell, and that is the false statement that "the saloons are needed to help lighten the taxes." The saloon business has never paid, and it has cost fifty times more than the revenue derived from it.
Does the Saloon Help Business?
I challenge you to show me where the saloon has ever helped business, education, church, morals or anything we hold dear.
The wholesale and retail trade in Iowa pays every year at least $500,000 in licenses. Then if there were no drawback it ought to reduce the taxation twenty-five cents per capita. If the saloon is necessary to pay the taxes, and if they pay $500,000 in taxes, it ought to reduce them twenty-five cents a head. But no, the whisky business has increased taxes $1,000,000 instead of reducing them, and I defy any whisky man on God's dirt to show me one town that has the saloon where the taxes are lower than where they do not have the saloon. I defy you to show me an instance.
Listen! Seventy-five per cent of our idiots come from intemperate parents; eighty per cent of the paupers, eighty-two per cent of the crime is committed by men under the influence of liquor; ninety per cent of the adult criminals are whisky-made. The Chicago Tribune kept track for ten years and found that 53,556 murders were committed by men under the influence of liquor.
Archbishop Ireland, the famous Roman Catholic, of St. Paul, said of social crime today, that "seventy-five per cent is caused by drink, and eighty per cent of the poverty."
I go to a family and it is broken up, and I say, "What caused this?" Drink! I step up to a young man on the scaffold and say, "What brought you here?" Drink! Whence all the misery and sorrow and corruption? Invariably it is drink.
Five Points, in New York, was a spot as near like hell as any spot on earth. There are five streets that run to this point, and right in the middle was an old brewery and the streets on either side were lined with grog shops. The newspapers turned a searchlight on the district, and the first thing they had to do was to buy the old brewery and turn it into a mission.
The Parent of Crimes
The saloon is the sum of all villanies. It is worse than war or pestilence. It is the crime of crimes. It is the parent of crimes and the mother of sins. It is the appalling source of misery and crime in the land. And to license such an incarnate fiend of hell is the dirtiest, low-down, damnable business on top of this old earth. There is nothing to be compared to it.
The legislature of Illinois appropriated $6,000,000 in 1908 to take care of the insane people in the state, and the whisky business produces seventy-five per cent of the insane. That is what you go down in your pockets for to help support. Do away with the saloons and you will close these institutions. The saloons make them necessary, and they make the poverty and fill the jails and the penitentiaries. Who has to pay the bills? The landlord who doesn't get the rent because the money goes for whisky; the butcher and the grocer and the charitable person who takes pity on the children of drunkards, and the taxpayer who supports the insane asylums and other institutions, " at the whisky business keeps full of human wrecks.
Do away with the cursed business and you will not have to put up to support them. Who gets the money? The saloonkeepers and the brewers, and the distillers, while the whisky fills the land with misery, and poverty, and wretchedness, and disease, and death, and damnation, and it is being authorized by the will of the sovereign people.
You say that "people will drink anyway." Not by my vote. You say, "Men will murder their wives anyway." Not by my vote. "They will steal anyway." Not by my vote. You are the sovereign people, and what are you going to do about it?
Let me assemble before your minds the bodies of the drunken dead, who crawl away "into the jaws of death, into the mouth of hell," and then out of the valley of the shadow of the drink let me call the appertaining motherhood, and wifehood, and childhood, and let their tears rain down upon their purple faces. Do you think that would stop the curse of the liquor traffic? No! No!
In these days when the question of saloon or no saloon is at the fore in almost every community, one hears a good deal about what is called "personal liberty." These are fine, large, mouth-filling words, and they certainly do sound first rate; but when you get right down and analyze them in the light of common old horse-sense, you will discover that in their application to the present controversy they mean just about this: " Personal liberty" is for the man who, if he has the inclination and the price, can stand up at a bar and fill his hide so full of red liquor that he is transformed for the time being into an irresponsible, dangerous, evil-smelling brute. But "personal liberty" is not for his patient, long-suffering wife, who has to endure with what fortitude she may his blows and curses; nor is it for his children, who, if they escape his insane rage, are yet robbed of every known joy and privilege of childhood, and too often grow up neglected, uncared for and vicious as the result of their surroundings and the example before them. "Personal liberty" is not for the sober, industrious citizen who from the proceeds of honest toil and orderly living, has to pay, willingly or not, the tax bills which pile up as a direct result of drunkenness, disorder and poverty, the items of which are written in the records of every police court and poorhouse in the land; nor is'' personal liberty " for the good woman who goes abroad in the town only at the risk of being shot down by some drink-crazed creature. This rant about "personal liberty" as an argument has no leg to stand upon.
The Economic Side
Now, in 1913 the corn crop was 2,373,000,000 bushels, and it was valued at $1,660,000,000. Secretary Wilson says that the breweries use less than two per cent; I will say that they use two per cent. That would make 47,000,000 bushels, and at seventy cents a bushel that would be about $33,000,000. How many people are there in the United States? Ninety millions. Very well, then, that is thirty-six cents per capita. Then we sold out to the whisky business for thirty-six cents apiece - the price of a dozen eggs or a pound of butter. We are the cheapest gang this side of hell if we will do that kind of business.
Now listen! Last year the income of the United States government, and the cities and towns and counties, from the whisky business was $350,000,000. That is putting it liberally. You say that's a lot of money. Well, last year the workingmen spent $2,000,000,000 for drink, and it cost $1,200,000,000 to care for the judicial machinery. In other words, the whisky business cost us last year $3,400,000,000. I will subtract from that the dirty $350,000,000 which we got, and it leaves $3,050,000,000 in favor of knocking the whisky business out on purely a money basis. And listen, we spend $6,000,000,000 a year for our paupers and criminals insane, orphans, feeble-minded, etc., and eighty-two per cent of our criminals are whisky-made, and seventy-five per cent of the paupers are whisky-made. The average factory hand earns $450 a year, and it costs us $1,200 a year to support each of our whisky criminals. There are 326,000 enrolled criminals in the United States and 80,000 in jails and penitentiaries. Three-fourths were sent there because of drink, and then they have the audacity to say the saloon is needed for money revenue. Never was there a baser he. "But," says the whisky fellow, "we would lose trade; I heard my friend ex-Governor Hanly, of Indiana, use the following illustrations:
"Oh, but," they say, "Governor, there is another danger to the local option, because it means a loss of market to the farmer. We are consumers of large quantities of grain in the manufacture of our products. If you drive us out of business you strike down that market and it will create a money panic in this country, such as you have never seen, if you do that." I might answer it by saying that less than two per cent of the grain produced in this country is used for that purpose, but I pass that by. I want to debate the merit of the statement itself, and I think I can demonstrate in ten minutes to any thoughtful man, to any farmer, that the brewer who furnishes him a market for a bushel of corn is not his benefactor, or the benefactor of any man, from an economic standpoint. Let us see. A farmer brings to the brewer a bushel of corn. He finds a market for it. He gets fifty cents and goes his way, with the statement of the brewer ringing in his ears, that the brewer is the benefactor. But you haven't got all the factors in the problem, Mr. Brewer, and you cannot get a correct solution of a problem without all the factors in the problem. You take the farmer's bushel of corn, brewer or distiller, and you brew and distill from it four and one-half gallons of spirits. I don't know how much he dilutes them before he puts them on the market. Only the brewer, the distiller and God know. The man who drinks it doesn't, but if he doesn't dilute it at all, he puts on the market four and a half gallons of intoxicating liquor, thirty-six pints. I am not going to trace the thirty-six pints. It will take too long. But I want to trace three of them and I will give you no imaginary stories plucked from the brain of an excited orator. I will take instances from the judicial pages of the Supreme Court and the Circuit Court judges' reports in Indiana and in Illinois to make my case.
Several years ago in the city of Chicago a young man of good parents, good character, one Sunday crossed the street and entered a saloon, open against the law. He found there boon companions. There were laughter, song and jest and much drinking. After awhile, drunk, insanely drunk, his money gone, he was kicked into the street. He found his way across to his mother's home. He importuned her for money to buy more drink. She refused him. He seized from the sideboard a revolver and ran out into the street and with the expressed determination of entering the saloon and getting more drink, money or no money. His fond mother followed him into the street. She put her hand upon turn in a loving restraint. He struck it from him in anger, and then his sister came and added her entreaty in vain. And then a neighbor, whom he knew, trusted and respected, came and put his hand on him in gentleness and friendly kindness, but in an insanity of drunken rage he raised the revolver and shot his friend dead in his blood upon the street. There was a trial; he was found guilty of murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, and when the little mother heard the verdict - a frail little bit of a woman - she threw up her hands and fell in a swoon. In three hours she was dead.
In the streets of Freeport, Illinois, a young man of good family became involved in a controversy with a lewd woman of the town. He went in a drunken frenzy to his father's home, armed himself with a deadly weapon and set out for the city in search of the woman with whom he had quarreled. The first person he met upon the public square in the city, in the daylight, in a place where she had a right to be, was one of the most refined and cultured women of Freeport. She carried in her arms her babe, motherhood and babyhood, upon the streets of Freeport in the day time, where they had a right to be, but this young man in his drunken insanity mistook her for the woman he sought and shot her dead upon the streets with her babe in her arms. He was tried and Judge Ferand, in sentencing him to life imprisonment said: "You are the seventh man in two years to be sentenced for murder while intoxicated."
In the city of Anderson, you remember the tragedy in the Blake home. A young man came home intoxicated, demanding money of his mother. She refused it. He seized from the wood box a hatchet and killed his mother and then robbed her. You remember he fled. The officer of the law pursued him and brought him back. An indictment was read to him charging him with the murder of the mother who had given him his birth, of her who had gone down into the valley of the shadow of death to give him life, of her who had looked down into his blue eyes and thanked God for his life. And he said, "I am guilty; I did it all." And Judge McClure sentenced him to life imprisonment.
Now I have followed probably three of the thirty-six pints of the farmer's product of a bushel of corn and the three of them have struck down seven lives, the three boys who committed the murders, the three persons who were killed and the little mother who died of a broken heart. And now, I want to know, my farmer friend, if this has been a good commercial transaction for you? You sold a bushel of corn; you found a market; you got fifty cents; but a fraction of this product struck down seven lives, all of whom would have been consumers of your products for their life expectancy. And do you mean to say that is a good economic transaction to you? That disposes of the market question until it is answered; let no man argue further.
More Economics
And say, my friends, New York City's annual drink bill is $365,000,000 a year, $1,000,000 a day. Listen a minute. That is four times the annual output of gold, and six times the value of all the silver mined in the United States. And in New York there is one saloon for every thirty families. The money spent in New York by the working people for drink in ten years would buy every working man in New York a beautiful home, allowing $3,500 for house and lot. It would take fifty persons one year to count the money in $1 bills, and they would cover 10,000 acres of ground. That is what the people in New York dump into the whisky hole in one year. And then you wonder why there is poverty and crime, and that the country is not more prosperous.
The whisky gang is circulating a circular about Kansas City, Kansas. I defy you to prove a statement in it. Kansas City is a town of 100,000 population, and temperance went into effect July 1, 1905. Then they had 250 saloons, 200 gambling hells and 60 houses of ill fame. The population was largely foreign, and inquiries have come from Germany, Sweden and Norway, asking the influence of . the enforcement of the prohibitory law.
At the end of one year the president of one of the largest banks in that city, a man who protested against the enforcement of the prohibitory law on the ground that it would hurt business, found that his bank deposits had increased $1,700,000, and seventy-two per cent of the deposits were from men who had never saved a cent before, and forty-two per cent came from men who never had a dollar in the bank, but because the saloons were driven out they had a chance to save, and the people who objected on the grounds that it would injure business found an increase of 209 per cent in building operations; and, furthermore, there were three times as many more people seeking investment, and court expenses decreased $25,000 in one year.
Who pays to feed and keep the gang you have in jail? Why, you go down in your sock and pay for what the saloon has dumped in there. They don't do it. Mr. Whisky Man, why don't you go down and take a picture of wrecked and blighted homes, and of insane asylums, with gibbering idiots. Why don't you take a picture of that?
At Kansas City, Kansas, before the saloons were closed, they were getting ready to build an addition to the jail. Now the doors swing idly on the hinges and there is nobody to lock in the jails. And the commissioner of the Poor Farm says there is a wonderful falling off of old men and women coming to the Poor House, because their sons and daughters are saving their money and have quit spending it for drink. And they had to employ eighteen new school teachers for 600 boys and girls, between the ages of twelve and eighteen, that had never gone to school before because they had to help a drunken father support the family. And they have just set aside $200,000 to build a new school house, and the bonded indebtedness was reduced $245,000 in one year without the saloon revenue. And don't you know another thing: In 1906, when they had the saloon, the population, according to the directory, was 89,655. According to the census of 1907 the population was 100,835, or an increase of twelve per cent in one year, without the grogshop. In two years the bank deposits increased $3,930,000.
You say, drive out the saloon and you kill business - Ha! Ha! "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord."
I tell you, gentlemen, the American home is the dearest heritage of the people, for the people, and by the people, and when a man can go from home in the morning with the kisses of wife and children on his lips, and come back at night with an empty dinner bucket to a happy home, that man is a better man, whether white or black. Whatever takes away the comforts of home, whatever degrades that man or woman, whatever invades the sanctity of the home, is the deadliest foe to the home, to church, to state and school, and the saloon is the deadliest foe to the home, the church and the state, on top of God Almighty's dirt. And if all the combined forces of hell should assemble in conclave, and with them all the men on earth that hate and despise God, and purity, and virtue, if all the scum of the earth could mingle with the denizens of hell to try to think of the deadliest institution to home, to church and state, I tell you, sir, the combined hellish intelligence could not conceive of or bring an institution that could touch the hem of the garment of the open licensed saloon to damn the home and manhood, and womanhood, and business and every other good thing on God's earth.
In the Island of Jamaica the rats increased so that they destroyed the crops, and they introduced a mongoose, which is a species of the coon. They have three breeding seasons a year and there are twelve to fifteen in each brood, and they are deadly enemies of the rats. The result was that the rats disappeared and there was nothing more for the mongoose to feed upon, so they attacked the snakes, and the frogs, and the lizards that fed upon the insects, with the result that the insects increased and they stripped the gardens, eating up the onions and the lettuce and then the mongoose attacked the sheep and the cats, and the puppies, and the calves and the geese. Now Jamaica is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to get rid of the mongoose.
The American Mongoose
The American mongoose is the open licensed saloon. It eats the carpets off the floor and the clothes from off your back, your money out of the bank, and it eats up character, and it goes on until at last it leaves a stranded wreck in the home, a skeleton of what was once brightness and happiness.
There were some men playing cards on a railroad train, and one fellow pulled out a whisky flask and passed it about, and when it came to the drummer he said, "No." "What," they said, "have you got on the water wagon?" and they all laughed at him- He said, "You can laugh if you want to, but I was born with an appetite for drink, and for years I have taken from five to ten glasses per day, but I was at; home in Chicago not long ago and I have a friend who has a pawn shop there. I was in there when in came a young fellow with ashen cheeks and a wild look on his face. He came up trembling, threw down a little package and said, 'Give me ten cents.' And what do you think was in that package? It was a pair of baby shoes.
"My friend said, 'No, I cannot take them. ''But, he said, 'give me a dime. I must have a drink.' "'No, take them back home, your baby will need them.' "And the poor fellow said,' My baby is dead, and I want a drink.' "
Boys, I don't blame you for the lump that comes up in your throat. There is no law, divine or human, that the saloon respects. Lincoln said, "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong." I say, if the saloon, with its train of diseases, crime and misery, is not wrong, then nothing on earth is wrong. If the fight is to be won we need men - men that will fight - the Church, Catholic and Protestant, must fight it or run away, and thank God she will not run away, but fight to the last ditch.
Who works the hardest for his money, the saloon man or you?
Who has the most money Sunday morning, the saloon man or you?
The saloon comes as near being a rat hole for a wage-earner to dump his wages in as anything you can find. The only interest it pays is red eyes and foul breath,'and the loss of health. You can go in with money and you come out with empty pockets. You go in with character and you come out ruined. You go in with a good position and you lose it. You lose your position m the bank, or in the cab of tile locomotive. And it pays nothing back but disease and damnation and gives an extra dividend in delirium. tremens and a free pass to hell. And then it will let you, wife be buried in the potter's field, and your children go to the asylum, and yet you walk out and say the saloon is a good institution, when it is the dirtiest thing on earth. It hasn't one leg to stand on and has nothing to commend it to a decent man, not one thing.
"But," you say, "we will regulate it by high license." Regulate what by high license? You might as well try and regulate a powder mill in hell. Do you want to pay taxes in boys, or dirty money? A man that will sell out to that dirty business I have no use for. See how absurd their arguments are. If you drink Bourbon in a saloon that pays $1,000 a year license, will it eat your stomach less than if you drink it in a saloon that pays $500 license? Is it going to have any different effect on you, whether the gang pays $500 or $1,000 license? No. It will make no difference whether you drink it over a mahogany counter or a pine counter, it will have the same effect on you; it will damn you. So there is no use talking about it.
In some insane asylums, do you know what they do? When they want to test some patient to see whether he has recovered his reason, they have a room with a faucet m in, and a cement floor, and they give the patient a mop and tell him to mop up the floor. And if he has sense enough to turn off the faucet and mop up the floor they will parole him, but should he let the faucet run, they know that he is crazy.
Well, that is what you are trying to do. You are trying to mop it up with taxes and insane asylums and jails and Keeley cures, and reformatories. The only thing to do is to shut off the source of supply.
A man was delivering a temperance address at a fair grounds and a fellow came up to him and said: "Are you the fellow that gave a talk on temperance?" "Yes."
"Well, I think that the managers did a dirty piece of business to let you give a lecture on temperance. You have hurt my business and my business is a legal one."
"You are right there," said the lecturer, "they did do a mean trick; I would complain to the officers." And he took up a premium list and said: "By the way, I see there is a premium of so much offered for the best horse and cow and butter. What business are you in?"
"I'm in the liquor business."
"Well, I don't see that they offer any premium for your business. You ought t(? go down and compel them to offer a premium for your business and they ought to offer on the list $25 for the best wrecked home, $15 for the best bloated bum that you can show, and $10 for the finest specimen of broken-hearted wife, and they ought to give $25 for the finest specimens of thieves and gamblers you can trot out. You can bring out the finest looking criminals. If you have something that is good trot it out. You ought to come in competition with the farmer, with his stock, and the fancy work, and the canned fruit."
The Saloon a Coward
As Dr. Howard said: "I tell you that the saloon is a coward. It hides itself behind stained-glass doors and opaque windows, and sneaks its customers in at a blind door, and it keeps a sentinel to guard the door from the officers of the law, and it marks its wares with false bills-of-lading, and offers to ship green goods to you and marks them with the name of wholesome articles of food so people won't know what is being sent to you. And so vile did that business get that the legislature of Indiana passed a law forbidding a saloon to ship goods without being properly labeled. And the United States Congress passed a law forbidding them to send whisky through the mails.
I tell you it strikes in the night. It fights under cover of darkness and assassinates the characters that it cannot damn, and it lies about you. It attacks defenseless womanhood and childhood. The saloon is a coward. It is a thief; it is not an ordinary court offender that steals your money, but it robs you of manhood and leaves you in rags and takes away your friends, and it robs your family It impoverishes your children and it brings insanity and suicide. It will take the shirt off your back and it will steal the coffin from a dead child and yank the last crust of bread out of the hand of the starving child; it will take the last bucket of coal out of your cellar, and the last cent out of your pocket, and will send you home bleary-eyed and staggering to your wife and children. It will steal the milk from the breast of the mother and leave her with nothing with which to feed her infant. It will take the virtue from your daughter. It is the dirtiest, most low-down, damnable business that ever crawled out of the pit of hell. It is a sneak, and a thief and a coward.
It is an infidel. It has no faith in God; has no religion. It would close every church in the land. It would hang its beer signs on the abandoned altars. It would close every public school. It respects the thief and it esteems the blasphemer; it fills the prisons and the penitentiaries. It despises heaven, hates love, scorns virtue. It tempts the passions. Its music is the song of a siren. Its sermons are a collection of lewd, vile stories. It wraps a mantle about the hope of this world and that to come. Its tables are full of the vilest literature. It is the moral clearing house for rot, and damnation, and poverty, and insanity, and it wrecks homes and blights lives today.
God's Worst Enemy
The saloon is a liar. It promises good cheer and sends sorrow. It promises health and causes disease. It promises prosperity and sends adversity. It promises happiness and sends misery. Yes, it sends the husband home with a lie on his lips to his wife; and the boy home with a lie on his lips to his mother; and it causes the employee to lie to his employer. It degrades. It is God's worst enemy and the devil's best friend. . It spares neither youth nor old age. It is waiting with a dirty blanket for the baby to crawl into the world. It lies in wait for the unborn.
It cocks the highwayman's pistol. It puts the rope in the hands of the mob. It is the anarchist of the world and its dirty red flag is dyed with the blood of women and children. It sent the bullet through the body of Lincoln; it nerved the arm that sent the bullets through Garfield and William McKinley. Yes, it is a murderer. Every plot that was ever hatched against the government and law, was born and bred, and crawled out of the grog-shop to damn this country.
I tell you that the curse of God Almighty is on the saloon. Legislatures are legislating against it. Decent society is barring it out. The fraternal brotherhoods are knocking it out. The Masons and Odd Fellows, and the Knights of Pythias and the A. O. U. W. are closing their doors to the whisky sellers. They don't want you wriggling your carcass in their lodges. Yes, sir, I tell you, the curse of God is on it. It is on the down grade. It is headed for hell, and, by the grace of God, I am going to give it a push, with a whoop, for all I know how. Listen to me. I am going to show you how we burn up our money. It costs twenty cents to make a gallon of whisky; sold over the counter at ten cents a glass, it will bring four dollars.
"But," said the saloonkeeper, "Bill, you must figure on the strychnine and the cochineal, arid other stuff they put in it, and it will bring nearer eight dollars."
Yes; it increases the heart beat thirty times more in a minute, when you consider the licorice and potash and logwood and other poisons that are put in. I believe one cause for the unprecedented increase of crime is due to the poison put in the stuff nowadays to make it go as far as they can.
I am indebted to my friend, George B. Stuart, for some of the following points:
I will show you how your money is burned up. It costs twenty cents to make a gallon of whisky, sold over the counter at ten cents a glass, which brings four dollars. Listen, where does it go? Who gets the twenty cents? The farmer for his corn or rye. Who gets the rest? The United States government for collecting revenue, and the big corporations, and part is used to pave our streets and pay our > police. I'll show you. I'm going to show you how it is burned up, and you don't need half sense to catch on, and if you don't understand just keep still and nobody will know the difference.
I say, "Hey, Colonel Politics, what is the matter with the country?"
He swells up like a poisoned pup and says to me, "Bill, why the silver bugbear. That's what is the matter with the country."
The total value of the silver produced in this country in 1912 was $39,000,000. Hear me! In 1912 the total value of the gold produced in this country was $93,000,000, and we dumped thirty-six times that much in the whisky hole and didn't fill it. What is the matter? The total value of all the gold and silver produced in 1912 was $132,000,000, and we dumped twenty-five times that amount in the whisky hole and didn't fill it.
What is the matter with the country, Colonel Politics? He swells up and says, "Mr. Sunday, Standpatism, sir."
I say, "You are an old windbag."
"Oh," says another, "revision of the tariff." Another man says, "Free trade; open the doors at the ports and let them pour the products in and we will put the trusts on the sidetrack."
Say, you come with me to every port of entry. Listen! In 1912 the total value of all the imports was $1,812,000,000, and we dumped that much m the whisky hole in twelve months and did not fill it.
"Oh," says a man, "let us court South America and Europe to sell our products. That's what is the matter; we are not exporting enough."
Last year the total value of all the exports was $2,362,000,000, and we dumped that amount in the whisky hole in one year and didn't fill it.
One time I was down in Washington and went to the United States treasury and said: "I wish you would let me go where you don't let the general public." And they took us around on the inside and we walked into a room about twenty feet long and fifteen feet wide and as many feet high, and I said, "What is this?"
"This is the vault that contains all of the national bank stock in the United States."
I said, "How much is here?"
They said, "$578,000,000."
And we dumped nearly four times the value of the national bank stock in the United States into the whisky hole last year, and we didn't fill the hole up at that. What is the matter? Say, whenever the day comes that all the Catholic and Protestant churches, just when the day comes when you will say to the whisky business: "You go to hell," that day the whisky business will go to hell. But you sit there, you old whisky-voting elder and deacon and vestryman, and you wouldn't strike your hands together on the proposition. It would stamp you an old hypocrite and you know it.
Say, hold on a bit. Have you got a silver dollar? I am going to show you how it is burned up. We have in this country 250,000 saloons, and allowing fifty feet frontage for each saloon it makes a street from New York to Chicago, and 5,000,000 men, women and children go daily into the saloon for drink. And marching twenty miles a day it would take thirty days to pass this building, and marching five abreast they would reach 590 miles. There they go; look at them!
On the first day of January, 500,000 of the young men of our nation entered the grog-shop and began a public career hellward, and on the 31st of December I will come back here and summon you people, and ring the bell and raise the curtain and say to the saloon and breweries: "On the first day of January, I gave you 500,000 of the brain and muscle of our land, and I want them back and have come in the name of the home and church and school; father mother, sister, sweetheart; give me back what I gave you. March out."
I count, and 165,000 have lost their appetites and have become muttering, bleary-eyed drunkards, wallowing in their own excrement, and I say, "What is it I hear, a funeral dirge?" What is that procession? A funeral procession 3,000 miles long and 110,000 hearses in the procession. One hundred and ten thousand men die drunkards in the land of the free and home of the brave. Listen! In an hour twelve men die drunkards, 300 a day and 110,000 a year. One man will leap in front of a train, another will plunge from the dock into a lake, another will throw his hands to his head and life will end. Another will cry, "Mother," and his life will go out like a burnt match.
I stand in front of the jails and count the whisky criminals. They say, "Yes, Bill, I fired the bullet." "Yes, I backed my wife into the corner and beat her life out. I am waiting for the scaffold; I am waiting." "I am waiting," says another, "to slip into hell." On, on, it goes. Say, let me summon the wifehood, and the motherhood, and the childhood and see the tears rain down the upturned faces. People, tears are too weak for that hellish business. Tears are only salty backwater that well up at the bidding of an occult power, and I will tell you there are 865,000 whisky orphan children in the United States, enough in the world to belt the globe three times around, punctured at every fifth point by a drunkard's widow.
Like Hamilcar of old, who swore young Hannibal to eternal enmity against Rome, so I propose to perpetuate this feud against the liquor traffic until the white-winged dove of temperance builds her nest on the dome of the capitol of 'Washington and spreads her wings of peace, sobriety and joy over our land which I love with ail my heart.
What Will a Dollar Buy?
I hold a silver dollar in my hand. Come on, we are going to a saloon. We will go into a saloon and spend that dollar for a quart. It takes twenty cents to make a gallon of whisky and a dollar will buy a quart. You say to the saloonkeeper, "Give me a quart." I will show you, if you wait a minute, how she is burned up. Here I am John, an old drunken bum, with a wife and six kids. (Thank God, it's all a lie.) Come on, I will go down to a saloon and throw down my dollar. It costs twenty cents to make a gallon of whisky. A nickel will make a quart. My dollar will buy a quart of booze. Who gets the nickel? The farmer, for corn and apples. Who gets the ninety-five cents? The United States government, the big distillers, the big corporations. I am John, a drunken bum, and I will spend my dollar. I have worked a week and got my pay. I go into a grog-shop and throw down my dollar. The saloonkeeper gets my dollar and I get a quart of booze. Come home with me. I stagger, and reel, and spew in my 'wife's presence, and she says:
"Hello, John, what did you bring home?"
"A quart."
What will a quart do? It will burn up my happiness and my home and fill my home with squalor and want. So there is the dollar. The saloonkeeper has it. Here is my quart. There you get the whisky end, of it. Here you get the workingman's end of the saloon.
But come on; I will go to a store and spend the dollar for a pair of shoes. I want them for my son, and he puts them on his feet, and with the shoes to protect his feet he goes out and earns another dollar, and my dollar becomes a silver thread in the woof and warp of happiness and joy, and the man that owns the building gets some, and the clerk that sold the shoes gets some, and the merchant, and the traveling man, and the wholesale house gets some, and the factory, and the man that made the shoes, and the man that tanned the hide, and the butcher that bought the calf, and the little colored fellow that shined the shoes, and my dollar spread itself and nobody is made worse for spending the money.
I join the Booster Club for business and prosperity. A man said, "I will tell you what is the matter with the country: it's overproduction." You lie, it is under consumption.
Say, wife, the bread that ought to be in your stomach to satisfy the cravings of hunger is down yonder in the grocery store, and your husband hasn't money enough to carry it home. The meat that ought to satisfy your hunger hangs in the butcher shop. Your husband hasn't any money to buy it. The cloth for a dress is lying on the shelf in the store, but your husband hasn't the money to buy it. The whisky gang has his money.
What is the matter with our country? I would like to do this. I would like to see every booze-fighter get on the water wagon. I would like to summon all the drunkards in America and say: "Boys, let's cut her out and spend the money for flour, meat and calico; what do you say?" Say I $500,000,000 will buy all the flour in the United States; $500,000,000 will buy all the beef cattle, and $500,000,000 will buy all the cotton at $50 a bale. But we dumped more money than that in the whisky hole last year, and we didn't fill it. Come on; I'm going to line up the drunkards. Everybody fall in. Come on, ready, forward, march. Right, left, here I come with all the drunkards. We will line up in front of a butcher shop. The butcher says, "What do you want, a piece of neck?"
"No; how much do I owe you?" "Three dollars." "Here's your dough. Now give me a porterhouse steak and a sirloin roast."
"Where did you get all that money?"
"Went to hear Bill and climbed on the water wagon." "Hello! What do you want?" "Beefsteak."
"What do you want?" "Beefsteak."
We empty the shop and the butcher runs to the telephone. "Hey, Central, give me the slaughter house. Have you got any beef, any pork, any mutton?"
They strip the slaughter house, and then telephone to Swift, and Armour, and Nelson Morris, and Cudahy, to send down trainloads of beefsteaks.
"The whole ,bunch has got on the water wagon."
And Swift and the other big packers in Chicago say to their salesmen: "Buy beef, pork and mutton."
The farmer sees the price of cattle and sheep jump up to three times their value. Let me take the money you dump into the whisky hole and buy beefsteaks with it. I will show what is the matter with America. I think the liquor business is the dirtiest, rottenest business this side of hell.
Come on, are you ready? Fall in! We line up in front of a grocery store.
"What do you want?"
"Why, I want flour. What do you want? Flour."
"Flour."
"Pillsbury, Minneapolis, 'Sleepy Eye'?"
"Yes, ship in trainloads of flour; send on fast mail schedule, with an engine in front, one behind and a Mogul in the middle."
"What's the matter?"
"Why, the workingmen have stopped spending their money for booze and have begun to buy flour."
They tell their men to buy wheat and the farmers see the price jump to over $2 per bushel. What's the matter with the country? Why, the whisky gang has your money and you have an empty stomach, and yet you will walk up and vote for the dirty booze.
Come on, cut out the booze, boys. Get on the water wagon; get on for the sake of your wife and babies, and hit the booze a blow.
Come on, ready, forward, march! Eight, left, halt! We are in front of a dry goods store.
" Calico."
"Calico."
"Calico; all right, come on." The stores are stripped. Marshall Field, Carson, Pirie, Scott & Co., J. V. Farreu, send down calico. The whole bunch has voted out the saloons and we have such a demand for calico we don't know what to do. And the big stores telegraph to Fall River to ship calico, and the factories telegraph to buy cotton, and they tell their salesmen to buy cotton, and the cotton plantation man sees cotton jump up to $150 a bale. What is the matter? Your children are going naked and the whisky gang has got your money. That's what's the matter with you. Don't listen to those old whisky-soaked politicians who say "stand pat on the saloon."
Come with me. Now, remember, we have the whole bunch of booze fighters on the water wagon, and I'm going home now. Over there I was John, the drunken bum, The whisky gang got my dollar and I got the quart. Over here I am John on the water wagon. The merchant got my dollar and I have his meat, flour and calico, and I'm going home now. "Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home without booze."
"Two porterhouse steaks, Sally."
"What's that bundle, Pa?"
"Clothes to make you a new dress, Sis. Your mother has fixed your old one so often, it looks like a crazy quilt."
"And what have you there?"
"That's a pair of shoes for you, Tom; and here is some cloth to make you a pair of pants. Your mother has patched the old ones so often, they look like the map of United States."
What's the matter with the country? We have been dumping into the whisky hole the money that ought to have been spent for flour, beef and calico, and we haven't the hole filled up yet.
A man comes along and says: "Are you a drunkard?"
"Yes, I'm a drunkard."
"Where are you going?"
"I am going to hell."
"Why?'
"Because the Good Book says: 'No drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of God,' so I am going to hell."
Another man comes along and I say: "Are you a church member?"
"Yes, I am a church member."
"I am going to heaven."
"Did you vote for the saloon?"
"Yes."
"Then you shall go to hell."
Say, if the man that drinks the whisky goes to hell, the man that votes for the saloon that sold the whisky to him will go to hell. If the man that drinks the whisky goes to hell, and the man that sold the whisky to the men that drank it, goes to heaven, then the poor drunkard will have the right to stand on the brink of eternal damnation and put his arms around the pillar of justice, shake his fist in the face of the Almighty and say, "Unjust! Unjust!" If you vote for the dirty business you ought to go to hell as sure as you live, and I would like to fire the furnace while you are there. Some fellow says, "Drive the saloon out and the buildings will be empty." Which would you rather have, empty buildings or empty jails, penitentiaries and insane asylums? You drink the stuff and what have you to say? You that vote for it, and you that sell it? Look at them painted on the canvas of your recollection.
The Gin Mill
"Hello, there, what kind of a mill are you?"
"A sawmill."
"And what do you make?"
"We make boards out of logs."
"Is the finished product worth more than the raw material?"
" We will make laws for you. We must have lumber for houses."
He goes up to another mill and says:
"Hey, what kind of a mill are you?"
"A grist mill."
"What do you make?"
"Flour and meal out of wheat and corn."
"Then come on. We will make laws for you. We will protect you."
"What kind of a mill are you?" "A paper mill." "What do you make paper out of?" "Straw and rags."
"Well, we will make laws for you. We must have paper on which to write notes and mortgages."
"Hey, what land of a mill are you?"
"A gin mill."
"I don't like the looks nor the smell of you. A gin mill; what do you make? What kind of a mill are you?"
"What is your raw material?"
"The boys of America."
The gin mills of this country must have 2,000,000 boys or shut up shop. Say, walk down your streets, count the homes and every fifth home has to furnish a boy for a drunkard. Have you furnished yours? No. Then I have to furnish two to make up.
"American boys."
"Then I will pick up the boys and give them to you."
A man says, "Hold on, not that boy, he is mine."
Then I will say to you what a saloonkeeper said to me when I protested, "I am not interested in boys; to hell with your boys."
"Say, saloon gin mill, what is your finished product?"
"Bleary-eyed, low-down, staggering men and the scum of God's dirt."
Go to the jails, go to the insane asylums and the penitentiaries, and the homes for feeble-minded. There you will find the finished product for their dirty business. I tell you it is the worst business this side of hell, and you know it.
Listen! Here is an extract from the Saturday Evening Post of November 9, 1907, taken from a paper read by a brewer. You will say that a man didn't say it: "It appears from these facts that the success of our business lies in the creation of appetite among the boys. Men who have formed the habit scarcely ever reform, but they, like others, will die, and unless there are recruits made to take their places, our coffers will be empty, and I recommend to you that money spent in the creation of appetite will return in dollars to your tills after the habit is formed."
What is your raw material, saloons? American boys. Say, I would not give one boy for all the distilleries and saloons this side of hell. And they have to have 2,000,000 boys every generation. And then you tell me you are a man when you will vote for an institution like that. What do you want to do, pay taxes in money or in boys?
I feel like an old fellow in Tennessee who made his living by catching rattlesnakes. He caught one with fourteen rattles and put it in a box with a glass top. One day when he was sawing wood his little five-year old boy;
Jim, took the lid off and the rattler wriggled out and struck him in the cheek. He ran to his father and said, "The rattler has bit me." The father ran and chopped the rattler to pieces, and with his jackknife he cut a chunk from the boy's cheek and then sucked and sucked at the wound to draw out the poison. -He looked at little Jim, watched the pupils of his eyes dilate and watched him swell to three times his normal size, watched his lips become parched and cracked, and eyes roll, and little Jim gasped and died.
The father took him in his arms, carried him over by the side of the rattler, got on his knees and said, "0 God, I would not give little Jim for all [the rattlers that ever crawled over the Blue Ridge mountains."
And I would not give one boy for every dirty dollar you get from the hell-soaked liquor business or from every brewery and distillery this side of hell.
In a Northwest city a preacher sat at his breakfast table one Sunday morning. The doorbell rang; he answered it; and there stood a little boy, twelve years of age. He was on crutches, right leg off at the knee, shivering, and he said, "Please, sir, will you come up to the jail and talk and pray with papa? He murdered mamma. Papa was good and kind, but whisky did it, and I have to support my three little sisters. I sell newspapers and black boots. Will you go up and talk and pray with papa? And will you come home and be with us when they bring him back? The governor says we can have his body after they hang him."
The preacher hurried to the jail and talked and prayed with the man. He had no knowledge of what he had done. He said, "I don't blame the law, but it breaks my heart to think that my children must be left in a cold and heartless world. Oh, sir, whisky did it."
The preacher was at the little hut when up drove the undertaker's wagon and they carried out the pine coffin. They led the little boy up to the coffin, he leaned over and kissed his father and sobbed, and said to his sister, "Come on, sister, kiss papa's cheeks before they grow cold." And the little hungry, ragged, whisky orphans hurried to the coffin, shrieking in agony. Police, whose hearts were adamant, buried their faces in their hands and rushed from the house, and the preacher fell on his knees and lifted his clenched fist and tear-stained face and took an oath before God, and before the whisky orphans, that he would fight the cursed business until the undertaker carried him out in a coffin.
A Chance for Manhood
You men have a chance to show your manhood. Then in the name of your pure mother, in the name of your manhood, in the name of your wife and the poor innocent children that climb up on your lap and put their arms around your neck, in the name of all that is good and noble, fight the curse. Shall you men, who hold in your hands the ballot, and in that ballot held the destiny of womanhood and childhood and manhood, shall you, the sovereign power, refuse to rally in the name of the defenseless men and women and native land? No.
I want every man to say, "God, you can count on me to protect my wife, my home, my mother and my children and the manhood of America."
By the mercy of God, which has given to you the unshaken and unshakable confidence of her you love, I beseech you, make a fight for the women who wait until the saloons spew out their husbands and their sons, and send them home maudlin, brutish, devilish, stinking, blear-eyed, bloated-faced drunkards.
You say you can't prohibit men from drinking. Why, if Jesus Christ were here today some of you would keep on in sin just the same. But the law can be enforced against whisky just the same as it can be enforced against anything else, if you have honest officials to enforce it. Of course it doesn't prohibit. There isn't a law on the books of the state that prohibits. We have laws against murder. Do they prohibit? We have laws against burglary. Do they prohibit? We have laws against arson, rape, but they do not prohibit. Would you introduce a bill to repeal all the laws that do not prohibit? Any law will prohibit to a certain extent if honest officials enforce it. But no law will absolutely prohibit. We can make a law against liquor prohibit as much as any law prohibits.
Or would you introduce a bill saying, if you pay $1,000 a year you can kill any one you don't like; or by paying $500 a year you can attack any girl you want to; or by paying $100 a year you can steal anything that suits you? That's what you do with the dirtiest, rottenest gang this side of hell. You say for so much a year you can have a license to make staggering, reeling, drunken sots, murderers and thieves and vagabonds. You say, "Bill, you're too hard on the whisky." I don't agree. Not on your life. There was a fellow going along the pike and a farmer's dog ran snapping at him. He tried to drive it back with a pitchfork he carried, and failing to do so he pinned it to the ground with the prongs. Out came the farmer: "Hey, why don't you use the other end of that fork?" He answered "Why didn't the dog come at me with the other end?"
Personal liberty is not personal license. I dare not exercise personal liberty if it infringes on the liberty of others. Our forefathers did not fight and die for personal license but for personal liberty bounded by laws. Personal liberty is the liberty of a murderer, a burglar, a seducer, or a wolf that wants to remain in a sheep fold, or the weasel in a hen roost. You have no right to vote for an institution that is going to drag your sons and daughters to hell.
If you were the only persons in this city you would have a perfect right to drive your horse down the street at breakneck speed; you would have a right to make a race track out of the streets for your auto; you could build a slaughter house in the public square; you could build a glue factory in the public square. But when the population increases from one to 600,000 you can't do it. You say, "Why can't I run my auto? I own it. Why can't I run my horse? I own it. Why can't I build the slaughter house? I own the lot." Yes, but there are 600,000 people here now and other people have rights.
So law stands between you and personal liberty, you miserable dog. You can't build a slaughter house in your front yard, because the law says you can't. As long as I am standing here on this platform I have personal liberty. I can swing my arms at will. But the minute any one else steps on the platform my personal liberty ceases. It stops just one inch from the other fellow's nose.
When you come staggering home, cussing right and left and spewing and spitting, your wife suffers, your children suffer. Don't think that you are the only one that suffers. A man that goes to the penitentiary makes his wife and children suffer just as much as he does. You're placing a shame on your wife and children. If you're a dirty, low-down, filthy, drunken, whisky-soaked bum you'll affect all with whom you come in contact. If you're a God-fearing man you will influence all with whom you come in contact. You can't live by yourself with my business?"
If I heard a man beating his wife and heard her shrieks and the children's cries and my wife would tell me to go and see what was the matter, and I went in and found a great big, broad-shouldered, whisky-soaked, hog-jowled, weasel-eyed brute dragging a little woman around by the hair, and two children in the comer unconscious from his kicks and the others yelling in abject terror, and he said, "What are you coming in to interfere with my personal liberty for? Isn't this my wife, didn't I pay for the license to wed her?" You ought, or you're a bigamist. "Aren't these my children; didn't I pay the doctor to bring them into the world?" You ought to, or you're a thief. "If I want to beat them, what is that your business, aren't they mine?" Would I apologize? Never! I'd knock seven kinds of pork out of that old hog.
The Moderate Drinker
I remember when I was secretary of the Y. M. C. A. in Chicago, I had the saloon route. I had to go around and give tickets inviting men to come to the Y. M. C. A. services. And one day I was told to count the men going into a certain saloon. Not the ones already in, but just those going in. In sixty-two minutes I could count just 1,004 men going in there. I went in then and met a fellow who used to be my side-kicker out in Iowa, and he threw down a mint julep while I stood there, and I asked him what he was doing.
" Oh, just come down to the theater," he said, "and came over for a drink between acts."
I said to my friend, "George, do you see that old drunken bum, down and out? There was a time when he was just like you. No drunkard ever intended to be a drunkard. Every drunkard intended to be a moderate drinker."
"Oh, you're unduly excited over my welfare," he said. "I never expect to get that far."
"Neither did that bum," I answered. I was standing on another corner less than eight months afterward and I saw a bum coming along with head down, his eyes bloodshot, his face bloated, and he panhandled me for a flapjack before I recognized him. It was George. He had lost his job and was on the toboggan slide hitting it for hell. I say if sin weren't so deceitful it wouldn't be so attractive. Every added drink makes it harder.
Some just live for booze. Some say, "I need it. It keeps me warm in winter." Another says, "It keeps me cool in summer." Well, if it keeps you warm in winter and cool in summer, why is it that out of those who freeze to death and are sun-struck the greater part of them are booze-hoisters? Every one takes it for the alcohol there is in it. Take that out and you would as soon drink dish water.
I can buy a can of good beef extract and dip the point of my knife in the can and get more nourishment on the point of that knife than in 800 gallons of the best beer. If the brewers of this land today were making their beer in Germany, ninety per cent of them would be in jail. The extract on the point of the knife represents one and three-quarter pounds of good beefsteak. Just think, you have to make a swill barrel out of your bellies and a sewer if you want to get that much nourishment out of beer and run 800 gallons through. Oh, go ahead, if you want to, but I'll try to help you just the same.
Every man has blood corpuscles and their object is to take the impurities out of your system. Perspiration is for the same thing. Every time you work or I preach the impurities come out. Every time you sweat there is a destroying power going on inside. The blood goes through the heart every seventeen seconds. Oh, we have a marvelous system. In some spots there are 4,000 pores to the square inch and a grain of sand will cover 150 of them. I can strip you and cover you with shellac and you'll be dead in forty-eight hours. Oh, we are fearfully and wonderfully made.
Alcohol knocks the blood corpuscles out of business so that it takes eight to ten to do what one ought to do. There's a man who drinks. Here's a fellow who drives a beer wagon. Look how pussy he is. He's full of rotten tissue. He says he's healthy. Smell his breath. You punch your finger in that healthy flesh he talks about and the dent will be there a half an hour afterwards. You look like you don't believe it. Try it when you go to bed tonight. Pneumonia has a first mortgage on a booze-hoister.
Take a fellow with good, healthy muscles, and you punch them and they bound out like a rubber band. The first thing about a crushed strawberry stomach is a crushed strawberry nose. Nature lets the public on the outside know what is going on inside. If I could just take the stomach of a moderate drinker and turn it wrong side out for you, it would be all the temperance lecture you would need. You knew what alcohol does to the white of an egg. It will cook it in a few minutes. Well, alcohol does the same thing to the nerves as to the white of an egg. That's why some men can't walk. They stagger because their nerves are partly paralyzed.
The liver is the largest organ of the body. It takes all of the blood in the body and purifies it and takes out the poisons and passes them on to the gall and from there they go to the intestines and act as oil does on machinery. When a man drinks the liver becomes covered with hob nails, and then refuses to do the work, and the poisons stay in the blood. Then the victim begins to turn yellow. He has the jaundice. The kidneys take what is left and purify that. The booze that a man drinks turns them hard.
That's what booze is doing for you. Isn't it tune you went red hot after the enemy? I'm trying to help you. I'm trying to put a carpet on your floor, pull the pillows out of the window, give you and your children and wife good clothes. I'm trying to get you to save your money instead of buying a machine for the saloonkeeper while you have to foot it.
By the grace of God I have strength enough to pass the open saloon, but some of you can't, so I owe it to you to help you.
I've stood for more sneers and scoffs and insults and had my life threatened from one end of the land to the other by this God-forsaken gang of thugs and cutthroats because I have come out uncompromisingly against them. I've taken more dirty, vile insults from this low-down bunch than from any one on earth, but there is no one that will reach down lower, or reach higher up or wider, to help you out of the pits of drunkenness than I.
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Vin Diesel >
Dwayne Johnson hints at an end to Vin Diesel...
Dwayne Johnson hints at an end to Vin Diesel feud
By Bang Showbiz in Lifestyle / Showbiz on 01 October 2019
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Vin Diesel Dwayne Johnson
DWAYNE 'THE ROCK' JOHNSON has hinted that his feud with Vin Diesel is over, three years after it started on the set of 'The Fate of the Furious'.
DWAYNE 'THE ROCK' JOHNSON has hinted that his feud with Vin Diesel is over.
The pair allegedly fell out on the set of 'The Fate of the Furious' in 2016, which spilled onto social media, when Dwayne accused ''a male co-star'' of being a ''candy-a**'' and claimed that the anger had affected his performance.
He wrote on Instagram at the time: ''When you watch this movie next April and it seems like I'm not acting in some of these scenes and my blood is legit boiling - you're right.''
And since then, the pair have often made comments which allude to a feud between the pair, with Vin once saying things were ''blown out of proportion''.
Speaking in 2017, he said: ''I think some things may be blown out of proportion.
''In my house, he's Uncle Dwayne ... It's not always easy being an alpha. And it's two alphas. Being an alpha is sometimes a pain in the butt.''
But now, it seems they have finally buried the hatchet, as Dwayne has thanked Vin for his ''support'' in the wake of the release of 'Hobbs and Shaw', the 'Fast and Furious' spin off that stars Dwayne and Jason Statham.
Dwayne, 47, said in an Instagram video: ''I want to thank brother Vin for your support of Hobbs and Shaw.''
The star also hinted that Vin, 52, has reached out to congratulate Dwayne and his wife Lauren Hashian on their recent wedding.
He said: ''I saw your post, and appreciate it.
''Lauren and I appreciate the wedding congratulations, we send love right back to you and Paloma [Jimenez, Vin's partner], it was a very classy post and I appreciate it, brother.''
The former wrestler then teased he could feature in the upcoming 'Fast and Furious 9'.
He said: ''And, of course, all roads lead to one thing. I'll be seeing you soon, Toretto.''
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ATLRetro
Your Guide to 20th Century Atlanta in the 21st Century
About ATLRetro
Classic Couture & Flashback Fashion
Kool Kat of the Week
Metal Memories
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This Week in ATLRetro
Tis the Season To Be…
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Kool Kat of the Week: Derek Yaniger, King of Killer Kitsch and the Daddy-O’est of ‘Em All Slings His Ink and Gets to Creepin’ with NETHERWORLD this Season of Haints, Haunts and Horror!
Posted on: Sep 27th, 2016 By: Anya99
by Melanie Crew
Perpetual Kool Kat and Daddy-O extraordinaire, Derek Yaniger, now officially official (Finally. He did create our retro-tastic logo after all!) helps dish out the terror this season of haints, haunts and horror with one of our favorite local haunted attractions, NETHERWORLD! Beginning this Friday, Sept. 30, you can feed the maniacal monster inside nightly, through Oct. 31, with a bloody encore weekend, Nov. 4-5! Get out, get scared, and spook it up!
Consistently ranked as the nation’s best Halloween attraction, our very own fangtastic homegrown haunt, NETHERWORLD delivers a terrifying 20th season, which kicked off this killer season on Sept. 23! Founders Billy Messina and Ben Armstrong and a dedicated team of designers, painters, sculptors and other artists, including Yaniger and his classic monster art created specifically for NETHERWORLD, deserve every kudo imaginable for crafting a Gothic wonderland in a Norcross commercial space. Every year it gets bigger and more creative and this year’s MONSTERS theme is no exception. Chock full of nightmare-inducing creatures, horrorific special effects and a sinister atmosphere, NETHERWORLD does not disappoint! NETHERWORLD also always features a second haunt, VAULT13: MELTDOWN that is more slasher/contemporary horror in its bent–read toxic waste, laboratories gone awry and chainsaws.
Yaniger, former artist for Marvel Comics and Cartoon Network has made a groovy name for himself locally and worldwide in the land of all things retro-culture (rockabilly, burlesque, beatnik, etc.) and has been the purveyor of ‘50s/’60s-style art since 2000. Yaniger has slung his brushes and gathered a gaggle of giddy fans at many a retro-culture event: Tiki Oasis (San Diego), Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekend, Tales of the Cocktail (New Orleans), Spain Wild Weekend, DragonCon and more! And of course our brothers and sisters across the globe dig his work as much as we do, with pieces hanging at Italy’s famed MondoPop, Australia’s Outre, Mexico’s Vertigo, the UK’s Castor & Pollux, just to name a few!
ATLRetro gabbed it up with Yaniger and dished about his ‘50s/’60s kitschy art-style, his love of all things retro and spookin’ it up with one of our favorite neighborhood haunts, NETHERWORLD . While you’re eyeballing our little Q&A, why not take a gander and grab a piece or two of Yaniger’s rockin’ art here!
ATLRetro: We are huge fans of your art (obviously) and of Atlanta’s own spooktacular haunt, Netherworld, celebrating 20 ghoulish years this season of haints, haunts and horrors. Tell us about your partnership with Netherworld and what you bring to their terrifying table?
Derek Yaniger: I do dig me some spooktacular haunts! And Netherworld is claws down the best of the best! I am lucky enough to have a nice relationship with Billy Messina and Ben Armstrong (the cats what founded Netherworld ) and they are kind enough to invite me every year to create a few pieces of art for ’em! Just like me, they have been monster fans since their early days so they seem to dig my retro-inspired take on creepy stuff.
Atlanta’s fangtastic classic horror scene seems to grow larger every year, which keeps local haunts, such as our pals over at Netherworld alive (so to speak!) and kicking. In the spirit of Halloween, is there anything in particular about this season, about the idea of getting spooked that keeps you coming back?
The Halloween season has been my favorite time of year ever since I was a crumbsnatchin’ lil’ creepster! Those first autumn days when the steamy summer temperatures begin to drop and the leaves begin to fall instantly transports me back to my trickin’ or treatin’ days! Memories of my old CREEPY and EERIE magazines and my Aurora Monster Models flood my brain bucket and I can’t wait to head to Netherworld to see it all come to life!
Which classic monster would you say is your favorite?
It’s got to be the original Boris Karloff FRANKENSTEIN! That cat is the ding dong daddy of ‘em all! King of the Monsters! For some reason that film as well as the follow-up, THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN really started it all off for me! I used all my lawn-mowin’ money back in my youth to purchase anything and everything Frankenstein…FAMOUS MONSTERS mags, Don Post Franky masks, Frankenstein model kits…Much to the disappointment of my Mom, I would wear that damn Frankenstein mask EVERYWHERE….even tried to wear it to church once!
You create some killer images, with just the right amount of kitsch, which we of course can’t get enough of, and neither can your fans. Can you tell us a little about your style, and how it differs from the work you did with Marvel Comics and Cartoon Network in the ‘90s?
My current style is deeply rooted in the cartoon art of the ‘50s and early ‘60s….all the stuff that flipped my switches as a child! When I worked for Marvel the requirement was to draw the “Marvel Way,” but after 5 years of that I decided I would rather draw the “Derek Way“. I transitioned into working for Cartoon Network which was closer to my natural cartoon style, but still not me dancin’ to the beat of my own bongos. After about 5 years of that I decided I wanted to commit fully to my first love, the mid-century modern cartoon.
What drew you to a life of creating art? Any riotous tales of your artistic journey?
Honestly, art is the ONLY thing I’m good at, and I really believe I was born to doodle! My life-long obsession with visual images, even before I actually started scribbling, made it clear to me at a young age that a life creating art was the only way to fly! I don’t know how “riotous” my journey has been, as it was mostly working for fat cats n’ bigwigs that micro-managed me to the point where I wasn’t really proud of the work I was creating. One example of the drag that was advertising art: I was commissioned by Kroger to create a deli-chicken waitress character. After the committee of ad cats had their say, I was forced to add big red lips to the beak and red fingernails to the feathered hands! It was uglier and creepier than anything I ever created for Netherworld!
Who would you consider to be your top three favorite retro artists? Where did you draw your inspiration from and how did they inspire you?
My all favorite would have to be the great Jim Flora! Such a great mixture of modern art, humor and weirdness! His album cover art for Columbia, RCA and Camden is so damned great it kinda makes my stomach hurt! Second on the list would be Ward Kimball. He was the Disney director/animator responsible for the majority of experimentally fantastic art seen in the early ‘50s Disney shorts. I sometimes watch those on super-slo-mo and have to repeatedly dab the drool from my dropped jaw! Last, but NEVER least would have to be Georgia-born, UGA-educated illustrator extraordinaire…Jack Davis. His work for EC Comics and Mad Magazine was the first real exposure I had to art as a wee one. Although my style doesn’t really borrow too much from Jack’s, he will always be an inspiration!
Which pop-culture artist would you say is the most neglected and what do you think makes him/her worthy of attention?
If we’re talkin’ present day here, I would say Mitch O’Connell. I dig his work the MOST! He uses heaps of vintage-inspired imagery in his work and as a technician, his skills are insane! AND he’s one of the nicest cats in the kingdom! He was a big inspiration for me when I finally decided to make the big dive into the retro art pool. If we’re talkin’ back in the day, I would have to say Cliff Roberts….kinda hard to find examples of his work. I was lucky enough to snag a copy of THE FIRST BOOK OF JAZZ off EBAY a while back. His B&W illustrations throughout the book swing like a well-greased gate! Who are your favorite local artists? Dave Cook is a local cat who is a very good friend and an even better artist. This Clyde can do it ALL! He’s known for his work on RollerGirls art and his “Cadavitures” (zombie caricatures that he scribbles at DragonCon), but I think he’s mostly known for all the Netherworld tees he’s created over the years. If you own a favorite Netherworld tee, Dave probably scribbled it!
Can you tell our readers how you got involved with Tiki Oasis, Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekend, and our very own DragonCon?
Around the year 2000, When I decided to put all my eggs in the retro art basket, I burned CDs (remember CDs?) of all the retro art I created in my spare hours and sent them to anyone who published a retro-themed magazine (Atomic, Barracuda ) or held retro culture events. (Tiki Oasis, Viva Las Vegas, Hukilau) Otto Von Stroheim, the Grand Poobah of the Tiki Oasis in San Diego was the first to respond, and I’ve scribbled art for that gig every year for the past 15 years! Crazy! Thankfully I am now known as the retro art guy all over the world and have created art for heaps of events celebrating rockabilly, burlesque, cocktail culture, beatnik, etc. The DragonCon connection happened about 8 or so years ago. They were starting the Pop Artist’s Alley to give some attention to artists that don’t make with the comic book bit (more underground Lowbrow kinda stuff). At the time, I was growing in popularity in the Lowbrow world so it was a natural fit!
Your art spans the globe, being housed in galleries across the world, including Italy’s MondoPop, Australia’s Outre, Mexico’s Vertigo and the UK’s Castor and Pollux. What’s it like to know that your art inspires people the world over and what do you want your fans to take away from your work?
Yeah, the international response to my work was a coo coo nutty surprise to me! Them cats overseas seem to really dig the whole American kitschy ‘50s art scene. Just last May I had a sold out show at the La Fiambrera Gallery in Madrid! It was amazing how many people attended the opening and how damn nice they were to me! It was a solid gas! It is so rewarding to know that all this silly crap that pours from my coconut can be an inspiration to so many other artists around the globe. I seem to have a nice following among young artists who may just be discovering retro. I just want my art to make cats ‘n’ kittens smile….I love seeing people eyeball my work for the first time and get a nice wide grin goin!
What are you currently working on? Anything exciting in the pipeline?
I have a couple of gallery shows that I need to start slingin’ paint for. I’m working on a design for a Mai Tai decanter set for Tiki Farm, I’m going to be designing some fabric for Pinup Girl Clothing and I’m REALLY excited to be in discussions with a company to create some high-end 3-D collectible figures of my work! These days I’m jumpin’ like a Mexican bean on a trampoline!
How can our readers get their hands on your art?
Bop on over to https://www.misterretro.com/merchandise and snag somethin’ for your good self!
Anything exciting planned with Netherworld this year?
I created a new piece for Netherworld a couple of months ago. It’s my most favorite yet! Not sure how those cats are planning to use it, but it should show up in the Netherworld gift shop in some creepy form or fashion! Other than that, I’m just planning on falling by the haunts in early October with my good friend Dave Cook. Netherworld always delivers the CREEPS….and I do love it so!
All images provided by Derek Yaniger and used with permission.
Category: Kool Kat of the Week | Tags: Atlanta Haunts, Ben Armstrong, Billy Messina, Boris Karloff, Bride of Frankenstein, Cartoon Network, Castor and Pollux, Cliff Roberts, Creepy Magazine, Dave Cook, Derek Yaniger, DerekArt, Don Post, DragonCon, ec comics, Eerie Magazine, Famous Monsters of Filmland, Frankenstein, Halloween, Hukilau, Jack Davis, Jim Flora, La Fiambrera Gallery, Mad Magazine, Marvel Comics, Mitch O'Connell, MondoPop Gallery, monster model kits, monsters, Netherworld, Otto von Stroheim, Outre Gallery, Pinup Girl Clothing, Spain Wild Weekend, Tales of the Cocktails, Tiki Farm, Tiki Oasis, Vertigo Gallery, Viva Las Vegas, Ward Kimball
Kool Kat of the Week: Space Is the Place: Balogun Ojetade’s Journey from Sword and Soul to Co-Founding The State of Black Science Fiction Convention Which Lands in Atlanta This Weekend
Posted on: Jun 7th, 2016 By: Anya99
The Mothership lands in Atlanta this weekend. No, it’s not a Funkadelic concert, but the first annual State of Black Science Fiction Convention (SOSBFC) at the Southwest Arts Center Saturday June 11 and Sunday June 12. For all the talk about accepting the diversity of the alien, science fiction’s early history is peopled by white super-men protagonists, and some today seem to want to keep it that way if recent controversies in fandom are any indication. But black writers, artists and filmmakers have been emerging to create some of the most dynamic and innovative speculative fiction today, pushing boundaries and re-imaging earth’s future and space as diverse, complex, uncomfortable, beautiful and inspiring.
SOSBFC aims to bring together the most comprehensive celebration of black creators of science fiction, fantasy, horror and comics to date. Just a glance at the programming schedule is sure to cause sensory overload with the mix of panels, speakers, workshops, presentations and kids’ activities to nurture the next generation of creators and fans–something most cons neglect. There’s also a dealers room and art show, cosplay is encouraged, and there’s even going to be onsite food that’s more than pizza or burgers, we hear – something most cons neglect! Whether you’re into Afrofuturism, steamfunk, cyberfunk, dieselfunk, sword and soul, rococoa, Afrikan martial arts, or just what the find out what the funk is happening, SOSBFC is the place.
Needless to say, our choice of Kool Kat this week was easy. ATLRetro caught up with Atlanta-based writer Balogun Ojetade, co-founder with writer/editor/publisher Milton Davis, to find out more about how Atlanta’s newest spec-lit convention got launched, what’s planned and what’s next.
ATLRetro: To many, Samuel R. Delany and Octavia E. Butler lit the fuse on an African-American SF perspective, yet W.E.B. DuBois published an SF story back in 1908. Which SF/spec-lit authors were early favorites/inspirations for you?
Balogun Ojetade: My early inspirations were Charles R. Saunders, the Father of Sword and Soul and creator of the Imaro series of novels and the brilliant master storyteller and poet, Henry Dumas, whose short stories “Fon,” “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” and “Ark of Bones” were the greatest influences on my horror and fantasy writing style as a young man.
Atlanta’s been characterized as a center for Afrofuturism. Can you talk a little about the local community of black writers and publishers? Do you feel like you were part of a movement?
Atlanta is where the now worldwide State of Black Science Fiction author, publisher, artist, filmmaker, game designer and cosplayers collective was founded. As one of the founders of this collective and one of its most active members, I am certainly part of a movement, which is still very much alive. I am also one of the people who founded the Steamfunk Movement, along with author and publisher Milton Davis, who also resides in Atlanta.
What’s the specific origin story of SOBSFC?
The origin of the State of Black Science Fiction Convention, or SOBSF Con, began about four years ago. In the State of Black Science Fiction Facebook Group we had a lively discussion about the need for a convention that would not only showcase comic books by creators of African descent, but would also showcase novels, films, artwork, fashion design, cosplay, African martial arts and much more. We wanted to give con goers a full and enriching experience.
It was originally decided that each region would host a convention – one would be in Atlanta, one in the DC / Maryland / Baltimore area, one in New York City, one in Chicago and so on – on the same days and times. We would call this mega event Diaspora Con. Well, certain things happened that let Milton Davis and I know that Diaspora Con was not to be, so we scrapped the idea, but the desire to give the world a convention that showcased black speculative works continued to burn.
In early 2015, Milton and I decided we would host a con that would draw fans and creators of black speculative fiction, film, fashion and fabrication from around the country. We agreed on the name State of Black Science Fiction Convention and then started making plans. By mid-2015, we made our plans public and received positive feedback from hundreds of people who said they would attend such a con in Atlanta and here we are.
Do you think SOBSFC and a greater push for diversity in SF publishing is especially needed right now in light of the Sad and Rabid Puppies Hugo Awards controversy and Internet outrage about a black lead in the recent Star Wars movie?
These controversies and the outrage is nothing new. You have always had and will always have ignorant and fearful people in all walks of life. The science fiction and fantasy community is not exempt from this. There has always been a need for a SOBSF Con and for a constant push for diversity in SFF publishing. The more we push, the more people know we are here. The more people know we are here, the more that know there are alternatives to the racist, sexist rubbish they have had to endure for so long.
SOBSFC is billed as the “most comprehensive presentation of black speculative fiction ever.” There’s a lot going on for just $25 for both days (a bargain compared to DragonCon, most cons). I know this is a hard question but what 3-5 pieces of programming should con attendees be sure not to miss and why?
Yes, it is a hard question because the programming is so Blacktastic, but I will share a few that I know people will absolutely be blown away by.
The YOU are the Hero Cosplay Contest: Imagine hordes of black cosplayers of all ages and body types presenting mainstream, independent AND original characters from film, comic books, anime, manga, or of their own design. TOO cool!
The Future is Stupid Art Show: Dozens of Afrofuturistic pieces of artwork by Atlanta’s favorite artists will be found all over the exterior and interior of the convention facility.
The Big, Beautiful, Black Roundtable: At this “Town Meeting” we will present, discuss, listen to and put into effect strategies and collaborations to take black speculative fiction/film/fashion/fabrication to the next level!
The Charles R. Saunders Tribute: We will share stories about how this great man has influenced our writing, his history and great contribution to the advancement of speculative fiction and we will read excerpts from his works, all before presenting Charles with a much deserved award.
Can you talk a little about the writer guests and how they reflect the variety and scope of black spec-lit today?
We have some great guests at SOBSF Con and the authors represent the entire spectrum of speculative fiction. Here are a few:
Valjeanne Jeffers: Writes horror, Steamfunk and Sword and Soul.
Zig Zag Claybourne: Writes action and adventure, Rococoa and Cyberfunk.
Derrick Ferguson: New pulp icon. Creator of black pulp heroes Dillon and Fortune McCall.
Cerece Rennie Murphy: Writes urban fantasy for adult, young adult and middle grade readers.
Brandon Massey: Master of horror and suspense.
Hannibal Tabu: Comic book writer and critic.
We also have authors of Cyberfunk, Dieselfunk, Dark Universe (Space Opera) Afrofuturistic fusions of hip-hop, jazz, blues, time travel, magic realism and urban fantasy and much more. Black speculative fiction is very broad and very deep. Con-goers are in for a powerful experience.
This is a really exciting time for black filmmakers in SF and horror. Can you talk a little about that and how that will be reflected in SOBSFC’s programming?
As a lifelong fan and creator of science fiction and fantasy with strong horror elements and straight up horror, too, I am very excited. The digital age has allowed filmmakers who would have otherwise been unable to tell their stories – stories in which the Black character doesn’t die within the first 10 minutes or die sacrificing himself or herself so the white hero can live on to save the day – to now tell stories in which Black people are the heroes, sheroes and even mastermind villains.
Many great independent films and web series have been developed, screened and gained massive followings and Hollywood has been paying attention, so now you have the Black Panther stealing the show in CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR and even getting his own movie. You have Idris Elba playing Roland in the film adaptation of Stephen King’s THE DARK TOWER and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Will Smith and Viola Davis starring in SUICIDE SQUAD as Killer Croc, Deadshot and Amanda Waller, respectively.
And television is even more progressive, giving starring roles to black people in several Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror-themed series and having very diverse casts on these shows.
But again, this all began with black indie filmmakers. To reflect this, SOBSF Con is featuring our Black Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Film Festival, which showcases short and feature films by independent creators. Many of the films creators will also be on hand to share their creative process and answer questions from the audience. Just a few of the films screening at the film festival are: PUMZI (award-winning science fiction short from Africa), DAYBLACK (horror), BLACK PANTHER: STORMS OF CARNAGE Parts 1 & 2 (superhero / fantasy), REIGN OF DEATH (dieselfunk), DANGER WORD (horror; written and produced by master horror author Tananarive Due and science fiction icon Steven Barnes), RITE OF PASSAGE: INITIATION (steamfunk), and a special screening of the science fiction film RETURNED.
What about comics at SOBSFC?
You cannot have a science fiction and fantasy convention without comic books! While comic books are not the focus at SOBSF Con – our focus is on all aspects of black speculative creation – most of the creators and fans at SOBSF Con were heavily influenced and inspired to “do” Science Fiction and Fantasy from our love of comic books, manga, animation and anime. Thus, there will be comic book vendors at SOBSF Con and some giants in the industry are distinguished guests, including Dawud Anyabwile, the co-creator and artist of the iconic blockbuster comic book series BROTHERMAN; Marvel Comics artist Afua Richardson, best known for her work in the award-winning and politically potent Image / Top Cow miniseries GENIUS; Tony Cade, comic book publisher and owner of comic book company, Terminus Media; and TUSKEGEE HEIRS creators Marcus Williams and Greg Burnham, just to name a few. The creators and publishers will share their knowledge and experience with con-goers on the Create Your Own Comic Book and Black Craft and Consciousness in Comic Books panels.
Atlanta is known for its cosplay community. Are you encouraging costuming and will there be activities for cosplayers?
We highly encourage cosplay and invite all the cosplayers in Atlanta to come out and join us! We are very excited about our YOU are the Hero Cosplay Contest I mentioned above, and we also have the Cosplay in Non-Canon Bodies panel, facilitated by popular cosplayers, TaLynn Kel, who will be joined by popular cosplayers, JaBarr Lasley and Dru Phillips.
Balogun Ojetade.
What else would you like people to know about SOBSFC?
While SOBSF Con offers all the great things you expect from a great fan convention – awesome panels, cosplayers, genre films, a dealers’ room with all kinds of cool stuff for sale – we also have offerings you probably have never seen at any con before, such as Tiny Yogis, a yoga class for children; 5P1N0K10 (SPINOKIO), an Afrofuturistic, hip-hop puppet show by a master puppeteer named Jeghetto; Traditional Arms, Armor and Martial Arts of Afrika; Afrikan Martial Arts for Youth Workshop; traditional African artifacts and soaps, oils and fabrics sold in the dealers’ room; your questions answered through traditional Afrikan casting of lots by the Amazing Identical Ojetade Twins (one is a 13-year-old boy; the other a 6-year-old girl); gourmet pot pies; and, most importantly, a place where you can be yourself without judgment, without rude comments, but with love and appreciation. This is a fun event for the entire family you do NOT want to miss!
Finally, would you like to take a moment to talk about your own writing? What’s your latest work and what are you up to next? Feel free to add where we can find you at SOBSFC!
I am always happy to talk about my writing. For those who don’t know me, I write fiction, nonfiction and screenplays. I also direct films and choreograph stunts and fights for films. As a fiction writer, I am most known for my Steamfunk novels, MOSES: THE CHRONICLES OF HARRIET TUBMAN and THE CHRONICLES OF HARRIET TUBMAN: FREEDONIA; my Sword and Soul novel, ONCE UPON A TIME IN AFRICA; and for the STEAMFUNK anthology, which I co-edited with author Milton Davis. However, my novels cover the spectrum of black speculative fiction: Dieselfunk, Rococoa, Afrofuturism; urban fantasy; action-adventure and horror.
My latest work is BENEATH THE SHINING JEWEL, a horror novel set in Ki Khanga, a Sword and Soul world created by Milton Davis and me for our upcoming tabletop role-playing game, KI KHANGA. I am finishing up a Dark Universe (space opera) novel and have a horror short film I wrote slated to begin production in the fall. Finally, in August, comic book artist Chris Miller (Chris Crazyhouse) and I begin work on a graphic novel that is going to blow away fans of manga, comic books and black speculative fiction!
Thanks, so much, for this opportunity and I look forward to seeing everyone at the State of Black Science Fiction Convention June 11 and 12!
Category: Kool Kat of the Week | Tags: 2016, 5P1N0K10, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, afrikan martial arts, afrofuturism, afua richardson, Amanda Waller, Amazing Identical Ojetade Twin, art, Atlanta, ATLRetro, balogun ojetade, beneath the shining jewel, Black Panther, black panther storms of carnage, black speculative literature, brandon massey, brotherman, Captain America Civil War, cerece rennie murphy, chris crazyhouse, chris miller, chronicles of harriet tubman, comics, con, convention, cosplay, cyberfunk, danger word, Dark Tower, Dawud Anyabwile, dayblack, Deadshot, derrick ferguson, dieselfunk, dillon, dru phillips, fantasy, film, Film Festival, fortune mccoll, freedonia, funkadelic, Genius, Greg Burnham, henry dumas, hip hop, horror, hugo awards, Idris Elba, imaro, jabarr lasley, Jeghetto, june 11, june 12, ki khanga, Killer Croc, Kool Kat of the Week, Marcus Williams, Marvel Comics, md media, milton davis, moses, mothership, movies, octavia butler. charles r saunders, once upon a time in africa, panels. hannibal tabu, pumzi, rabid puppies, reign of death, returned, rite of passage initiation, rococoa, Roland, sad puppies, samuel delany, sci-fi, science fiction, sobsfc, southwest arts center, spec-lit, speculative literature, Spinokio, Star Wars, state of black science fiction convention, state of black science fiction facebook group, steamfunk, steamfunk movement, steamfunk anthology, Stephen King, steven barnes, Suicide Squad, Sun Ra, sword and soul, talynn kel, tananarive due, Terminus Media, Tony Cade, Top Cow, Tuskegee Heirs, valjeanne jeffers, viola davis, Will Smith, zig zag claybourne
ATLFF Q&A with GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY Director James Gunn and Actor Michael Rooker: “Atlanta has treated us really, really well!”
Posted on: Apr 12th, 2016 By: Anya99
By Andrew Kemp
James Gunn’s GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 2 is now filming in Atlanta, and last week’s Atlanta Film Festival took advantage by booking a screening of the original GUARDIANS movie with a Q&A after with Gunn and actor Michael Rooker. If you heard about this event, it may have been in context of the grumpy final exchange between Gunn and a fan who asked Rooker if his GUARDIANS character, Yondu, was a just a copy of his racist redneck Merle from THE WALKING DEAD. But prior to that hiccup, the Q&A had been a lovefest between Gunn, Rooker and a roomful of appreciative fans. Here are some highlights from the rest of the session:
Gunn on taking the time to do the Q&A: “One of the reasons we wanted to come do this today is because, really, Atlanta has treated us really, really well so far. We have an amazing crew, many of whom are from Atlanta; the majority of them are from Atlanta. And it’s nice to be able to come and do something with you guys and give a little thanks for what you guys have given us. So we really just appreciate being here, and really the hospitality of the city in general. “
On GUARDIANS 2: “It’s been a lot of hard work, honestly. It’s a much bigger film. Also at the same time, a much more intimate film, more character-driven in certain ways, so it’s just a lot of work. And everybody has been on their game. The new cast members… Kurt Russell has been incredible. And Pom Klementieff… who plays a new Guardian has been just, she blows me away. She’s really been perfect.”
On directing actors: “It’s kind of like going through a dark cave and you’re looking for those moments of truth, which means that you’re kind of working together , you’re holding hands, you can’t always see exactly where you’re going, but you’re trying to find those true moments. So that often means that I’m having people do things again and again and again and again and again.”
On moving from indie films to blockbusters: “I don’t think I was ever scared of the scope. I feel like I’ve always wanted to do huge movies, so I think that I’ve always been working towards that. I’ve always been afraid of ‘are people going to like the movie,’ ‘is the movie going to make money?’ There are times on the first movie where I’d wake up at 3 a.m. and go ‘Oh no, am I making PLUTO NASH (2002)?’”
Rooker on people dressed up as GUARDIANS characters: “It’s better if they’re undressed.”
Gunn joking about Rooker: “We’ve done four movies, two webseries, two reality shows, a video game… it’s really my penance for my success. He is the cross I carry on my back. ‘OK, you can have all your dreams and your money and whatever, but you have to work with Michael Rooker.’”
Rooker on acting with pop songs: [After Gunn describes playing the pop songs on set as they’ll appear in the film] “It’s going, the music’s going. And then you hear ‘action.’ But by the time you hear ‘action,’ you’re already into the music. I’m telling you, it’s so hard to not bop along.”
Gunn on convincing the studio to hire Rooker: “There were a couple of people I had to fight for on the first movie. I had to fight for [Rooker] real hard and I had to fight for Dave Bautista. It was an uphill battle….Especially because you have these guys who are, like, 50ish year old guys, there’s a lot of them, a lot of really big actors around that age that would die to be in a Marvel project. So he’s not just auditioning against all of these other no name actors, they have to trust me to hire him over a bunch of A-list actors or guys who are just out of being A-list actors. So that’s what they had to put faith in.”
Gunn on Rocket Raccoon: “Rocket is my inner child. The whole movie to me was based on Rocket. Marvel came to me with this movie, I thought ‘you guys are crazy,’ this sounds like an insane idea. I was driving home from the meeting and I’m like, ‘OK, let’s say there was really a talking raccoon. How would that exist? And it was really that scene is everything, GUARDIANS was built out of that, so I have a very strong emotional connection to Rocket…. Rocket is really a combination of a lot of people. I write the character. My brother Sean does all the acting on set. Bradley [Cooper] comes and does the voice. We have a whole team of animators who help with the acting there. So there’s a lot of control I have, a lot more attachment to Rocket and to Groot in that respect.”
On SUICIDE SQUAD (2016) and other movies emulating GUARDIANS’ humor: “If it’s sincere, I think that’s great. For me, honestly, the reason why GUARDIANS was successful, and I believe the reason a movie like DEADPOOL (2016) was successful is because we really are sincere about it. This is the real stuff. Everything in this movie is something I believe in. I believe in those characters. Some people think I’m crazy. Because I love that raccoon. I mean, as much as I would love my own child. Really, it’s a little bit insane. But I love those characters so much, and I love that story so much, and I love that I was a kid that was not a normal kid and felt very alone. And luckily I had some artists out there, who I could listen to their music or watch their films, whether it was David Cronenberg movies or Alice Cooper’s music, where I thought ‘goddamn I’m not the only weirdo in the world.’ And to be able to make a movie that speaks to those people, that speaks to people that feel like they’re alone or like they’re outcasts or that don’t have friends or have screwed-up families and need that connection with other living beings, that they can feel some small part of that through seeing GUARDIANS, that is why I make the movies. And that is the only reason I make them.”
Andrew Kemp is a screenwriter and game designer who started talking about movies in 1984 and got stuck that way. He can be seen around town wherever there are movies, cheap beer and little else.
Category: Features | Tags: 2016, Alice Cooper, Atlanta, Atlanta Film Festival, ATLFF, david cronenberg, Deadpool, Groot, Guardians 2, Guardians of the Galaxy, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, James Gunn, kurt russell, Marvel Comics, Michael Rooker, Plaza Theatre, Pluto Nash, Pom Klementieff, Rocket Raccoon, Suicide Squad, The Walking Dead
Kool Kat of the Week: Chesya Burke Investigates the Harlem Renaissance in THE STRANGE CRIMES OF LITTLE AFRICA
Posted on: Jan 29th, 2016 By: Anya99
Atlanta author Chesya Burke finds a mystery in 1920s Harlem in THE STRANGE CRIMES OF LITTLE AFRICA, her debut novel from Rothco Press which has its launch party Friday Jan. 29 at 7:30 p.m. at Charis Books and More in Little Five Points. The innovative and much anticipated story features as its protagonist feisty would-be detective Jaz Idewell, daughter of the first African-American officer in the New York Police Department, and as her best friend a young Zora Neale Hurston.
Chesya has been turning heads with her short fiction, unabashedly bringing an African-American woman’s perspective to horror and spec-lit. Her first story collection, LET’S PLAY WHITE, came out from Apex Publications in 2011, and other recent publications include “In the Quad of Project 327,” in CASSILDA’S SONG, an all-women authors’ collection of stories inspired by Robert W. Chambers’ THE KING IN YELLOW which featured in HBO’s TRUE DETECTIVE.
ATLRetro was lucky enough to get a sneak peek at STRANGE CRIMES and enjoyed it so much we couldn’t help but make her Kool Kat of the Week. We caught up with her recently to find out more about the book, the festivities at Charis and what’s next for this innovative author.
ATLRetro: What’s the “secret origin story” behind how you came to write THE STRANGE CRIMES OF LITTLE AFRICA?
Chesya Burke: STRANGE CRIMES isn’t much of a secret. A fellow writer and I thought that a black woman detective novel would be fun to write, Harlem would be a great setting and now there’s my Little Africa. Which I hope captures just a little of the real Little Africa.
How much of an impact has Zora Neale Hurston’s writing had on you personally, and did you feel at all intimidated bringing such a literary icon onto the page?
I love ZNH! Just love her. I love everything about her. Researching her, reading her biography, her own story, written by her, true and false—she was known to…subvert the truth when she saw fit—was fascinating. I’m a huge fan and I enjoy her work. I’m not sure how much influence she has on me, probably quite a bit, but less than some authors such as Octavia Butler. I think what I take most from Hurston is dialogue. She really got to the essence of rural black dialect. I hope I can be half as good as she one day!
I was nervous to write about Hurston. I have this idea of the woman that she was in my head, but it’s not real. I had to realize that I could never get the real Zora on the page, only a bit of the mystery of her as I could imagine.
Zora is not the only real-life character from the Harlem Renaissance. Briefly, can you tell us about a few of the others, such as the enigmatic Madam St. Clair, who also appears in your story “I Make People Do Bad Things”?
There are so many. I researched a lot for the book. Stephanie St. Clair, Bumpy Johnson, Anderson Charles and several others. Even her father, Rueben Idawell was based on the first black traffic cop in NYC.
What did you do to research the book, and what was the most challenging piece of information to find/fact-check?
I’ve been to New York a bunch, and I went to Harlem specifically to do research. I spent hours and hours in the museum, walking the streets and just trying as hard as I could to get a feel for it. But, of course, I hadn’t been to 1920s Harlem, so I looked at old articles and pictures and newspaper clippings from the time. That’s where I got the name, “Little Africa.” I hadn’t [known] it was called that until I read it in a newspaper from the time.
Jaz, the protagonist, is the daughter of the first African-American officer in the NYPD. Are there any lessons that you hope readers will bring to the present from your depiction of race and justice/injustice in the Harlem Renaissance?
Racial injustice and police brutality have only changed in measures since the era of the novel. We don’t have to read historical novels to see this. Anyone reading STRANGE CRIMES will see parallels. And that is unfortunate.
Your acclaimed short story collection LET’S PLAY WHITE is horror/spec-lit. Especially over the past decade more African-American horror writers have risen to prominence from Tananarive Due to Victor LaValle, and some would say that Toni Morrison’s BELOVED is one of the best horror novels of all time. Are you encouraged by more diversity in the genre community or do you still see significant challenges/barriers for writers of color?
Of course. I hope that in the future we will see even more.
You just completed a master’s thesis at Agnes Scott College about Storm of Marvel Comics’ X-MEN and started a doctoral program at the University of Florida-Gainesville. Is it challenging to be both a graduate student and an author?
Oh. My. God. Yes. It’s most difficult because it seems that I’m being pulled in so many directions and both careers are doing relatively well. But it’s the problem to have, so I’m not complaining. Love every minute of it!
You still consider Atlanta home, though. Is that why you wanted your official book launch here at Charis? Can you tell readers a little about the festivities on Friday night?
Yes. Atlanta is home. Always will be. The book launch is on Friday and I will be reading from STRANGE CRIMES. Charis is also home and is the perfect place for the release party of my first book. I’m also reading at Agnes Scott College on Wednesday evening!
What’s next in fiction for you? The end of STRANGE CRIMES seemed to hint that you might have a sequel in mind?
Yes. I’m working on the next book in the series. At least, I should be. I’m working on a few short stories and comic stuff. Most of it, I can’t talk about unfortunately.
Any other current or “lost/forgotten” writers you’d like to recommend to ATLRetro readers?
Octavia Butler, who is not lost, but everyone should know about. Maurice Broaddus. Jennifer Brissett. Victor LaValle. Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Kiese Laymon. Shane McKenzie. Laird Barron. I know I’m missing lots of people.
Chesya talks more about THE STRANGE CRIMES OF LITTLE AFRICA and other works in this recent interview on THE OUTER DARK podcast on Atlanta-based Project iRadio.
Category: Kool Kat of the Week | Tags: african american, agnes scott, anderson charles, apex publications, Atlanta, ATLRetro, beloved, bumpy johnson, cassilda's song, charis books, chesya burke, harlem renaissance, i make people do bad things, jaz idawell, Jennifer Brissett, Kiese Laymon, king in yellow, Kool Kat of the Week, Laird Barron., let's play white, madam st clair, Marvel Comics, Maurice Broaddus, mystery, novel, octavia butler, robert w chambers, rothco press, Shane McKenzie, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, spec-lit, stephanie st clair, storm, strange crimes of little africa, tananarive dur, toni morrison, true detective, victor lavalle, x-men, zora neale hurston
Really Retro: Sergio Leone Meets Norse Legend WHEN THE RAVEN FLIES at The Plaza & A Retrospective on Vikings in the Movies
Posted on: Jun 20th, 2013 By: Anya99
WHEN THE RAVEN FLIES (Iceland/Sweden 1984); Dir. Hrafn Gunnlaugsson; Starring Jakob Þór Einarsson; Sunday, June 23; 3 p.m.; Plaza Theatre; Preshow presentation and weapons/crafts for sale by Sons of Loki; Sponsored by Scandinavian American Foundation of Georgia; $8 general admission, $6 for SAFG members; PG-13; violence; parents should exercise caution when bringing children; Trailer; Facebook event page.
By Anya Martin
Vikings may come from cold climates, but Dark Age Scandinavians are hot right now, at least on screen. The TV series, VIKINGS, was such a hit that The History Channel has renewed it for a second season. With promises of capturing the authentic violence of the Vikings in Dark Age Britain, HAMMER OF THE GODS (2013) hits theaters July 5. The main villain in THE AVENGERS (2012) was Norse trickster god Loki, and THOR: THE DARK WORLD, a second feature about that Norse-God-turned-Marvel-Superhero premieres in November. Even Mel Gibson supposedly has BERSERKER, a “real and visceral” Viking feature in preproduction.
In the midst of this seeming Viking fever, critically acclaimed Viking adventure movie WHEN THE RAVEN FLIES (HRAFNINN FLYGUR) will get a rare return to the big screen at the Plaza Theatre on Sun. June 23 at 3 p.m. WHEN THE RAVEN FLIES recounts an Irishman’s quest for revenge on the Viking raiders who savagely killed his parents and abducted his sister. Ancient Norse gods figure prominently in the plot, and the prerequisite violence ensues. However, the film is as much a Western in its structure as a mythological saga with striking visuals of the desert replaced by stunning cinematography of the unique Icelandic landscape. Director Hrafn Gunnlaugsson describes himself as a disciple of Sergio Leone, John Ford and Akira Kurosawa, and the influence of all three is apparent. WHEN THE RAVEN FLIES is evocative of A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, in that a mysterious stranger Gestur (Jakob Þór Einarsson) plays off tensions between Thor and Erik, the two brothers who lead the Viking band.
Poster for EMBLA, aka THE WHITE VIKING.
WHEN THE RAVEN FLIES has won several awards, including being voted one of the outstanding films of the 1980s at the Tokyo International Film Festival and Gunnlaugsson winning the 1985 Guldbagge Award for Best Direction, the Swedish equivalent to the Oscars. It was also nominated for the 1986 International Fantasy Film Award for Best Film.The movie is the first of the Raven Trilogy, which includes IN THE SHADOW OF THE RAVEN (Í SKUGGA HRAFNSINS, 1987) and EMBLA (2007), aka the director’s cut of THE WHITE VIKING (1991), which was originally edited by that film’s producers without Gunnlaugsson’s approval.
If the melding of real Viking lore and Leone couldn’t be cool enough, the screening will be preceded by a live weapons demonstration by the Sons of Loki. These contemporary Vikings will also be present in the Plaza Lobby before and after the movie with Viking handicrafts and weaponry for sale and to answer questions about Scandinavian culture in the Dark Ages.
Still over the history of Hollywood, Viking movies have been relatively rare, compared to other historic-based genres such as the Western or the sword-and-sandle epic. And good ones with any relevance to actual Viking culture even rarer. Therefore, at ATLRetro, we decided to dig a little deeper to excavate a brief saga of Norse-inspired cinema.
THE VIKING (1928).
The first appearance of Vikings on film that we could find was THE VIKING (1928), a silent that chronicles Leif Ericsson‘s journey to the New World. The costumes apparently are strictly Wagner, the weaponry inauthentic and the actual history tenuous, but Leif’s father enthusiastically slaughters Christians and Princess Helga has a sexy winged helmet and heavy black eyeliner.
Unfortunately, Hollywood didn’t return to the world of the Vikings until the 1950s when a sudden splash of features hit the big screen. The first, PRINCE VALIANT (1954), was based on the popular comics series, directed by Henry Hathaway (who would go on to direct TRUE GRIT[1969]) and starred a young Robert Wagner. It was a fun sword-and-sorcery romp with links to the King Arthur legend and the bonus that the sword actually sung, but the plot has virtually nothing to do with authentic Vikings. Always one to follow a trend as cheaply as possible, Roger Corman followed with THE SAGA OF THE VIKING WOMEN TO THE WATERS OF THE GREAT SEA SERPENT (1957). In this cheesy fantasy frolic, a young way-pre-FALCON CREST Abby Dalton leads a bevy of scantily clad Norse babes to battle a monster and rescue a missing man.
Then came THE VIKINGS (1958), the first actual epic Hollywood treatment starring Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, Ernest Borgnine and Janet Leigh. Full of battles and striking cinematography in Norwegian locations, this romanticized story of two brother vying for a Welsh princess was directed by Richard Fleischer (20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA [1954]) and also benefitted from visual designs by Harper Goff, another 20,000 LEAGUES veteran as art director. Some time around then, by the way, was the only other Norse-inspired TV series, TALES OF THE VIKINGS, which ran about 19 episodes from 1959-60. Alas most of the footage is lost, but it lifted scenes and props directly from THE VIKINGS movie. You can hear the jaunty theme song here! Oh, wait, there was also the silly British children’s cartoon NOGGIN THE NOG which ran from 1959 to the mid-70s.
Italian giallo director Mario Bava (DANGER:DIABOLIK; BARON BLOOD) also tried his hand on two spaghetti Viking features, ERIK THE CONQUEROR (1961) and KNIVES OF THE AVENGER (1966) with American action hero Cameron Mitchell, who would go on to become best known as Uncle Buck in 1960s TV Western series THE HIGH CHAPARRAL. The first steals its tale of two brothers plot directly from THE VIKINGS, but is noteworthy for rich cinematography, strong action and dancing vestal virgins. California-based living history and educational group, the Vikings of Bjornstad point out in their wonderful Viking Movie List (see link at end), “This is a Viking-related movie. It’s 786 AD. The ships had red and white striped sails. Once in a while, someone yells “Odin!'” They go on to mention inaccurate costumes that even sometimes have clearly visible zippers, an “underground throne room left over from some Biblical Philistine movie” and a Viking village that seems to be made out of Lincoln logs. KNIVES OF THE AVENGER is basically a spaghetti Western reset in the Dark Ages mixed with pirates, supernatural magic and lots of knife-throwing which the trusty Vikings of Bjornstad spare no punches to declare “Worst Viking Movie Ever!” As for Cameron Mitchell, maybe he aspired to be the Clint Eastwood of Italian Viking epics since he also starred in THE LAST OF THE VIKINGS (L’ULTIMO DEI VIKINGHI, 1961) and ATTACK OF THE NORMANS (I NORMANNI, 1962).
Charlton Heston is THE WAR LORD (1965).
In general, the 1960s weren’t good to the Vikings on screen, whether outright fantasy or not. THE LONG SHIPS (1964) is a lightweight adventure about a Viking quest for a golden bell in the Holy Land. Directed by Jack Cardiff, cinematographer of THE VIKINGS, and starring Richard Widmark as a Viking warrior and Sidney Poitier as a Moorish king, the movie is not really very Viking except for the presence of a long ship and round shields. But the action scenes nonetheless are amplified by lush Yugoslavian locations, and the titles were designed by Maurice Binder who crafted the Bond openers. Not surprisingly, Charlton Heston also did an obligatory stint as a Norman war lord in THE WAR LORD (1965) charged with defending his Duke’s land again Frisian invaders, who are costumed to look like Vikings, not a far stretch considering they came from near Denmark and were eventually conquered. Despite the stringy chainmail and Hollywood backlot locations, The Vikings of Bjornstad give this one a thumbs up, noting that Heston is well cast and it’s “one of the few films that touches on the differences between the Christian Normans and the pagans they ruled.” They also wouldn’t mind seeing a better update of another Hollywood film that had potential, ALFRED THE GREAT (1969), which starred David Hemmings as King Alfred and Michael York as Viking Chief Guthrum.
Britain’s Hammer Films, known for its high quality low budget horror, served up THE VIKING QUEEN (1967). The goofy plot is involves women wearing much too little to be comfortable in British climates, a Viking-Roman forbidden romance and a Brits versus Romans rebellion which evokes Celtic tribal queen Boudicca. Nobody obviously cared to check and see that Vikings didn’t raid the U.K. coast until long after the Romans had already left. Meanwhile, Danish film HAGBARD AND SIGNE (aka THE RED MANTLE/DEN RODE KAPPE, 1967) transplanted a ROMEO AND JULIET storyline to two warring Viking families. Filmed in Iceland, Roger Ebert called it “a beautiful, lean spare film…the sleeper of the year,” and the Vikings of Bjornstad overall give it a thumbs up for aesthetics and action for the time.
Perhaps mercifully the long ships barely got unmoored during the ’70s, with the highest profile feature THE NORSEMAN (1978) sinking at the box office despite starring a hunky Lee Majors, at the peak of his SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN fame, with a Tom Selleck moustache as Greenland’s Prince Thorvald. It followed the frequent Viking movie plot of a journey to the New Land, in this case to free his father King Eurich (Mel Ferrer) who is imprisoned by Native Americans, and the brawny cast also included quirky character actor Jack Elam, then a Western staple; NFL stars Fred Biletnikoff and Deacon Jones, and Denny Miller (TARZAN THE APE MAN, 1959). Oh, lest we forget, Walt Disney action-adventure flick THE ISLAND AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD (1974) included a lost Viking colony.
In the ’80s, ERIK THE VIKING (1989) literally became a bad joke. Alas it was to be a Monty Python vehicle starring Graham Chapman, but while Terry Jones directed and John Cleese plays the villain, audiences just didn’t find it funny maybe because of the sheer unlikelihood of Mickey Rooney, Eartha Kitt and Imogen Stubbs appearing in even a satire of a Norse saga. Tim Robbins valiantly gave his best effort to star as Erik who ironically was tired of marauding and goes on a quest for a magic horn of peace.
Well, that’s in the English and apparently Italian speaking world of mainstream movies. In Iceland where Vikings actually lived, the 1980s produced a number of features that purported to be more authentic takes on Norse culture. The first was OUTLAW, THE SAGA OF GISLI (UTLAGINN, 1981), based directly on the Gisla saga. Then director Hrafn Gunnlaugsson embarked on WHEN THE RAVEN FLIES, the film which is playing at the Plaza and became the first installment of a Viking trilogy. Norway also produced THE LITTLEST VIKING (1989), a charming children’s tale about a daydreaming boy who seeks to end a feud with another clan. It apparently has lots of stunning fjord shots.
In the ’90s and 2000s, the mainstream Viking feature took a turn towards being more gritty and gory, allegedly to be true to the times or well, because, dark sells movie tickets. Several interesting ventures featuring high-profile directors and actors sailed onto the big screen. The first was ROYAL DECEIT (aka PRINCE OF JUTLAND, 1994), a supposedly period-accurate retelling of HAMLET starring Christian Bale as a sixth century Danish prince whose father (Tom Wilkinson) is murdered by a power-hungry uncle (Gabriel Byrne, who would be back in Viking robes as the surly old chieftain in The History Channel’s VIKINGS this spring). Of course, he has the hots for his hot mama (who else but Helen Mirren?!). The Vikings of Bjornstad like that the costumes, weaponry and sets are simple, hence probably more period accurate, but otherwise found it disappointing despite what would seem to be a strong cast. The European version is 17 minutes longer than the US/Region I DVD version.
THE 13TH WARRIOR (1999)
Next up is the uber-violent THE VIKING SAGAS (1995), directed by Michael Chapman, the cinematographer of Martin Scorsese‘s RAGING BULL (1980). It starred Ralf Moeller (TV’s CONAN, GLADIATOR) and was actually filmed in Iceland. Alas, the acting and script are not much, but it has a mythic quality with a magic sword – as much a must seemingly for a Viking movie as a medieval fantasy one – and more of an authentic look than most of its predecessors, actual Icelandic movies excepted.
And then THE 13TH WARRIOR (1999) nailed the look and feel of a Norse legend perhaps better than any Hollywood film that came before it. Originally titled EATERS OF THE DEAD and based on a Michael Crichton novel, it was meant to be a gory but realistic retelling of BEOWULF, but really more captured the spirit of a Robert E. Howard short story though its outsider hero, an Arab ambassador played by Antonio Banderas, was more spirit and intellect than Conan the Barbarian brawn. Unfortunately, director John McTiernan (DIE HARD, PREDATOR) was not allowed the final cut (the idea of a director’s version someday being released seems increasingly remote especially with McTiernan now in prison). However, enough of McTiernan’s vision remained that THE 13TH WARRIOR acquired a loyal fan following (including a high recommend from ATLRetro and an even better authority – the Vikings of Bjornstad).
Yeah, we are going to skip quickly over the disappointing PRINCE VALIANT (1997) – ATLRetro would love to see a PRINCE VALIANT that’s true to Hal Foster‘s wonderful comic which has been recently resurrected by masterful illustrator Gary Gianni, but this is NOT it. And no time is worth devoting to BEOWULF (1999) starring Christopher Lambert who at some point after GREYSTOKE did completely forget how to act. And the Vikings of Bjornstad say everything worth saying about BERSERKER: HELL’S WARRIOR (2004) in this phrase – “time-traveling immortal Viking vampires who wear sunglasses in discotheques…So overdone.”
The Vikings of Bjornstad rank Polish movie THE OLD FAIRY TALE (STARA BASN, 2003) as “the best Viking movie” for its historical accuracy. Directed by Jerzy Hoffman, who has been called Poland’s John Ford, the 9th century story revolves around a wicked Polish king and a Viking-raised hero. Apparently, Viking reenactment is big in Poland, which the Vikings of Bjornstad think may have contributed to it, first, getting made, and second, its high quality. Also well worth a view for its stunning Icelandic scenery and interesting take on the quintessential Saxon/Norse legend is BEOWULF AND GRENDEL (2005), starring a pre-300 Gerard Butler and featuring some of the best Viking era costumes of any film.
In South Africa-filmed low-budget BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (BLOOD OF BEASTS, 2005), Odin punishes a Viking princess (Jane March) by trapping her in a castle with a beast. A Gallic bande dessinee hero finally gets big-screen treatment in the French animated comedy ASTERIX AND THE VIKINGS (2006) which seems to forget that Vikings weren’t around yet in AD 50. Robert Zemeckis‘s much-touted 3D BEOWULF (2007) honed so close to the original poem, probably thanks to Neil Gaiman being involved in the script, but yes, the animation even of beautiful Angelina Jolie as Grendel’s evil mother, is decidedly creepy.
PATHFINDER (2007) starred Karl Urban, who certainly looked mighty Norse as Eomer in THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy, as a Viking raised by Native Americans who ends up leading the tribe that raised him in battle against new Viking invaders. A crappy remake of a much better 1987 Norwegian movie, the story really comes from Lapland/Sammi mythology. Directed by Marcus Nispel (TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE [2003], CONAN [2011] ), it’s gory melodrama with lots of mist. The same year (2007) also saw the release of the more serious and well-reviewed SEVERED WAYS: THE NORSE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.
Jim Caviezel (THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST) travels back from the future to 8th century Norway in OUTLANDER (2008). Viewers who ignore that this mash-up of Norse mythology and sci-fi is light on history may have silly fun. It features both laser guns and swords, a monster, John Hurt as the old king, Sophia Myles as the prerequisite sexy princess and Ron Perlman as a gruff Viking with, let’s just say, poor manners.
And then there’s VALHALLA RISING (2009). Director Nicholas Winding Refn (DRIVE) spares no punches with the ultra-violence in which Christian Vikings and a mute slave (Mads Mikkelsen, HANNIBAL, CASINO ROYALE) headed for the Holy Land get blinded by fog and end up in the New World. An article in Movie Fanfare on the “Top 13 Viking Films You Need to See” (see link at end) perhaps put it best: “VALHALLA RISING plays like THE VIKINGS co-directed by Terrence Malick and Italian gore specialist Umberto Lenzi!”
And oh yeah, there was some movie about a Marvel super-hero named THOR (2011).
For more about Vikings in the Movies, check out the Vikings of Bjornstad’s Viking Movie List, as well as Movie Fanfare’s “Top 13 Viking Films You Need to See.”
Category: Really Retro | Tags: 20, 20000 Leagues Under the Sea, A Fistful of Dollars, Abby Dalton, Akira Kurosawa, Alfred the Great, Antonio Banderas, Anya Martin, Asterix and the Vikings, Attack of the Normans, Beauty and the Beast, Beowulf, Beowulf and Grendel, Berserker, Berserker: Hell's Warrior, Blood of Beasts, cameron Mitchell, Charlton Heston, Christian Bale, Christopher Lambert, Conan, David Hemmings, Deacon Jones, Denny Miller, Eartha Kitt, Embla, Erik the Conqueror, Erik the Viking, Ernest Borgnine, Falcon Crest, Fred Biletnikoff, Gabriel Byrne, Gary Gianni, Gerard Butler, Gisla, Gladiator, Graham Chapman, Hagbard and Signe, Hal Foster, Hamlet, Hammer Films, Hammer of the Gods, Harper Goff, Helen Mirren, Henry Hathaway, High Chaparral, History Channel, Hrafn Gunnlaugsson, Icelandic film, Imogen Stubbs, In the Shadow of the Raven, International Fantasy Film Award, Jack Cardiff, Jack Elam, Jakob Por Einarsson, James Bond, Jane March, Janet Leigh, Jerzy Hoffman, Jim Caviezel, John Cleese, John Ford, John Hurt, John McTiernan, karl urban, King Arthur, Kirk Douglas, Knives of the Avenger, Lee Majors, Leif Ericsson, Loki, lord of the rings, Mads Mikkelsen, Marcus Nippel, Mario Bava, Marvel Comics, Maurice Binder, Mel Ferrer, Michael Chapman, Michael Crichton, michael York, Mickey Rooney, Monty Python, Movie Fanfare, Neil Gaiman, New World, Nicholas Windling Refn, Noggin the Nog, Norse mythology, Odin, Outlander, Outlaw, pathfinder, Plaza Theatre, Polish movie, Prince of Jutland, Prince Valiant, Raging Bull, Ralf Moeller, Raven Trilogy, Richard Fleischer, Richard Widmark, Robert E Howard, Robert Zemeckis, Roger Corman, roger ebert, Romeo and Juliet, Ron Perlman, Royal Deceit, SAFG, saga, Saga of Gisli, Scandinavian-American Foundation of Georgia, Sergio Leone, Severed Ways, Sidney Poitier, Six Million Dollar Man, Sons of Loki, Sophia Myles, spaghetti Western, Stara Basn, Tales of the Vikings, Tarzan the Ape Man, Terence Malick, Terry Jones, The 13th Warrior, The Avengers, The Island at the Top of the World, The Last of the Vikings, The Littlest Viking, The Long Ships, the Norse Discovery of America, The Norseman, The Old Fairy Tale, The Red Mantle, The Sage of the Viking Women to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent, The Viking, The Viking Queen, The Viking Sagas, The Vikings, The War Lord, The White Viking, Thor, Thor the Dark World Mel Gibson, Tim Robbins, Tokyo International Film Festival, Tom Wilkinson, Tony Curtis, True Grit, Umberto Lenzi, Valhalla Rising, viking movies, vikings, Vikings of Bjornstad, Wagner, Walt Disney, When the Raven Flies
Weekend Update, June 24-26, 2011
Blair Crimmins
Things could get dangerous as radical ragtimers Blair Crimmins & the Hookers revive the Roarin’ Twenties after A Fight to the Death and Lille at The Earl. Read ATLRetro’s interview with Blair here. If you missed AM Gold‘s brilliant heartfelt rendition of the entire Steve Miller Band’s Greatest Hits ’74-’78 album at Bubbapalooza, we guess you could settle for the real Steve Miller Band at Delta Classic Chastain. Experience a funkier kind of jazz with Cadillac Jones at Star Bar. Catch an IMAX movie and swing dance the night away to Kingsized at Fernbank Museum of Natural History’s Martinis and IMAX.
The bewitching Dario Argento classic SUSPIRIA, starring Jessica Harper (PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE) and Joan Bennett (DARK SHADOWS), is this month’s feature for Shriek Theatre Movie Night at DooGallery. And Film Love:Robbie Land includes 16 mm shorts and a chance to meet the acclaimed filmmaker. Works include MICANOPY WINTER WONDERLAND, which documents an antique jukebox converted into a diorama wonderland scene, and FLORIDALAND, about defunct Florida theme parks from 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. Film Love founder/director Andy Ditzler was a recent Kool Kat.
Saturday June 25
Greg Theakston, comics writer/artist and the man who rediscovered Bettie Page, signs JACK MAGIC, THE LIFE AND ART OF JACK KIRBY, his definitive biography of the King of Comics who co-created many of Marvel’s most iconic characters from Captain America to the Fantastic Four, from 3 to 6 PM at Criminal Records.
Forget 3D! Ever seen a movie in hypnoprismoscope? Ghost Host with the Most Prof. Morte will unveil the mysterious new process this weekend as The Silver Scream Spookshow screens schlocky 1953 sci-fi/horror – well we’re not sure it’s a classic – movie ROBOT MONSTER at the Plaza Theatre. Come early for the hilarious pre-film stage show featuring gorgeous dancing ghouls and other fiendish friends. Kids matinee at 1 PM and adult show at 10 PM. Look for ATLRetro’s review soon.
It’s also the last day to see the ever irreverent Dad’s Garage Theatre take a stab at the ’80s horror genre of camp slasher films in SLAUGHTER CAMP about a homicidal maniac terrorizing a theatre camp. DJ Romeo Cologne transforms the sensationally seedy Clermont Lounge into a ’70s disco/funk inferno.
Sunday June 26
It’s a day for new exhibitions. At the High, be among the first to experience RADCLIFFE BAILEY: MEMORY AS MEDICINE and JOHN MARIN’S WATERCOLORS: A MEDIUM FOR MODERNISM. Read more about the former in this week’s Kool Kat. Marin was named America’s number one artist in a 1948 LOOK magazine survey. While his name is not a household one today, this exhibition reminds us of his important place in the modernist movement and why watercolors became such a powerful instrument for avante-garde art in the hands of him and other artists in the Stieglitz Circle, including Georgia O’Keefe.
The Museum of Design Atlanta (MODA) opens its newest exhibit WaterDream: The Evolution of Bathroom Design, which runs through Sept. 24 in the dynamic new Midtown space. Displays take visitors through a four-part journey into the bathroom including the birth of minimalist aesthetics in 20th century design and progress into current concepts.
The Barrow Boys headline blues “dunch” between 1 and 4 PM at The Earl. And at night catch ’80s-founded alt-rockers Dinosaur Jr. at Variety Playhouse.
MODERN BY DESIGN, the High‘s newest special exhibition celebrates three key moments in modern design and also the Museum of Modern Art, New York‘s (MOMA) collection history. The works on loan from MOMA cover “Machine Art” (1934), “Good Design” (1950-55) and “Italy: The New Domestic Landscape” (1972), with the latter addressing modernism in the context of 1960s and ’70s counterculture.
Margaret Mitchell Typing - Courtesy Margaret Mitchell House
Get a rare chance to view original manuscript pages from the last four chapters of ATLANTA’S BOOK: THE LOST GONE WITH THE WIND MANUSCRIPTat the Atlanta History Center. The new exhibit, which opens today and runs through Sept. 5, is part of a series of activities celebrating the 75th anniversary of the publication of the international bestseller and also includes foreign and first edition copies, the desk Margaret Mitchell used while writing it and select images.
Tune back in on Friday for Weekend Update. If you know of a cool happening that we’ve missed, send suggestions to ATLRetro@gmail.com.
Category: Weekend Update | Tags: Andy Ditzler, Atlanta History Center, Barrow Boys, bathrooms, Bettie Page, Blair Crimmins, Cadillac Jones, Classic Chastain, Clermont Lounge, Criminal Records, Dad's Garage, Dario Argento, Dark Shadows, Dinosaur Jr, DooGallery, Fernbank, Film Love, Florida, Gone with the Wind, Greg Theakston, High Museum of Art, Jack Kirby, Jack Magic, Jessica Harper, Joan Bennett, Joe Gransden, John Marin, Kingsized, Margaret Mitchell, Martinis & Imax, Marvel Comics, moda, modern art, modern design, modernism, Plaza Theatre, Radcliffe Bailey, Robbie Land, Robot Monster, romeo cologne, Shane Morton, Shriek Movie Night, Silver Scream Spookshow, Slaughter camp, Star Bar, Steve Miller Band, Suspiria, The Earl, theme parks, Variety Playhouse
The King is Dead, Long Live the King—Rockin’ Retro Artist Derek Yaniger Reveals His Squirmy Past with Dead Elvis
Posted on: Feb 25th, 2011 By: Anya99
Back in the day, a motley group of UGA art students had this crazy idea to start a band that combined their love of punk rock, beer and the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll. For about a decade, Dead Elvis was a—welcome to some, nightmare to others—fixture on the Atlanta music scene, drinking buckets of booze and spewing out hard-ass, high-energy hardcore with their signature sense of humor. All the local fame and phlegm, though, never went to their heads—shhh, don’t tell anyone but they’re really swell, sweet guys. But in the mid-1990s as punk began to fade into Green Day-fueled corporate respectability, the band parted ways.
That is, until an awesome set at the 688/Metroplex reunion concert at Masquerade in 2009. Since then Dead Elvis has been rising from the grave periodically to haunt the Atlanta scene. The next of those occasional gigs is this Saturday, February 26, at Star Bar. This time they are teaming up with the El Caminos, another Atlanta classic, and Sex Pistols tribute band Sid Vicious Experience, for a not-to-be-missed old-school punk revival to raise money to help good friend Ed Waller who was in a serious motorcycle accident last fall.
ATLRetro recently caught up with Squirmy Rooter, aka Derek Yaniger, for a sneak peak and to find out what the band has been up to. Since those decadent days, Derek also has forged a righteous reputation as one of America’s top retro pop culture artists. His self-described “chicken scratchins” have appeared in Marvel Comics and on the Cartoon Network, as well as in scads of vintage revival magazines such as Atomic, Barracuda and Car Kulture Deluxe. He’s also designed posters for some of the nation’s premiere retro gatherings like Tiki Oasis, Hukilau and the Wild Weekend. And soon you’ll be seeing his artwork right here as ATLRetro revs up its engines to supersonic this spring.
1. For all the young ‘uns, what’s the quick history of Dead Elvis’s origins and how you got involved? As I recall, the band was founded in 1984 and it had something to do with beer?
I’m a little fuzzy on when she all began, but 1984 sounds about right. The bass player Ernie Danzig, lead singer (Tranny Danny) and myself (Squirmy Rooter) met in the halls of the Art Department at UGA. We were surrounded by heaps of other bands in Athens, but no one was makin’ with the punk rock bit. It wasn’t until we graduated and moved to Atlanta and met up with our lead guitarist Jet [Terror], that Dead Elvis finally rose from the crypt. And yes—it had a LITTLE somethin’ to do with beer!
Category: Features | Tags: 688, Atomic, Barracuda, beer, Car Kulture Deluxe, Cartoon Network, Dead Elvis, Derek Yaniger, DragonCon, Ed Waller, El Caminos, Hard Rock Casino, Hukilau, Jet Terror, Kevin Rej, Las Vegas, Marvel Comics, Masquerade, Metroplex, MondoPop Gallery, punk rock, Ramones, Sid Vicious Experience, Squirmy Rooter, Star Bar, Tiki Oasis, Wild Weekend
Kool Kat of the Week: Shake, Rattle & Spring Roll – Spike Fullerton, Guitarist, Ghost Riders Car Club
Posted on: Feb 2nd, 2011 By: Anya99
Ghost Riders Car Club guitarist Spike Fullerton agrees that Pho Truc, a Vietnamese restaurant in Clarkston, may seem like an unlikely place to find live rockabilly and honkytonk, but don’t let appearance deceive you Thursday nights this month. With their characteristic sense of humor, the band, which features some of Atlanta’s top professional musicians, has dubbed these gigs “Tet 2011: A Guaranteed Nguyen,” a pun on the common Vietnamese surname which is pronounced “win.”
Category: Kool Kat of the Week | Tags: 688, Bob Wills, Charlie Christian, Charlie Louvin, David Mann, Elvis Costello, Elvis Presley, Ernie Dale, Frank Jimenez, Georgia Satellites, Ghost Riders Car Club, Grand Ole Opry, Hank Williams Sr., James St. James, Jason and the Scorchers, Kim Lenz, Kingsized, Louvin Brothers, Marvel Comics, Mighty Joe Hamm, Miss Margie & the Tall Boys, Ocha La Rocha, Page Waldrop, Pho Truc, Rick Price, Right as Rain, Roy Lanham, Southern Culture on the Skids, Spike Fullerton, Star Bar, Ted Weldon, The Byrds, The Glenwood, Truckadelic, Vidalia, Washington Squares, Zenith Nadir
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Laulea Kailani Villa
Princeville, Hawaii
Property Name: Laulea Kailani Villa
Type: Luxury Estate
Location: Princeville, Hawaii
Other: Hawaii State Tax ID # W02147862-01
Security Deposit : 3000
Cleaning Fee: 750+tax
Reservation Fee: 50
TVR Permit #: Hawaii State Tax ID # W02147862-01
Queen Bed: 1
Nestled into the idyllic north shore of Kauai, this 4,000-square foot custom villa was designed by Hawaii’s renowned architect Mark Eyler for professional surfer Bruce Irons. The architecture and interior design blend Hawaiian, Balinese, and Asian elements with a contemporary style, offering unparalleled beauty and elegance in a modern tropical setting.
Laulea Kailani Villa features an expansive, flowing floor plan in which the upper-level living spaces open to bring the outdoors in, emphasizing the breathtaking mountain, waterfall, and ocean views. The home also includes an additional living space on the lower level, a state-of-the-art kitchen with bar seating, a steam room, and a yoga/meditation room. Each of the three sumptuous bedrooms offers access to a lanai, enabling guests to enjoy cool trade winds as they blow through the villa. The bathrooms provide spa-like amenities such as soaking tubs, a walk-in shower with dual shower heads, and an open-air shower.
Resting on nearly an acre of lush green land, Laulea Kailani Villa showcases sweeping views of the waterfall-drenched Hanalei Mountains, Hanalei Bay, and stunning Bali Hai sunsets. The tranquil, tropically-landscaped grounds include a salt-water infinity pool, hot tub, and full-sun lounge area. Covered lanais surrounding the home also contain additional lounge seating, sofas and chairs, a dining area, and a grill, sink, and refrigerator.
Just steps away from this luxurious, private Princeville villa, guests will find Pu’u Poa Beach at the St. Regis Princeville Resort, Hideaways Beach, the Queen’s Bath tide pools, and the renowned Princeville Makai Golf Club. The home also offers convenient access to dining, shopping, and entertainment in Hanalei town, as well as opportunities for surfing, snorkeling, diving, windsurfing, kayaking, hiking, horseback riding, helicopter rides, ziplining, and miniature golf. After a visit to Laulea Kailani Villa, you’ll certainly understand the meaning of its name, “peaceful sea and sky.”
Air conditioning is available in the bedrooms of Laulea Kailani Villa, and stand fans are available in the remaining rooms. Windows can also be opened to allow the cool trade winds to pass through. Occasionally trade winds may not blow for a few days. The months of July through September tend to have the warmest temperatures.
Hawaii State Tax ID # W02147862-01
Other Rentals in Princeville...
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The UK’s Continuity Trade Agreements: Is the roll-over complete?
Nicolo Tamberi is Research Assistant in Economics for the UK Trade Policy Observatory and L. Alan Winters CB is Professor of Economics and Director of the Observatory.
The eight EU Trade Agreements that the UK has rolled-over replicate current trading conditions with their respective partners to a substantial extent. However, conditions could still deteriorate for at least two reasons:
A bilateral negotiation that excludes the EU can only partially overcome possible problems with rules of origin;
UK regulation and/or certification can be recognised only where partners have not tied themselves to EU regulations. Where they have, recognition of UK regulation and certification must wait until the UK also aligns with the EU.
Charlotte Humma March 29th, 2019
Posted In: UK - Non EU, UK- EU
Tags: continuity bilateral trade agreements, Grandfathering, mutual recognition, rolling over, Rules of Origin, Trade agreements
The UK’s Continuity Trade Agreements: Missing in Inaction
Julia Magntorn Garrett is a Research Officer in Economics at the University of Sussex and a fellow of the UK Trade Policy Observatory.
Two weeks ago, the UKTPO called for further transparency on the Government’s current progress on replicating the existing agreements between the EU and third countries. On Thursday last week, Secretary of State for International Trade, Liam Fox MP made a public announcement confirming that little had changed since he gave evidence to the International Trade Select Committee on the 6 February and that the progress has been minimal. So far, only six out of the 40 existing trade agreements have been signed, covering a total of 9 countries; Chile, Faroe Islands, Switzerland, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles and Zimbabwe. One further agreement is close to being finalised, adding another 2 countries (Fiji and Papua New Guinea) to the list. This still leaves about 60 Free Trade Agreement (FTA) countries without continuity agreements.
Dr Fox also announced that some agreements will definitely not be in place for exit day, those with Andorra, Japan, Turkey, and San Marino. The agreement with Algeria is also unlikely to be ready. When it comes to numbers, the announcement is thin on details. The Department for International Trade states that the EU-FTA agreements account for 11% of the UK’s trade, a figure that seems low to start with. No further information is provided as to how important the signed countries are to the UK’s trade, or how much of the UK’s trade with the rest of the FTA group is still at risk if we have a hard Brexit in about a month’s time. This blog aims to fill some of these gaps. (more…)
Charlotte Humma February 25th, 2019
Posted In: UK - Non EU
Tags: Free Trade Agreement, future trade, Grandfathering, No deal, rolling over
Determining goods at risk
How much is a Free Trade Agreement with the US worth to the UK economy?
Parties’ election promises on trade are incoherent and unachievable
EU tariffs could cover 75% of imports of goods into Northern Ireland
Get Brexit done: An oven-ready Brexit?
UK – Non EU
UK- EU
Tweets by uk_tpo
© 2020 UK Trade Policy Observatory
Site by: Phipps Design
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Payne Stewart Award
2010: Tom Lehman
2000 Byron Nelson, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer
2001 Ben Crenshaw
2002 Nick Price
2003 Tom Watson
2004 Jay Haas
2005 Brad Faxon
2006 Gary Player
2007 Hal Sutton
2008 Davis Love III
2009 Kenny Perry
The award is named for Payne Stewart, an 11-time winner on the PGA TOUR, including three major championships. Stewart died the week of THE TOUR Championship in 1999. The award was created by the PGA TOUR Policy Board to perpetuate Stewart’s memory. Designed and sculpted by Bob Pack, the award is presented annually at THE TOUR Championship to a player sharing Stewart’s respect for the traditions of the game, his commitment to uphold the game’s heritage of charitable support and his professional and meticulous presentation of himself and the sport through his dress and conduct.
For more information on the Payne Stewart Award, visit www.pgatour.com/paynestewart.
2009: Kenny Perry
2008 Recipient: Davis Love III
2007 Recipient: Hal Sutton
2006: Gary Player
2005: Brad Faxon
2004: Jay Haas
2003: Tom Watson
2002: Nick Price
2001: Ben Crenshaw
2000: Byron Nelson
Jack Nicklaus (not pictured)
2020 © copyright Pack Sports Bronzes, Inc., 842 Bel Mar, Sugar Land, TX 77478 • Robert.packsports@gmail.com
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BOFCA REVIEW ROUNDUP: 9/21
Posted on September 21, 2012 by bofca
“I am kind of at a loss for words at the moment. This is really impressive filmmaking.” – Steve Head, The Post-Movie Podcast
“The gushing blood and continuous violence get to be too much. Everything’s so amped up that the individual moments fail to register.” – Jake Mulligan, EDGE Boston
“It’s a good deal wittier than expected from a movie that consists mostly of people getting shot in the face.” – Sean Burns, Philadelphia Weekly
“Mildly rattled me with visceral gruesomeness, and yet had me giggling in delight at the audacity of its superb presentation.” – Tim Estlioz, Boston Movie Examiner
“Erase your memories of Sly’s bomb with this, director Pete Travis and writer/producer Alex Garland’s lean reboot.” – Brett Michel, The Boston Phoenix
“DREDD has all the hard-hitting violence an action movie fan could ever want, and because it’s rated R, it’s not afraid it rub your nose in it.” – John Black, Boston Event Guide
“This is one of the most violent movies released this year. Consider that less a criticism than a warning. This is not for the squeamish.” – Daniel M. Kimmel, The Sci-Fi Movie Page
“A slam-bang joyride with a grim canvas — a darkness interrupted by vibrantly violent bursts of red.” – Greg Vellante, The Eagle Tribune
“The extreme violence and satire are very much an amusing throwback to films of the late 80s/early 90s such as THE RUNNING MAN, ROBOCOP and TOTAL RECALL.” – Evan Crean, Reel Recon
“Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña aren’t exactly corrupt cops in this self-important police drama. They’re just fascistic assholes.” – Jake Mulligan, The Boston Phoenix
“This whole point-of-view, hand-held shaky camera crap has got to stop.” – John Black, Boston Event Guide
“Trying to follow the action made me so nauseous, I had to take a break halfway through and go walk around the lobby for a few minutes to keep from throwing up.” – Sean Burns, Philadelphia Weekly
“It’s nothing we haven’t seen in countless other cop shows and movies, but the Anglo/Hispanic rapport here seems fresh because of the enthusiasm the two actors bring to their roles.” – Daniel M. Kimmel, NorthShoreMovies.net
“Ayer’s gut wrenching flick is so emotionally charged, it makes his previous police film TRAINING DAY seem wimpy.” – Evan Crean, Reel Recon
“A gratuitous migraine of narrative voids.” – Greg Vellante, The Eagle Tribune
“Clint Eastwood’s most embarrassing public moment might have been his infamous speech to an empty chair at the Republican National Convention. Up until now, that is.” – John Black, Boston Event Guide
“The star power helps the charm outweigh the schmaltz.” – Jake Mulligan, The Boston Phoenix
“TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE doesn’t just remind you what a great screen presence Clint Eastwood is; it makes you appreciate him even more as a director because Lorenz does such a terrible job.” – Sean Burns, Philadelphia Weekly
“If the plot points are a bit too neat, the emotional truths are not.” – Daniel M. Kimmel, NorthShoreMovies.net
“His acting style consists mainly of grunts and curse words, and every little sound or swear that comes through his mouth is a small stroke of grumpy geezer genius.” – Greg Vellante, The Eagle Tribune
“A miserable film about miserable people, and sitting through it for 137 minutes is a miserable experience.” – John Black, Boston Event Guide
“If Anderson can ever figure out how to tell a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, cutting out long scenes that go nowhere, he might make a really great film.” – Daniel M. Kimmel, NorthShoreMovies.net
“The actors are all pretty excellent but the mercurial Phoenix is a surprising standout. He makes Quell into a fascinating human freakshow, alternately frightening or pathetic.” – Bob Chipman, The Escapist
“Confounding and troubling. This is an ambivalent picture, one that remains stubbornly unresolved. It’s a singular vision, and the movie haunts.” – Sean Burns, The Improper Bostonian
HOUSE AT THE END OF THE STREET
“‘I think this place is gonna be good for us,’ Sarah says to Elissa. Nope… not for any of us.” – Brett Michel, The Boston Phoenix
CHICKEN WITH PLUMS
“The many pieces never coalesce into a satisfying whole, yet the indelible images make up for the lack of harmony.” – Jake Mulligan, The Boston Phoenix
“This is a little more than an affable, self-absorbed fable for Generation Y as it pauses on the threshold of middle age.” – Kilian Melloy, EDGE Boston
“Radnor steals a lot from Woody Allen, particularly MANHATTAN. If only he could replicate the wit.” – Jake Mulligan, The Boston Phoenix
“Less a film about baseball itself, and more a film about two men who struggled with rejection, self-doubt and ultimate triumph against odds.” – Tim Estiloz, Boston Movie Examiner
“Jamie Linden’s directorial debut proves what we long suspected: all movies could use a little more Channing Tatum.” – Jake Mulligan, EDGE Boston
“Taken as satire, this isn’t particularly funny. But then, the corruption he’s exposing is anything but a joke.” – Brett Michel, The Boston Phoenix
“Shaylena Mandingo’s so good, it’s a shame that Paul Dano is his typically mannered self.” – Brett Michel, The Boston Phoenix
This entry was posted in Review Roundups and tagged 10 Years, Chicken with Plums, Dredd, End Of Watch, For Ellen, Knuckleball!, Liberal Arts, The Ambassador, The Master, Trouble With The Curve by bofca. Bookmark the permalink.
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CYCLONES LOSE IN SERIES FINALE, 2-0
Brooklyn, NY -- July 22, 2013 -- The Cyclones could not complete the sweep against the Batavia Muckdogs on Monday, losing 2-0. Brooklyn is yet to complete a sweep this season and is now 0-3 in three attempts. The Cyclones best hitter as of late Jared King went 2-4 in the loss.
The Muckdogs got on the board first with help from the best hitter in the NYPL thus far this season, Avery Romero. Romero hit a double off Carlos Valdez that put runners on second and third with nobody out. Romero finished 2-4 and currently leads the NYPL in batting average. Muckdogs catcher Chad Wallach then grounded out to second base, allowing Scott Carcaise to score who led the inning off with a walk. Valdez was able to get out of the inning only allowing one run, giving the Muckdogs a 1-0 lead after two.
With no run support from his offense, Valdez kept the deficit at one until the fifth inning. Austin Dean hit an RBI single to center field that scored Carlos Lopez from second, making it 2-0 Muckdogs, Valdez could not make it out of the fifth inning, being replaced by Akeel Morris. Valdez tossed 4.2 IP, allowing two runs on five hits and striking out four. In relief Morris held down the fort for Brooklyn, pitching a season high 4.1 innings, allowing two hits and striking out six.
They Cyclones were quiet with the bats accumulating only two hits, both coming from Jared King .King continues to swing the bat extremely well extending his hitting streak to six games. Over that span King is hitting .458, going 11-24. Brooklyn had limited scoring opportunities, only getting runners into scoring position two times. Muckdogs pitchers combined to retire the last 14 Brooklyn batters.
The Cyclones go on the road until Sunday when they come back to MCU Park to take on the Hudson Valley Renegades on July 28 at 5:00 PM for the first of a two game series. For tickets call 718-507-TIXX, go to the MCU ticket window or click here.
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A modern interpretation by the English Shakespeare Company, recorded at the Grand Theatre, Swansea before a live audience. The seven plays in the ‘Wars of the Roses’ cycle were performed over seven nights, with 28 actors playing nearly 500 roles.
Wars of the Roses, The
Colour / Sound
Out of distribution (2005)
Michael Bogdanov
Jean-Paul Chapple; Mark Saunders
Michael Pennington King Henry V
Barry Stanton Chorus
Francesca Ryan Katherine
Andrew Jarvis Dauphin
Ben Bazell Jamy
Charles Dale Duke of Gloucester
Clyde Pollitt King Charles VI of France
Colin Farrell Bardolph
Colin Farrell Sir Thomas Erpingham
Hugh Sullivan Constable of France
Ian Burford Duke of Exeter
John Tramper Boy (Falstaff’s page)
June Watson Hostess, formerly Mistress Quickly
June Watson Queen Isabel
Michael Cronin Macmorris
Michael Fenner Gower
Philip Bowen Montjoy
Roger Booth Governor of Harfleur
Sion Probert Fluellen
Stephen Jameson Duke of Clarence
Stephen Jameson John Bates
Grand Theatre, Swansea
English Shakespeare Company
Stage Recordings
Article in The Guardian 4 May 89 about the filming of the plays. Reviewed by RenÈ Pigeon in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol 12 No 4 (1994), pp37-40.
Reviewed by Brian Morton in Times Educational Supplement (29 Mar 1991), p. 27.
Bulletin, Vol 12 No 4 (1994), pp. 37-40. Article in the TES 29 March, 1991.
Bogdanov, Michael & Michael Pennington, The English Shakespeare Company: The Making of ‘The Wars of the Roses’ (London: Nick Hern Books, 1990).
The plays are sold as a series by Films for the Humanities & Sciences within the US and Canada only.
It has not been possible to ascertain with 100% accuracy which actors played some of the smaller roles in this recording, as they were changed as the tour progressed. The actors cited all played the part at some point in 1989.
Portman Classics
Shakespeare Institute Library
silib@bham.ac.uk
http://www.is.bham.ac.uk/shakespeare External site opens in new window
CV37 6HP
Vision Replays
29 D’Arblay Street
W1V 3FH
rec’d 12/99
Distributor (Sale)
Films for the Humanities & Sciences
custserv.@films.com
http://ffh.films.com/ External site opens in new window
Films for the Humanities & Sciences is part of the US-based Films Media Group and specialises in selling programmes aimed at the HE and FE education and training market. The collection has thousands of titles and a range of separate subject catalogues is available in pdf format at http://ffh.films.com/landing.aspx?show=Catalogs/catalog_FFH.htm. Sale on video/DVD or online viewing via the Films on Demand service.
Moving Image Company
Shakespeare, "Henry V". http://bufvc.ac.uk/shakespeare/index.php/title/9527 (Accessed 20 Jan 2020)
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The Trouble City Forums › Sports, Games, and Leisure › Television
Damon Lindelof's WATCHMEN, Coming to HBO
Richard Dickson
Damn fool idealist
Maybe not jumping up and down, but he did revel in it.
My karmic debt must be huge.
My blog: An Embarrassment of Rich's
ska oreo
(12-05-2019, 11:41 AM)Richard Dickson Wrote: Maybe not jumping up and down, but he did revel in it.
Right. And you can make the argument that in that moment, Veidt revealed himself to be what he actually was--kind of a monster.
"Why did she do it?"
"Why are you the fucking Police?"
rhymes with kunt
(12-05-2019, 11:02 AM)ska oreo Wrote:
(12-04-2019, 08:12 PM)schwartz Wrote:
(12-04-2019, 03:51 PM)ska oreo Wrote: Also violently disagree with your opinion on Irons’ performance. That’s absolutely the same man who, 35 years ago, jumped up and down in glee at having “saved” the world.
He didn't actually jump up and down, and it was fundamental to that character that he still needed to ask for reassurance from the only other intellect he truly respected that he had done the right thing and at least tell himself that he had made himself "feel every death". He was capable of being ruthless, obviously, but he would never treat killing with the glee or petulance with which Irons slaughters the clones.
He was also rather scrupulous about affording his enemies respect. He took insults from Rorschach and his early loss to the Comedian in stride, never rising to their insults and only moving against them when they threatened to expose his plan. He wouldn't fart at them, no matter how far beneath himself he thought them to be. The Ozymandias who gave away a fortune just to challenge himself and spent decades coolly assessing and methodically conquering the threat of mutually assured destruction would likely find escaping his space prison and the Warden to be stimulating problems to solve, rather than whine and rant at them like Cobra Commander.
But again, you'd only have a point if we were talking about the "same" Ozymandias right from when Watchmen the comic ended. I absolutely buy that, as desperation set in, that Veidt became more callous and less empathetic--less empathetic for a man willing to drop a nuclear bomb on an American city. People change depending on the circumstances: sometimes for the better, and sometimes for the worst.
You just said it was "the same" guy who reacted a certain way in the comic!
Really, I feel like you are arguing points that are just off center from what the other is saying. I have repeatedly said that my issue with the shift in characterization is not that I don't believe that Nu-Veidt could developed out of Old-Veidt, it's that I think Nu-Veidt is more simplistic and less interesting than Old-Veidt.
The more we go around on that particular point, the more it feels like this.
ChrisW
Apparently there's a post credits scene this week. My guess is that it's Veidt joining the current time line.
#BetterCallOverlord
I think that actual moment came earlier.
superlaser
(12-05-2019, 01:22 PM)ChrisW Wrote: Apparently there's a post credits scene this week. My guess is that it's Veidt joining the current time line.
Yeah, I’d assume Veidt has to come into the main story by the final episode.
Superlaser speaks for me from now on.
-Bart
Tore through all of the episodes the last couple of days, and like the show, my thoughts are all over the place. Loved the pilot, then eps 2-3 gave me that MR. ROBOT / LEGION vibe, where the show is so intent on blowing my mind that it forgot to get me to care. Then, I thought eps 4-6 were GREAT, and Ep 7 was very good. Binging the show made the end of 7 feel less like a Lindelofian cheat, but I could see why folks feel that way.
Lindelof's fractured "I'll tell you later" style gets on my nerves, but I really like the show in spite of itself. Also, the show looks expensive as hell! All of the money is on the screen.
I was in a horror-comedy called BLACK HOLLER. It's now on Prime Video. Check it out!
I feel like Watchmen is a show I can't wait to rewatch once it finished its run. Cause I have a feeling that there are things that I missed in those first couple of episodes, that will seem so obvious having watched the entire season.
It made me want to buy a new copy of the original Watchmen as well. I had forgotten that Hooded Justice and Captain Metropolis had a relationship in the original, so that cut to them having sex felt incredibly abrupt. I had to double-check Google to confirm that happened. My wife never read the original Watchmen, so she's occasionally confused, but the story's remained consistently compelling.
Has it been confirmed that this will last more than one season?
(12-06-2019, 11:45 AM)Mangy Wrote: It made me want to buy a new copy of the original Watchmen as well. I had forgotten that Hooded Justice and Captain Metropolis had a relationship in the original, so that cut to them having sex felt incredibly abrupt. I had to double-check Google to confirm that happened. My wife never read the original Watchmen, so she's occasionally confused, but the story's remained consistently compelling.
They've been skirting around that issue. Lindelof hasn't said there won't be a 2nd season, but it sounds like he made this with a single season in mind.
If anything, Lindelof probably won't be back as showrunner if Watchmen does get a second season.
MichaelM
You only have 14 hours to save the earth.
Yeah, Lindelof has clearly said that he meant this story to be concluded in a single season....but didn't rule out additional seasons, with other (though presumably related) stories.
My guess is that unless HBO backs up a Brinks truck, he'd be an exec producer and essentially not involved with subsequent seasons.
"Nooj's true feelings on any given subject are unknown and unknowable. He is the butterfly flapping its wings in Peking. He is chaos and destruction and you shall never see his true form." - Merriweather
My Steam ID: yizashigreyspear
(12-06-2019, 12:16 PM)MichaelM Wrote: Yeah, Lindelof has clearly said that he meant this story to be concluded in a single season....but didn't rule out additional seasons, with other (though presumably related) stories.
Or he’ll parlay this into big money to develop his next project.
If the show is only meant to last one season then the structure is extremely wonky. This feels like the beginning of a 5 season journey, not the end of a singular story, especially considering the amount of flashbacks and detours.
I might have been born yesterday sir, but I stayed up all night!
Don't agree. What's been revealed in the last couple of episodes is that everything is pointing towards one event (Trieu's reference to "three days from now" and Keene's needing to take Angela "off the board for a couple of days." There's a very definite endpoint/goal in mind, and everything we're getting is to give us the necessary context for the full impact of what's going down then.
Oh I see an endpoint, but to me it feels like the end of a season or chapter. Setup for something greater.
(12-08-2019, 06:12 PM)Evi Wrote: Oh I see an endpoint, but to me it feels like the end of a season or chapter. Setup for something greater.
Well it kinda has to act as both, doesn't it? A satisfying conclusion in case there's only one season, possible threads if there's more than one.
12-08-2019, 06:48 PM (This post was last modified: 12-08-2019, 06:50 PM by schwartz.)
Honestly, the plotting is so opaque that it’s hard to tell if things are just getting started or coming to a head in the main plot.
The one area where it definitely feels like it can’t be one season and done is the Veidt stuff. While I have no idea how things will pan out, it seems impossible that any contribution he could make in the final episode, if indeed that is all there is, that would render the dicking around with him in isolation for the previous 8 hours feel justified or necessary.
Don't go there
Just caught up with this...
Veidt is definitely in the statue. His scenes on Europa have taken place over many years. We see at least 2 or 3 different cakes, and his trial lasted a year. So he spends years getting to the point of making an SOS message to his daughter, then he is put on trial, found guilty and turned into a statue. Then either his warden shoots him towards Earth, or his daughter devises a way to do so. Then she buys the farm where the statue will fall, collects her dad, and will use the Manhattan/Clock plan to reanimate him. She wants both parents to witness her triumph so badly she Dr. Venture'd her own mom, after all!
And I do agree that just freeing Veidt seems too small his role in the season, and especially to be her end game. It seems unlikely that she's simply trying to help save Manhattan. She seemed to pretty clearly know he was Cal when Angela took off, and just before that she gave a little speech about people begging him for help but he doesn't listen. Couple that with her likely true claim to be trying to "save humanity", and my guess would be that she's got at least half of the same plan as the Cavalry: Kill Dr Manhattan, so people stop begging him for help and start helping themselves and each other.
Good stuff so far. I'm curious to see how big the viewership is for the season as a whole, as I'd imagine this would be a tough watch for people w/ no familiarity w/ the source. I never read the comics, saw the film once and read a bit on the differences between the two... but that was barely enough prologue to keep the early episodes from being a confusing mess. I wonder how many people got their first taste of Watchmen 7 weeks ago, saw raining squid, and just, "Nope"-d out.
Gamertag: Tweakee
welp. Let's see if he's stuck the landing.
"It's important...for later." BLEEUUUUUGGGHHHHHH
I will agree that last episode was a little wonky, but I was all in on this one.
Christ I could probably watch a legit romantic-comedy featuring Angela and Dr. Manhattan. The whole meet-cute was pretty adorable, especially since Manhattan was clearly enjoying his time with Angela.
HUGE SPOILERS for tonight's episode:
I ain't kidding.
They're coming.
Those spoilers.
So WTF didn't Manhattan just blow all their heads off from inside the house? Why didn't he just fuck with a couple of critical components of the tachyon cannons to make them inoperable or malfunction?
I applaud the ingenuity on display at getting Manhattan to limit/forget himself for a duration, but I'm not buying that a bunch of racist fucks in pickup trucks somehow outthink Manhattan.
12-08-2019, 11:30 PM (This post was last modified: 12-08-2019, 11:31 PM by ska oreo.)
(12-08-2019, 11:28 PM)MichaelM Wrote: HUGE SPOILERS for tonight's episode:
I don't think they outthink him. He's just a slave to time. To him: It is what it is. Even his death.
Already know people are gonna snark about how "HE COULD HAVE JUST MOVED ONE STEP TO THE LEFT!!!"
Well, I mean....he could have!
But would it have mattered, Michael? HMMMM!!! HMMM?!!!
Sort of withholding final judgment until next week's episode. But the ending of tonight's episode was the first time I felt like Lindelof just wrote things Because TV Show.
I mean, if I can think of Jon doing those things without having to step directly in front of the tachyon cannon, then so could have the writers (and the fictional omnipotent and supragenius being).
He couldn't have moved. Because he already didn't move.
It's the same as the answer to a question from earlier about why Doc is connected to Angela... Because he already was.
Essentially, Manhattan is a slave to time. He lacks even the appearance of free will.
I just watched that whole episode thinking it was the finale. So you can imagine the range of reactions I went to from the cut to credits until the previews for next week.
I figured from last week's episode that this season would be about the death of Dr Manhattan, and it seems even more likely now. I'd also have to guess that he passes on his power to someone, since they were sure to let us know that he can.
Over/Under on the number of "Manhattans" around after next week is set at 0.5.
I'd take the over, and even further, I'll guess 2. I'm betting Veidt's daughter steals some power for herself (or dad), and Manhattan himself prepares for that outcome by feeding someone else some blue waffles. Meanwhile, things go Not Great for Bob!
Note that when it comes to predictions, I'm Doctor Anti-Manhattan, so this is the only outcome that can't happen. Because it didn't happen.
doc happenin
My bear has a bomb. Your argument is invalid!
Before anything else...
Why did I not realize that was Ichabod Crane from Sleepy Hollow?!?!
Ok, carry on.
Has Seen Shit that Would Turn You White
(12-09-2019, 12:06 AM)doc happenin Wrote: Before anything else...
Right. I only got that myself last week. Dude shaves and it’s like a totally different person.
"Every romantic comedy should just be called "Tryin' to Fuck" - Patton Oswalt
12-09-2019, 01:55 AM (This post was last modified: 12-09-2019, 01:56 AM by Richard Dickson.)
Your Christ analogy can't decide to lay waste to the centurions sent to take him to his crucifixion.
He did what he did to save Angela, not himself.
I kind of hate turning Manhattan into a Christ figure, though. He's always been explicitly a deity, but not that one.
I think Christians might be a tad upset if the only reason Christ returns is to get laid.
Well, he's an all-powerful being who comes to Earth in mortal form with a message of love and who willingly goes to a seemingly predestined death. If it's not intentional, that's a hell of a subconscious the writer's room has.
But even if that's not the case, Jon allows it to happen because it's what happens. But does it happen because it's supposed to, or because he allows it? Or does he allow it because it's supposed to happen? The chicken and the egg...
UltraAnxiety
The world’s smartest man poses as little threat to him as its smartest termite. It’s smartest redneck, on the other hand...
Ugh. They fucked it. Such a shame.
12-09-2019, 09:17 AM (This post was last modified: 12-09-2019, 09:21 AM by ska oreo.)
(12-09-2019, 09:14 AM)UltraAnxiety Wrote: The world’s smartest man poses as little threat to him as its smartest termite. It’s smartest redneck, on the other hand...
No they really didn't.
It's frustrating because IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE FRUSTRATING. Because if you're going to that perspective,
Then you can take Manhattan to task for not stopping The Comedian from shooting the woman back in Vietnam. For Manhattan, he already died. So there's no point in moving.
It's the whole reason why he gets lobotomized in the first place.
Quote: But even if that's not the case, Jon allows it to happen because it's what happens. But does it happen because it's supposed to, or because he allows it? Or does he allow it because it's supposed to happen? The chicken and the egg...
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Unicode CLDR Project > CLDR Specifications >
Collation Guidelines
1 Filing a Request
1.2 Test Data
1.3 Justification
1.4 Testing Your Request
2 Determining the Order
2.1 Determining Level Differences
2.1.1 Primary Test
2.1.2 Secondary Test1
2.1.4 Tertiary Test
2.2 Contractions
3 Minimal Rules
4 Pitfalls
Collation sequences can be quite tricky to specify.
The locale-based collation rules in Unicode CLDR specify customizations of the standard data for UTS #10: Unicode Collation Algorithm (UCA). Requests to change the collation order for a given locale, or to supply additional variants, need to follow the guidelines in this document.
Filing a Request
Requests to change the collation order for a given locale, or to supply additional variants should be filed as bugs at http://unicode.org/cldr/trac/newticket.
The request should present the precise change expressed as rules. The rules must be supplied in the syntax as specified in http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr35/tr35-collation.html#Rules. (This used to be called the "basic syntax".) The rules must also be Minimal Rules as described below: only differences from http://unicode.org/charts/uca/ should be specified.
& c < cs
& cs <<< ccs / cs
Normally CLDR does not accept submissions that reorder particular digits, punctuation, or other symbols, following instead the UCA ordering for those characters. However, if punctuation, general symbols, currency symbols, or digits as a class all sort after letters, that change can be accommodated. Similarly, if the letters in a particular script sort ahead of others (such as Greek characters ahead of Latin), that can also be accommodated. Both of these are done with a reorder setting. Note: For a given language, CLDR normally sorts the language's native script before other scripts, via the reorder setting.
Please supply short test cases that illustrate the correct sorting behavior as a list of lines in sorted order. Try to include cases that show the boundary behavior by including suffixes, such as the following to illustrate that "cs" and "ccs" sort specially.
cscsy
ccsy
Provide justification for your change. Citations should be to authoritative pages on the web, in English.
Testing Your Request
Please test out any suggested rules before filing a bug.
Go to the ICU Collation Demo.
Pick the language for which you want to change the rules, or keep it on "und" (root) if you want to start from the Unicode/CLDR default sort order.
Put your rules into the "Append rules" box.
Put an interesting list of strings into the Input box.
Click "sort" and verify the sort order and levels of differences.
Go to the ICU Locale Explorer.
Pick the appropriate locale.
Follow the instructions at the bottom to use your suggested rules on your suggested test data.
Verify that the proper order results.
Determining the Order
The exact collation sequence for a given language may be difficult to determine. The base ordering of characters can be fairly straightforward, but there are quite a few other complications involved.
Most standards that specify collation, such as DIN or CS, are not targeted at algorithmic sorting, and are not complete algorithmic specifications. For example, CSN 97 6030 requires transliteration of foreign scripts, but there are many choices as to how to transliterate, and the exact mechanism is not specified. It also specifies that geometric shapes are sorted by the number of vertices and edges, which is, at a minimum, difficult to determine; and are subject to variation in glyphs.
The CLDR goals are to match the sorting of exemplar letters and common punctuation and leave everything else to the standard UCA ordering. For more information, see UTS #10: Unicode Collation Algorithm (UCA).
Determining Level Differences
It is often tricky to determine the exact relationship between characters. In the UCA, case and similar variant differences are at a third (tertiary) level, while accent and similar differences are at a second (secondary) level, and base letter differences are at the first (primary) level. That results in an order like the following:
çina
That is, the difference between c and C is weaker than the difference between c and ç, which in turn is weaker than the difference between c and d. For any two characters α and β, it may be very clear that α < β, but not be clear what the right level difference is. To establish this, see if you can find examples of two words that of the following form.
Primary Test
...α...Z
...β...A
That is, the words are identical except for α, β, A, and Z, and you know that A and Z have a clear primary difference. If we get the above ordering in dictionaries and other sources, you know that the difference between α and β is a primary difference. If we get the opposite ordering than 1,2 above, then you only know that the difference between α and β is not a primary difference: it may be secondary or tertiary.
You now need to distinguish which of the non-primary level differences you could have. So try again, this time seeing if you can find examples of two words that of the following form, where you know that A and Á have a clear secondary difference in the script.
Secondary Test1
...α...Á
Now the ordering of these two strings tells you whether the difference between α and β is a secondary difference, or not. Alternatively, you can look for words of the form:
...B...α
...b...β
where b < B at a tertiary level. If you get the above ordering for the secondary test2, you also know that the difference between α and β is at a secondary level. The Test2 form is often easier to find examples for.
If you have established that the characters have neither a primary nor secondary difference, the following can be used in a similar fashion to test whether the difference is at a tertiary level or not.
Tertiary Test
...α...B
...β...b
If there is no tertiary difference, then the difference is not significant enough for CLDR to take it into account, so they will be treated as equals (unless someone sorts with a final, codepoint level).
Characters may behave differently in different contexts. For example, "ch" in Slovak sorts after H. A sequence of characters that behaves that way is called a contraction. Another common case of contractions is in the case of syllabaries, where a sequence of characters forming a syllable collates as a unit.
Note that contractions are typically rather expensive in implementations: they take more storage, and are much slower to compare. So they should be avoided where possible. For example, suppose that we have the following sequence in a dictionary (where the uppercase characters represent characters in the target script):
... // combinations of K with consonants
There are two ways to produce this ordering. One is to have KA, KE, KI, etc be contractions. The other is to order all the vowels after all the consonants. Where the latter is sufficient, it is strongly preferred.
Minimal Rules
The goal is always specify the minimal differences from the DUCET. For example, take the case of Slovak, where everything sorts as in DUCET except for certain characters. The following rules place the characters ä, č, đ, and the sequence "ch" (and their case variants) at the appropriate positions in the sorting sequence, and with the appropriate strengths:
& A
< ä <<< Ä
& C
< č <<< Č
& D
< đ <<< Đ
& H
< ch <<< cH <<< Ch <<< CH
It would be possible instead to have rules that list every letter used by Slovak [a á ä b c č d ď e é f-h {ch} i í j-l ĺ ľ m n ň o ó ô p-r ŕ s š t ť u ú v-y ý z ž], looking something like the following.
Maximal Rules
& A << á <<< Á
< b <<< B
< c <<< C
< d
The Maximal Rules format is not accepted in CLDR. The reasons are:
Every time a character is tailored, the data for that character takes up more room in typical implementations. That means that the data for collation is larger, downloads of collation libraries with that data are slower, sort keys are longer, and performance is slower; sometimes very much so.
Related characters in the same script are in a peculiar order. For example, if the Slovak tailoring omits ƀ, then it would show up as after z.
You can see what the UCA currently does with a given script by looking at the charts at Unicode Collation Charts, or at the UCA in ICU-style rules. For example, suppose that U+0D89 SINHALA LETTER IYANNA and U+0D8A SINHALA LETTER IIYANNA needed to come after U+0D96 SINHALA LETTER AUYANNA, in primary order, and that otherwise DUCET was ok. Then you would give the following rules:
& ඖ # U+0D96 SINHALA LETTER AUYANNA
< ඉ # U+0D89 SINHALA LETTER IYANNA
< ඊ # U+0D8A SINHALA LETTER IIYANNA
There are a number of pitfalls with collation, so be careful. In some cases, such as Hungarian or Japanese, the rules can be fairly complicated (of course, reflecting that the sorting sequence for those languages is complicated).
Only tailor expected data. We focus on the required collation sequence for a given language with normal data. So we don't include full-width characters for a European collation sequence, such as
... CSCS <<< ＣＳＣＳ ...
... CSCS <<< \uFF23\uFF33\uFF23\uFF33 ... (equivalently)
Tailor trailing contractions. If a sequence of characters is treated as a unit for collation, it should be entered as a contraction.
& c < ch
One might think that sequence like "dz" doesn't require that, since it would always come after "d" followed by any other letter; it is a "trailing contraction". But in unusual cases, that wouldn't be true; if "dz" is a unit sorted as if it were a distinct letter after "d", one should get the ordering "dα" < "dz". The correct behavior will only happen if "dz" is a contraction, such as
& d < dz
Watch out for Expansions. If you have a rule like &cs < d, and "cs" has not occurred in a previous rule as a contraction, then this is automatically considered to be the same as &c < d / s; that is, the d expands as if it were a "cs" (actually, primary greater than a "cs", since we wrote "<"). This expansion takes effect until the next primary difference.
So suppose that "ccs" is to behave as if it were "cscs", and take case differences into account. You might try to do this with the rules on the left:
Rules (Wrong)
Actual Effect
& C < cs <<< Cs <<< CS
& cscs <<< ccs
<<< Cscs <<< Ccs
<<< CSCS <<< CCS & C < cs <<< Cs <<< CS
<<< Cscs / cs <<< Ccs / cs
But since the CSCS has not been made a contraction in previous rules, this produces an automatic expansion, one that continues through the entire sequence of non-primary differences, as shown on the right. This is not what is wanted: each item acts like it expands compared to the previous item. So CCS, for example, will act like it expands to CSCScs!
What you actually want is the following:
Rules (Right)
& CSCS <<< CCS & C < cs <<< Cs <<< CS
In short, when you have expansions, it is always safer and clearer to express them with separate resets. There are only a few exceptions to this, notably when CJK characters are interleaved with Hangul Syllables.
Minimal Rules. Example: Maltese was sorting character sequences before a base character using the following style:
& B
< ċ
<<<Ċ
< c
<<<C
The correct rules should be the minimal ones.
& [before 1] c < ċ <<< Ċ
This finds the highest primary (that's what the 1 is for) character less than c, and uses that as the reset point. For Maltese, the same technique needs to be used for ġ and ż.
Blocking Contractions. Contractions can be blocked with CGJ, as described in the Unicode Standard and in the Characters and Combining Marks FAQ.
Case Combinations. The lowercase, titlecase, and uppercase variants of contractions need to be supplied, with tertiary differences in that order (regardless of the caseFirst setting). That is, if ch is a contraction, then you would have the rules ... ch <<< Ch <<< CH. Other case variants such as cH are excluded because they are unlikely to represent the contraction, for example in McHugh. (Therefore, mchugh and McHugh will be primary different if ch adds a primary difference.) [#8248]
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Cliff Hague
Urbanisation and Planning
Original blogs
Blogs by Cliff Hague
ICN Blog
World View Blog
Small Towns Reports
Blogs and small towns work
Flashback to Cliff Hague's Diaries in "Planning"1986-2006"
European Observation Network for Territorial Cohesion
ESPON (2013) UK Contact Point
External expert on ESPON (2013) projects
ESPON (2013) Applied Research Sounding Boards
EU INTERREG projects
Commonwealth, international and global projects
UK projects
Cliff has operated as a freelance consultant since 2004. He does research, authors reports and is a facilitator and trainer. While at Heriot-Watt University he was also involved in contract research.
He has worked on numerous projects:
With Spatial Foresight GmbH (http://www.spatialforesight.eu/spatial-foresight.html ) to deliver research-based reports for the ESPON Co-ordination Unit on European territorial development and policy.
With the Royal Town Planning Institute (www.rtpi.org.uk) to deliver the UK National Contact Point for the ESPON 2013 programme.
As an external expert for the Royal Town Planning Institute on transnational projects within the ESPON 2013 programme.
For the ESPON 2013 Co-ordination Unit as a peer reviewer on Sounding Boards for research projects.
On European Union INTERREG projects.
On other European projects.
On Commonwealth, international and global projects.
On UK projects.
ESPON 2013 Applied Research Sounding Boards
ESPON 2013 is an applied research programme partly funded by the European Regional Development Fund and partly by the 28 EU member states, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. Its research has built an evidence base to support policy development for territorial cohesion and development. ESPON appoints two experts to sit on the Sounding Board for Applied Research projects and to provide advice and peer review throughout the research.
Cliff was a peer reviewer on the Sounding Boards for two Applied Research projects.
European Development Opportunities in Rural areas – EDORA (2008-2011) http://www.espon.eu/main/Menu_Projects/Menu_AppliedResearch/edora.html
Geographical Specificities and Territorial Potentials in Europe – GEOSPECS (2010-2012) http://www.espon.eu/main/Menu_Projects/Menu_AppliedResearch/geospecs.html
Europe and its neighbours
Cliff is a freelance consultant, researcher, author and trainer. He is the Chair of the Cockburn Association.
He is Professor Emeritus of Planning and Spatial Development at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.
He is a Past President of the Royal Town Planning Institute, and of the Commonwealth Association of Planners.
He is a past Chair of Built Environment Forum Scotland.
He was awarded the O.B.E. in the 2016 Birthday Honours.
Tweets by @CliffHague
American Planning Association China Cities Climate change Commonwealth Association of Planners economic development ESPON European Union Housing Migration Planning Planning Education Public spaces Rapid urbanisation Regional development Royal Town Planning Institute Spatial Planning Sustainable Development Territorial Cohesion UNHabitat Urbanisation Urban Planning Urban regeneration Urban Transport World Urban Forum
Webdesign and Hosting : www.brandenburg-bm.de - info@brandenburg-bm.de
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Ignacio Jimenez
Captain of the Spanish team for the 2016 Wroclaw World Bridge Games
Read more by Ignacio Jimenez
About This Tournament
2016 World Bridge Games
Articles covering the 2016 World Bridge Games in Wroclaw, Poland.
Official Spanish Team Statement
by Ignacio Jimenez Sept. 21, 2016
(Page of 4)
Prev. Page
As captain of the Spanish team in Wroclaw, Iam posting this on behalf of our entire team (Federico Goded, Gonzalo Goded, Andres Knap, Luis Lantaron, Jordi Sabate, Arturo Wasik), who collaborated to write down the incident between USA and Spain from their perspective. This statement represents the official view of our team and will be sent to the WBF.
The first day of play (4x16 boards), the Spain vs. USA match developed in a normal manner with no incidents.
During dinner that evening (10th of September), a player on the Spanish team shared a deal (board 30) played during the second segment against K. Bathurst and J. Lall. It was quite surprising to see that East took no action during the bidding after partner’s opening and on top of this didn’t lead partner’s suit.
Lall
Wasik
3NT North
NS: 0 EW: 0
Lead ♦3!!!
On Sunday the 11th of September, a member of the Spanish team decided to spend some of his time analyzing deals played by Bathurst–Lall, using BBO archives of11 matches includingthis pair prior to the matchagainst Spain. He then decided to check the archives on the American Trials, and while he was going through the Spingold his time expired. In total he analyzed over 400 boards played by the pair.
Here are 2 other examples found in this tournament, only 2 days before the previous board already mentioned:
(http://www.bridgebase.com/tools/handviewer.html?linurl=http://www.bridgebase.com/tools/vugraph_linfetch.php?id=46659)
Round 14, USA-China Hong Kong, Board 24.
None vul, Dealer West.
QJ
W Ho
QJ7
KJ953
G Ho
3♣ South
Round 15, USA-Latvia, Board 8.
Nonevul, Dealer West.
KJ10875
QJ52
Lorencs
AKJ7
4♥X West
The analysis concluded that Bathurst-Lall opened 100% of the deals in which they were NV in third seat (after 2 consecutive passes), not finding a single deal where the pair passed.
The team discussed the situation over the phone and decided to gather in the playing area to inform the TDs of our findings. At 16:00 (with play scheduled to start at 17:30) the team presented the findings on the boards and Bathurst-Lall’s CC (http://www.ecatsbridge.com/documents/files/2016WroclawSystems/OpenTeams/USA/Lall-Bathurst.pdf)to the only available TD,Slawek Latala, and our desire to file a complaint. We expected that the WBF would contact us for a hearing with the USA captain. This never happened, and we were never given the opportunity to make our complaint. The director told us that he would inform the Chief TD and left.
During the next hour, nothing happened: nobody asked us for anything or questioned us, and the WBF never filed the complaint. We were ignored by the organizers until it was time to start the match (5th segment).
When the match started, our captain asked TD Antonio Riccardi what verdict he had reached based on our findings. He answered in a very angry manner that we had to start play and told us that we would have an answer in no less than a month.
At that point, we had the feeling that the only thing the organizers wanted us to do was to sit, play, lose, and leave. Nobody attended our complaint, and our situation was completely ignored. As if in a way they only wanted to get rid of us. The incompetence of the TDs and organizers and the lack of an official response made our captain refuse to play the 5th segment until some sort of precautionary measure was taken, such as lining up another pair that wasn’t Bathurst-Lall or playing the standard CC recognized by the WBF.
The TDs continuously ignored our petitions and informed us that the Spanish team would be penalized due to the delayed start of the match. At this point our captain asked the team (who were already sitting) to stand up and leave because we were not going to play. It is very important to emphasize that this decision was taken as a response to the TDs' passiveness with the ongoing situation.
The Chief TD informed us that the penaltywould be approx. 1 IMP per minute and that if the delay exceeded 40 minutes the team would lose by walk-over and thus beexpelled from the competition. However, an auxiliary TD suggested to our captain that weshould wait a little, because something could still happen.
In the meantime, the president of the WBF, Gianarrigo Rona, appeared in the playing area. After talking with one of the Spanish players, he met with TDs Antonio Riccardi and Max Bavin.
After that brief meeting between the WBF president and the TDs,Max Bavin informed our captain ofRona's commitment to assembling an appropriate committee and to delivering a quick resolution, sayingthat we would probably get an answer that same night, or, in any case, before the tournament had concluded. He also informed us that the Spanish team would be penalized.
Our captain instructed us to finally begin playing the 5th segment,which we did immediately.
The TDs decided that the first 6 deals would be hand-dealt for security reasons (since they had been broadcaston VuGraph).
During the match, TD Max Bavin informed our captain of the final verdict taken by the WBF committee: the facts presented against Bathurst-Lall's methods would be examined by the organization later on, but in no case would it affect the results of this tournament, and in the best-case scenario it would be taken as a CC mistake, applying an adjusted score to the boards played.The penalty of 32 IMPs for a delayed start had been changed to 10 IMPs for disobeying the TDs' instructions to sit and play.
II. OUR ARGUMENTS
(Which we have never been given the chance to make)
When a partnership opens every hand in third position not vulnerable disregarding hand strength, according to law 40.C.1 it constitutes a partnership agreement and not a psyche. It is not necessary to open 100% of the cases (like we have found here), just opening enough for partner to be aware of the possibility is enough to constitute a partnership agreement according to the rules.
The agreement on opening hands at the 1-level with less than 8 HCP constitutes a HUM system according to rule 2.2.C of the WBF system policy.
The use of a HUM system during this tournament is forbidden according to rule 3, Category 2 from the WBF system regulations.
Therefore we have all (not only our team) been playing against opponents who use forbidden methods without knowing what is the resolution or sanction for this kind of behavior.
Even if frequent psychic bids in third position were not considered a partnership agreement, it constitutes a serious lack of disclosure on the convention card according to the Appendix 4 (page 11) on the WBF system policy point 2.
Furthermore, looking at the statement from WBF on page 9 of the 1st bulletin, a partnership can be forced to play theWBF's standard convention card when its own card and appendices are found unsatisfactory. If we had been given the opportunity we would had asked for one of the following solutions for this partnership: a) to stop playing until they filled their convention card properly in order to allow us to prepare the right defenses against their gadgets or b) to play the WBF's standard convention card for the remaining segments. Both options would exclude the possibility of opening 3rd seat NV with <8 HCP.
Besides this we would have asked to adjust the score of board 30 of the 2nd segment to 3NT-X (or XX).
III. FINAL CONSIDERATIONS AND TEAM OPINIONS
A) We did not know the procedures to follow in order to handle this kind of situation (and we still don’t know them). The Spanish team took what seemed the most logical courseof referring it to the TDs and then waiting for a hearing before the round started.
B) It is important to know that the Spanish team's decision of refusing to begin the match was a protest against the WBF as a consequence of the feeling of helplessness that its behavior caused us, and in no case was related or intended towards the USA team or its members.
C)We also want to mention clearly that the WBF's behavior was totally inappropriate and we consider them fully responsible for this whole unpleasant situation. Nobody told us what was going to be the decisions and/or solutions applied for this kind of situation.
D) We are aware that many other international pairs consider these kind of methods (continuously opening very light in 3rd seat) licit and have been using them in this Championship in a regular manner. Even if this agreement is widely used it shouldn’t be considered legal in this kind of competition until they change the rules and allow all the players to do the same and prepare theircorrespondingdefenses.
E) Lastly we would like to clarify that after the recent “witch hunt” that has been ongoing in the bridge world, we would like to emphasize that the Spanish team has never accused (or suggested) that the USA pair were cheating; on the contrary, we have always had a great amount of respect towards them and their game.We simply complained that they were playing an illegal method for this Championship, perhaps due to lack of knowledge of the rules of this competition. Besides, their convention card wasn’t properly filled out.
All these reasons in our humble opinion justify the Spanish complaint.
PS: We don’t want to conclude this document without formulating the following questions:
What would have been the USA team's reaction if they had discovered a Spanish pair using illegal methods and the WBF had ignored their claims?
Would the WBFhave reacted in the same way if the claim was from the USA team rather than the Spanish one?
Extract of the regulations applicable to the facts alleged by the Spanish Team
Document #1. WBF SYSTEMS POLICY
(http://www.worldbridge.org/Data/Sites/1/media/documents/official-documents/Policies/WBFSystemsPolicy.pdf)
2.2 HUM Systems
For the purpose of this Policy, a Highly Unusual Method (HUM) means any System that exhibits one or more of the following features, as a matter of partnership agreement:
c) By partnership agreement an opening bid at the one level may be made with values a king or more below average strength.
3. Systems allowed at WBF Championships
In relation to the aspect of Systems to be allowed at WBF Championships, the events will be divided into three categories:
Category 2: Specific Teams Championships as decided by the WBF Rules and Regulations Committee:
The use of HUM systems is prohibited
Page 11:
Appendix 4: Psychic bidding (Revised August 2002)
Document #2. LAW 40 - PARTNERSHIP UNDERSTANDINGS
(http://worldbridge.org/Data/Sites/1/media/documents/laws/2007lawscomplete.pdf)
C. Deviation from System and Psychic Action
1. A player may deviate from his side’s announced understandings always provided that his partner has no more reason to be aware of the deviation than have the opponents. Repeated deviations lead to implicit understandings which then form part of the partnership’s methods and must be disclosed in accordance with the regulations governing disclosure of system. If the Director judges there is undisclosed knowledge that has damaged the opponents he shall adjust the score and may award a procedural penalty.
Document #3. BULLETIN #1 OF THE WORLD BRIDGE GAMES 2016
(http://www.worldbridge.org/repository/tourn/wroclaw.16/Microsite/bulletins/Bul_01.pdf(Bottom of page 9))
WBF standard convention cards
Players will be forced to use standard WBF convention cards if their own card and supplements are found unsatisfactory.
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Joe Biden Loses It When Reporter Asks Him About His New Grandchild [WATCH]
belle November 22, 2019 729 Views
Former Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday ripped into a reporter who asked for comment on the news that his son Hunter Biden fathered an out-of-wedlock child with a woman in Arkansas.
Hunter, 49, is the father of Lunden Alexis Roberts’s child, according to a motion filed Wednesday in Arkansas. The 28-year-old filed a petition for a paternity test and support for her 1-year-old back in May, the Daily Mail previously reported. Hunter denied the allegations in August and asked the court to dismiss all petitions.
Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked Biden to comment Thursday on the Arkansas court filing, prompting the former vice president to scold the journalist for his question.
“Do you have a comment on this report and court filing out of Arkansas that your son Hunter just made you a grandfather?” Doocy can be heard saying off-camera.
“No, that’s a private matter, I have no comment. But only you would ask that. You’re a good man, you’re a good man. Classy,” Joe Biden responded, smiling.
The paternity news broke shortly before Wednesday’s fifth Democratic debate, though the elder Biden’s newest grandchild wasn’t mentioned during the debate. Hunter Biden reportedly fathered the child while dating his deceased brother’s widow, Hallie Biden. They broke up in April and Hunter Biden married Melissa Cohen in May, according to Business Insider.
Biden gets angry at a reporter for doing his job:
Reporter: "Do you have a comment on this report and court filing out of Arkansas that your son Hunter just made you a grandfather?"
Biden: "No, that's a private matter, I have no comment. But only you would ask that. … Classy" pic.twitter.com/vxPzE8St8Q
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Home > Public Appearances > 2015 > 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' Los Angeles Premiere
Album name: Lora / 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' Los Angeles Premiere
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Geographies of migration, gender and agrarian change in the Global South (1)
Convenor(s) Fraser Sugden (International Water Management Institute, Nepal)
Stephanie Leder (International Water Management Institute, Nepal)
Chair(s) Stephanie Leder (International Water Management Institute, Nepal)
Session abstract There are an estimated 214 million international labour migrants and 740 million internal labour migrants worldwide. The impact of migration on receiving countries and regions has received unprecedented public and policy interest in recent years. However, migration also has a far reaching impact on rural economies and the trajectory of change in agriculture within the Global South. Understanding the relationship between migration and agrarian change is a classic ‘nexus’ challenge. The out-migration of men and youth in particular, can result in transformations in gender relations in agriculture, changes in how natural resources are managed, new patterns of investment, and reconfigured power relations and geographies of inequality. However, the character of these agrarian transformations over time and place are mediated by larger scale processes such as climate change and regional or global political economy – the same processes which drive migration in the first place. The dynamics of these relationships are not well understood, and neither is the complex experience of households negotiating migration induced demographic change in the Global South. The International Water Management Institute, as part of the CGIAR research programme on Water Land and Ecosystems (WLE), will bring together case study research on migration and rural change in the Global South to generate dialogue and debate on rural transformation in migrant sending regions and countries, to identify a research and policy agenda. Sponsored by International Water Management Institute (IWMI)
Linked Sessions Geographies of migration, gender and agrarian change in the Global South (2)
Introduction: The migration-agriculture nexus in the Global South
Fraser Sugden (International Water Management Institute, Nepal)
Migration today represents one of the most critical issues facing rural communities in the Global South, and the unprecedented outflow of men, women and youth from rural areas has transformed agriculture and rural social relations, while creating new patterns of vulnerability and inequality. This introduction briefly sets the context of the migration-agriculture nexus, and shapes the agenda for the session.
Moving in and out of vulnerability: migration as an adaptation strategy along a rural urban continuum in Karnataka
Chandni Singh (Indian Institute for Human Settlements, India)
Ritwika Basu (Indian Institute for Human Settlements, India)
Rural livelihoods in semi-arid regions negotiate multiple climatic and non-climatic risks. Migration has emerged as a key livelihood strategy to diversify incomes, reduce risks associated with rainfed agriculture, and meet personal aspirations. Drawing on life histories of migrant and non-migrant families, this research explores the role of migration and commuting in addressing livelihood vulnerability along a rural-urban continuum in Karnataka, India. In-depth life histories across two districts are used to explore livelihood trajectories in rural households and understand how households negotiate their fast-changing environmental, social, and institutional landscape through migration and commuting, among other strategies. Preliminary findings suggest that labelling migration as an adaptive strategy does not necessarily capture the breadth of experiences and implications for livelihoods that migrants and their families face. At an intra-household level, migration and commuting can alleviate vulnerability for some family members while exacerbate vulnerability of those left behind. At a larger scale, migration that is adaptive at a household scale can be maladaptive at a system-scale where cities are unable to provide for or absorb migrants who often live in highly vulnerable conditions. Finally, on a temporal scale, migration and commuting affect livelihood trajectories and choices beyond the migrants alone and understanding how these strategies affect household vulnerability over time is crucial for adaptation research. The paper also presents life histories as a powerful methodological tool to complement current econometric methodological approaches exploring migration and demonstrates a more nuanced, in-depth and temporally-sensitive inquiry into the drivers and consequences of migration.
Feminization of crop-livestock systems in South Asia: A case from Uttarakhand India
Sushrut Chauhan (Freelance Consultant)
Sapna Jarial (ICRISAT, Niger)
Uttarakhand is primarily a mountainous state with only about ten percent of its total geographical area in the plains, the economy of Uttarakhand is predominantly dependent on mountain agriculture. However, the scope for agricultural policies based on modern input-intensive agriculture is severely constrained in the hilly regions because of various physical, geographical and environmental problems. This has resulted in the majority of the rural population in the hills either surviving on subsistence agriculture or migrating to other parts of the country for employment. Who does the animal agriculture in such a backdrop? What are gender roles, constraints and opportunities of in crop-livestock farming? Using quantitative and participatory qualitative tools an investigation was conducted in year 2011-12, in two blocks namely, Jhakhanidhar (altitude 1500-1700 above mean sea level) and Gangolihat (altitude 1600-1750 amsl) of districts TehriGarhwal and Pithoragarh respectively and was confined to (lactating) buffaloes considering their prevalence in the area. Relevant information was collected from 20 women farmers (10 from block Jhakhanidhar and 10 from Gangolihaat) in three consecutive seasons (summer, rainy and winter).
Unravelling rural migration networks: Land-tenure arrangements among Bugis migrant communities in Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia
Elok Ponco Mulyoutami (World Agroforestry Centre, Indonesia)
Ekawati Sri Wahyuni (Bogor Agricultural Institute, Indonesia)
Lala M Kolopaking (Bogor Agricultural Institute, Indonesia)
James Michael Roshetko (World Agroforestry Centre, Indonesia)
Spontaneous rural-to-rural migration has many impacts on every dimension of human life. Migration driven by the hunger for land has been stimulated by the development of high economic value crops. The study of migration networks will contribute to a better portrait of continuing migration and the related actors: their influence on the decision to migrate and their role in facilitating the migration. This study focussed on Bugis migrant communities— famous as great wanderers—in Southeast Sulawesi Province, Indonesia. In the province, smallholders' cocoa plantations are dominated by Bugis migrants, contributing two-thirds of the total 137 833 tonnes of cocoa production in 2010. Research was conducted at the migrants' destination (Konawae District) and origin (Sinjai District). The study showed that the main motivation for Bugis to migrate was to obtain land. The three main waves of migration to Southeast Sulawesi are characterized by development of a major commodity in each time period: 1) the 'green revolution' with paddy-rice development in the 1970s–80s; 2) the cocoa boom in early (1980s–2000s); and 3) late phases (2000s until present). Four migration network patterns were deliberately or unintentionally developed by the Bugis migrant community: 1) kinship network; 2) patron–client relationship; 3) migration owing to work displacement; and 4) the pioneer migration: early migrants who have lived in Southeast Sulawesi for a long time. In each wave, the central actor in the migration is the land broker, linking different villages and families.
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Youth For Palin Not Defeated By Latest Outbreak of Palin Hate
Yesterday we posted a Youth For Palin video that has been gaining popularity on You-Tube. Unfortunately, the video has also attracted an incident of extreme Palin Derangement from several individuals who apparently resent that so many young people are fleeing the Obama youth plantation . Y4P founder and mentor Elizabeth Hawkes shares the story behind the video and the hate outbreak it inspired.
On July 15, 2011, The Undefeated, written and directed by Stephen K. Bannon and produced by Bannon and Victory Film Group, was released for the country to see.
Upon originally hearing about The Undefeated, Youth for Palin wanted to be involved in promoting the film because of the message that the film would share with the public. So Youth for Palin contacted Victory Film Group, offering to bring awareness to The Undefeated. Along with getting the word out about the documentary over Facebook, Twitter, and several Pro-Palin blogs, Youth For Palin was also asked by Victory Film Group to create a You-Tube video that would emphasize the importance of seeing The Undefeated while also showing Youth for Palin’s support for Sarah Palin.
Once Youth for Palin did their part in the filming process, Victory Film Group was gracious enough to edit the video before it was posted for everyone to view. It was posted on July 14, 2011.
Within 24 hours this video attracted at least 10 comments that advocated the beheading, killing and/or violent gang rape of Gov. Sarah Palin and her daughters.
Here is a small sample … Some of the even worse comments were accidentally deleted before we could capture them.
*WARNING LANGUAGE*
“I hope Sarah Palin’s skirt gets ripped off during her next speech”
“Sarah Palin deserves to get raped by Bloods and Crips because she is a racist bitch”
“I would like to see Willow Palin get raped by Bloods and Crips at her birthday party”
“Sarah Palin and her daughters should be gang raped by Bloods and Crips because they are racist”
After discussions with Victory Film’s Andy Badolato, I became very concerned as to the safety of the youth members of my organization who were named and appeared in the video because:
* I was informed by Andy Badolato that, of the 150 plus blogs, articles, and videos that they have posted on their websites that allow comments, there is not one incident or circumstance of any similar threats made or stated. This leads me to believe that the parties responsible specifically SINGLED OUR GROUP OUT AND OR MY MEMBERS OR MYSELF WHO WERE HIGHLIGHTED IN THE VIDEO.
Whoever wrote these comments should be captured and prosecuted. This is a crime of threat against a public official and minors and well as obscenity HATE crime directed at our group. In addition, there may be indirect crimes against minors who appeared in the video due to the content involving rape and murder directed only at our video and not at any of the other content posted on the YouTube channel or Victory Film website.
It’s hard to believe that people would have such anger towards a group that consists of people who will be a part of our nation’s future. People are supposed to be educating and motivating our youth, not creating fear with in them and discouraging their efforts and beliefs and that is why it is important to bring awareness to this situation. Youth for Palin and Victory Film Group are concerned about the threats that were made and have already stepped up to do something about them.
We took screen shots of the comments made on You-Tube and filed a police report.
I was informed by the local police department, their sergeant and the county sheriffs’ department that a case number could not be issued because of jurisdictional reasons and, since the comments were made on a public forum, were protected by free speech. The agencies implied that the content of our Youth For Palin video and our comments therein were as valid as comments made by the detractor.
Remind me again why the liberals pass hate crime legislation and rail against bullying but it never seems to apply when the hatred and bullying is aimed at conservatives?
And doesn’t this make it rather imperative that we push back against idiots like Bill Maher, Sandra Bernhardt and Chris Titus so that their “free shots” at conservative women aren’t free of consequence and so they are not allowed to contaminate and influence what passes for “valid” political discourse in this country?
Nicole Owl
PDS, The Undefeated, Youth For Palin
Nicole Owl(261 Posts)
I'm a mother of three, and devoted Palin blogger.
David Limbaugh Reviews The Quotable Rogue
Tickets to See the Undefeated in Cincinnati, Columbus, Charleston, South Carolina, and Salt Lake City Are Now Available
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The US & others working with Pakistan
Thread: The US & others working with Pakistan
SWJED
Largo, Florida
20 July New York Times commentary - The Taliban’s Silent Partner by Robert Kaplan.
When the American-led coalition invaded Afghanistan five years ago, pessimists warned that we would soon find ourselves in a similar situation to what Soviet forces faced in the 1980’s. They were wrong — but only about the timing. The military operation was lean and lethal, and routed the Taliban government in a few weeks. But now, just two years after Hamid Karzai was elected as the country’s first democratic leader, the coalition finds itself, like its Soviet predecessors, in control of major cities and towns, very weak in the villages, and besieged by a shadowy insurgency that uses Pakistan as its rear base.
Our backing of an enlightened government in Kabul should put us in a far stronger position than the Soviets in the fight to win back the hinterland. But it may not, and for a good reason: the involvement of our other ally in the region, Pakistan, in aiding the Taliban war machine is deeper than is commonly thought.
The United States and NATO will not prevail unless they can persuade Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, to help us more than he has. Unfortunately, based on what senior Afghans have explained in detail to American officials, Pakistan is now supporting the Taliban in a manner similar to the way it supported the Afghan mujahedeen against the Soviets two decades ago.
The Taliban has two leadership cells operating inside Pakistan, presumably with the guidance and logistical support of local authorities. Senior lieutenants to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s supreme leader, are ensconced in Quetta, the capital of the Pakistani province of Baluchistan. From there they direct military operations in the south-central Afghan provinces of Helmand, Kandahar, Uruzgan and Zabul.
Meanwhile, one of the Taliban’s savviest military commanders, Jalaluddin Haqqani, and his sons operate out of Miramshah, the capital of the North Waziristan Province. From there, they run operations in Kabul and the eastern Afghan regions of Khost, Logar, Paktia and Paktika...
Brigadier Richard E Simpkins in the his book "Race to the Swift" as far back as 1985 visualised that the Islamic threat would be the spectre that would haunt the western world. It is obvious that he would not have penned such a radical thought in print without it having attained some credibility in the political and military academic circles.
However, the western political circles did not appreciate the full impact of the Islamist wave that was sweeping the world since it did not affect them, so much so many a Islamist radical movements found sanctuary in Britain and elsewhere. The Tablighi, ostensibly a pacifist Islamic movement was gnawing away at the innards of the western world and swelling the rank of Islam with converts. This was feasible since there was an influx of political asylum seekers and Asian job seekers in the West. It was only after 9/11 when it impacted the western world did the west awake to the devastating effect that this Islamic wave was impacting elsewhere around the world i.e. Kashmir, some places in Africa, West Asia etc.
Quite shortsightedly the US encouraged these radicals and gave assistance to rid Afghanistan of the Soviet bear even though USSR was, as it is, on its last legs. But then the Americans are by upbringing and psyche an impatient people who like quick fixes. This quick-fix attitude has brought about the menace of Islamic radicals who plague the earth.
Zia, the born again Islamist, grabbed the US offer and ran camps to organise, equip and control the Taliban hordes against the USSR in Afghanistan. He required this manna since he was an illegitimate usurper of the throne and required to shore up his illegitimacy and nothing is better than religion to divert attention from the miseries of daily life of a poverty stricken and illiterate mass of humanity.
The defeat of the Soviet Union brought about an illusion amongst the Moslem hordes that superpowers can be defeated if one is resolute in Islam. All said and done, no matter what the apologists have to say, the Koran is clear that the only religion that is pure and authentic is Islam. And yet, Islam was not doing well. It was proliferating at a rapid pace, but it was not the ruler of the world! This dichotomy was put to rest (at least in the Islamic mind) by the defeat of USSR in Afghanistan. It gave the impetus to achieve the impossible - world at the feet of Islam. And, why not? If a totalitarian superpower can be defeated, then surely a democratic superpower too could be brought to its knees since democracy has many an infirmity in mustering a national will.
Thus, this foundationed the current Islamic fundamentalism that is running wild with a pipe-dream. Only thing is that they don't think it is a pipe-dream.
In this Islamist dream, the Pakistani population, from whose womb the "Islamic warriors" emerged, has snatched the shining armour from Arabia as the prima Donna and champion and centre of Islam! This fact manifest itself wherein Pakistanis remain in the forefront terrorist attacks in the US (latest being the attempt to blow up a Jewish temple at Seattle). The Arabs are nowhere on the scene any more. Even in the latest meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Countries (OIC) at Kuala Lumpur, Pakistan took the lead to condemn the Israeli bombing on Lebanon!
Pakistan is the front-line ally of the US in the War on Terror. This is but a ploy to keep Pakistan from exhibiting open terrorism so that the western actions in Afghanistan is not totally derailed. The US mollifies the Pakistani regime with lollies like F 16 etc and massages the Pakistani ego of being the most modern Islamic defence force. But the game maybe deeper than what meets the eye.
It is in the US interest to mollify and placate Pakistan. Given the commitment in Iraq and the defiance of Iran, the west is in no position to take on Pakistan should it interfere more vigorously in Afghanistan. There is no love lost between the two given the harsh words exchanged by their respective leaders about each other.
Therefore, to keep Pakistan busy, the US and its proxies are actively participating in the Balochistan liberation movement. If Balochistan remains "hot", Pakistan's attention toward Afghanistan would be diluted. Further, if liberation does come, Iran would be boxed in from both sides and the Chinese influence in Gwadar (aimed to make its presence felt in the Indian Ocean and thus challenge the US; as also have a listening post into US activities in the Middle East) removed. It maybe noted that Gwadar in no way assists Balochistan.
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=17800
But Afghanistan and Balochistan liberated means the Tazakhistan - Afghanistan - Balochistan pipeline is through to feed the oil guzzling requirements of India and China (NIC 2020)! This miracle is very essential for the US flagging economy!
Therefore, Pakistan survival depends on delaying the US plans. Taliban is their saviour!
Last edited by Ray; 08-02-2006 at 03:13 PM.
Pakistan: GWOT Ally or Enemy?
26 August Washington Post news analysis - Pakistan's Awkward Balancing Act on Islamic Militant Groups by Pamela Constable.
For the past five years, Pakistan has pursued a risky, two-sided policy toward Islamic militancy, positioning itself as a major ally in the Western-led war against global terrorism while reportedly allowing homegrown Muslim insurgent groups to meddle in neighboring India and Afghanistan.
Now, two high-profile cases of terrorism -- a day of gruesome, sophisticated train bombings in India in mid-July and a plot foiled this month to blow up planes leaving Britain for the United States -- have cast a new spotlight on Pakistan's ambiguous, often starkly contradictory roles as both a source and suppressor of Islamic violence, according to Pakistani and foreign experts.
Moreover, increasing evidence of links between international attacks and groups long tolerated or nurtured in Pakistan, including the Taliban and Kashmiri separatists, are making it difficult for the military-led government here to reconcile its policy of courting religious groups at home while touting its anti-terrorist credentials abroad...
The basic problem for Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, is that he is trying to please two irreconcilable groups. Abroad, the leader of this impoverished Muslim country is frantically competing with arch-rival India, a predominantly Hindu country, for American political approval and economic ties. To that end, he has worked hard to prove himself as a staunch anti-terrorism ally.
But at home, where he hopes to win election in 2007 after eight years as a self-appointed military ruler, Musharraf needs to appease Pakistan's Islamic parties to counter strong opposition from its secular ones. He also needs to keep alive the Kashmiri and Taliban insurgencies on Pakistan's borders to counter fears within military ranks that India, which has developed close ties with the Kabul government, is pressuring its smaller rival on two flanks...
Until recently, Musharraf had handled this balancing act with some success, Pakistani and foreign experts said. He formally banned several radical Islamic groups while quietly allowing them to survive. He sent thousands of troops to the Afghan border while Taliban insurgents continued to slip back and forth. Meanwhile, his security forces arrested more than 700 terrorism suspects, earning Western gratitude instead of pressure to get tougher on homegrown violence.
But this summer, a drumbeat of terrorist violence and plotting in India, Britain and Afghanistan have begun to blur the distinction between regional and international Islamic violence. Pakistan, which has a large intelligence apparatus, is now in the awkward position of denying any knowledge of local militants' links to bombings in India and Afghanistan, while claiming credit for exposing their alleged roles in the London airliner plot...
Islamabad's fragile new alliance with the West has developed only since 2001, when Musharraf renounced the Taliban and embraced the anti-terrorist cause. The U.S.-Pakistan relationship has been strained both by Musharraf's foot-dragging on democratic reforms and by India's high-profile rapprochement with Washington, including a controversial new nuclear energy agreement.
Analysts said the Musharraf government may now be playing up its role in foiling the London plot in order to reinforce its importance as a strategic Western ally.
Some observers suggested that in different ways, both Pakistan and India are using the terrorist threat to bolster their competing relations with the West. Just as Pakistan, the regional underdog, may be exaggerating its role as a terror-fighter, they noted, India, the aspirant to global influence, may be exaggerating its role as a victim of terror.
Others suggest that U.S. policy in the Middle East is making it difficult for Muslim countries such as Pakistan to remain peaceful and in control of large, impoverished populations who increasingly turn to religion and identify with the struggles of Muslims in other countries.
But critics said Pakistan's problems with Islamic violence cannot be resolved as long as the military remains in power. In an unusual move last month, a diverse group of senior former civilian and military officials wrote an open letter to Musharraf, warning that the country is becoming dangerously polarized and that a uniformed presidency only exacerbates the problem by politicizing the armed forces. The only solution, the group wrote, is a transition to a "complete and authentic democracy."
It is to massage the ego of Pakistan that it is the front line ally.
Musharraf is incongruous in the sphere of Pakistani politics and has been forced by fate into the high office since he had to undertake the coup or else he would be facing court-martial, which was what the Prime Minister Sharif had lined up for him on return from Sri Lanka.
Ever since then, he has had to play the role of a juggler, both internally and externally. The powerful forces at home that were aligned against him forced him to devise the strategy to show his "prowess" as the saviour by showing positive results taht so far was eluding Pakistan and thereby making himself acceptable both internally and in the international field.
It was evident that without the US assistance and US permission, no external funds would be available to salvage the bankrupt Pakistan or get rid of the danger of being labelled a rogue state, given the fact that all terrorist acts had its root in Pakistan.
Thus, Musharaf had no option but to align himself personally to the US policies. However, to keep himself current with the Islamists, he, every now and then had to indicate his pride as a Pakistani (condemning US air strikes within NWFP, but ensuring that the PAF is not scrambled and mauled or thus upsetting the US) and as also as a Moslem (by proclaiming the greatness of Islam, and to please the US, with a touch of moderation). He spoke against the madrassas to please the US and yet did nothing to change the status quo except for some cosmetic actions nor did he expel the foreign madrassa students inspite of vehement assertions of doing so with immediate effect.
He started the dialogue with India to keep this image of being larger than life! He is yet to match his pious platitudes with the actions against crossborder terrorism. But then, he is a master at jugglery!
To ensure his survival in Pakistan, he, with Machiavellian cunning divided the formidable opposition with bribes or threats of opening up cases of corruption (which was endemic in Pakistani politics) and cobbled up what is know as the "KIngs Party" and has clung on to his uniform (Post of Chief of the Army) since that alone is his mainstay for staying in power.
He has also killed a formidable rival, the Balochi leader Akhbar Khan Bugti and even though currently there is riots practically all over Pakistan, he will survive. He will buy up the trouble creator leaders as he has always done.
In short, he has been a politician par excellence even if not a great military commander.
It must also be mentioned that the Pakistani politicians as a group are not pro US. Even during the catastrophic earthquake that hit Kashmir, the Pakistani Senators were up in arms in the National Assembly claiming that the US and NATO assistance was basically aimed at spying on Pakistan! Even in a catastrophe, instead of being grateful and singleminded in allievating the woes, the Pakistani politicians vectored on to the sinister!
That Pakistan is not at all concerned about containing the Taliban is ever so evident. Pakistan has deployed 80,000 troops in the area along the Afghan border and yet it cannot control either the cross border terrorist movement, nor can they rid the Taliban based within or even nab a AQ operative worth the name! If they can find and kill the Balochi leader, Akhbar Khan Bugti (Musharraf was single minded in getting him since it is said that he was the mastermind behind one of the assassination attempts on Musahrraf) and who was surrounded by his own people and in his own state, then the claims that the Taliban and AQ are difficult to find and kill is too slim an excuse to believe.
To be frank, Musharraf cannot be seen that he is against the "real" defenders of Islam - the Taliban, AQ and Osama! If he does it, he shall hang by the nearest pole and he has no intentions to adorn a tree! Being the master at chicanery, he is playing the fool with the Hudood Law, wherein claiming that it is against Islam and yet ensuring that there is confusion and preventing the amendment being passed. Something on the lines of Pontius Pilate!
To please the US, on and oft a Taliban leader is caught and is always the fourth important person in AQ hierarchy! The US also plays ball since it help to keep this charade going as it is better to have a reluctant ally rather than an active foe on the Afghanistan border skewing up the works in Afghanistan at a time when the focus and the effort is totally being consumed in Iraq!
It is not that there is not a bigger game plan that the US is at. As per some Pakistani commentators, the US is neck deep in the Balochistan issue since the TAP oil and gas pipeline is planned to travel through via Afghanistan and Balochistan to the port of Gwadar. Indeed, if Balochistan declares independence with covert US help or through the "good offfices" of India, the border along Balochistan and FATA would be neutralised and Afghanistan would be in a better position to put its house in order so that the pipeline fructifies! If this happens, then the importance of Pakistan will fade as far as the US strategy is concerned and so it is a question of survival for Musharraf to ensure that Balochistan is calmed, but the terrorist threat to Afghanistan kept alive! An independent Balochistan would also be worth the while for the US because Iran will be boxed from both the flanks.
The port of Gwadar is an important issue in the US strategic map. China is assisting Pakistan in developing this port and will be using it as a listening post into US activities in the Middle East as also be able to interfere with the same when it positions some naval effort there. It will also give teeth to the Chinese strategy of "String of Pearls". Already the Chinese have naval facilities in the Myanmar Coco Islands in the Bay of Bengal. These two naval facilities of Coco Island and Gwadar will compensate for the weakness of the Chinese Navy of not being a blue water navy to protect its interests in the Indian Ocean, which is very critical since the seaway transport oil to China.
Stu-6
Occupied Virginia
Pakistan is a long term liability but we have few other good options. Being overly supportive of non-representative governments especially those with large dissident populations is a risky strategy. If these governments collapse the likely result is government that’s powerbase revolves around confronting the outside power that supported the earlier regime, e.g. Iran. The possibility of a similar situation in Pakistan is very real, made more so by the divides with in the existing power structure.
Mike in Hilo
Democratic Pakistan
That Pakistan's (democratically elected) politicians are not pro-US is perhaps an understatement...Ms. Constable's implicit endorsement of the elected government alternative to Musharraf is as disappointing in its shortness of memory as it is predictable. The US seems to me to be appropriately cautious in not pushing too hard for Musharraf to democratize immediately.
During my tenure in Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto's government (first woman PM and darling of US liberals) was ebullient in publicly hailing the creation of the "Islamabad-Tehran-Beijing Axis." Progress was made in nuclear weapons development and AQ Khan flourished. The government was worryingly pro-Saddam before and during the Gulf War, until those final days when it became certain that he would lose. The electoral process served as a mechanism by which the entrenched family dynasties of landowning "feudal lords" (an appellation of unusual honesty for Pakistani politics) could cynically maintain their hold on the country while ensuring that the masses remained steeped in ignorance and powerless poverty. Furthermore, our media consistently err in forgetting that Islamic Law was introduced into Pakistan by Ms Bhutto's democratically elected, "leftist" father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and not by General Zia, who ousted him....
As for the prime minister ousted by Musharraf, Nawaz Sharif, the perennial opponent of Ms Bhutto in a series of national elections, his government was steadfast in its support of the Taleban in Afghanistan....
Last edited by Mike in Hilo; 08-31-2006 at 07:18 AM.
Over the long term I think anti-US democracies can be better than pro-US dictators. If a dictatorship is unresponsive to the population then a resistance too it will develop, if the US overtly supports the dictator this can have the effect of empowering the resistance since they can now cast the dictator as being a foreign lackey. This allows the resistance to cast their struggle in terms of us against the alien power and appeal to nationalistic instincts. If the resistance comes to power or gains significant influence a strongly anti-US policy will soon develop.
Worse than a Mistake
By Frederic Grare
Posted August 2006
How Pervez Musharraf is endangering himself, Pakistan, and the war on terror.
GENERAL CONFUSION: Musharraf is causing problems for himself and his allies.
Guang Niu/Getty Images
The Bush administration does not know it yet, but Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf may have just outlived his usefulness. He has already failed to confront the Taliban fighters who have made Pakistan a staging area for their attacks in Afghanistan. He has delayed and postponed promises to shore up his country’s democratic freedoms. He has even walked away from symbolic pledges to remove his own military uniform. And last weekend, the Pakistani strongman may have finally tipped the scales too far. On his orders, Pakistani security forces killed Nawab Akbar Bugti, the tribal leader and former governor of Baluchistan. The elimination of the leader of one Pakistan’s most strategically important border regions threatens the country’s territorial integrity, the war on terror, and Musharraf’s own political future. In one deft stroke, Musharraf has made himself an ally no longer worth the effort.
On August 26, Bugti was killed by Pakistani forces in a firefight close to his mountain hide-out. For 60 years, Bugti was a Baluchi nationalist leader and a key figure in the various insurgencies that have gripped Pakistan’s largest and most mineral-rich province. The Baluchis feel they are exploited by a central government they view as a colonial vehicle for Pakistan’s most populous region, the Punjab. They want more political autonomy and a greater share of their region's lucrative gas revenues.
Bugti commanded a sizable force, and he has long been a thorn in Islamabad’s side. But, unlike other leaders in Pakistan’s unruly border areas, he always deployed his forces with politics in mind and an eye on the future. Just last year, he proposed, albeit unsuccessfully, a compromise peace based on a proposal from Pakistan’s Muslim League leadership. His own stature, combined with the fact that he was in charge of the tribe controlling most of Baluchistan's natural gas reserves, made him unacceptable to the military leadership—even though he was Islamabad’s most credible partner for peace in the region.
Some argue that because the insurgency is essentially tribal, the removal of this tribal leader cuts the head off the snake. But that is a fundamental misreading of the insurgency. A prolonged, low-intensity conflict is now likely. With Bugti’s death, the insurgency will be led by far more radical elements, many of whom, including the largest tribe in Baluchistan, the Marri, will settle for nothing less than independence.
Baluchistan’s strategic location, bordering Iran, Afghanistan, and the Arabian Sea, as well as its wealth of minerals and hydrocarbons, means that Baluchi independence will always be unacceptable to Islamabad. So, the army will be ordered to redouble its efforts to crush the insurgency. But the military will struggle to control a province representing some 43 percent of the country’s territory. More forces will likely be redeployed to the region from the Afghan border. Such a move will further thin the army’s presence along the Afghan border and weaken the help it can offer NATO in the fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda remnants.
Indeed, the army is already paving the way for a drawdown from the Afghan border, which would free up soldiers for Baluchistan. The Pakistani press reported several days ago that a truce is being negotiated with the Taliban in the frontier area of Waziristan. Such a move would result in the army's withdrawal from all border posts and effectively allow the Taliban to cross the border at will.
If the consequences of Bugti’s death on the ground are still difficult to predict, some of them are already apparent in the political arena. Every political party, even Musharraf’s own political allies, has condemned the killing. The division between the civilian leadership and the military is widening—a frightening trend in any country where the military has such a stranglehold on political life. If this rift continues to widen, the Pakistani military might demand that Musharraf, who is still simultaneously—although unconstitutionally—the army’s chief of staff, choose between his two positions.
The killing of Bugti has exposed a Pakistani president both unable to fulfill his commitments in the war on terror and only able to act decisively against his own people. Musharraf’s actions have reversed decades’ worth of slow progress toward national integration. Reporting restrictions will guarantee that we will not hear much from Baluchistan in the coming months. But the next thing we hear might well be an explosion that reverberates as far as Washington.
Frederic Grare is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/c...?story_id=3578
Pakistan will survive. But will be weak.
Musharraf's Dangerous Highwire Act
Tim Lister | Bio | 30 Aug 2006
World Politics Watch Exclusive
Pervez Musharraf is no stranger to a welter of competing pressures -- domestic and external. His government remains under international pressure to root out al Qaeda and Taliban elements in frontier areas; Pakistan's Islamic parties are well-organized and growing in influence; separatists in Baluchistan are making parts of the province ungovernable just as the government tries to exploit its mineral and hydrocarbon potential. Pakistan's political institutions are weak and Islamic extremists have several times tried to assassinate the General. Set against these problems, there is one shaft of light. Pakistan's economy is now one of the fastest growing in Asia -- thanks largely to a government of technocrats that is pursuing privatization and foreign investment.
Amid these pressures, Western governments (and India) continue the clamor for more aggressive action from Pakistan in the "War on Terror." It's a clamor that's understandable -- but counter-productive.
In her provocative piece for World Politics Watch earlier this month, Bridget Johnson asked whether conflict in the Middle East would push Musharraf to abandon his "fine line" between a liberal state and a theocracy and maybe "stop offering any bit of comfort or shelter to Islamofascist elements." Setting aside the fashionable term of "Islamofascist," the choice is simplistic; there is a gulf between a theocracy and a liberal state, not a fine line. Ms. Johnson suggests that "if [Musharraf] uses the lives he has left to seriously quash radical Islam in Pakistan, he may leave a significant mark on the region." Indeed he might -- he might set off the sort of sectarian war in Pakistan that has engulfed Iraq, plunging a nuclear-armed state into chaos, with consequences well beyond its own borders. Radical Islam can't simply be quashed, by mobilizing a couple of battalions. Addressing Pakistan's manifold problems also has to take account of incendiary Sunni/Shia relations (Iraq, anyone?) and the vital role of the army as the only functioning national institution.
There is no doubting that Musharraf needs the West and needs to show the international community that he is serious in containing Islamic extremists in Pakistan, whether home-grown or of the multinational al Qaeda variety. The 9/11 Commission and others have legitimately complained that Pakistan remains a breeding ground for terrorism. Offering solutions is more problematic.
It is not as though Musharraf's government is doing nothing -- especially against al Qaeda militants. The army has lost scores of soldiers in remote and rugged Waziristan pursuing foreign fighters. Pakistan has tracked down plenty of important al Qaeda figures -- including Abu Zubaida, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Altogether it has probably arrested some 700 people allegedly linked to al Qaeda. There is also evidence of a new drive against Taliban leaders who have long gone unhindered in using the rugged territory of Baluchistan as a rear base for operations across the border. A recent raid on a hospital in Quetta netted several Taliban operatives, and a Taliban commander, Mullah Hamdullah, was also arrested.
But an overly aggressive pursuit of Islamic radicals might backfire with disastrous consequences. Trying to eradicate (as opposed to contain) militants in Waziristan and tribal areas is not feasible; it could also exacerbate ethnic tensions and cause dissension in an overstretched military. The government suffered a popular backlash after the abortive U.S. missile strike earlier this year on the border village of Damadola, which missed its intended target -- al Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri -- but killed several civilians. Recently, a more subtle approach has taken hold, to try to peel away tribal leaders from foreign elements while using Special Forces to target the latter more precisely rather than risking civilian casualties. A similar state of affairs exists in Baluchistan, home to more than 200,000 Afghan refugees, smuggling routes, grinding poverty and hardline madrassas. It is truly the wild west, where eradicating support for the Taliban is a pipe dream among a well-entrenched network of Sunni Deobandi groups.
Some might describe the government's less than whole-hearted approach as appeasement; others as a prudent cost-benefit analysis. That analysis includes two elements of self-interest. Pakistan had close ties to the Taliban while it ruled Afghanistan and retains some influence over events there by allowing the organization to survive as a thorn in the Karzai government's side. (Not that Pakistani officials would ever admit to such realpolitik.) Musharraf is also aware that if western financial aid and credits are to continue, it is the ongoing nature of the struggle that preserves his and Pakistan's strategic "currency." Since 9/11, America has dismissed $1.5 billion in debt and provided Pakistan with more than $3 billion in military assistance. Its strategic value -- and status as a nuclear power -- helps to preserve Pakistan's primitive parity with India. A similar dynamic informs negotiations with India. Musharraf wants to be seen to be making progress, but not too fast. Important constituencies at home would not tolerate compromise on Kashmir, and as a "process" the relationship attracts greater attention and financial help from the West.
Home-Grown Trouble
Musharraf's action against Pakistani Islamist groups has been less consistent than operations against al Qaeda and fellow travelers. His government has taken highly visible initiatives against radical Islamic groups -- especially after the 2001 attack on India's Parliament and the July 2005 attacks in London. But these crackdowns are not sustained. For example, the order that foreign students at madrassas leave Pakistan in the wake of the London attacks in July 2005 has been defied by many of the schools and quietly dropped. There are probably still several hundred foreign students at the religious schools. One group, Lashkar-e-Taibam, has been outlawed (and also is on the U.S. State Department's list of terrorist organizations) and held responsible for several attacks on India. But it has adopted a "shell" as a charitable organization (Jawaat ud Dawa) and it maintains - openly -- a large compound near Lahore.
A broader sweep against groups like Lashkar would be possible, but unlikely to bear fruit. Their memberships are fluid and dispersed among Pakistan's teeming cities and remoter corners. They include some adherents who want to liberate Kashmir and others who migrate to a broader jihad. Some enjoy protection from powerful elements of military intelligence (ISI) as a stick with which to beat India. Mass arrests could have the effect of radicalizing opposition to Musharraf's regime, like poking a stick into a wasps' nest. Instead, the government's policy has been to target individuals with known links to terrorist acts or plots -- such as the murder of Daniel Pearl or the London subway attacks. This month Pakistani al Qaeda suspects were detained in Karachi in connection with a suicide bomb attack against a U.S. diplomat earlier this year. Not pursuing these groups and their sympathizers wholesale is designed to keep social peace in a country that is a sectarian and religious cauldron. A virulent Sunni purism retains its grip in the grimy towns of southern Punjab, stoked by firebrand preachers who have persuaded more than a few to become al Qaeda's foot soldiers. Pakistan's deep-seated religious culture won't be changed overnight. (The democratic experiment in Iraq may be instructive in this respect.) Witness the timidity with which the Musharraf government has approached the reform of Islamic laws on rape and marriage, which constitute abhorrent discrimination against women.
It's important to distinguish between underground Islamist groups like Jaish e Mohammed and Lashkar e Taiba and the "mainstream" Islamist opposition, represented by the Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA). By western standards, the MMA is extremely conservative -- but it does represent the values of many Pakistanis. It has benefited from Musharraf's assault on the old "dynastic" parties, led by Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, who both probably would face criminal charges should they return home. As Bhutto's PPP and Sharif's PML(N) have suffered, so the Islamic opposition alliance continues to grow in influence. It doubled its vote in the 2002 elections, and now has more parliamentary seats than Sharif's party. Once promoted by Musharraf as a counterweight to the other parties, the MMA has won a majority in North West Frontier Province and is already introducing legislation based on Sharia law. Now it decries Musharraf as a "creature" of Washington and coordinates anti-American protests whenever the opportunity arises.
The popularity of the MMA -- like that of Hezbollah and Hamas -- has as much to do with its role as a social welfare provider as its politics. Its grassroots presence fills a vacuum left by the state. In Lahore, for example, the MMA has converted old movie sets into a clinic and hospital. (The symbolism is not lost on its leaders.)
But does the MMA seriously threaten Musharraf? Bridget Johnson asks: "Will the people go for a hardline regime?" The reality of Pakistani politics is that they won't have the option. The military is the only functional entity and Musharraf's command of it appears as secure as anything in Pakistan can be. Pakistanis joke: "Most countries have an army; here the army has a country." The MMA may burn effigies of Musharraf, but venting on the streets and making decisions in Islamabad are poles apart.
continued.....
Musharraf's government is pinning substantial hopes for containing Islamic opposition and popular discontent on improving living standards. Held back by a bureaucratic straitjacket and poor infrastructure, Pakistani business has until recently been left in the dust by more competitive regional economies. That is beginning to change following the appointment of former Citibank executive Shaukat Aziz as Prime Minister. In 2005, Pakistan registered one of the fastest growth rates in the world (8.4 percent) as red tape was cut and foreign investment attracted. Some Pakistani expatriates are returning to invest at home, less out of a sense of patriotic duty than because of new opportunities.
There are massive challenges. Trade negotiations with India proceed at glacial pace. Most trade is still indirect through Dubai, and a visit last year to the only road crossing open for trade (at Wagah) revealed nothing more than a few truck loads of Indian potatoes and garlic crossing the border. Potentially, an open trading relationship with India could bring capital and markets to Pakistan, but not at this rate.
Pakistan has to sustain and learn to handle high economic growth if is to meet the challenge of a young and increasingly urbanized population, many of whom are without regular work. In the interest of transparency, the government has to tackle the fabulous perks enjoyed by the military and its interests in the commercial and agricultural sectors. Unless handled astutely, economic growth could bring about as many problems as it solves, accelerating the rush to the cities and the growth of an underemployed, unskilled "proletariat" exposed to but unable to attain wealth. Above all, massive investment and political resources need to be plowed into overhauling education, where the curriculum is dominated by religious education with little vocational instruction
This is the greatest near-term imponderable in Pakistan. Musharraf has avoided grooming a successor and despite multiple promises has not shed his uniform for civilian garb. The pro-military PML-Q party -- the largest in parliament -- has no outstanding leaders but is rather a vehicle for the General's 2007 election bid. Musharraf has hand-picked his immediate circle of military chiefs; no one in the largely technocratic government has a power base. But in reinforcing his rule he has enfeebled Pakistan's already moribund political institutions. It's unclear whether in the run-up to the elections he will seek favor from the more secular parties (rehabilitating the Bhutto or Sharif dynasties) or the Islamists. Whichever direction he tilts will constrain his room for maneuver.
Many observers in Pakistan have a grudging respect for Musharraf's ability to bring stability (especially when compared with the chaos and corruption of the previous governments). But there is also anxiety that he is beginning to develop a "cult of indispensability." Increasingly, Musharraf compares himself to Pakistan's revered founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah. At the Independence Day rally in Lahore last year, he was flanked by two enormous portraits of Jinnah -- partly to underline his secular credentials, but also to portray himself as the indispensable father of modern Pakistan; so indispensable that there was a well-guarded 50-yard gap between him and his audience.
Few Pakistani analysts regard Musharraf as a visionary who can refashion Pakistan in the style of Ataturk (his hero) into a modern, secular state. The best they hope for is that his instinct for tactical advantage, his talent for steering between the Scylla and Charibdis in pursuit of "enlightened moderation" provides stability, which in turn limits the appeal of the Islamic opposition and entrenches economic improvement. The alternative, that al Qaeda gets lucky in one of its assassination attempts, is not one they wish to entertain.
Tim Lister has covered international news for 25 years as a producer and reporter for the BBC and CNN. He has lived and worked in the Middle East, and has also worked in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In 2004, he produced the award-winning documentary "Between Hope and Fear: Journeys in the New Iraq" for CNN. He is now an independent writer and producer.
Mushrraf is paying lip service to getting rid of the AQ and instead is more keen to consolidate his position in the country.
However, this is going to be a serious problem for him.
Pakistan: Friend or Foe?
5 September Los Angeles Times commentary - Pakistan: Friend or Foe? by Selig Harrison.
Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf is supposedly a key U.S. ally in the "war on terror." But is he, in fact, more of a liability than an asset in combating Al Qaeda and the increasingly menacing Taliban forces in Afghanistan?...
Musharraf's most vocal defender is former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who has urged continued support for him "no matter how frustrated we become at the pace of political change and the failure to eliminate Taliban fighters from the Afghan border." Musharraf is better than what might come after him, Armitage argues, and is a moderate who has done his best to fend off the entrenched forces of Islamic extremism in Pakistan.
But this argument does not hold up against mounting evidence that, as an ally, Musharraf has been an opportunist from the start who has continued to help the Taliban (just as he had done before 9/11 ) and who has gone after Al Qaeda cells in Pakistan only to the extent necessary to fend off U.S. and British pressure.
On Sept. 19, 2001, Musharraf made a revealing TV address in Urdu, not noticed at the time by most Americans, in which he reassured Pakistanis who sympathized with Al Qaeda and the Taliban that his decision to line up with the U.S. was a temporary expedient.
To Taliban sympathizers, Musharraf directed an explicit message, saying: "I have done everything for the … Taliban when the whole world was against them….We are trying our best to come out of this critical situation without any damage to Afghanistan and the Taliban." He has kept his promise to the latter.
Taliban forces continue to have unrestricted access to Pakistani border towns as staging areas and sanctuaries. Pakistani soldiers look the other way when Taliban units cross the mountains at Bormoi. With U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan suffering increasingly heavy casualties in the face of a Taliban offensive this summer, their officers no longer mince words about Pakistan's role. Col. Chris Vernon, chief of staff of British forces in southern Afghanistan, charged recently that the Pakistan border town of Chaman serves as the "major headquarters" for a guerrilla network in southeast Afghanistan.
Musharraf sees the Taliban as a pro-Pakistan counterweight to Indian influence in Afghanistan and wants to keep it strong in case Afghan President Hamid Karzai is overthrown and Afghanistan collapses into chaos. As a sop to Washington and London, he ordered raids on two small Taliban encampments in July, and he occasionally rounds up key Al Qaeda figures — but in many cases only after the FBI and CIA have confronted Pakistani police with communications intercepts pinpointing their hide-outs.
Even if Musharraf wanted to remove Taliban and Al Qaeda forces from Pakistan, his ability to do so is limited by the political pact that he made with a five-party Islamic alliance in 2004 to win state elections in the two key border provinces. As a result, Al Qaeda and Taliban activity is openly supported by local officials there, and Pakistani groups allied with Al Qaeda are thriving, notably Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba. This prevents Musharraf from carrying out his pledge to crack down on madrasas (religious schools) linked to terrorist groups.
The Islamic parties are flourishing under the protective umbrella of the Pakistani armed forces. Their growth would be slowed if secular political forces had a chance to assert themselves through free elections and a parliamentary system liberated from army manipulation. Under Musharraf, the army has seized much more power than past military regimes, installing military officers in hundreds of government posts previously held by civil servants. Army-sponsored conglomerates control multibillion-dollar enterprises and will not be easily dislodged. As a Pakistani editor commented, "Most countries have an army, but in Pakistan, the army has a country." ...
Merv Benson
Washington, Texas
Pakistan's Taliban truce
According to the BBC, Pakistan has entered into an agreement with Taliban tribesman that amounts to a cease fire and a deal to turn over "foreigners."
Pakistan has signed a deal with pro-Taleban militants on the Afghan border aimed at ending years of unrest.
The North Waziristan accord calls on tribesmen to expel foreign militants and end cross-border attacks in return for a reduced military presence.
Tens of thousands of Pakistani troops are fighting foreign Islamic militants and their local supporters in the country's restive tribal belt.
Hundreds of people have been killed in violence in North Waziristan this year.
The BBC's Barbara Plett in Islamabad says some observers believe the deal offers the government an exit from a military strategy that has largely failed.
Under the accord, the Pakistani military promises to end major operations in the area.
It will pull most of its soldiers back to military camps, but will still operate border check-points.
Over the summer the military met other conditions, releasing a number of tribesmen in an apparent goodwill gesture to the militants and withdrawing soldiers from new check-posts.
Local Taleban supporters, in turn, have pledged not to harbour foreign militants, launch cross-border raids or attack Pakistani government troops or facilities.
Observers say meeting these conditions could be difficult, as the Taleban has support on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghan border.
The value of the agreement will depend in large part on whether the tribal leaders word is any good and what is meant by "harboring foreign militants." Does that mean they are going to turn over bin Laden and Zawahiri? Probably not.
Islamabad, Pakistan (AHN) - After signing a truce with pro-Taliban militants on its border with Afghanistan, Pakistan is now extending the olive branch to America's most wanted man; Osama bin Laden.
Pakistani officials tell ABC that the leader of the terror group al-Qaeda, and the mastermind of the September 11th attacks in the U.S. will not face capture if he agrees to lead a "peaceful life."
Major General Shaukat Sultan Khan says that "as long as one is being like a peaceful citizen" bin Laden "would not be taken into custody.
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7004763605
and the Treaty signed with the tribal leaders in North Waziristan.
The above are masterstrokes that Musharraf has played. Brilliant, in fact.
No longer will Pakistan's own troops battle its own people. It is a larger than life message to the Balochis - play by the rules and all will be well!
This is also a great message to fundamentalists and fundamnetalist leaning political parties and the Pakistani population that Pakistan will not fight its own people which is an unIslamic act, in that Moslems killing Moslem. A great coup.
The withdrawal of troops from North Waziristan means an open hunting season for western forces in the guise of 'Hot Pursuits" and if Osama is nabbed, then neither the Pakistani govt nor Musharraf can be held responsible. After all, the tribal leaders wanted the army to be out!
It is a brilliant move par excellence by Musharraf.
Abizaid's visit and the Canadian proclamation (that was taken back) that western troops should be placed on the Pakistan side of the border could be read in this context.
One has to see now how the cat jumps!
Below is an article that explains the undercurrents that occur in Pakistan politics.
The article was published in the Indian Army ATRAC magazine PINNACLE
Owing to the space restriction of the posting, it is in parts.
Military Involvement in the Political Development of Pakistan and its Rationale
Pakistan shares a common heritage with India. Its Army, like the Indian Army, had inherited the apolitical culture of the British Army.
Yet, there have been four coup d’états that toppled the civil governments of Pakistan. This is extraordinary since they should have imbibed the British ethos more than the Indians as the British were closer to the Moslems community since the bulk of their retainers were Moslems, who had less of social inhibitions that the Hindus. Unfortunately, Pakistanis apparently have not imbibed the British legacy either in their military or in governance.
The rationale for the repeated coup d’états is very complex. It has its roots in militarism that diffused through the political and social ethos of the areas that became Pakistan. It was also spawned additionally in the psychological, social and political catharsis that the events during the Partition havocked on the mindset of the migrants from India. The illusion of having been the rulers of India prior to the British and then being reduced to being the legatee of a moth eaten state called Pakistan instead of the Indian Empire, too added to a serious irritant to the Pakistani ego. Therefore, it is not surprising, given the mix stated earlier, that the population sought salvation through the more disciplined military to rid them of the chaos, deprivation and ignominy that Pakistan has sunk to owing to the ‘dis-focussed’ governments that followed Jinnah and after the assassination of Liaquat Ali. The global ascension of Nehru and India’s stature in comparison also indirectly aggrandised the consolidation of militarism egged on by obscurantist element. Unfortunately, this practice of military in governance has become more of a rule than an exception even though the popular index has diminished.
An overview of the psyche that propels the destiny of Pakistan, continually wracked by military coup d’états, is thus essential since such ‘turbulence’ affects the stability of the region and impedes the progress of the sub continent in the highly global existence. Such analysis alone can assist in collaborating to bring stability and progress to the region. It is in the world’s interest that a responsible and incorruptible democracy permanently returns to Pakistan. Had Pakistan not been carved out of India and instead was a nation with its own history, it might have been a “normal” nation. Therefore, the cause and the impact of the anti Indian psyche leading to militarism, visitations of military dictatorships and the role of the military in the ‘development’ of Pakistan must be understood.
The Social Churn of Pakistan
Carved out of India, Pakistan came into existence with five provinces – Balochistan, North West Frontier Province (NWFP), Punjab, Sindh and East Bengal. Balochistan and NWFP were tribal in composition (and loosely administered, even in the British era) while Punjab, Sindh and East Bengal were peasantry predominant. Excepting in East Bengal, because of the feudal structure of areas that became Pakistan, there was a deficiency in the constitutional and institutional ethos or awareness. Axiomatically, the ‘mai baap’ (feudal lords being the sole arbiter) culture permeating the citizens’ interactivity was a way of life. There were the rich and there were the poor but hardly any middle class. There was barely any industry or commerce worth mention except to some extent in Karachi.
On the other hand, undivided Punjab, the epicentre of Pakistani politics, was the cradle for the military. During World War I, Punjab alone accounted for 66 per cent cavalry, 87 per cent artillery and 45 per cent infantry of the undivided Indian Army. It was obvious that Punjab became historically military sensitive and its administration was essentially committed to the welfare of the soldiery. The military cast it shadow in all the facets of the social milieu of Punjab. The extent of the military’s influence can be well judged by the fact that in the first two decades of the 20th Century, the Punjab government granted half a million acres of land as rewards to the soldiers. At Partition, Punjab, and to some extent the Rawalpindi district, swamped in domination in the Indian Army. There lay the foundation of the militarism that grips Punjab and in consequence, Pakistan.
Upon Partition, the Mohajirs, or migrants from India, comprised 20 percent of Pakistan’s population. They were socially aware, better educated and intellectually and politically empowered. These migrants formed the middle class and axiomatically had overwhelming representation amongst bureaucracy, judiciary, commerce and industry since the indigenous population was feudalistic and socially, educationally and politically backward. The Punjabis who were getting sidelined in governance, had never appreciated this ‘usurping of power’ by the migrants. Yet, given Jinnah’s (a Mohajir) stature as the Qaid e Azam, the Punjabis could do little to exert themselves.
Jinnah’s Moslem League dominated the political scene, which was virtually composed of the more educated, politically and socially savvy migrants of India. On the other hand, the Punjabis and other indigenous tribes staffed the military. This obviously led to a schism and the successive resurfacing of military governments was but a manifestation of the original inhabitants, predominantly the Punjabis, attempting to establish their hold on governance which they felt was rightful theirs. Thus lay the foundation of the jockeying for power between the indigenous and the migrant populations exemplified by the military and the rest, which is now history.
Continued from above
Rationale for the Anti Indian Psyche – Catalyst for the Armed Forces Involvement
Interestingly, the anti Indian psyche that now forms the rasion d’être of the present shape of the Indo Pak relationship, and Pakistan’s overzealous quest to assert a Muslim identity, was not the handiwork of the indigenous Pakistani population. It was the migrants who shaped the psyche of the new nation. The migrants, being rootless, and without a common cultural and ethnic identity of their own, that they would be swamped into oblivion if sub-nationalism was allowed to develop roots in Pakistan. Being savvy, they realised that unless there was a bogey created that would divert attention, they would have no future. Hence, the whipped up the fear of India that was already prevalent because of the horrendous events of the Partition. However, realising that this phenomenon would not last, they used Islam as the bulwark since this would attain perpetuity. Hence, Islam was used as a cause célèbre in Pakistan to divert attention from sub-nationalism while propping ‘oneness’ (Islam) of the sole factor for the existence and propagation of Pakistan, and the anti Indian factor suited this line of militant Islamism immeasurably. (note: that is why Pakistanis cannot think beyond India being Hindu inspite of a huge minority of Muslims as it would not suit the agenda!) Sub-nationalism was thus pushed into an insignificant pale except to some extent in East Bengal (East {Pakistan).
The matter would have. However, in masterful sleight of hand, the indigenous population of Pakistan, which dominated the Army, with a view to best the Mohajir at their game, fed fat the Mohajir inspired hate psychosis by keeping the Kashmir issue and the bogey of India on the boil. This was also done to extract a hefty defence budget at the expense of progress in Pakistan and ensuring perks “beyond the call of duty”. Mohajirs in the Army like Musharraf, play ball to suit their personal interests. Thus, the one-upmanship game continues to the detriment of their citizenry and to the discomfort of the subcontinent and the world at large!
The anti Indian feeling has its foundation in the Partition. In India, which is a vast country, the basic tendency is for the reverberation to die out as these progress outward. Therefore, the mayhem and trauma of the Partition was experienced in Bengal and the Punjab alone and found sober repercussions in the rest of India. This was not so with the smaller Pakistan. The blood letting in these states was felt throughout Pakistan. Apart from the Punjab and East Bengal, the various elements of the Army extensively employed to control the mayhem, such as the Pakistan Miltiary Evacuation Organisation (PMEO) was also affected. Muslim, unlike other religious denominations, are more inward looking and cohesive and more subservient to their Mullahs. The mullahs had a field day. The gruesome stories reached the remote corners of Pakistan. The Hindu – Muslim animosity that caused the Partition turned into a deep rooted hatred. The Pakistani Army too got brutalised and politicised!
From Pakistan’s point of view, to add insult to injury, was the Radcliffe Award that demarcated the boundary of India and Pakistan. The Pakistanis felt shortchanged. In India, too, many felt shortchanged. However, while Indians accepted the same as a fait accompli, there being no option if Independence was to come about on schedule, the Pakistanis could not reconcile. This added to the cauldron of hatred for Indians.
The failure of being thwarted in 1947 in the annexation of Jammu and Kashmir, a Muslim majority State which acceded to India; failure to capitalised on Islam to rouse the Kashmiris and being defeated in the war in 1965; the humiliating rout in 1971 with 90,000 of the best of the ‘redoubtable and invincible’ Pakistani Army being taken as prisoners of war and Pakistan torn in half; and the Kargil folly where Pakistan was ensconced in the international doghouse, have only added to the ‘hate India’ psyche. Worse still, through each defeat in the successive wars Pakistan thrust on India, was exploding the self deluding myth that Muslims are manifold braver and better than the avaricious, feeble and emaciated Hindus [little do they realise that the Nation is composed of all religious groups who are equally dedicated to the Indian nationhood!] This shattering of the psychological indoctrination, based on assumed religious superiority, makes it difficult for the Pakistanis accept the reality of India’s superiority in size and economy. The fact that in 1965 and also in Kargil, it was the Muslims who alerted the country is too insulting for Pakistanis to believe!
That India has stood tall in the international arena without buckling or aligning to any major power has added to their national shame wherein they have found their country a handmaiden of the US, mortgaging their destiny to the dictates of that country. For proud Muslims, it is yet another bitter pill and a fulcrum of jealous anger against India. Thus, that the cup if Pakistani hatred brims over, and India, in the Pakistani mindset, is the cause of their nation’s deprivations is but natural.
Continued from abvoe
Growth of Military’s Predominance
As elucidated above, the Pakistani psyche was moulded to suit the migrants’ fear of sub-nationalism rising and swamping their rootless identity, the Punjabis’ ‘loss of power’ and their abating of their predominance, the fervent focus on Islam as the saviour and the uniting force, and impertinently, a contrived fear of India. This resulted in the tussle between these various powerful focal points in the governance of Pakistan. This, in turn, resulted in a schizophrenic morass in the quest for national identity. This unholy power struggle between the various vested interest groups and the mullahs led to a chaotic state which was neither democratic nor representative.
From Independence to 1958, turmoil and strife was commonplace and brimming subsurface. The Parliament was not representative since it had been elected indirectly. Even thought the Constituent Assembly was composed of the ‘locals’, the migrants controlled the executive wing of the government. The first coup had already taken place in 1954, at the hands of the bureaucracy, and not the Army! The Governor General, Gulam Mohammed, dissolved the National Assembly and formed a so called ‘government of talent’. It was an amalgam of various ethno-regional, industrial, landed, bureaucratic and military interests. However, the illegitimacy of the arrangement led to the indirect elections of 1955 to form the Second Constituent Assembly.
The elections were being postponed repeatedly because of the fear of various lobbies losing their clout to machinate governance to suit their interest. Making matters worse were the Bengalis who, as a’ bloc’, were in the majority. Suhrawardy of Bengal loomed as a Spectre, which could upset the delicate power equation of the Mohajirs and the Punjabis! The spatial distance between East and West Pakistans being large and discontinuous, the mentalities and ethos were equally disparate. This psyche obviously did not fashion any bonhomie with the Bengalis nor with the other communities. Thus, there was an internal schism.
The elections were to be held. This would mean the power base would shift to the representatives of the people; worse still to the Bengalis, who were unpredictable and were not too steeped in the form of zeal propagated by the Mohajirs and the Punjabis. The prospect of handing power to the peoples’ representatives, did not suit the vested interests of the bureaucracy, military, feudal satraps and other niches of privilege. In this disquieting milieu, the first military coup took place.
The President Iskander Mirza invited the Army in. The Army did not alienate the vested seats of interest. However, for the Army, it was their first savour of power and it was sapid. The tables were slowly turned to bring in the supremacy of the Punjabi influence, the army being predominantly Punjabi who were the erstwhile pacesetters of the destiny of the areas that came to be Pakistan. Ayub Khan’s military rule was more benign than his successors, though during his tenure, Pakistan shifted to a Presidential form of government. He did bring in stability as also attempted to make Pakistan self reliant through industrialisation to some extent.
In 1970, General Yahyah Khan was forced by circumstances to call an election. The result resurrected the sceptre that the vested interests feared, especially the military. The elections delineated the people along ethnic, linguistic, class and sectarian niches. The worst fear fructified. Mujibur Rehman, a fiery Bengali, would become the Prime Minister! This served none’s purpose including the common Punjabis, who illogically reposed on themselves the fallacy that they were a superior race! Therefore, the turmoil in Pakistani polity suited the military and bureaucracy. ZA Bhutto, another charismatic leader, a Sindhi and West Pakistani, and the second polestar of popularity, was covertly propped up by the military. Bengalis, realising that they had been shortchanged, rose in rebellion. The rest is the sad history of Pakistan. Yahyah and his military cahoots attempted to brutally goosestep the Bengali aspirations and this came to as sorry pass. East Pakistan, plundered, raped and pillaged rose as a phoenix and emerged as Bangladesh! The military was disgraced. The Punjabi domination ebbed, as Bhutto became the undisputed leader and Prime Minister.
The military and the Punjabis could not brook this shift in the seat of power, especially since democracy was becoming a bedrock in Pakistan and the power brokers and vested interests [to some extent] banished into oblivion. Like all despots, Bhutto too overreached himself and played into the hands of the military. A popular movement against his autocracy was set afire.
Gnereal Zia ul Haq, a Bhutto protégé, had Bhutto arrested and hung. He changed the form of government to semi Presidential one through the 8th Amendment to ensure that the Army ruled supreme. The Pakistani history from Zia to Nawaz Sahrif is too recent to repeat. However, it was Sharif who clipped the wings of the military by taking away the presidential powers to dissolve the national and provincial assemblies with the 13th Amendment in April 1997, much to the chagrin of the Army.
The paternalistic attitude that still prevails in Pakistan has allowed the Army during each coup to hold the populations’ adulation initially, since the same adulation was allowed to politicians in the interim to ruin democracy through misgovernance and corruption. Thus, the cycle continues with Pakistan meandering rudderless through a variety of government, both military and civil!
The Army has mastered the politics of ‘bringing democracy to the doorstep’.
Each successive coup engineered by the Army has used this trump card to justify the act. Ayub brought in ‘Basic Democracies’ in the 1962 Constitution. It had ensured that local counsellors were elected and they acted as the Electoral College that not only elected the President but also the national and provincial assemblies. This way Ayub ensured that politics was localised and de-radicalised. It was also ensured that there was a direct link between the villages and the central government, cutting across parochial party based patronage, especially since no party had the means to field 80,000 candidates! The District Administration was supreme in the allocation of funds. Indeed, this was a novel way to ensure a ‘panchayati raj’ while having a centralised control over the progress of he country. However, this scheme alienated the intelligentsia since they had no role to play. A turmoil ensued and Ayub had to quit.
Zia also realised that ‘bringing democracy to the doorstep’ was a failsafe method to ensure continuance of his power. He promised elections twice, but postponed the same since it could be disastrous for his regime since the environment clearly indicated a pro Pakistan Peoples’ Party [Bhutto’s Party] tilt. Therefore, he wanted to test the waters. He took the tested route through local bodies’ election, which was held regularly till the Movement for Restoration of Democracy (MRD) in 1983 forced him to opt for elections. However, cleaver as he was, Zia agreed for election but on non party basis. This ensured an inbuilt safety. In any case, the Constitution empowered the President to dismiss the government at will.
President General Musharraf too has taken the route of the military dictators before him. Instead of general elections that the Nation demanded, he opted for elections to the local bodies. To ensure centralised control, Parvez constituted the National Reconstruction Board (NRB), patterned on the Bureau of National Reconstruction that Ayub had constituted. In short, it was to bring democracy to the grassroots and yet did not devolve on it the revenue raising power.
Increasingly, in spite of of the cosmetic power to the local bodies, the actual power has rested with the Central government. This type of an environment where political and religious views in deciding the fate of the Nation was stifled, the political scene became murkier. With the political and financial patronage of the Central government (i.e. the Army, with Musharraf both as the Army Chief and the President), the Central government thus engineered the elections in the Districts, which threw up very odd bedfellows. This suited Musharraf’s designs to keep the US on tenterhooks as also appease the population. In fact, it became a strife between the Army and its bedfellows versus the Rest, which is composed of rather incongruous customers and hence more instability. This instability also fits the designs of the Army.
In this context, the Army has always distrusted the politicians even more than they distrust India. They hold them in contempt as corrupt and self serving with little concern for Pakistan. That is the reason why the Army has always insisted on its hold on the foreign policy, especially after they were in disarray after resounding defeat and the disgrace of 1971. Likewise in the democratic phase from 1988 to 1999, no defence policy could be framed without the sanction of the military. Every government of Pakistan had a watchdog body composed of the military to keep an eye on the affairs of the state.
Concluding part
That the politicians are not the major players in the destiny of Pakistan, especially now, is borne by the fact that when Nawaz Sahrif took some steps to normalising the relationship with India, he was overthrown. In fact, he was backstabbed by Kargil! To his credit, he was the first Punjabi politician to be ready to reconsider the intangible position of Pakistan on Kashmir (his own father opposed it!). He and Vajpayee thawed the tense situation with the Lahore Bus, exchange of prisoners, visits of commercial and cultural delegations and the Lahore Declaration including the easing of the visa protocol. He also started the Track Two diplomacy. And yet, the Army prevailed! They orchestrated an asinine plan in Kargil, defying military tenets, without planning re-supply for suystenance of the troops (the diary recovered in Dras indicated so) and then finally overthrew him! These reflect the total supremacy of the Army in governance.
The Pakistan military, and to some extent the bureaucracy, will continue to be at the helm of affairs in the governance of Pakistan. The rationale and the ethos for the same have been already explained in detail in this article. It is too deep seated for any quick change. The migrants, whoa re intellectually superior and form the bulk of the bureaucracy, will continue to ensure their supremacy and not allow sub-nationalism to surface or else they are doomed to oblivion. Till today, even after 56 years of Independence, they are not accepted as a part of Pakistan and are still referred to as Mohajirs (refugees). Likewise, the self proclaimed ‘superior race’ Punjabis will not abdicate their predominance and they have the Army (70% still is Punjabis) to put their money where their mouth is! Lastly, there is always the India factor, to strike the fear of God in any deviate!.
The only hope of salvation of this complex situation is the economic, social and political stability of Pakistan. This is achievable only through interpersonal interactivity of the population of Indian and Pakistan and a better commercial equation between the two countries. A prosperous nation is a contented nation.
Kashmir will axiomatically find its slot.
(PINNACLE Vol 2, No 2 October 2003)
sorry about this long post. There are no links.
An upcoming 60 minutes interview
This is just an FYI
U.S. threatened to bomb Pakistan over war on terror: Musharraf
Last Updated Thu, 21 Sep 2006 20:49:01 EDT
The U.S. threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the Stone Age" after the Sept. 11 attacks if the country refused to help America with its war on terrorism, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf says.
In an interview with CBS's 60 Minutes to air on Sunday, the Pakistani leader said the threat came from then-deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage. Musharraf said it was delivered to his intelligence director.
Source: CBC News
Speaking of "masterfulstrokes".....
Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
Senior Research Fellow,
The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
http://marctyrrell.com/
Pakistani Role in Mumbai Bombings?
Evidence of Foreign Hand in Mumbai Train Blasts - Times of India
India Police: Pakistan Spy Agency Behind Mumbai Bombings - CNN News
Indian Police Blame Pakistan in Bombings - Associated Press
Pakistan ISI Involved in Train Blasts, Mumbai Investigators Say - Bloomberg
Pakistan 'Role in Mumbai Attacks' - BBC News
Police: Pakistan Group Behind Mumbai Blasts - Reuters
India Makes Mumbai Train Blast Arrests - Associated Press
'Foreign Hand' Behind Mumbai Bombings - Associated Press
Pakistan Asks for Mumbai Blasts' Evidence - Reuters
Headquarters of the Taliban
24 November Der Spiegel - Headquarters of the Taliban by Susanne Koelbl.
To understand the war in Afghanistan, one must go to Pakistan. There, in Quetta, the leaders of the Taliban find safe harbor. Afghan President Hamid Karzai claims Taliban leader Mullah Omar is living there.
Quetta is located in western Pakistan. It is the capital of Balochistan, the largest and poorest of the Pakistani provinces. Somewhat like a lunar outpost, the 800,000-resident city is situated at an altitude of nearly 1,700 meters between the sand-brown peaks of Chiltan, Takatoo, Mordar and Zarghun. Quetta originally means "fort," and it has always been just that: a fortress, where opposing forces are battling for regional hegemony.
Quetta is considered the center of terror and resistance against the Americans and their allies -- the "occupiers" of Afghanistan. In the backrooms of radical parties and in the white-washed mosques whose towers spiral decoratively skywards, the elite of the holy warriors meet regularly to organize their comeback. Right out in the open streets -- between the market stalls with pomegranates and dates, the currency exchanges and the vats where meat and beans steam on open fires -- the Taliban recruit the holy warriors who will blow themselves up as suicide bombers in Afghanistan...
Much more at the link.
Quick Navigation South Asia Top
How to beat the Taliban in Afghanistan / Pakistan (and win the war on terror)
By Peter Dow in forum OEF - Afghanistan
NATO's Afghanistan Challenge
By Ray in forum OEF - Afghanistan
Step 1: Decentralize Afghanistan
By IntelTrooper in forum OEF - Afghanistan
afghanistan, china, gwot, india, pakistan, saudi arabia
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Pregled rada
Hemijski fakultet
Molecular orbital investigation of various reaction pathways in reaction of ketones with bromoform
Vitnik, ZJ
Kiricojevic, VD
Ivanović, Milovan
Juranić, Ivan O.
Članak u časopisu (Objavljena verzija)
Prikaz svih podataka o dokumentu
Apstrakt
To elucidate the ring opening, nucleophilic reactions of dihaloepoxides the extensive calculations were done on a model system cyclohexanone-bromoform. In this reaction, the formation of dihaloepoxide is postulated as a key step that determines the distribution and stereochemistry of products. Every reaction scheme involves epoxide as a key intermediate (1). Three major products (2, 3, and 4) can be obtained, in principle, by three different competing reaction pathways. The calculations showed that all the pathways are exothermic. Reaction pathway 1 is most convenient, it does not include any intermediate, and its energy is not much affected by the polarity of the medium. In pathways 2 and 3, the calculations showed the intermediates having a largely carbocationic character on the spiro junction carbon atom. The step in which these intermediates are formed determines the reaction rate. Because of the polarity of intermediates in pathways 2 and 3, the base concentration and polarity of ...solvent determine the balance of reaction pathways and the product yield. (c) 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
MNDO-PM3 / reaction pathway / dihaloepoxides / bromoform
International Journal of Quantum Chemistry, 2006, 106, 6, 1323-1329
John Wiley & Sons Inc, Hoboken
DOI: 10.1002/qua.20888
WoS: 000236034600005
Scopus: 2-s2.0-33645704057
http://cherry.chem.bg.ac.rs/handle/123456789/528
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Book Review: An Everchanging Monument
Book Review An Everchanging Monument By Christina Capetillo Reviewed by Alexandra Huddleston The seasonal narrative in Christina Capetillo's An Everchanging Monument begins in winter when snow-covered ground and grey skies allow the barren hedges to form intricate, lacy silhouettes that emphasize the rigid, geometric landscaping. We barely notice that the photographs are in black and white until late spring brings forth a harsher sunlight and dandelions scatter across the carefully manicured lawns.
An Everchanging Monument. By Christina Capetillo.
Aristo Publishing, 2012.
An Everchanging Monument
Reviewed by Alexandra Huddleston
An Everchanging Monument: A photographic narrative about The Musical Gardens by Carl Theodor Sørensen
By Christina Capetillo
Aristo Publishing, 2012. 80 pp., 65 black & white illustrations, 11¼x11".
The seasonal narrative in Christina Capetillo's An Everchanging Monument begins in winter when snow-covered ground and grey skies allow the barren hedges to form intricate, lacy silhouettes that emphasize the rigid, geometric landscaping. We barely notice that the photographs are in black and white until late spring brings forth a harsher sunlight and dandelions scatter across the carefully manicured lawns. The hedges and lawns photographed are The Musical Gardens by renowned Danish modernist landscape architect Carl Theodor Sørensen.
By summer we begin to notice the second narrative device at play: that of a walking journey through this garden of tall hedges. It’s not until summer that the camera brings the viewer into the interior of the leafy topiaries. By autumn, fallen leaves break the rigid order of the modernist design, and the camera is so immersed in the garden that sometimes the frame is filled with twigs and leaves. The work finally abandons its veneer of documentation for the feeling of the human experience, and for the first time the viewer can almost feel the sunlight and touch the leaves.
An Everchanging Monument. By Christina Capetillo. Aristo Publishing, 2012.
Carl Theodor Sørensen’s Musical Gardens are considered a highlight of modernist landscape architecture. Many of the aesthetic choices in the book’s creation clearly reference modernism, from Capetillo’s monochrome, square photographs — most of which have very simple, geometric compositions — to the book’s own square format with its gray end pages and straightforward design of 28 pairs of photographs, each image taking-up its entire square page.
The photographs are bookended by a foreword and two essays. Professor Carsten Thau, in his essay, suggests that Capetillo’s work is more influenced by a Romantic approach to landscape than a modernist one. His comments highlight an undercurrent that contradicts the book’s — and perhaps even the garden’s — seemingly modernist aesthetic. The geometry, the simplicity, and the monochrome are constantly called into question by nature’s forces: falling snow, overgrown weeds, mist, and sunlight. We might even imagine that these are photographs of a topiary garden in a royal palace and a plaster Venus or a bronze triton will grace the next frame.
Is it actually impossible to document a modernist garden? In fact, the garden in its current form was built after Sørensen’s death. Every year the hedges grow and every day and every season the garden changes. In harnessing the narrative structure of a walking journey through the season, Capetillo adds a powerful Romantic drama into her photographs and allows the living nature of The Musical Gardens to create its own lively melody within her monochrome documentation.—ALEXANDRA HUDDLESTON
ALEXANDRA HUDDLESTON was born in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and grew up in the Washington DC area and in West Africa. She holds a BA from Stanford University and an MS in journalism from Columbia University. Her work has been published and exhibited internationally. Among other honors, she has received a Fulbright Grant, and her prints are in the collections of the US Library of Congress, the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, and the British Library. Huddleston is the co-founder of the Kyoudai Press publication series with which she has published several works of her own, including Lost Things, 333 Saints: A Life of Scholarship in Timbuktu, and East or West: A Walking Journey Along Shikoku’s 88 Temple Pilgrimage. You can learn more about her work on the following websites:
http://www.alexandrahuddleston.com
http://www.kyoudaipress.com
Labels: Alexandra Huddleston, Book Reviews, Books
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Procurement software firm buys VMS provider DCR workforce
The acquisition could be a watershed moment for the industry, potentially signalling a shift away from traditional MSP partners
Last week, procurement software maker Coupa Software announced it acquired DCR Workforce, a provider of a vendor management system for managing contingent workforces. Coupa reported it paid $25 million upfront for the company with an earnout potential, according to a conference call with analysts.
“This acquisition could end up being a watershed moment for the industry,” said Bryan Peña, senior VP, contingent workforce strategies at Staffing Industry Analysts.
“It not only demonstrates the continued appetite for consolidated technological solutions that address an ever-increasing piece of the enterprise third-party spend,” Peña said, “but could, more importantly, signal a potential shift away from traditional MSP partners as companies like Coupa leverage management consultancies and higher-level relationships within the organization to deploy the technology.”
DCR Workforce’s VMS operates under the Smart Track brand; the Boca Raton, Fla.-based company was founded in 1995.
“Effective visibility and control of contingent labor spend continues to be a growing priority for best-in-class organizations,” Coupa CEO Rob Bernshteyn said in a statement. “I am excited to welcome co-founders Ammu Warrier and Naveen Dua and their team to Coupa and look forward to delivering on our shared vision.”
Coupa announced DCR Workforce will build upon its “Coupa Services Maestro” offering that provides statement-of-work management, and the company will integrate DCR Workforce’s functionality into its platform. The new offering will be called “Coupa Contingent Workforce.”
Coupa CFO Todd Ford said in a conference call that DCR Workforce has two key businesses. “One is a VMS, vendor management systems, the piece that we’re most interested in, and then they also have a managed service provider business. So the deal that we did was an asset acquisition so that we picked up the assets related to the vendor management system and the key people there as well.”
Later in the call, Ford said the company will continue to support customers who use both DCR Workforce’s VMS and MSP.
“In today’s gig economy, businesses have greater access to temporary labor and services around the globe to augment their workforce in new and innovative ways. With this expanded labor force comes the need for more sophisticated solutions to manage onboarding, offboarding and services delivery, all while ensuring local labor and compliance requirements are met,” said Warrier, DCR Workforce president, said in a statement. “We are thrilled to join Coupa to deepen the company’s offering in this space so that businesses can spend smarter across every aspect of their business.”
Katherine Alvarez | September 12, 2018|No Comments
Katherine Alvarez
Katherine Alvarez is an associate editor for Staffing Industry Analysts. She can be reached at kalvarez (at) staffingindustry (dot) com.
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Flexibility is the keyword for the FS3
The modular design utilizes one, two or three multi-voltage charger modules and is available in single or three phase configurations.
The FS3 supports conventional charging of batteries up to 1175Ah and opportunity charging of batteries up to 750Ah.
Our custom bracket accessories provide simple and cost-effective wall, shelf or floor installations.
The FS3 is compact and light enough to carry with one hand.
Flexibility & Scalability is the keyword for the FS5
The modular design utilizes one, two or three multi-voltage charger modules and is available in three phase configurations only.
The FS5 supports conventional charging for batteries up to 1875Ah and opportunity charging of batteries up to 1250Ah.
The FS5 cabinet offers a scalable output power feature which delivers a max output of 300 DC amps.
The FS9 supports conventional charging of batteries up to 3375Ah and opportunity charging of batteries up to 2160Ah. Fast charging is available for batteries up to 1350Ah.
The FS9 is equipped with dual leads for high DC current applications with 300 amps per circuit to ensure safe operations and enabling use of either the SB350, SBX350 or Euro style connectors.
The FS9 cabinet offers a scalable output power feature which delivers a maximum output of 540 DC amps at 24V-48V.
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Articles, Essays and Reviews by David
Gay Hollywood 2000 : Signs of the Times, As the Century Turns
This article appeared in an abridged form in Daily Variety, October 11, 2000
This essay originally appeared in The Film Yearbook Volume Two back in 1983.
Basic Impediment: "Cruising" William Friedkin’s 1980 Film Still Rankles Queer Nerves
(Bay Area Reporter, Vol. XXV No. 19, May 11, 1995)
Sullivan's Travails
First appeared in slightly different form in the San Francisco Examiner on June 17, 2001.
David's essay for the Criterion DVD release of the classic Akira Kurosawa movie.
Black Orpheus
David's essay for the Criterion DVD release of the classic Marcel Camus movie.
M. Hulot's Holiday
David's essay for the Criterion DVD release of the classic Jacques Tati movie.
David's essay for the Criterion DVD release of the classic Masaki Kobayashi movie.
David's essay for the Criterion DVD release of the controversial Scorsese movie.
David's essay for the Criterion DVD release of the 1938 film adaption of the classic George Bernard Shaw play.
Gay Hollywood 2001 : Got Cable?
The complete article that originally appeared in Daily Variety, July 12, 2001
Sexual Snobbery: The Texture of Joseph Epstein
L.A.Weekly August 30-September 5 2002, Vol. 24 No. 31
The Perp of Pop: Where the "Rubba" Hits the Road
L.A.Weekly November 28 - December 4, 2003
Death in the Afternoon
L.A.Weekly December 12 - 18, 2003
Get Me to the Church on Time and a Half For Overtime
L.A.Weekly November 14 - 20, 2003
Faking It : Hollywood's “New York Marriages”
High Society April 2004
Swallow This, DeepThroat: A case for silencing anonymous sources
L.A. Weekly April 16 - 22, 2004
Articles, Essays and Reviews by Others
The Tom Cruise/Open Secret Letters
Q & A with Ruth Olay
by Bill Reed
Books by, or about ...
David Ehrenstein
Bill Reed
Edmund White
Paul Conrad
Michelangelo Signorile
Arthur Laurents
C o p y r i g h t © E h r e n s t e i n l a n d 1 9 9 9 - 2 0 0 5
P l e a s e R e a d
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Best Movie to Watch in Hollywood
To start with, there are top quality actors and directors in hollywood and one best thing about them is that the making of the movie. They tend to spend crores on currencies on building up a good sets for them to work. It is not the question of the budget, it is about how well you utilize the finance and how you manage to use it in a better way is left to you. One such greatest movies of all time is Titanic. The movie was written and directed by James Cameron. Cameron hails from Canada and is a environmentalist. He was very much interested in movie making and the passion has driven him to reach heights. For those who never watch english movies, Titanic is supposed to best movie to watch hollywood.
The movie is based on a ship named titanic. The giant ship will be heading towards the NYC and it is supposed to be her maiden voyage. The ship was constructed by a talented group of engineers and had all the facilities. Right from kitchens to pool, everything was readily available. In her maiden voyage, she hit an Iceberg while she was crossing Atlantic ocean. Titanic was well equipped with the sensors but still it was very much late for the captain to steer it left. The ship wrecked and sank in 10 April, 1912. She hit an ice berg at 11.40 pm and there were certain lifeboats which could help the needy to escape from the scenario. It took 3 hours to break apart and by then many men were asked to stay considering children and women to safe guard.
The above mentioned story is carved as a beautiful movie by James, starring jack dawson and kate winslet. The making is absolutely brilliant with all the special effects and all. James has wonderfully expressed a love story between Jack and Rose. Rose is supposed to be from a rich family and she falls in love with a Jack. While the ship sinks, the duo gets separated from each other. Rose would get some wooden plank to rest on and she will be finding jack. Jack swims to her and because of the negative temperature it will be very much freezing. Jack dies! Rose Cries! The story ends!
We hope this answers most of your doubts regarding best movie to watch hollywood. Just in case you have any further questions, you can always ask us in the comments section. Thanks for reading!
HI, My name is Ravi Raj I had always been interested in movies industry , so that why I shared some thoughts about my movies sense. If you want to know more about this , Please feel free to reach out to me. Thanks for visiting.
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By Miriam • 8 years ago
The most frequently challenged book is about gay penguins
Alex from the Bilerico Project shares the news that And Tango Makes Three, a book about two male penguins who take care of a baby penguin, is one of the most frequently challenged books according to the American Library Association.
There is nothing more scary than gay penguins! Hide your kids folks.
Alex hits the nail on the head about where these fears come from:
Somehow people have come to believe that heterosexuality, which children are bombarded with daily in all its forms, is not a sexual orientation and has nothing to do with sex. The parents from the Berenstein Bears don’t set off alarms, but Tango’s parents do. The solution is to perhaps just remind straight people that they can’t write heterosexual without “sex.”
Ironically, Tango’s parents didn’t have to have sex to parent Tango, unlike most of the heterosexual parents in children’s books.
I could think of many things that I wouldn’t want my kids to see (if I had kids). A fictional story about gay penguin parents? For sure not on the list.
Photo via Amazon
Read more about Miriam
Feministing Reads: What We’re Reading
By Dana Bolger
Feministing Reads: A Grace Paley Reader
By Sam Huber
By Dana Bolger • @danabolger • 1 year ago
Every month we share what our team is reading. We’re about four months overdue this time around (better late than never?), so without further ado, here’s what’s on our nightstands these days…
Sejal: This month, I read Malcolm Harris’s very good Kids These Days. It’s one of the first books about millennials that’s actually, well, by a millennial, and I found a lot in it that resonated. Harris argues that from elementary school on, our lives are a boot camp designed to make us maximally productive workers, on the theory that we’d get a fair shot in the world if we just invest in our own human capital — all while an increasingly precarious economy makes that ...
Sejal: This month, ...
By Sam Huber • @hubersamj • 2 years ago
It’s hard to strike a balance between the self-possession on which depend first principles—mutual responsibility, self-determination, and other such enduring commitments—with the humility to remain genuinely open to new comrades and new stimuli. Good art and good politics require both, or so Grace Paley helps me imagine.
During her long life and since, Paley has been well appreciated as one of the twentieth century’s most inventive writers of short fiction, though she only published three story collections over a span of twenty-five years. (Paley died in 2007 at the age of 84.) The great gift of the recently published A Grace Paley Reader (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), which collects selected stories alongside Paley’s less widely read essays and poems, ...
It’s hard to strike a balance between the self-possession on which depend first principles—mutual responsibility, self-determination, and other such enduring commitments—with the humility to remain genuinely open to new comrades and new stimuli. Good art and good ...
By Dana Bolger • @danabolger • 2 years ago
Here’s what our team is reading this month! Tell us what we missed in the comments.
Reina: I’m rereading Leela Gandhi’s Affective Communities. It’s a beautiful work of history about late nineteenth century British radicals whose friendships with various Indian radicals caused them to protest England’s imperial regime. Gandhi theorizes a “politics of friendship” as the capacity for humans to act against their own group interests (of class, race, nationality) in friendship with people unlike them. She connects British anti-imperialist thought not only to late nineteenth century utopian socialism, but to animal rights, spiritualism, and homosexuality, arguing that all these movements fundamentally challenged the colonizer’s idea of the human — and presented the possibility of radical forms of community. I ...
Reina: I’m rereading Leela Gandhi’s Affective Communities. It’s a beautiful work of history about late nineteenth century British radicals whose ...
Books▪LGBT issues
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by Emily Hawkins 9 Mar, 2015
A New Brand of Politics was last modified: September 4th, 2015 by Emily Hawkins
A New Brand of Politics
Our new writer, Emily Hawkins, sums up why most young people believe in Russell Brand, don’t care about Westminster, hate politicians and why our democracy is smelling stagnant. But it doesn’t have to stay...
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Saudi Arabia, Iran and ISIS: The black clouds gather was last modified: September 4th, 2015 by Janith Peiris
Saudi Arabia, Iran and ISIS: The black clouds gather
Saudi Arabia has long been the central power of Sunni Islam, but now some of its people have embraced new Salafist and Wahhabi ideologies. With the death of the 90 year old monarch Abdullah,...
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The Participation Crisis: there may yet be hope. was last modified: September 4th, 2015 by admin
The Participation Crisis: there may yet be hope.
There has been a visible decline in turnout figures at general elections held in the UK and other forms of political participation for almost half a century now. In the 2010 general election, there...
“We would scrap tuition fees” & more: An Interview with Caroline Lucas MP was last modified: September 5th, 2015 by admin
“We would scrap tuition fees” & more: An Interview with Caroline Lucas MP
In an exclusive interview for Filibuster, Caroline Lucas, Green MP for Brighton Pavilion made the case for votes at 16, a more compassionate economic policy, and a re-evaluation of Britain’s monarchy and armed forces. By Rebecca...
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We are not to be blamed for our political apathy. was last modified: September 4th, 2015 by Will Matthias
We are not to be blamed for our political apathy.
The Government is. PoliticalBeatBy Will Matthias (@WillMatthias15)_______________ Educating people about the power of their ballot is the only way to stem the problem of political apathy. (Photo: Pennsylvania State University) We consider ourselves lucky in...
by Lylaah Bhalerao 27 Feb, 2015
We Need Feminism Because… was last modified: September 4th, 2015 by Lylaah Bhalerao
We Need Feminism Because…
As the lead up to the General Election gets under way, it seems as appropriate a time as any to reflect on the position of women, and why we need feminism. The western world...
by Will Matthias 25 Feb, 2015
Tristram Hunt: The Cure for Education? was last modified: September 4th, 2015 by Will Matthias
Tristram Hunt: The Cure for Education?
In the run up to the general election many whispers of a leadership crisis in the Labour Party have been spread through the media into the all too willing ears of the public. Amongst...
by admin 23 Feb, 2015
The House of Lords: we don’t need more democracy was last modified: September 4th, 2015 by admin
The House of Lords: we don’t need more democracy
In this day and age, everywhere you turn you hear people complaining about the Lords, asking why we really need them in the modern world, claiming they are highly undemocratic and made for a...
by Matt Smith 20 Feb, 2015
Coalitions: What are they good for? was last modified: September 4th, 2015 by Matt Smith
Coalitions: What are they good for?
To me at least, it feels like this article belongs almost 5 years ago, when the coalition government first arrived in office, I remember sitting in the car listening on the radio to that...
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“If you’re not a liberal at twenty you have no heart; if you’re not a conservative at forty you have no brain.” was last modified: September 4th, 2015 by Jacob Whitehead
“If you’re not a liberal at twenty you have no heart; if you’re not a conservative at forty you have no brain.”
Our series of interviews with policy makers, movers, shakers and promise breakers in our government continues with Oliver Dowden, domestic policy aide to David Cameron, the PM’s former Deputy Chief of Staff, and current...
Pressure Groups and Lobbying Organisations: Who do they protect? was last modified: September 4th, 2015 by admin
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These organisations are here to protect and represent people’s specific interests to Government, in a sense, becoming the loudspeaker to individual concerns which they want addressed. They encourage debate, attention and action. Matei Sacerdoteanu questions...
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In an exclusive interview for Filibuster, Nick de Bois MP (Conservative, Enfield North) gave his opinions on why the Tories were right to raise tuition fees, why young people tend to vote Labour, how...
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The term ‘safe seats’ is one of that confusing collection of political jargon that floats up around every election like excrement in a swimming pool. It refers to a constituency that votes for the...
by Adrian Burbie 9 Feb, 2015
If you don’t want a coalition, buck your ideas up. was last modified: September 4th, 2015 by Adrian Burbie
If you don’t want a coalition, buck your ideas up.
With 87 days to go until the general election on May 7, voters are fearful. Nobody wants a hung parliament, but it is clear that unless the parties answer the voters’ key questions, that...
by Akshay Narayan 7 Feb, 2015
The Cold War is over. Grow up. was last modified: September 4th, 2015 by Akshay Narayan
The Cold War is over. Grow up.
Efforts are being made to improve diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba. Does the future look bright for these two countries? Where in the world? By Akshay Narayan _____________________ Barack Obama and Raúl...
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Boobs aren’t news. was last modified: September 4th, 2015 by Vida Adamczewski
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Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems: Here to help?
Geraldine O’Reilly, 16, discusses whether on meeting Nick Clegg, she feels the recent Lib Dem election pledge of £150m funding to child mental health services will impact others like her who have experienced NHS...
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Sherlock Holmes once said, “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” This statement has rarely rung truer than in this General Election, where my friends all...
by admin 31 Jan, 2015
Thirteen Years a Prisoner was last modified: September 4th, 2015 by admin
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12 Years a Slave – Oscar winning movie and horrible miscarriage of justice. Thank God it could never happen in this day and age, right? Wrong. Where In The World? By Rebecca Linford ____________________...
Time for Something New? was last modified: September 4th, 2015 by admin
Time for Something New?
Over the course of the past few months, several very interesting events have changed the course of British politics: the very close No vote in the Scottish Independence Referendum, UKIP winning two defecting MPs...
“Young people don’t care about the world around them.”
Filibuster seeks to challenge this.
Filibuster is a platform for young people to get their opinions published, run entirely by student volunteers with ages ranging from 15 to 25. We have a team of young writers worldwide, all with varying views and outlooks on life, all united by a passion to be heard and influence the agenda.
Arts and Culture Countdown Economics and Business Editorial Fiction Foreign Affairs Health and Science Legal Affairs Literature PoliticalReview Science and Technology The Interviews The Satiric Verses UK Politics Uncategorized YouthVoice
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Best Overall Small Accommodation Provider 2016
Voted by Teesside University Student Union
WIN AN IPAD MINI
BOOK YOUR PLACE TO ENTER THE DRAW
FANTASTIC PRIZES AT DRINKWATER HOUSE
BOOK TO AVOID DISAPPOINTMENT
CHOOSE WHAT YOU LIKE, COMBINE IT HOW YOU WANT
GREAT COMMUNAL AREAS
IT'S YOUR PLACE
DRINKWATER HOUSE STUDENT ACCOMMODATION
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THE BEST STUDENT ACCOMMODATION IN MIDDLESBROUGH
RECOMMEND A FRIEND & RECIEVE UPTO £150
TELL YOUR FRIENDS AND RECIEVE UPTO £150 INTU VOUCHERS
WELCOME TO DRINKWATER HOUSE
If you are looking for student accommodation in Middlesbrough, look no further than Drinkwater House. Located in Middlesbrough, Drinkwater House is a new luxury student accommodation award winning complex, right on the doorstep of Teesside University. It is a newly refurbished secure building with the up to date features and facilities, suitable for all UK and International students. Drinkwater House is within walking distance from all of the Teesside University campus buildings.
Close to all local amenities, bars, clubs, town centre shops and train station. So, If you’re just starting your new student life, or are a more seasoned post graduate student and are looking for a luxury & quality yet affordable student residence, Drinkwater House is the place for you!! We still have limited rooms available 2017/18 academic year. Drinkwater House comprises of studio apartments, double rooms and single rooms. All rooms are with en-suites.
September 2017 sees the opening of our new block 4, which is a brand new building within the grounds, which will provide our students excellent en-suite rooms, with extra facilities such as a gymnasium, cardio room, games room, cinema room and more. All this is free for all our students to use whilst their stay at Drinkwater House.
The rent is all inclusive of bills and cheaper than you may think, so you can budget far more easily, and spend your money on more important things!! Students can tailor make their rooms to suit them. The management will be able help you to make your room how you want. Your comfort is our satisfaction.
No need to fall out with friends - you can have individual contracts and not worry about any hassle with chasing other people for bills, you are only responsible for yourself! We also have on site management team who are there to help you with any queries you may have during your stay. So if you really want a top student accommodation in Middlesbrough, just contact us and we will gladly help you.
Nicha AramayThailand
I was an International student, and I stayed at Drinkwater House for 12 months whilst studying my Masters. I absolutely loved my stay as the place is really clean.
Check our video below and see what Drinkwater House is really about...
Welcome to our new accommodation block
Drinkwater House would like to welcome all our students old and new!!! This year we are excited with the opening of our brand block, we have listened to our students that live at Drinkwater House, and designed the building with what they would like. Therefore we have put in facilities such a gymnasium, games room, cinema room and more, so that all our students staying at the complex, will have a more enjoyable stay at Drinkwater House.
Preparing for the Big Move!
Firstly, if you’re reading this it’s because you have been successful in gaining a place at university so congratulations!!
Moving away from home to start university will probably be the biggest step you will take so far in your life. Forget sixth form and college, uni is the first time in your education where you are fully independent. It’s all on you... from getting yourself up for early morning lectures, visiting the library for resources and setting deadlines for assignments… there’s no teachers to micro manage your schedule and keep you on track.
New Student Accommodation in Sunderland
Developer reveals plan to turn Sunderland's former
Joplings department store into student flats
A fresh plan has been submitted to redevelop the former Joplings site seven years after the long-running Sunderland department store closed its tills.
The latest vision is to convert the five-storey building into flats for 178 students, along with three shop units.
Joplings shut in June 2010 and several attempts to redevelop the site have come to nothing. Only last year, Sunderland City Council approved a plan to build a 122-bed hotel on the site.
But the latest planning application, which Jaspia submitted last week, reveals the hotel plan has fallen through for “unknown reasons”.
Previous failed plans led to Jaspia buying the Joplings site and putting forward a proposal which has a primary aim of bringing the empty building back into use.
Joplings served Sunderland for 206 years.
Before closing in 2010, Joplings had operated in John Street from 1956, where it reopened after a fire burned the High Street old store down in 1954.
Jaspia’s planning application details how it the developer aims to incorporate the department store’s original features into the student flats.
It says: “This development aims to reuse the original building form by way of retaining the existing brickwork facade which gives the building its character.
“With the additional feature of full-length glazed windows to the fourth floor level to maximise the internal views out, whilst softening this bland 20th-century building with a contemporary appearance.”
The three ground-floor retail units would have separate entrances to the student apartments, which would go on the first, second, third and fourth levels.
Extra space will be added to the fourth floor as part of the plans.
The applicants said a similar extension was approved by Sunderland City Council in 2008 but never materialised.
WHY CHOOSE DRINKWATER HOUSE
INCLUSIVE RENT
Rent is inclusive of all bills - Easier for you to budget on more important things.
CLOSE WALK
just 5-10 minute walk away from Teeside Uni Campus.
ON-SITE MANAGEMENT TEAM
There's always somebody there in case you need assistance.
Kick back and relax and watch your favorite movies.
24HR SECURITY CCTV
Monitoring for your protection.
Car Park spacing available.
Keep your wheels safe.
Let the games begin.
Free high speed internet access in every room.
Housekeeping services are available.
ON-SITE LAUNDRY
Laundry services are available.
Pump some iron.
En-suite in every room.
KEY-FOB ACCESS
Get in and out of the building wityh ease.
FREE CONTENTS INSURANCE
Keep your contents insured.
A quiet space to Study.
Drinkwater House
© 2015 DRINKWATER HOUSE. All Rights Reserved.
Created by OCTOPUS
210-212 Marton Road
TS4 2ET
Email: info@drinkwaterhouse.co.uk
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Mission & Services
Dobrogea (Romania)
General Tours
Birdwatching in Southern Danube Delta
799€ per explorer
This private tour dedicated to the Danube Delta is available in English guiding (on request in different languages), it starts in Bucharest (on request in Constanța), it has the accommodation in Sarichioi village and it lasts 5 days (4 nights).
On our way to the Danube Delta, on the first day we will discover the historical center of Constanța, the old seaport at the Black Sea, and the ruins of Histria, the first pontic fortress on the map of the Roman Empire and the famous fortress of Enisala. In the evening we will arrive in Sarichioi, where we’ll be accomodated in a beautiful traditional guest house.
During the next three days we will slowly explore the Southern part of the Danube Delta in a search for bird colonies that populate this part of the delta. If you are a birdwatching lover, you will truly be impressed by the extremely rich fauna. The vast reed stretch is the home of 327 species of birds and that’s about 81% of Romania’s avifauna.
Finally, on the last day we will return to Bucharest via Hârșova – Slobozia route, an extremely spectacular road thanks to its endless agricultural crops and hundreds of wind-farms.
Above, in the tabs of the page, you will find more details about the highlights of the itinerary + the timetable of it and the rates + the services included in this Birdwatching tour in Southern Danube Delta.
Can we help you with any other information? Don’t hesitate to contact us! Are you already convinced that this trip to Danube Delta attracts you the best? Then make the first steps and book now by filling out the form on the last tab!
4-8 explorers
DAY 1 - Exploring Dobrogea
07:00 - 07:15 We meet in Bucharest - pick up from your hotel or from another place established together.
07:15 - 10:00 We hit the road to Constanța via A2 highway.
10:00 - 14:00 We visit the main attractions of Constanța. This ancient seaport is known for more than two thousands years and has the name of Tomis, a former Greek and later Roman colony. Closer to the present, King Carol I was in love with this place and raised it to the rank of national and later international seaside resort.
14:00 - 16:00 Lunch break in a great fishery located near the beach.
16:00 - 20:00 We drive for about one hour to Histria where we visit the oldest urban structure in the country and the first pontic fortress on the map of the Roman Empire. Histria archaeological site covers 72 hectars and includes ruins of 7m high walls, a Roman forum, the temples of Aphrodite and Zeus, two Roman baths, eight basilicas, workshops and shopping areas. This whole place is one of the most important historical points in Romania and that’s for sure! After which, we continue our journey to the fortress of Enisala and then we arrive to Sarichioi village, the central point of this tour.
20:00 - 22:00 Check-in and dinner at a traditional guest house recently built, respecting the specificity of the place, but with modern comfort.
The itinerary of this day has a length of 380 km and we will spend about 5 hours in the car.
DAY 2 - Birdwatching in the Danube Delta
06:00 - 07:00 Breakfast at the guest house.
07:00 - 08:00 Transfer by car to the harbor of Murighiol.
08:00 - 13:00 We explore by boat alongside our local guide the southern part of the Danube Delta, with focus on this first day on Sacalin Island and Zatonu lakes. This place is considered one of the most beautiful areas for ornithological observation in the world. The island is a very important area of passage (rest and food) located on a major migration route (the Black Sea coastline) and also an important nesting area for many species of birds. Among the stars of the day we can mention: juvenile pelicans, dalmatian pelicans, bald eagles, blue fishers, flamingos or lapwings.
13:00 - 15:00 Traditional lunch break at a local resident in Sfântul Gheorghe, a small village accessible only by boat.
15:00 - 18:00 We discover some special places of the village, we relax a couple of moments on the wild beach and we see the place where the Danube flows into the Black Sea. This moment will be a milestone of your journey!
18:00 - 20:00 We return to the guest house following Sfântul Gheorghe (Saint George) branch, one of the three main waterways.
20:00 - 22:00 Dinner at the guest house.
08:00 - 13:00 We continue to explore by boat alongside our local guide the southern part of the Danube Delta, with focus on this second day on Sfântu Gheorghe forest and nearby saline lakes. In this area we will observe one of the most important cormorant colonies in the entire delta, as well as a lot of day and night raports like orioles or godwits.
13:00 - 15:00 Traditional lunch break in Sfântul Gheorghe.
15:00 - 20:00 We return to the guest house following Sfântul Gheorghe (Saint George) branch and then free time for relaxing at the pool.
08:00 - 13:00 We continue to explore by boat alongside our local guide the southern part of the Danube Delta, with focus on this third day on the lakes of Tătaru, Balanova, Roșu, Cobardin, Puiu and Erencic. In this area we will observe a lot of ducks, swans, pelicans, eagles, coots and much more.
15:00 - 20:00 We return to the guest house following Sfântul Gheorghe (Saint George) branch and then free time.
DAY 5 - Returning to Bucharest
07:00 - 10:00 Breakfast at the guest house and check-out.
10:00 - 14:00 We return to Bucharest by going through Hârșova - Slobozia route.
Optional: If your program allows you, we can stay up to the evening to relax at the pool.
2018 SEASONAL RATES (APRIL - OCTOBER)
GROUP OF ROOM TYPE CAR TYPE RATE PER EXPLORER
4 explorers 2 doubles VAN – Mercedes V Klass 1199 EUR + VAT
5 explorers 2 doubles & 1 single VAN – Mercedes V Klass 1099 EUR + VAT
6 explorers 3 doubles MINIBUS – Mercedes Sprinter 999 EUR + VAT
7 explorers 3 doubles & 1 single MINIBUS – Mercedes Sprinter 899 EUR + VAT
Transport by car (with VAN or MINIBUS) with professional driver, fuel and road taxes
Pick-up and drop-off at your hotel in Bucharest
English speaking guide and tourist assistance throughout the holiday
Transport by boat together with a local guide (3 days)
4 nights accommodation (in DOUBLE or SINGLE)
All meals: breakfasts, lunches and dinners
Access fees in the visited places (some of them)
Drinks and tips
Value Added Tax (VAT) = 19%
Accommodation in Bucharest
Airport - hotel - airport private transfer
Travel guide in Bucharest
Payment steps:
25% upfront payment after we confirm the availability of the requested tour and period.
75% payment difference within 30 days of the chosen check-in date.
100% refundable for 60 days before the chosen check-in date (we return the entire advanced payment).
50% refundable when cancelling between 30-60 days before the chosen check-in date (we return half of the advanced payment).
Not refundable when cancelling 30 days before the chosen check-in date (we don't return the advanced payement).
BOOK THE BIRDWATCHING TOUR IN SOUTHERN DANUBE DELTA NOW
The first step in booking this tour is to fill in the form below. As soon as we check the availability, if everything is alright, we will send you a proforma invoice (with an advance payment link) to your email address and a confirmation message to your phone as well. So no payment needed in this moment. Just fill in the form!
[Form id="20"]
Great deals and cool content you'll receive every month.
USEFUL POSTS ON BLOG
Basics about Dobrogea
5 things you must know before exploring Dobrogea
Everyday life in a typical village of the Danube Delta (video)
10 recommended events in Dobrogea in 2018
COOL STUFF ON FACEBOOK
We are here for you so don't hesitate to contact us using these coordinates:
Bucharest: New City Residence
Tulcea: Coral Plaza Residence
contact@exploredobrogea.com
© Copyright 2018 – Explore Dobrogea Travel Agency – All Rights Reserved
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Eating well in Paris isn’t hard to do, but there are many ways to do it. You could go big and do something fancy at Alain Ducasse or nosh your way through croissants, cheese and tasty snacks. This guide to Paris is for those who like something more casual, the people who are fans of going to a bar with some atmosphere that also happens to make very good food, where you don’t have to dress up, and you can be in and out in less than 2 hours. Paris has perfected this style of eating, and so, with one exception, here’s a list of some places that do this very well.
City Guides, Restaurant ReviewsTagged chez alain miam miam, clamato, clown bar, grive, la condesa, paris, sanukiya, weekend in paris3 Comments
Verjus Restaurant in Paris
When in Paris, the last thing you want to do is eat in a restaurant full of Americans. But when you’re eating in a dining room as exquisitely beautiful and romantic as the one at Verjus, you’re more than willing to make the exception. Located in the backstreets of Palais Royal, Verjus is hidden from view and gated away in the back, like a secret passageway to another time. Sure, the conversations taking place are thoroughly modern, but use your imagination and replace that businessman from Chicago with a gentleman from the Island of La Grand Jatte.Read More
Restaurant ReviewsTagged paris, verjusLeave a comment
Le Coucou Late Night
There are few restaurants that I would stay up so late for. A 9 pm seating is my limit, and after that, I’ll move on and revisit once the hype has died down. But like the desperate girl who can’t play it cool when she’s finally invited to a party, I caved to the pressure and made an exception for a 10:30 reservation at Le Coucou. There was a little thought behind this, though. First of all, Ruoxi’s birthday was at midnight, so we would need to do some sort of big, late night blowout celebration anyway. Also, my friend Eugenia from Hong Kong was in town, and she was already going to be jet lagged, so why not shake it off by staying up as late as possible? All good reasons for me to bite the bullet on a super late dinner reservation.Read More
Restaurant ReviewsTagged chinatown, daniel rose, french, le coucou, paris, soho1 Comment
Roseval, a Bistronomy in Paris
Roseval is one of the new breed of restaurants in Paris that eschews the traditional for something different. Run by non-Parisiens in a small, cozy space located in the low-key and slightly out-of-the-way neighborhood of Belleville, it doesn’t fit the bill of a typical French restaurant, and it doesn’t really want to. In that way, it has a lot in common with the Brooklyn restaurant scene, where people with beards and man buns are free to make whatever food they want in whatever setting pleases them. Unfortunately, they’ve also adopted that similar indifferent hipster attitude. I always felt a bit of a tension between us and the server, who scoffed at our wine choices at times and was there just going through the motions.
at roseval
The 5-course pre fixe menu of 55 euros is good value, and it sort of follows a New World theme that incorporates a lot of ingredients and inspirations from everywhere. The bonito fish, which is common in Japanese cuisine, made a surprise appearance here swimming into the waters of France, in the form of a smoky, fatty filet subdued by smoked ricotta and cherry. The scallop is a classic staple in many countries, but Roseval gives it a refresh with some tart pomegranate seeds for flavor. Duck is of course very French, but here it gets paired with a cured eggplant that gives it almost an ashy flavor, severing ties with its confit/l’orange past and forging a new identity. The best course was the langoustine, which arrived in an impeccable potato soup, creamy and classic in the best sort of way, while the weakest was the turbot, a poor man’s version of the farm-to-table fish creations that have been done much better elsewhere. Sometimes the experiments work, sometimes they don’t, but it’s clear that Roseval feels a sense of joy in being given the freedom to do what it wants. Now if they only brought that same sense of joy to their customer service…but some habits in a country die hard.
bonito with smoked ricotta cherry
scallop with pomegranate seeds
smoked potato soup with langoustine
turbot with zucchini and spinach
duck with swiss chard and cured eggplant
fresh cheese with celery root
dessert. my memory escapes me, but i think it was pineapple based.
Roseval
1 Rue d’Eupatoria, 75020 Paris, France
City Guides, Restaurant ReviewsTagged belleville, bistro, bistronomy, paris, roseval1 Comment
Timbre, a Cozy Parisian Bistro
My favorite restaurant in Paris is Le Timbre, a tiny neighborhood bistro in the 6th arrondissement. I love this place for its warm, comfortable atmosphere and the general lack of haughtiness or indifference displayed by the wonderful staff, which is hard to come by in Parisian restaurants. The food is comforting, delicious and unpretentious, as bistro food should be. You won’t necessarily find traditional dishes like steak frites or onion soup here, the emphasis is more on farm to table, seasonally driven ingredients, but the same feeling of feel-good satiation applies.
the boys at le timbre
The 3-5 course pre fixe options are very reasonably priced (49 euros for the 5 course set), especially considering all the skill that goes into each bite. The flavor profile is rich but well rounded and never heavy handed. Brown butter may be an overwhelming ingredient, but when paired with the smoothness of a fresh avocado or with the spritzy accents of citrus fruits, it embraces everything in a warm, unifying halo rather than assertively dominating its place. Other restaurants would likely charge a premium for the ability to reinterpret and innovate, but at Timbre this high standard is simply the norm that should apply to every customer. This very democratic approach in which good food and service are accessible to everyone is what makes Timbre stand out from the highly acclaimed or the painfully trendy.
fish with avocado and cucumber
our bottle of wine
poached trout in brown butter with citrus and pine nuts
pork belly cooked for 60 hours
guinea fowl with leg confit, shiitake mushrooms, pine nuts and cauliflower
I specifically called out the customer service here because there were so many ways in which Timbre went over and beyond its call to duty in making the customer happy, and I feel strongly that this needs to be recognized. When we had a question about where to get a bottle of wine that we particularly enjoyed during our meal, our server Agnes went to the trouble of writing down the name and address of the wine retailer and its hours of operations. One of the members in our dining party wanted to order the off-the-menu dessert for vegans, and again, Agnes made this happen with a smile. We asked questions about how this sublime apricot dessert was prepared, and Chef Charles let us in on one of the secrets, the transformative powers of the tonka bean, which he grabbed off of the spice rack so that we could all take a look. I would love to be friends with Agnes and Charles and just eat at their restaurant every night. They take care of you, and that’s what a great restaurant is all about.
the mouth-watering apricot in brown butter with tonka bean
on to the second bottle
terrence and anna sitting pretty and feeling full
agnes’ well-written and thoughtful directions to the wine store
3 Rue Sainte-Beuve, 75006 Paris, France +33 1 45 49 October 40
City Guides, Restaurant ReviewsTagged bistro, le timbre, paris, timbreLeave a comment
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90% of Gays Should Be Gassed
Wombourne March
Gay Demo Arrests December 1986
by In The Pink, 21
Heavy handed policing
by Lyn David Thomas, 47
Bill Gavan
Birmingham Christian Centre
Birmingham Stop the Clause
Bordesley Street
Chamberlain Square
Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights
Deaf Lesbian Group
Gay Liberation Front National Conference
Judy Small
Lesbian and Gay community Centre
Women's Aid
lesbian conference
lesbian feminist meetings
The Wombourne 12
Following a speech by William Frank Brownhill, the leader of South Staffordshire Council, in which he said 90% of gays should be gassed, a group of young protesters from the National Lesbian and Gay Youth Movement were arrested by the police on 21st December 1986 and detained for two weeks over the Christmas Period. Some of the group later received compensation for wrongful arrest and false imprisonment. They became know as The Wombourne 12.
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Trash rates - Foster City style
Two issues: 1) apparently Foster City does consider trash pick-up a Proposition 218 issue; and 2) cost is less, probably in conjunction with the city contract (lower franchise fees), the land is flat, the city economy is good (and sustainable).
"Sweet deal" Cookie Monster!
From The Daily Journal, 11/29/11. "The Foster City Council approved a 6.4 percent increase to garbage rates last night in a special Proposition 218 public hearing. The hearing allowed residents to officially protest the increase and if a majority did, the council would have had to figure out another way to pay Recology the money it lost this year and expects to lose next year based on residents migrating to smaller 32- and 20-gallon cans.
Only 10 residents sent in protests but more than 3,600 were needed to prevent the rate hike in accordance with Proposition 218 which allows residents who are assessed a fee a chance to protest it. The approval means residents will see the increase in their next bill, which will be mailed out next Wednesday for the months of December, January and February. The increase will be reflected for the months of January and February. The monthly cost for a 20-gallon can will rise from the current rate of $11.11 to $11.82 next year and from $17.78 to $18.92 for the 32-gallon can. Foster City Manager Jim Hardy called the increase “modest” compared to other cities who contract with Recology through the South Bayside Waste Management Authority, which represents most cities in the county.
The increase did not get unanimous approval, however, as Councilman Rick Wykoff voted against it. “I have a real problem with the rate increase so soon after joining the service,” Wykoff said. In February, the council approved a 29.5 rate hike to cover the cost for Recology’s expanded service, improvements to the Shoreway Environmental Center and expected migration to smaller cans.
Wykoff is not thrilled with state mandates that call for 75 diversion rates by 2020. He called Assembly Bill 341, which set the diversion rate, a “baseless law.” The law calls for cities to divert garbage out of landfills by 75 percent through recycling or composting efforts or face stiff penalties. Wykoff said that even though the city only received 10 protests does not mean that more are against the hike. “I don’t want staff to assume there is no objection to this. There’s more than 10 that object to this,” he said." Read more...."
History lesson reminder - move away from radical environmentalism
One wonders why Pacifica is going broke, scrambling to extort new infrastructure repairs out of the public, and in the crosshairs of every radical enviro group in the state. Can you imagine if this biodiesel albatross had been hooked into our "State of the Art" waste water treatment plant!
Pacifica City Councilman Jim Vreeland is not up for re-election next year, but just thought I would remind people of just one of his failed projects that cost the City of Pacifica and its citizens. Satirical Video, 4:52 minutes. Pacifica Mayor Vreeland at the Coastal Commission. flaky, potentially dangerous project for our WWTP.
Coastal Commission Staff Report and recommendations,7/11/08 hearing (large report).
Coastal Commission approval article, Pacifica Tribune article/Jane Northrop, 7/16/08.
Biodiesel project tanks (4/09), scroll down for more detail, All Business News.
Attend Public Hearing Monday, Dec. 5, 10 A.M., S.F. City Hall, RM. 250: Oppose Avalos Ordinance to Close Sharp Park
The long-threatened public hearing on Supervisor Avalos' Close-Sharp Park Golf Course Ordinance, is scheduled for public hearing Monday, Dec. 5, 10 a.m. in Room 250, S.F. City Hall, before the City Operations & Neighborhood Services Committee. (Room 250 is the big legislative chamber at top of the grand staircase).
The Avalos Ordinance would direct the Rec & Park Dept. to offer to close Sharp Park Golf Course and enter exclusive negotiations with the GGNRA to take over Sharp Park. The GGNRA has already announced it will not operate a golf course at Sharp.
NOW is the time for golfers and their friends and families to come to the aid of affordable public golf and the legacy of Alister MacKenzie at Sharp Park.
Bring your friends, family, and foursomes. Be early.
If you plan to attend, PLEASE RSVP via Email by clicking here. Please include your name and phone number.
Save Sharp Park!!
Donations are greatly appreciated. To donate, please visit our website: Donations Page
We are on Twitter (@SFPublicGolf), Facebook and our website
Submitted by Richard Harris
Sharp Park legal victory for San Francisco and Pacifica
The Wildly Equitable Biodiverse Litigants for Ecological Extortion and Deep Untruths (WEBLEEDU) just lost another battle in the Sharp Park Golf War.
The San Francisco Public Golf Alliance has the story:
"Federal Judge Susan Illston today issued an Order Denying Plaintiffs' Motion for a Preliminary Injunction at Sharp Park Golf Course. The plaintiffs, "a collection of non-profit conservation groups" led by the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, had sought an order to halt mowing on Holes 9-18 and to halt winter flood-relief pumping at the 80-year-old golf course. Noted architect Robert Trent Jones, Jr. submitted a declaration to Court, saying that if granted, the relief sought by the plaintiffs would effectively mean destruction of the Alister MacKenzie-designed course.
In a 15-page ruling, Judge Illston said she denied the motion because she found that the plaintiffs "failed to establish the likelihood of irreparable harm" to the California red-legged frog or the San Francisco garter snake. Judge Illston, a veteran Federal Judge who last year presided at the Barry Bonds case, heard oral arguments in the Sharp Park case on November 18. Trial in the case is scheduled for July 16, 2012.
To read a copy of Judge Illston's opinion, click here [PDF]."
For those keeping score:
WEBLEEDU failed to elect SF Supervisor John Avalos mayor of San Francisco, after he cravenly secured their support by promising to give away 400 acres of beautiful coastal park land that belongs to the people of San Francisco (I know. Really. Only in EssEff.)
WEBLEEDU failed to make the scientific case to close Sharp Park based on a specious threat to endangered species who have thrived at the park since it was created over 70 years ago.
WEBLEEDU failed to close the park by promoting false and misleading statement about the financial status and popularity of golf at the park.
WEBLEEDU failed (thus far) to intimidate The City into closing the course with threats of patently absurd and pointless lawsuits.
WEBLEEDU failed to stop the funding of a job-creating, stimulus-subsidized, PUC-sponsored, cities of San Francisco and Pacifica supported project to bring recycled water to supply the course (Yes - this coalition of ostensible "environmentalists" were really fighting to stop a project to use recycled water instead of potable Hetch-Hetchy reservoir water at Sharp Park.)
With the latest win, by my count, the current score:
People of SF and Pacifica - 6
WEBLEEDU Axis - 0
Of course, this latest decision is only the most recent skirmish in a series of legal battles. That's ok. We may have a lot of problems in the City, but a shortage of really good lawyers is not one of them. No judge is going to rule to close a historically important landmark golf course in the face of a good faith plan to enhance the habitat for protected species that is sponsored by the most environmentally progressive City government in the country. It is purely an intimidation and EAJA compensation ploy. That's what WEBLEEDU does - environmental bullying of cash strapped municipalities. The City must stand up to them, and so far we have done exactly that.
They will lose the legal battle. Less predictable in San Francisco is what happens on the political front. The next political battle starts this Monday December 5th in a public hearing with the City Operations and Neighborhood Services Committee to discuss Supervisor Avalos' ordinance to give away Sharp Park.
The WEBLEEDU's will be there in force. Any Pacifica or San Francisco citizen interested in protecting this landmark city treasure should be there too. As I've said before:
"John Avalos is advocating giving Sharp Park away to the federal government. This is political suicide, or should be. Where else in the world could a politician run for mayor on a platform of giving away 400 acres of incredibly valuable and beautiful coastal park land that contributes millions in revenue to the city and belongs to the people of that city?
Sharp Park is a unique gem that belongs to the people of San Francisco. We choose to share our park with the Bay Area and the world.
The 80-acre golf course was designed and built by Alister MacKenzie, the game's most important architect. The 400-acre park itself was landscaped by John McLaren, the godfather of San Francisco parks. The park was a gift to the city in 1917 and represents a historic legacy entrusted to the people of San Francisco. The park and golf course are important historic landmarks by any standard.
This civic jewel of a park is a treasure that is our common San Francisco heritage and is a legacy for us to leave to future generations of San Franciscans.
Unless some clueless politician manages to give it away."
Cross Posted from MW Mobile Blog.
UPDATE: Fixed link
Mike Wallach
Fix Pacifica Foreign Correspondent
San Francisco Bureau
Posted by mw at 8:36 AM 3 comments:
Labels: sharp park, The Golf War
Sewer revenue bonds, the price bite just went up
This bankruptcy will affect the price of the 50 million in new sewer infrastructure bonds the city wants to float.
Comment from the Wall Street Journal/Kelly Noland, 11/29/11, "Muni Market Sounds Alert". The bankruptcy filing of Jefferson County, Ala., has caused alarm bells to ring in the municipal-bond market. Lawyers for the county, which in November filed for what could become the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, are arguing that holders of $3 billion in debt used to finance a sewer project should be forced to wait for their money along with other creditors. That has caused a stir in the market because the sewer bonds are classified as revenue bonds. Those bonds are considered among the safest to own because they are backed by a specific revenue stream.
"The cost of doing business" - not so fast....
Unfortunately this move -to-trial judicial decision will be appealed, but its a good start.
From the New York Times/Edward Wyatt, 11/28/11. "WASHINGTON — Taking a broad swipe at the Securities and Exchange Commission’s practice of allowing companies to settle cases without admitting that they had done anything wrong, a federal judge on Monday rejected a $285 million settlement between Citigroup and the agency.....
The agency in particular (the SEC), Judge Rakoff argued, “has a duty, inherent in its statutory mission, to see that the truth emerges.” But it is difficult to tell what the agency is getting from this settlement “other than a quick headline.” Even a $285 million settlement, he said, “is pocket change to any entity as large as Citigroup,” and often viewed by Wall Street firms “as a cost of doing business.” According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Citigroup stuffed a $1 billion mortgage fund that it sold to investors in 2007 with securities that it believed would fail so that it could bet against its customers and profit when values declined. The fraud, the agency said, was in Citigroup’s falsely telling investors that an independent party was choosing the portfolio’s investments. Citigroup made $160 million from the deal and investors lost $700 million." Full article.
Planning Commission meeting agenda for December 5
http://www.cityofpacifica.org/civica/filebank/blobdload.asp?BlobID=4654
Amendment, pages 1, 2.
Only in Pacifica, they try to shut down a businesses with outdoor seating(Gorilla BBQ) that was on a National TV show(Diners, Drive In's & Dives)!!!
Submitted by Jim Alex
Brown Act study session, Wednesday night, 11/30/11, 6 - 8 pm
Want to learn more about how the Brown Act works in government, and what constitutes good government vs. violations? There will be a special Study Session for the Planning Commission at City Council Chambers, 2212 Beach Boulevard, this Wednesday, November 30, 2011 from 6 pm. Take this opportunity to attend.
New studies suggest global warming less severe, but...
Washington Post/Andrew Freedman, 11/28/11. "New research takes some of the most dire global warming projections off the table. A study published last week in the journal Science concludes that the more extreme climate change scenarios, which involve temperature increases of up to 10°F are implausible. Instead, the study finds, we are likely in the midst of a more manageable, but still potentially dangerous, shift in the planet’s climate.
In fact, this study’s projections still warm the planet to the highest levels in human history.
According to the study, if atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), the most important global warming gas, were to double, the global average surface temperature would increase by between 3 to 4.7°F, with a median value of 4.1°F (or 1.7 to 2.6°C, with a median value of 2.3°C). This is a narrower range, with a lower upper estimate, than other studies have concluded. .....
Posted by Fix Pacifica at 10:26 AM 2 comments:
Fish and Game deer capture and tag December 2 - 15, 2011,
Highway 280, between Woodside and San Mateo - look out for the walk-in deer traps and rifle dart guns.
Mercury News/Jason Green, 11/23/11. "A San Jose woman's concern about the number of dead deer cropping up on Interstate Highway 280 has sparked an 18-month study of ways to reduce collisions between the animals and vehicles. Next month, the state Department of Fish and Game will help a team of researchers from UC-Davis capture 15 deer along I-280 -- between Woodside and San Mateo -- and fit them with radio tracking collars. When the devices fall off six months later, a second group of animals will be studied. Ultimately, the team plans to use the collars to figure out where the deer are crossing and present potential solutions to the California Department of Transportation, the agency responsible for the highway.
"The cheapest solution is to get people to slow down. I always pick that as solution No. 1. Solution No. 2 is directional fencing and underpasses," said Fraser Shilling, the project's lead scientist and co-director of the UC-Davis Road Ecology Center, which studies the impacts of roads on wildlife. "If we can avoid one person getting killed because we put these underpasses in, then it's worth it," he added.
On Sept. 22, San Jose resident Daniel Strickland, 27, suffered fatal injuries in a crash that occurred after his car hit a deer on I-280 near Alpine Road, according to the California Highway Patrol. Strickland stopped on the highway after the collision and was struck from behind by another driver. About 300,000 collisions between vehicles and wildlife take place nationwide every year, resulting in 26,000 injuries and 200 deaths, according to a 2008 Federal Highway Administration report to Congress. The costs associated with deer strikes alone add up to $8.5 billion annually. "Deer just don't respond well to headlights and fast-moving metal," Shilling said.
A San Jose resident who goes by the pseudonym of Rose Isarose out of privacy concerns said the idea to study wildlife strikes came to her two years ago as she drove down a stretch of I-280 littered with deer carcasses. "My daughter is going to be driving soon," she said. "And there's no way I want a deer to go through her windshield." Isarose said she reached out to Caltrans officials, who quickly warmed to the idea of studying deer movement along the highway. With their support, she pulled together the UC-Davis research team and landed a $320,000 grant through the federal Transportation Enhancement program. "She was persuasive with us, with Caltrans. She really got the ball rolling," said Shilling, noting the project's unusual genesis.
Between Dec. 2 and 15, motorists may see Department of Fish and Game officials pulled over on the side of I-280 to check walk-in deer traps and possibly firing rifle-like dart guns on nearby roads. "All captures will be conducted from specially marked California Department of Fish and Game vehicles, but at a glance the dart guns may look like rifles and we don't want to alarm motorists," research team member Clara Laursen said in an email advising the CHP of the upcoming study."
Rincon Hill dog park a result of community efforts
Another reminder about how Pacifica is the city that can't get anything done.
John King, Chronicle Urban Design Critic
At last count, there were six residential towers approved but unbuilt on Rincon Hill near the Bay Bridge. Pre-2008 visions of a bustling high-rise district seem as distant as ever.
But one must-have for urban neighborhoods is nearly in place: a dog park.
Construction is down to punch-list items on the landscaped space with a black metal fence that runs alongside the foot of the Bay Bridge at Beale and Bryant streets. The city agreed this week to lease the land from Caltrans. Supporters have a month to raise the $5,000 necessary for the 10-year lease.
These are small steps toward the sort of amenity that more settled districts take for granted. They're also reminders that neighborhoods evolve not just in the sky but on the ground, often in ways more subtle than mapped out by planners or economists.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/25/BA3V1M3OR8.DTL#ixzz1ercJE000
San Carlos hills - don't build hiking trails in my backyard
San Mateo County Times/Kristen Marschall, 11/24/11. "A plan to expand and connect nearly a mile's worth of trail segments in four areas of the San Carlos hills is encountering some early resistance from hillside residents as well as logistical problems involving land ownership and a gate. Already, two of the four study areas in the San Carlos Hillside Trails Plan have been "red-lighted" due to the complications, a city official said Wednesday.
Noting that nothing has been done to hillside trails for seven years, Parks and Recreation Director Doug Long said the plan proposes to add trails to Big Canyon and Eaton parks "to make it a little more interesting for the people who hike in there." The new trails would be loops with foot bridges and stairs, providing different vantage points for hikers. Because both trail sites are city-owned property and have cleared early environmental studies, no issues are anticipated, Long said.
But farther north, a proposal to connect Devonshire Canyon with Pulgas Ridge Open Space Preserve through Vista Park could be blocked by a gate. Hikers would cross Crestview Drive and venture up Los Vientos Way, where "there is literally a gate there with a lock on it," Long said. The gate belongs to the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, which would make the call on whether to open it, he said.
Nearby neighbors who don't want foot traffic likely would weigh in. "Los Vientos was going to be a hot-button item," Long said. "They've been very vitriolic about the whole thing. It will influence (the district's) decision whether they consider it or not."
The reception isn't any warmer for another trail proposed to connect the Devonshire trail system to Crestview Drive. Because the trail site is privately owned, Long said the Crestview Park Homeowners Association can dictate its fate. "The people who own the land don't want a trail," he said. "People are leery about trails. The biggest concerns are fire hazards and nefarious activity." An easement is available on the corner of the parcel farthest from residents and that's all the city needs to make the trail work, Long said. The city is awaiting a vote from the homeowner's association on whether the land could be purchased, but Long said he is not optimistic. If the association rejects the proposal, imminent domain is an option, "but that's never a popular thing," he added.
Since Long came to San Carlos three years ago, he said he has received few calls demanding more trails. "Even though our trail system is only nine miles, we do have access to many more miles just beyond San Carlos," he said. About $3,000 has been budgeted for the Big Canyon and Eaton trails. Long said that's a "relatively low budget" made possible by a volunteer trail builder. After the plan is reviewed by the Parks and Recreation Commission, it likely will go to the city council in March. If approved then, the trails could be ready by summer, Long said. The draft versions of the plan will be discussed at a 7 p.m. Parks and Recreation Commission meeting at City Hall on Dec. 7."
Enjoying the Holidays already?
This article is a good place for emotional Holiday whining, and complaining about irresponsible, criminal, unfair, unethical behavior, or general bad news. And, oh well, if you must report some good news, have at it. Only about 39 days until the Holidays are over and we begin to get back to normal. And, that's really okay from the view of some of us.
To start off with, here's a couple of articles about capturing swell Black Friday shopping bargains.
US News, 11/25/11: 2 shot, 15 others pepper-sprayed. This is a rolling news report. Submitted by Jim Wagner.
Yahoo News, 11/25/11: Woman pepper-sprayed other shoppers, another version of "dirty tricks" to get ahead. Submitted by Jim Alex.
Mountain Lion sighting in Pacifica
At 08:00 AM, today a possibe mountain lion was seen in the vicinity of San Pedro Valley Park (600 Oddstad Blvd) in Pacifica, California. The mountain lion was approximately 2 miles into the park walking along a trail.
If you see a mountain lion DO NOT APPROACH IT, especially one that is feeding or with offspring. Most mountain lions will try to avoid confrontation.
Here are a few tips:
Avoid hiking or jogging when mountain lions are most active—dawn, dusk, and at night.
Keep a close watch on small children.
If you encounter a mountain lion, do not run; instead, face the animal, make noise and try to look bigger by waving your arms; throw rocks or other objects.
Pick up small children.
For more information about mountain lions click here www.keepmewild.org
Sent by Joe Sheridan to Pacifica, Sheriff's Office Command Staff, Montara (E-mail accounts, Wireless devices) through SMC Alert
City Council Agenda, Monday, November 28, 2011
Attend in person, 2212 Beach Boulevard, 2nd floor. Or, view on local channel 26, also live feed internet www.pct26.com. The meeting begins at 7pm (but usually starts a few minutes late).
One burnt turkey after another.
Agenda 11/28/11, 1-92 pages.
1) Public employee appointment: City Attorney.
2) Labor negotiations Teamsters union locals Miscellaneous 856, Management 350, Waste Water 856.
Consent Calendar (pass through), pages 1-2.
1. Approval of Disbursements
2. Approval of Minutes
3. Street pavement rehabilitation Federal Aid project completion, resolution.
4. Adoption of wastewater and industrial wastes code amendment ordinance, chapter 13, title 6 (regulation of sewer laterals).
5. Beach Boulevard consultant services agreement with Leland Consulting Group, Phase 3, 1st amendment.
6. Senior bus replacement, purchase contract authorization: 80% cost reimbursed from C/CAG, City 20% from Fund 72 reserve.
Special Presentation - none
Public Hearing, page 2.
7. Appeal denial of outdoor uses permit at 800-1046 Palmetto Avenue (10/17/11 Planning Commission denial).
8. Adoption of Recology of the Coast rate increase from 1/1/12 through 12/31/12, 4.99%.
Consideration - none
Posted by Fix Pacifica at 8:49 AM 67 comments:
The misuse of sewer fees
Pacifica Tribune My Turn article, 11/23/11, page 7A, "Re: point of sale clause" by Tod Schlesinger.
Enlightened Pacifica property owner
"Let’s say you’re driving along Highway 1 and another car plows into your car. There’s a lot of damage. When the media interviews the other driver, at first he says there was no accident, the noise you heard was . . . well, “sound balls” . . . now let’s say the police department and insurance companies investigate the crash, and determine the other driver is at fault because his car was not functioning properly because he had neglected to replace his tires which were worn from years of neglect, and his steering column was broken but he decided not to fix it.
Follow me so far? It’s a slam dunk, you’re not at fault and his insurance will pay for it. Except . . . he negotiates a settlement with YOUR insurance company without your knowledge or consent that YOU will pay to fix YOUR car. And he only informs you of you’re right to protest the settlement on a late Friday afternoon when the settlement is due to be signed on Monday. Does that sound fair?
Of course not, and that is exactly what the City Council of Pacifica just did to the homeowners of Pacifica. After allowing 7.5 million gallons of sewage to spill out of the Calera Creek Waste Treatment Plant in 2008 (mostly due to their neglect and mismanagement of the plant), the City Council has negotiated a settlement to pay for their fines by passing a point of sale clause in all future home sales in Pacifica which says homeowners must now inspect and upgrade THEIR sewer laterals.
Here’s the facts: in late January 2008 the City of Pacifica allowed 7.5 million gallons of mostly untreated sewage to spill out of the plant and into the ocean. Weeks later, at least 2 council members (Vreeland and Dejarnatt) claimed the spill and clean up were due to “tar balls”. It was only after a private citizen dug a little and discovered it was a massive sewer spill that the City Council finally admitted it to the public.
What caused the spill? According to the Regional Water Quality Control Board, the plant was overloaded with I and I (inflow and infiltration) from a heavy rainfall. But the sewer plant has 5 “Sequence Batch Reactors” to process this heavy flow. However, one of those SBRs had been down for repairs since October 2007, and was not scheduled to be repaired until March 2008 . . . AFTER the heaviest rainfalls!! The plant was only functioning at 80% capacity as it headed into the wet season.
The same report also said the city should have been spending about $1 million per year on sewer main and sewer line upgrades, but instead was spending about $100,000. Where did all that money go? Money the homeowners and businesses paid as part of their ever increasing sewer fees? Why, the city council and their no growth supporters decided it was better to discourage new housing and businesses in Pacifica, and they transferred that money from the sewer fund to the general fund to plug gaping financial holes in the city’s budget. This was a practice the Big Horn decision later ruled was illegal.
So after the city received a record fine by the RWQCB and was sued by the environmental organization Our Children’s Earth, they negotiated a settlement by which the problem would be solved . . . or rather paid for by a point of sale ordinance they snuck on to a recent agenda at the last minute. The ordinance passed unanimously 4-0 (Councilman Vreeland was unable to attend the meeting for unknown reasons). Only 6 people spoke to oppose this ordinance, including members of the San Mateo County Association of Realtors. Too little too late, in my book. They had the opportunity to endorse 2 Realtors for City Council in 2008 and balked.
Bottom line is that millions of dollars will be paid by the homeowners over the next 20 years to pay for a mistake that falls squarely on the shoulders of the longest termed council members.
Think of my story, and replace the car with a giant truck barreling down Manor Drive, or Fassler. And there you homeowners are at the bottom of the hill completely unaware you’re about to get crushed."
San Jose leaders paint grim budget picture without pension reform
By John Woolfolk
jwoolfolk@mercurynews.com
Posted: 11/22/2011 08:55:14 PM PST
Updated: 11/22/2011 10:59:51 PM PST
With life hanging in the balance, San Jose police and firefighters will take minutes longer to respond to emergencies. City libraries and community centers, some newly built, will sit locked and empty. There will be no more city recreation programs, and roads will continue to deteriorate.
That was the ugly picture of San Jose's future that city leaders laid out Tuesday as they unveiled their case for declaring a "fiscal and service-level emergency" to justify rolling back the soaring costs for city workers' pensions.
"We are in a fiscal crisis," City Manager Debra Figone said. "Unless the city acts now to reduce these costs, the only choice will be to further reduce services to unacceptable levels. Further reductions of the magnitude necessary to pay retirement costs will cause the health, safety and well-being of our residents to be placed in critical and unacceptable risk."
San Jose's years-long battle over rising retirement costs will reach a crucial juncture Dec. 6, when the City Council is expected to vote whether to declare a fiscal emergency and set in place a March special election on a pension reform ballot measure championed by Mayor Chuck Reed.
"Our employees are dedicated, hardworking people, but if we fail to act, the ultimate consequences would be severe and devastating cuts to our workforce and to our services," Reed said in a statement. "Placing these reforms on the ballot will allow the people of San Jose to decide critical matters that will have a dramatic impact on their quality of life. After six months of discussion, debate and negotiations, it is time to act."
Submitted by Todd Bray
Thanksgiving Day - debunking the myths
For the "top 10 Myths about Thanksgiving", evolution of the holiday, see History Network.
From National Geographic Daily News/Brian Handwerk, 11/22/11. "Thanksgiving 2011 Myths and Facts". Did you know: "...the first "real" U.S. Thanksgiving wasn't until the 1800s"; and, "In 1941 President Franklin Roosevelt established the current date for observance, the fourth Thursday of November." (70 years ago).
Bad day for turkeys: "An estimated 248 million turkeys will be raised for slaughter in the U.S. during 2011." Read more...
Happy Holiday, enjoy! A good good day to reflect on what we have have to be thankful for.
Posted by Fix Pacifica at 12:42 PM 1 comment:
Pacifica sewer lateral replacement ordinance effective January 1, 2012
LOCAL LEGISLATIVE UPDATE: Pacifica Clarifies Implementation/Application of POS Sewer Lateral Inspections
SAMCAR (as well as the City of Pacifica) has received numerous telephone calls regarding which properties will be affected as well as when/how Pacifica’s mandatory Point-of-Sale mandate for sewer lateral inspections (adopted Nov. 14) will take effect.
According to Brian K. Martinez Sr., Collection System Manager for the city, “I have been receiving calls from REALTORS® who believe that it (the ordinance) affects properties that are currently listed. That is not the fact.
“The ordinance will begin implementation on January 1, 2012 and will only affect new property listings and new permit applications from that date forward. There will not be any retroactive enforcement of the ordinance. We are currently developing the policy and process documents and they will be available on the City’s website when completed.”
The new ordinance will require property owners to obtain a “Lateral Compliance Certificate” when any of the following occur.
1. Transfer of property ownership
2. When there is remodel or addition that cost $50,000 or greater
3. When adding any plumbing fixtures
4. When a change in water service is requested (change of meter size or adding second meter)
According to Martinez, the process for obtaining a “Lateral Compliance Certificate” will be handled by the Waste Water division. When any of the previously noted conditions occur, the property owner will be required to submit a video of their existing lateral sewer. If the lateral shows no apparent defects or leaks the property will receive a Lateral Compliance Certificate that will be valid for 7 years from the date of issuance.
If the lateral sewer shows signs of defects and/or leaks, the city will require replacement prior to allowing the sale to close/transfer of title. When the Compliance Certificate is obtained as a result of complete replacement of the sewer lateral, the Compliance Certificate shall be valid for 20 years from the date of issuance.
In conversations with Martinez, he asked that if any SAMCAR members have any questions regarding this or any other ordinances that involve the Sanitary Sewer System, to please contact him directly. His contact information is: Brian K. Martinez Sr./Collection System Manager/City of Pacifica/(650) 738-4669/Fax-(650) 355-5721/martinezb@ci.pacifica.ca.us
Respectfully, Paul Stewart, Government Affairs Director, San Mateo County Association of REALTORS®
850 Woodside Way / San Mateo, CA 94401, paul@samcar.org. (650) 696-8209 / (650) 342-7509 (fax).
“Pettiness-a need to dimish others in order to to make one feel feel superior.”
Posted by Fix Pacifica at 12:40 PM 13 comments:
Belmont mayor: Garbage hike stinks
November 22, 2011, 03:34 AM By Bill Silverfarb Daily Journal staff
Belmont Mayor Coralin Feierbach has been encouraging residents to officially oppose a 22 percent increase to garbage rates that the council is set to vote on tonight.
“I’m not only encouraging them, I’m telling them how to do it,” Feierbach said regarding Proposition 218 notifications sent out to Belmont residents.
The notifications allow the public to protest the increase, needing a majority to keep the rates from going up.
Feierbach wants to see the increase be below 15 percent.
“I’m looking for as low as I can get it. I’m not going to vote for the 22 percent,” she told the Daily Journal yesterday.
She proposes a variety of ways to get the rate increase lower, including using one-time funds set aside to pay off an old debt to Allied Waste, the company that formerly provided garbage service to most cities on the Peninsula through the South Bayside Waste Management Authority until Recology was awarded a contract in 2010.
Allied contends Belmont owes it $1.1 million that must be paid by September 2012. Belmont has about $600,000 set aside to pay off that debt, although Feierbach said at least a portion of the $600,000 can be used to lessen the burden on residential ratepayers.
Councilman Warren Lieberman, however, thinks that is a bad idea.
In fact, he said, it is the council’s fault Belmont residents are facing such an increase and not Recology’s.
“There is an overwhelming misperception that Recology will get a 22 percent increase. That is not the case. They will actually only be getting about a 1 percent increase in revenue,” Lieberman said.
The rest of the increase is needed to pay Recology what Belmont owes it based on a rate structure that Lieberman calls “too progressive.”
The council approved a rate structure that guaranteed Recology $5.9 million for 2011 but because Belmont residents migrated to smaller cans, the city only raised about $5.1 million from its commercial and residential ratepayers for the year, Lieberman said.
About 14 percent of the proposed increase is to cover about $730,000 in losses that Recology suffered related to customers migrating to smaller cans at a greater rate than was expected.
Recology also estimates it needs to add about $365,000 in cost related to Belmont residents migrating to smaller cans in the next two years.
That attributes about 7 percent of Recology’s requested 22.26 percent increase for 2012 as it agreed to spread those charges over a two-year period.
Judge hears arguments, takes Sharp Park case "under submission"
Golf Digest: Both Sides Optimistic after Court hearing on Sharp Park
Both sides in the ongoing dispute over Sharp Park Golf Course, expressed optimism following arguments in a hearing in Federal District Court in San Francisco Nov. 18 about the future of the Alister Mackenzie-designed municipal course. At the conclusion of oral arguments by attorneys for environmentalist groups, the City of San Francisco, and the Public Golf Alliance, Judge Susan Illston took the matter "under submission," saying that she would file her written decision at a later, unspecified time. For the complete story, as posted by Bill Fields November 19 in the Golf Digest "Local Knowledge" blog, click here.
San Francisco Public Golf Alliance will publish the Judge's written opinion as soon as it becomes available.
"Our environment is our economy" - Not exactly
From San Mateo County, another view of adding more "open space" and parkland. Not enough money to fund.
Conversation on the trail
Article from Half Moon Bay Review/Charles Russo, 11/16/11: "More land than money saps county parks". County parks will be taking on stewardship of more land in the coming years. The system is on the hook to pay about $2 million in 2013 to open a bike and pedestrian trail on Devil's Slide after the highway tunnels open up. That project is expected to also require hiring a new ranger and more maintenance, costing about $700,000 more each year.
Officials are indicating the 15,680-acre parks system is overburdened with too much land to cover and might have to close parks unless more money can be made available. They are requesting the Board of Supervisors provide as much as $2.1 million to keep the parks operating at "minimal" levels.
Delivered last week to the county Environmental Quality Committee, the news could spell trouble for the county's landmark parklands on the Coastside, including Pillar Point Bluffs, Quarry Park and Fitzgerald Marine Reserve. In their report, Public Works officials say the $8.2 million parks system this year acquired responsibility for more properties and trails even as it was simultaneously losing staffing and funding. They system faces immense challenges, said Neil Merrilees, a Coastside resident and Parks and Recreation commissioner. "There's just a couple rangers that go around and manage everything," he said. "It's a tremendous amount to cover."
For this fiscal year, the county Board of Supervisors eliminated the parks department's top director and merged the system into Public Works as a way to save money. The parks' budget was reduced by more than $500,000. Those cuts came soon after the county acquired the 140-acre Pillar Point Bluffs near Princeton.
Reeling from a lack of resources, San Mateo County earlier this year closed a youth camp at Memorial Park near La Honda and Flood Park on the Bayside. Supervisor Dave Pine indicated at a meeting last week that he would try to allocate more money to reopen those parks. County parks will be taking on stewardship of more land in the coming years. The system is on the hook to pay about $2 million in 2013 to open a bike and pedestrian trail on Devil's Slide after the highway tunnels open up. That project is expected to also require hiring a new ranger and more maintenance, costing about $700,000 more each year."
Additional reference: Montara Mountain pictures.
Devils Slide and the headlands after the tunnel is completed
From Marin Independent Journal/Aaron Kinney, 11/18/11. Devils Slide, one of the Bay Area's most notorious stretches of road, is on the verge of a family-friendly transformation. This landslide-prone section of Highway 1 that has claimed at least 12 lives in car crashes since 1990 will become a bicycle and pedestrian trail as early as 2013. Locals envision the new park as a jewel that will outshine virtually every other recreation spot on the Peninsula.
With the completion of twin bypass tunnels in late 2012, Caltrans will hand over the treacherous ribbon of asphalt to the San Mateo County Parks Department, which will embark on a yearlong project to turn it into a park offering breathtaking views of the ocean and coastline. It's a once-a-generation addition to the county parks system. The problem is, the department already is strapped for cash. "The timing couldn't be worse," said Dave Holland, the former head of parks who is now assistant county manager.
The park will have multiple draws for outdoors enthusiasts. It will provide a link between McNee Ranch State Park and Gray Whale Cove State Beach to the south and the Pedro Point Headlands to the north. The headlands, a rugged promontory on the southern boundary of Pacifica, will be accessible to the public as never before. But with Caltrans out of the picture, the county likely will not have enough money to clear the new trail in the event of a major slide, meaning it could ultimately be cleaved in two, barring north-south access. If that occurs, the full glory of Devils Slide may turn out to be a spectacular but temporary experience. More, including comments from Pacifica Activists...
Posted with picture chosen by Kathy Meeh
Judge Hears Arguments From Frog Fans Over Sharp Park Golf Course Maintenance
Julia Cheever, Bay City News
A federal judge in San Francisco heard arguments today but deferred ruling on a bid by six conservation groups for a preliminary injunction that would limit pumping and mowing activities at the Sharp Park Golf Course in Pacifica.
The golf course covers part of the 417-acre Sharp Park in Pacifica. The park is owned by the city of San Francisco, which has operated it as an 18-hole public golf course since it opened in 1932.
The environmental groups claim maintenance activities at the golf course harm two imperiled species: the San Francisco garter snake, which is listed as an endangered species, and the California red-legged frog, a threatened species.
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston took the case under submission after hearing arguments and did not say when she will rule.
Atherton trash pick-up rates increase 88% for 2012-13
Surprise, it costs money to pick-up residential trash, greenwaste garbage, and to recycle. Recology takes over another failed-cost contract, this one from Allied Waste.
San Mateo County Times/Bonnie Eslinger, 11/18/11. "Atherton residents overall will pay 88 percent more for trash pickup than they did in 2010.And it could have been worse."We tried to make the rates as low as we could," Vice Mayor Bill Widmer Widmer said Thursday. The new rates that the city council unanimously approved Wednesday will take effect Jan. 15. They are 31 percent higher than current rates that were increased a few months ago in July.
The council had postponed approving another rate increase so officials could investigate why it had to be so steep. Because a set price for the pickup service had already been established, however, Widmer said bills in 2012 and 2013 will incorporate amounts that weren't collected during the delay -- a total of roughly $500,000 to $600,000. Other costs that factored into next year's higher rates include a consumer price index-based contract increase to the hauler that took over in January -- Recology San Mateo County -- pay raises, higher disposal and processing fees, and debt owed to the previous vendor, Allied Waste.
Widmer said Atherton's rates also are high because residents generate large amounts of green waste and compost. The town has been taking a loss because while each green container costs $19.35 per month to pick up, residents were given two free bins and charged only $1 each for any extra ones until July, when the charge went up to $6. Next year, the charge for a third and fourth green container will be $10 each, and each container after that $15. "We've got one resident who has 35 of these barrels," Widmer said. "Another has 25 and one 23." The new prices approved for 2012 should finally help level out the overall costs so residents won't be hit with substantial price hikes in coming years, Widmer said."
Cost reference in article, source: Town of Atherton.
Trash "2010 rates July 2011 Approved 2012 Change 2010 to 2012
20 gallon bin $17.31 $ 20 $ 26 + $8.69 (50%), 32 gallon bin $ 27.69 $ 44.01 $ 55 + $27.31 (97%), 64 gallon bin $ 55.38 $ 101.23 $105 + $49.62 (90%), 96 gallon bin $ 82.18 $ 163.29 $155 + 72.82 (89%)
Compost (green) containers 2010 rates July 2011 Approved 2012 Change 2010 to 2012
Two cans Free Free Free + $0 (0%), 3+ $1 each $6 each $10 each + $9 (900%), 5+ $1 $6 $15 each + $ 14 (1400%)."
Californians moving to Texas in record numbers
Jeannie Kever, Houston Chronicle
The food? Too heavy. The traffic? Not so bad. The weather? Don't get transplanted California residents started. There are a lot of them in Texas these days.
More than 363,000 Californians moved to Texas over the past five years, helping the state grow more than twice as fast as the nation as a whole since 2000, census figures show.
California has sent more new residents to Texas than any other state in recent years. But the pipeline is tightening, part of a national slowdown in migration - from one house to another, from one county to another, and from state to state - that demographers say is a lingering sign of the recession.
California's population is still growing, up 10 percent between 2000 and 2010, thanks to a strong birth rate. But for the past decade, more people have moved out than in.
In 2010 alone, almost 70,000 Californians moved to Texas. Lloyd Potter, director of the Texas State Data Center, said there historically has been movement back and forth between the two states.
Texas' relatively strong economy - with 8.5 percent unemployment compared with 11.9 percent in California - gets most of the credit, he said.
It drew California natives Sandra Zalman and Ted Rubenstein, who moved to Houston from Los Angeles in 2009.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/15/MNRI1LVMFJ.DTL#ixzz1e2UYYDtm
Chamber of Commerce & Rotary Mixer, Evening of Friday, Nov. 18
Submitted by Susan Vellone
Sharp Park / Golf Digest Photo Essay / Federal Court Hearing Friday, Nov. 18
GOLF DIGEST POSTS PHOTO ESSAY ON SHARP PARK
Golf Digest reporter / photographer Bill Fields, who was in San Francisco in October to cover the Schwab Cup, headed over to Sharp Park with his camera on a couple of days, and produced a beautiful 30-picture photo essay on Sharp Park and its golfers. Do not miss this one. It is posted online at Golf Digest.com: click here to see this wonderful photo essay.
FEDERAL COURT HEARING FRIDAY, NOV. 18, 9:00 a.m.
The motion of Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity and other environmentalist groups for a Preliminary Injunction to halt all mowing on Holes 10-18 and halt all pumping at Sharp Park -- measures which would effectively destroy the golf course, according to famed golf architect Robert Trent Jones, Jr. -- will come up for hearing in the San Francisco courtroom of Federal Judge Susan Illston next Friday, November 18, 2011 at 9:00 a.m. The court proceedings will be open to the public at the Federal District Court, Northern District of California, in the Federal Building, 450 Golden Gate Ave. (one block north of Civic Center, at the corner of Polk St.), 19th Floor, Courtroom 10. Court papers of the Public Golf Alliance and City of San Francisco can be found on the Alliance website, by clicking here.
Millbrae to outsource police - Pacifica next?
November 16, 2011, 12:34 AM By Heather Murtagh Daily Journal Staff
Millbrae will begin negotiating to contract with the Sheriff’s Office for police services — a decision that could save the city $1.1 million to $2 million annually but that split the opinion of those at Tuesday’s City Council meeting.
San Bruno and Millbrae currently share Neil Telford, who acts as police chief for both cities until Nov. 18 when he will return to San Bruno full time. On Tuesday, Millbrae official voted 3-2, with councilmembers Paul Seto and Nadia Holober dissenting, to begin negotiating a contract for services to be provided by the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office. The vote came after more than two hours of discussion with community input that raised concerns about adequate staffing, volunteers and the future for non-sworn employees.
The timing of the decision was another topic that split those in attendance. Both Holober and Seto advocated for waiting until the newly elected council took office before the end of the year to make the decision.
“I’m voting no because it goes against the overwhelming majority of our community,” Holober said.
Others on the council disagreed.
“We have to make a decision and sadly, I don’t think we have enough facts,” said Councilwoman Gina Papan, who added Tuesday’s decision allows for negotiations to start so remaining questions can be answered.
Mayor Dan Quigg and Vice Mayor Marge Colapietro both pointed to the city’s financial challenges as a reason the sheriff’s proposal made sense. Quigg added many of the expressed concerns and questions were answered Tuesday before the vote.
For example, Undersheriff Carlos Bolanos said the plan includes positions for all the department employees — sworn and non-sworn, that can be tweaked to accommodate the city’s robust volunteer program, and the city can maintain any property it would like. Items like vehicles and other equipment to be used through the new partnership will result in a credit toward the upstart costs, he said.
The city’s current annual budget for the department is $4.258 million. When the budget is changed to include vehicles, safety equipment, overhead costs and other costs, the annual budget is raised to $7.27 million.
Should the city want to maintain its own department, Telford suggested increasing staffing levels by 2.5 full-time equivalent employees — a cost of $410,000 annually — that would raise the number of employees to 32 FTEs.
Advocates for maintaining an independent department questioned the rush to make a choice while also noting the additional cost seemed minimal.
“We should not risk the safety of our residents for a $410,000 deficit,” said resident Joe Chen.
Chris Co, special services coordinator for Millbrae police, asked the city to consider maintaining the current department staffing adding only a full-time chief and slowly building to the preferred levels. She also suggested asking the city’s electorate for money through a joint safety assessment that would support both the police and fire departments. Co’s suggestion was one Telford couldn’t recommend.
Half Moon Bay ditch clearing violation goes to court
Kind of funny story at the judicial and agency accountability level. Thankfully this one isn't Pacifica.
Jail inmates cleared this ditch 33 years ago, what's the problem?
Half Moon Bay Review/Mark Noack, 11/12/11. "Depending on how you read it, a court ruling faulting Half Moon Bay for Coastal Act violations could mean the city will face a five-figure slap on the wrist - or it might mean fines surpassing $1 million. In her decision made public on Thursday, San Mateo Superior Court Judge Julie Conger found a "knowing and intentional" violation in a city project in 2009 to clear out a clogged drainage channel along Kehoe Avenue. Conger decided the city should have first obtained a coastal development permit, but she noted the actual habitat damage from the project was relatively minor.
"Accordingly, minimum civil penalties of $1,000 for each day that the violation persists will be imposed per statute," she concluded. That final sentence has left all parties puzzled. Lawyers on both sides of the court case said Saturday it's not clear when the $1,000-per-day penalty begins and ends. The actual consequence is "ambiguous," said plaintiff lawyer Bradley Bening. "Does this go back to the date of the decision, or the date going back to 2009?" he asked. "That's unclear and we have to get that clarified." The answer is crucial.
If the fine is meant to apply every day since February 2009, that penalty would now surpass $1 million and still be growing. A fine of that magnitude would be disastrous for Half Moon Bay, which earlier this year cut its police and recreation departments for cost savings. A large penalty would also harken back to the 2007 Beachwood case, another coastal land-use lawsuit that the city settled for an $18 million loss. Alternatively, if the judge's ruling took effect at a later date, the city could scrape by with a much lighter penalty. But even that would depend on how soon the city could obtain a coastal development permit, which will be difficult in any case, said City Attorney Tony Condotti. "It's questionable whether the city could obtain a (coastal development permit) for this area," he said. "I guess that would mean a $1,000-a-day penalty for eternity." Any penalty from the court case would be paid to the California state treasury. The plaintiff in the case, former city Planning Commissioner James Benjamin, would not receive any damages; however, he could petition the court to be repaid for his costs for legal representation and expert witnesses. The City Council is scheduled to discuss the court ruling in closed session on Tuesday before the public meeting."
History lesson reminder - move away from radical ...
Attend Public Hearing Monday, Dec. 5, 10 A.M., S.F...
Sharp Park legal victory for San Francisco and Pac...
Brown Act study session, Wednesday night, 11/30/11...
New studies suggest global warming less severe, bu...
Fish and Game deer capture and tag December 2 - 1...
Rincon Hill dog park a result of community efforts...
San Carlos hills - don't build hiking trails in my...
San Jose leaders paint grim budget picture without...
Pacifica sewer lateral replacement ordinance effec...
Judge hears arguments, takes Sharp Park case "unde...
Devils Slide and the headlands after the tunnel is...
Judge Hears Arguments From Frog Fans Over Sharp Pa...
Atherton trash pick-up rates increase 88% for 2012...
Chamber of Commerce & Rotary Mixer, Evening of Fr...
Sharp Park / Golf Digest Photo Essay / Federal Cou...
Half Moon Bay ditch clearing violation goes to cou...
San Mateo county investment lawsuit dismissed, 12 ...
SMC Democratic Party Chairman David Burruto to Exp...
PSD Measure L comfortably passing and expanding i...
Even the cleanest wastewater contributes to more "...
City Countil meeting tonight, November 14, 2011
Planning commission meeting 11/21/2011
Veterans Day honors all who served
County wins legal battle over Lehman
Alabama county files biggest municipal bankruptcy
Leash your dogs at Linda Mar Beach
Consent Decree for Waste Water Treatment Plant Spi...
Skyline College Sustainable Campus Initiative
OPPOSE - Point of Sale Mandate on Nov. 14 CC Agend...
Brown Act Violation - "this Commission successful...
Planning commission cancelled tonight, Monday 11/7...
Meet Menlo Park Police Commaner Dave Bertini
Pacifica Police Chief Jim Tasa - who is he?
Time change: Sunday, 2 AM, November 6, 2011
Sharp Park improvement
Asteroid comes close to Earth Tuesday 11/8/11 - no...
Weak Economy update
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Java with Jerry Hill - Mazetti's Bakery, November ...
Think your brain and genes are "special"?
Vallejo's bankruptcy ends after 3 tough years
Scandal-plagued former Bell official sues city for...
Restore railroad car 1409 benefit 11/13/2011
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Works About News Contact
GUITARSOLO #2
Guitarsolo
Video, SD-PAL, stereo, 6', 2007
Performer: Humphrey Tieface
Camera: István Imreh
Sound: Werner Krumme and Yensin Jahn
Recorded at: PlanetRoc Studio, Berlin
In the video "Guitarsolo", the basic theme is the accentuation and replacement, the abstraction of the details of an arbitrary reality. In this case arbitrary reality is the isolated inner world of a recording studio – one of the many illusion factories –, where the meticulous work invested in arousing ecstasy is less absurd than the fact that it takes an incredible amount of time to record that little time in hope of reaching timelessness.The emphasis is on the stereotypical scenes, regrading them and rendering them visible in our twisted reality. In this approach, it is the less important or otherwise useless sections of a sound recording that are considered valuable. Such are the ambient noises of the recording work, the rustling and conversation of the technicians during the recording of a guitar solo, while the production is going on at the other side of the glass panel. The music and its recording together make up a composition, and this is what we hear. What we see, on the other hand, is a static black and white image, in which the only thing moving is the figure of the guitarist standing in the distance in the glass cage. It could be anyone.
Photo: István Imreh
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Christopher Guest & Eugene Levy - For Your Consideration - 11/10/06
Penelope (2008)
Surviving Christmas (2004)
Orange County (2002)
Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993)
Away We Go (2009)
Frankenweenie (2012)
A.C.O.D. (2013)
Cheaper by the Dozen 2 (2005)
Bringing Down the House (2003)
Taking Woodstock (2009)
American Reunion (2012)
Father of the Bride/Father of the Bride, Part II (1991)
The Simpsons: The Complete Thirteenth Season (2001)
Christopher Guest
A Mighty Wind (2003)
Fred Claus (2007)
Big Miracle (2012)
Are Guest and Levy scared of biting the hand that feeds or simply out of touch? In either case, the answer can't be good.
86 min. Warner Independent Pictures. Director: Christopher Guest. Cast: Catherine O'Hara, Eugene Levy, Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest, John Michael Higgins.
Self-absorption, vanity, and insecurity are the targets of Christopher Guest's Hollywood satire For Your Consideration. As with Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show (and, to a lesser extent, A Mighty Wind), For Your Consideration deals with hopeless strivers (this time, a batch of no-talent film "artists" making an Oscar-bait movie), and as with those earlier films, Consideration is improvised, by a crack cast, from a scenario by Guest and Eugene Levy. But For Your Consideration breaks with its predecessors in a significant respect: it isn't very funny.
Guest and Levy taking on Hollywood awards season is a great idea ruined by a succession of bad choices. Primarily, the writers forget to keep it real. The community theater, dog show, and folk circle of the previous films were all hilarious because of their resemblance to real places and people and attitudes. For Your Consideration gets most of the attitudes right, but forgoes depicting a realistic 2006 Hollywood. That's not only a big mistake, but a little depressing: are Guest and Levy scared of biting the hand that feeds or simply out of touch? In either case, the answer can't be good.
Guest announces his intentions from the opening scene, which finds washed-up actress Marilyn Hack moonily watching Jezebel on her TV and miming along. As it turns out, the movie Hack is in the process of making—"Home for Purim"—is a presposterous melodrama not only set in the '40s, but overacted in '40s style. No one in Hollywood is bankrolling a picture anything like this (it's also uncommon for a independent film to have—as "Home for Purim" does—a distributor while it's still being filmed, but who's counting?).
Guest takes particular aim at the meaninglessness and emotional damage of Oscar hysteria ("You see what a little bit of buzz can do in this town?"). But the satire doesn't sting because we don't believe what we're seeing. If the film weren't toothless, it would depict not "Home for Purim," but the sort of cynically splashy, star-packed war films and message pictures that actually win Oscars.
A scene of studio marketers pitching absurd poster designs is amusing, but likewise divorces reality: who would sell a Oscar-hopeful melodrama with frothy comic images like disembodied heads sticking up out of Jewish cookies? Compare this patent unrealism to the excruciatingly plausible bickering between a music executive and a head usher in A Mighty Wind's funhouse Carnegie Hall. One scene is wanly amusing in its ridiculousness; the other is plain funny in its satirical precision.
While it's perhaps also unrealistic that a distinctly Jewish drama, bursting with Yiddish, would be funded, that discrepancy does land as reasonably effective satire—in this respect, Home for Purim's unlikeliness makes a point. Unfortunately, in this respect, Home for Purim isn't funny. The Yiddish proves not to be inherently hilarious, and you'll see the punchline of "Home for Purim" being renamed "Home for Thanksgiving" coming all the way up Sunset Boulevard.
No, the pleasures of For Your Consideration, such as they are, are isolated jokes and particular performers from Guest's growing stock company. O'Hara's standout character gives the filmmakers a chance to skewer a deserving target: actresses who butcher themselves with plastic surgery in a misguided scramble to stay competitive. John Michael Higgins fires on all cylinders as an agent who's unreasonably proud of his supposed Chocktaw heritage (he also offers the deranged observation "In every actor lives a tiger, a pig, an ass, and a nightingale.")
I liked, to a point, the film's dead-on spoof of the promotional "rounds" on every kind of talk show (the Charlie Rose take-off is brilliant; the MTV kicker is lame), but the film resembles the media tour's unrelenting parade. The cast's sheer size blunts character development, with Levy effectively sidelined as another agent (for good reason: the character's not funny) and others, like the great Ricky Gervais, puttering in for a scene or two before wandering off.
Jennifer Coolidge somehow spins gold once more from her Judy Holiday routine, and Fred Willard gets off a few good lines repeating his addled, obtuse interviewer shtick. But the repetition of old comic beats contributes to the film's sagginess and the realization that Guest, for the first time, has had trouble sustaining his formula.
Parker Posey's line "We're all acting all the time" suggests a broader relevance of Hollywood's bad behavior—we all gossip, we all preen, we all compete—but Guest never digs very deep. Rather, For Your Consideration is uniformly mean-spirited, an affliction that never plagued Guest before. With the exception of the pointedly named Hack, Guest fails to make any of the film's characters even remotely likeable, including the lame-brained film director played by...Christopher Guest.
[For Groucho's interview with Christopher Guest & Eugene Levy, click here.]
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Francisco de Mendoza Ibáñez：Complexity in the ironic echo（时间：11.14）
报告题目：Complexity in the ironic echo
报 告 人：Francisco de Mendoza Ibáñez University of La Rioja教授
报告时间：2019年11月14日08:30
报告地点：外语北楼三厅
主办单位：外语学院
Francisco José Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez works on Cognitive Linguistics, Construction Grammar(s), inferential pragmatics and functional approaches to language. He has coordinated funded work on figurative language from scholars across Europe, many of them part of the Lexicom research group, which he co-founded (www.lexicom.es). He has published extensively on metaphor, metonymy, illocution, and has created, with professor Ricardo Mairal, the Lexical Constructional Model. He has edited or co-edited several books:Cognitive Linguistics: Internal Dynamics and Interdisciplinary Interaction (2005, Mouton),Cognitive Linguistics: Current Applications and Future Perspectives (2006, Mouton), Defining Metonymy in Cognitive Linguistics: Towards a Consensus View (2011, John Benjamins),Theory and Practice in Functional-Cognitive Space (2014, John Benjamins),The Functional Perspective on Language and Discourse: Applications and Implications (2014, John Benjamins). He has authored or coauthored several books on linguistic theory, the most recent one being Cognitive Modeling. A Linguistic Perspective (2014, John Benjamins), which received the 2015 AESLA Research Award for experienced researchers. He serves or has served on the editorial and scientific boards of journals such as Miscelánea, Jezikoslovlje, ITL-International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Revue Romane, and Cognitive Linguistics. Former editor of the Spanish Journal of Applied Linguistics, he has been the editor of the Review of Cognitive Linguistics, and co-editor of Applications of Cognitive Linguistics (Mouton de Gruyter) since their inception. Since January 2012 he has been co-editor of the Bibliography of Metaphor and Metonymy (John Benjamins). He also serves on the editorial board of book series, such as Human Cognitive Processing (John Benjamins, since 2010), Metaphor in Language, Cognition, and Communication (John Benjamins, since 2010), and Figurative Thought and Language (John Benjamins, since 2015). He has been the head organizer of two major international conferences: 8th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (University of La Rioja, 2003); 44th International Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (University of La Rioja, 2011) and several other conferences and seminars.
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UGA to Hire Mark Fox as Basketball Coach
Chip Towers of the AJC was the first to report that Mark Fox of Nevada will be named head basketball coach of the Georgia Bulldogs tomorrow at an 11:00 am press conference in Athens. Given what was available and willing to assume our challenge, this is a very strong hire.
His resume as a head coach beats the hell out of the one owned by Anthony Grant, Frank Haith, Brad Stevens (Butler) or Brian Gregory (Dayton).
Specifically, he has more conference titles, more NCAA Tourney wins, more weeks ranked in the Top 25, and more wins against teams you've ever heard of than Anthony Grant by a long shot.
Highlights of Fox's Career:
Career Record - 123-43 overall and 66-16 in the WAC. Never won fewer than 21 games in a season in five seasons.
Championships - Won the WAC regular season title four times in five years, and he won the conference tourney once.
NCAA Appearances - 3 NCAA Tourney appearances. He advanced to the second round twice including a huge win over Texas, and he beat Creighton in the tourney when they had a Top 25 team. His tourney losses were to Memphis, Illinois (when they were #1) and an upset loss to Montana. Also made the CBI twice (the other NIT).
Mentor of Note - Coached under Trent Johnson of LSU at Nevada for several years. When Johnson went to Stanford, Fox took over as head coach. Johnson's system and style of play was very effective in the SEC last year.
Fox is a guy that believes in scheduling relatively tough for the mid-major circuit. He typically scheduled about six quality non-conference games a year against high-majors (UNC, Kansas, UCLA, Cal, etc) or well known mid-majors like Gonzaga, UNLV, Santa Clara, etc.
Winner on the Road:
As a head coach he has won road games versus Kansas, Cal, Gonzaga, UNLV and Georgia. Given our program's problems winning road games the past few years, that's a quality list of wins for a mid-major program. He's also won home games against UNLV, Anthony Grant's VCU team (2009), Oregon State and UGA.
His record from Wikipedia:
Nevada (Western Athletic Conference) (2004–present)
2004–2005 Nevada 25-7 16-2 1st NCAA 2nd Round
2005–2006 Nevada 27-6 13-3 1st NCAA 1st Round
2007–2008 Nevada 21-12 12-4 1st (Tied) CBI 1st Round
2008–2009 Nevada 21-13 11-5 2nd CBI 1st Round
Nevada: 123-43 66-16
UPDATE Recruiting:
He put 4 players into the NBA in five years. For a mid-major, that's very strong. I would be embarrassed to tell you how far back you have to go to find four UGA players in the NBA.
He has a four star shooting guard committed for this season, but not signed yet (please oh please let him come here). He signed two four star kids last year, and he is credited with signing All-American Nick Fazekas at Nevada when he was an assistant coach.
UPDATE Profile Articles:
The NY Times put together a large profile piece on Fox's team in 2007. It talks about his background and views on life.
“The whole secret to our success has been finding kids that get better and kids that buy into how we operate here,” said Mark Fox, who is in his third season as Nevada’s coach. “They’ve all been really good kids that have allowed themselves to be coached and work hard.”
The Nevada News recently talked with Mark and Cindy Fox about a class they taught on campus. In the interview, Mark talks about his first paycheck where he realized his check was only $6 more than his rent.
Interestingly, his wife Cindy is the #2 athletic director at Nevada. Her title is Executive Associate Athletic Director, Sports Support. She's like the Arthur Johnson of Nevada.
Before you say....WTF? Or "Who?" Consider this....if you had never heard that unrealistic, dumbass idea that Jeff Capel was obtainable, and you actually read the guy's qualifications....would you be interested? Wait til you see who he has actually beaten. It's no joke.
-- Mark Fox Bio - Nevada Athletics
-- More info - SicEmDawgs
Posted by Unknown at Thursday, April 02, 2009
Labels: Basketball, UGA
How dare you compare anyone short of Wooden or Kryskewski to Anthony Grant!?!
Gotta do a little research, but like what I see on the surface.
Terrence Moore will not like this hire.
matt b. said...
I'll give UGA and Coach Fox the benefit of the doubt. Now just change those hideous uniforms.
Go Dawgs!!!!!!!!!
Mike in Valdosta,
The Pic was for you. ;-)
Hell, if Terrance Moore doesn't like it then I am all the more for it.
+1 Anon 9:10
Check out espn.com.
Says Fox to Alabama. World wide leader in sports.
This is UGA's Chiznik! LOL!
TopDawg said...
we didnt hire a guy who won 2 games last year like auburn did....This is a good move by Damon and UGA....It is not always the sexiest pick that gets the job done. The man can flat out coach
anon 919....
If you are going to try and flame, try and keep up...
IT is Chizik, not Chiznik.
Also, let me explain this....Chizik became Chizik because Aubie fired one of their top 3 coaches EVER and hired a hack with a .208 winning percentage.
We fired a hack with about a .208 winning percentage and hired a coach who is a tad over .700 for his career.
It ain't a real good comparison...
But keep trying, hey, by the way what color tux did you rent for your prom?
Give me a break. They haven't even gone to the NIT the last two years. He racked up huge win numbers with guys that Trent Johnson recruited. See yall in 5 years when we are searching to replace this guy. Way to blow it Damon.
At long last our georgia-national nightmare is over.
Well the NIT is under different selection process now than it used to be....plus alot of teams and coaches dont even want to be int he NIT because it is run by the NCAA. He is also in a 1-bid league almost every year so you have to take that into account. People are already dogging this guy and he hasnt even got on campus yet, at least give him a chance to succeed. Most people that are against him have never seen him coach
One question: does he run the high post?
He runs a flex offense like wisconsin but with higher scoring potential with small amounts of turnovers
Tommy said...
What a total joke! I just hope they are not paying him that much to coach. The CBI? What the hell is that? The fact that he couldn't get out of the 1st round of it the past 2 years isn't very promising.
The CBI is another postseason tournament in its second year of existence
The line of he did it with someone else's players is a joke. You still have to be able to coach them up and it might be more impressive when they are not your guys. You have to get them to buy into what you are trying to do. He has also beat Kansas on the road and he beat wonder boy Grant and VCU this year.
A few years back, an SEC school hired a coach from a poor mid-major, who had gotten worse every year he coached there, and had never coached in a postseason game.
That coach was Billy Donovan.
How did that work out?
rbubp said...
ROCK ON!!! Excellent!
He didn't do it with someone else's players. HE RECRUITED those guys to Nevada while Johnson's top assistant and recruiter.
Thank you PWD....Some people can't seem to understand that
So the head coach doesn't recruit players? Wasn't that one of your reasons for knocking Grant because he didn't recruit Eric Maynor? This is a terrible hire. Should have just kept Felton because this is not a step up from him.
This is not the great hire you guys are spinning. If he was that great of coach then some of those West Coast colleges with vacancies would have been after him. This is a horrible hire but what did one really expect.
Anderson might not have worked out, but have some faith in DE and the search firm. There is a reason they are in those positions. Give it a chance at least...
back to back cbi 1st round loss. what the fuc@ is the cbi?
ChicagoDawg said...
College Basketball Invitational...you people need to wake up and watch some damn basketball
Admittedly, I am not all that familiar with him. However, the resume of accomplishments amassed at a school located in Reno, NV has me more hopeful than the list of cadavers that were being talked about in the last 48 hours. If you have never been to Reno before, you can trust me it -- is not exactly a BB recruiting hotbed.
Carolina Dawg said...
Anon 9:53 Here is a link for you
http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/story/10293979
Very pleased with this hire. I had a feeling we were going to get a surprise, and Mark Fox was truly on NOBODY's radar. Nonetheless, he has an impressive resume, and like PWD said, much more impressive than Anthony Grant's. Kudos to Damon Evans and Parker search firm for finding this guy. GO DAWGS! Can't wait to see what Fox does.
The WAC, seriously!
Carolina Dawg why are you posting a link two years old? What has he done lately?
KCDawg said...
If you don't know what the CBI is, you probably don't pay that much attention to college basketball. To use another sport's analogy, this is not a homerun, but it is a stand up double.
Stand up double? This is a pop fly.
Jerry Hinnen said...
Excellent hire, Dawgs. Part of Fox's problem the last couple of years is that the players he's recruited have been too good--guys like Ramon Sessions and Javale McGee have been leaving early for (and succeeding in) the NBA. Easy to brush off at a larger program, tougher at Nevada. Anyone who's griping about Nevada's performance this year doesn't know what they're talking about--their top three scorers are all freshmen or sophomores and they didn't have a senior in the rotation. Frosh forward Luke Babbitt was their leading scorer, yet another legit NBA prospect Fox recruited at a mid-major program.
In short: this is every bit as good a hire as Grant, if not a little safer given Fox's longer resume, IMHO.
How's Caleb King coming along?
Yes, thank you Jerry....and with all those freshmen in the lineup they went 12-4 in conference and came within minutes of going dancing....
I know what the CBI is, but let's be honest it's a shitty tournament. It's for the teams that the NIT doesn't want. You can put a suit on a dog turd, but it's still a dog terd.
KCDawg it was a rhetorical question? you call it a stand up double, i call it the same thing uga did in the collage world series choke
well you would should understand that many teams dont want to play in the NIT anymore because it is run by the NCAA.....If a team is playing a post season tournament it is a good thing....
LOL, seriously, I am a fan of diversity. No, I am not politically correct.
Read up on him, he spent his free time while getting his masters at Kansas absorbing all he could from Roy Williams.
He would go over far better if the expectations hasn't been set so high publicly.
Everything I have read says he is a student of the game. Recruiting may not be is strong suit, I don;t know, but he is credited for doing more with less talent within his conference, not sure about the reference to winning with Trent Johnson's players. Johnson tried hard to get him to baton rough.
His bio is still up on Nevadas's website.
Okay, you negative ninnies, please tell me who you would hire?
I mean what are you going to do now. Not what should have been done two weeks ago or more.
You don't like Fox, OK. Who else is out there ready to come to Georgia? Ummmmmm, NO ONE.
Either be a Dawg or don't be one. Just pick one or the other so we can stop the nonsense.
Normaltown Mike said...
Thanx PWD. I like this. We swung for the fences (little league they might be) w/ Anderson and got rejected. Now we move to a safe pick and it's done. The search firm likely prevented more public smackdowns. To quote Parcells, "you are what you are". We are a sad bball program in a football conference. I'm not hoping for the moon, just a little excitement and a HC that wants to be part of it.
Normaltown Flyer, I mean Normaltown Mike, (if you are my age you will get it)
I think Parcells saifd "you are what your record says you are". I agree with your sentiment.
At least he took them to some tournament, even if it was the CBI. It is a lot better than where the Dawgs ended up this year. This is a step up for UGA
I would almost guarantee that half of the anon posters have neither a) ever been to a UGA hoops game and b) couldn't name 2 players without googling them.
All you jokers b!tching about this hire need to put your money where your mouth is and buy season tickets and support the team.
Bunch of whiners and losers!
Larry Cromulent said...
The "winning with someone else's players" argument only works if the coach WASN'T the head assistant at the school before he took the big chair.
Since everyone who comments here knows more about running a program and coaching basketball than Damon, Fox, or Phog Allen, I'm sure you will all hate this hiring and crush the Athletic Department and continue to not attend the non-Kentucky games and say how you really wish UGA Basketball was worth a damn.
I'm going to thank the Heavens we didn't get some NBA retread, or an aging ACC coach (Haith would have been okay with me), or Bob Knight.
You hit the nail on the head. It's no coincidence that as soon as UGA starts looking for a coach, all the posters come out of the woodwork to offer their uninformed opinions. It's usually easy to spot them, because right now they're complaining that we didn't hire Bob Knight.
Chip Bankhead said...
Thanks to Paul and Jerry for the detailed analysis.
I am happy that DE ignored talk radio and the haters and did his homework. Like a previous poster said, we didn't get the 3 run homer (which was a stretch by any means) and went with the double w/ no outs.
atlstew said...
Dont know anything about this guy could take us to the promise land or end up being a bust. His winning record speaks for itself, but as i recall felton had a pretty good record at wku. Does anyone know if this guy can recruit?
If he shows up at the presser wearing red and black, he's got to be a step up from Felton from the get-go.
atlstew, he can recruit...he had a 5 star on his roster this year and he has recruited many other high prifle guys who are pros now
peacedog said...
Great post Paul. I obviuously have no idea what the future holds. It looks to me like getting a guy like Mike Anderson was too much of a stretch (maybe not, but it looked like it to me). That means we had to look deeper. That doesn't mean we abandoned smarts, and contrary to the belief of a number of unhappy dawg netizens, I tend to think of Evans as a sharp guy.
Color me not optimistic, but intrigued, and happy that we can move forward. Here's to next year.
DawgGrad90
Regardless of your opinion, if you are a Dawg fan, support Coach Fox and the team. If you can't do that, I'm sure you can get tickets to GT games. Welcome Coach Fox and Go Dawgs.
I am actually a big basketball fan and I really really want us to have a good program. I still remember being at a Hawks game when they announced that UGA had beaten UNC to go to the Final Four. I honestly know nothing about this guy as a coach nor am I familiar with the type of offense he runs. What I am sure of is that anyone is an upgrade over Felton who couldn't seem to recruit players he could keep on the team due to either Academics or Disciplinary reasons. Atlanta is a FERTILE recruiting ground. There are enough Div I prospects just in Metro Atlanta to stock 2 or 3 programs if you get the right guy in there. Let's give Coach Fox a chance and see what he can do.
Just as a post script...we seriously need to upgrade the Stegosauraus....it isn't bad on the inside, but it does look old and tired on the outside and often that is a recruits first impression.
PS - Kudos to PWD for his coverage all week. You were the only media outlet that kept a fans perspective wedded to an iota of bball insights.
I would've lost it if I had to rely on the usual ATL media hacks.
First off...and I know it doesn't directly relate to Fox...but I've always been mystified at the love affair with Billy Donovan. Yes...I know the dude won the two national title and I'm not trying to trivialize that at all...but I just don't think of Billy D as a great coach. He hasn't made the tourney in two years in a horrible SEC. The five years prior to the national titles he never got past the second round of the tourney. I think he's a slightly better than average coach who struck it rich with one recruiting class and that's about it. On to Fox...
I'm not thrilled with the hire, but I can't say it's because I've watched a lot of Nevada basketball of the last 5 years. I think part of the problem is that Damon, by his own doing, set expectations very high. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but even if you like the hire I think we can all admit it's a bit underwhelming. My biggest concern is recruiting. Recruiting ATL is the only reason UGA is a decent job and it's the only way we'll ever be good. Hiring a unknown coach who hasn't been east of Reno isn't exactly a recipe for taking over ATL.
And the fact that he beat Grant this year head to head is completely irrelevant. He might be better than Grant but it's not because of that. Gimme a break. One game head to head isn't a good barometer in football, much less basketball. Let's try and refrain from using that to make ourselves feel better...it looks pathetic.
stick jackson said...
GATA, Coach Fox.
We'll see. The only thing wrong with the search was, as Paul says, completely losing control of the expectation game. That may have been a result of the long time after the firing. If you fantasize about Jeff Caple long enough, it starts to seem like he really is your coach, and then it sucks when you wake up and realize that he isn't.
All that's over now, let's go.
Yes. Sleep well tonight PWD. Thanks for the updates.
UnitedDawg said...
Shandon Anderson, Damian Wilkins, Jumaine Jones and Jarvis Hayes. I'm sure at some point a couple years back they were all the in the league together...
wfdawg said...
Ok, here's how I see this: We won't really be able to assess whether this was a good hire until 1-2 years from now. Fox could be Felton 2.0 or he could be just what we were looking for. It's entirely too soon to be making definitive pronouncements. So, I suggest we give Damon Evans the benefit of the doubt and soundly support our new coach. If hindsight proves this to be a bad hire, then is the time for criticizing and complaining. For now, we should all become Coach Fox's biggest fans. We owe this guy a clean slate and the benefit of the doubt as his tenure begins in Athens.
I'd also like to thank PWD for the updates, you've been the best source on the web to keep up to date on this. Far better than those pricks over at the AJC (who by the way, you should see the crap they are already saying about Fox). Thanks again for keeping us informed.
In defense of Hale, he does a helluva lot more than most beat writers. And truthfully - football sells!
Maybe we're getting closer now to BBall doing the same.
rpubp,
I am sure Hale doesn't need, nor probably wants, me to defend him, but he is a reporter, and spring practive is news. There really hasn't been any news, just conjecture on the BB front until Anderson turned us down. His statement of being tired was probably related to chasing down false rumors.
With that being said, I am very grateful for the basketball,a dn all Dawg sports, outlet georgiasports and PWD provide.
My big concern is that he is coming from a little-dog school and we need a guy to revolutionize our gameday atmosphere and marketing schemes. I am not sure if he has the background to do that.
I will give him the benefit-of-the-doubt, but this is doomed from the get-go.
This is why Damon needs to STFU if he has another hire. Do not go out and promise the fans that you are going to shoot for the stars and not deliver. You only create a worse situation for the guy who actually gets the job.
MidGA Dawg said...
Does anybody know what the possibilities are about Coach Fox bringing any players or recruits with him to UGA?
Chris, My apologies for missing that your question was rhetorical. But, it was obvious that many posters did not know what the tournament was. You think this is a pop fly, and it may turn out to be. But it is every bit as good a hire as Grant and a lot better than those ACC also rans that everyone had us going after. BTW, the Dawgs didn't choke in the World Series, they got beat. I was there, and Fresno State was on fire, seemingly a team of destiny, and with more fans than we had on hand. Sometimes you're the bug and sometimes you're the windshield. The second half of that series, we were the bug.
KC, I still wish that we could go back and test those Fresno kids for HGH and look at their bats.
There is no way that a statistical anomaly as enormous as the last 3 weeks of their season last year can occur in the sport of baseball.
They are sucking hind teet this season, and if they suddenly start hitting 4 HR's a game in mid-May again, the NCAA should draw blood, immediately.
Hate to sound like a Gtu fan, but I will never believe that last year's CWS was played cleanly by the Fresno kids. It is just not possible.
KC, I too was there, thanks to Sprint being a great customer. We looked like the "windshield" until we started believing as much. I would never call it a choke, as FS played theiur asses off, but we did let it slip away. Yes, they much greater support, but I think many of them were just fans of other teams rooting against us.
Anon 11:29. I know what you mean, as Fresno State was not that good last year either... I believe the lowest seed to ever win the tourney. That said, those statistical anomalies can occur, especially over a short season, and even moreso in one or two games. I coach a 6th grade competitive basketball team and one of the teams my team beat earlier in the year went 9 of 17 from three point land against us in our last game. 9 of 17 for 12 year old boys is crazy, but it can happen for one game, but certainly not for a season.
I'm nervous that he taught a class with his wife at Nevada. Have we seen copies of the final exam for that class? We don't need to go down that road again! I also agree with the ideas of anon 11:29. It would not suprise me at all if Detweiler and his BROKEN THUMB were on something.
KC, Fresno was like the 6th seed in the WAC tourney and won that, then batted some obscene average and obliterated the all-time CWS HR record. It was not just one or two games.
They were a mediocre team 80% of the season and then put up absolutely astronomical numbers as the competition got *markedly better.*
Mark Fox > Anthony Grant. Bama panicked and threw money at a "hot name" coach. Damon took his time and found a guy that not only beat Grant, but beat Kansas on the road.
When is the last time we have beaten a team of the calibur of Kansas on the road - or anywhere for that matter?
Re: My deleted comment about Hale's blog--I love his blog and read it every day. Nonetheless, I was extremely disappointed with his comment about basketball in the midst of an important hiring process compared to the competing attention of...spring football.
I don't get why anybody cares about spring football. But I guess that's the SEC for you, and I guess that's why we have the rep we've earned.
The fact of the matter is that no coach outside of huge names, tier 1 names, would be able to land great players out of Atlanta from the outset. We're going to need to piece together a couple quality seasons with above average guys -- guys that Fox can recruit -- to become relevant again. Once relevant, I have no doubt that Fox will have a much easier time landing big names. You only need one or two high quality players surrounded by good team-oriented guys to get into the tournament. I think this is good higher.
DocFumbles said...
I dunno, if you want to make comparisons, think of it on two fronts:
A)who would you prefer deep down inside between Grant and Fox
B) Grant won just as many Conference titles in less time (3 reg. season, 2 tournament) than Fox (4 reg., 1 Tournament). He has a National Title ring, name recognition, and knows the south. Oh, and has a great reputation amongst coaches in the south as well
Hey, Stuart...How many of Grant's players are in the NBA versus Fox's?
Fox is up 2-0. And if you count how many have played in the NBA, it's 4-0. Somehow, though, Grant is the coaching genius while Fox has toiled in recruiting hotbed of Reno, Nevada.
How many keep pieces to a national championship did Fox recruit? Also, how many Final Four teams has his conference sent this decade? How familiar is he with the area?
Excuse me, Key Pieces. It's been a long night
RedStripeDawg said...
Stuart's "A" question:
"who would you prefer deep down inside between Grant and Fox"
Answer: Stuart
ej said...
Two questions to consider:
1. Does Fox run an offense that requires more motion than Felton's "Stand Around and Look Petrified" sets? UPGRADE
2. Is Fox > Hewitt? UPGRADE (help us win some GA recruits back).
As Coach Herm Edwards says, "WE CAN BUILD ON THIS!"
David Perno is why UGA lost the CWS, not because fresno was playing better
I agree with Stuart - how many of those Nevada players are still in the NBA? How many of Grant's players are still there (including the ones he recruited?).
Not sure if the kids from Norcross, South Atlanta, Landmark Christian, etc are going to take this guy seriously.
1:40am - NIKE bats are the reason we lost the CWS.
Bad joo-joo was the reason we lost the CWS, conjured up by some disgruntled cajun hoodoo when the Bayou Bengals fell out of the tournament. Pray they don't bring their swamp devilry to Athens this weekend.
The fact that the WAC is a fairly mediocre hoops conference concerns me a little, but otherwise it seems like a solid hire and I'm willing to be optimistic. What people need to remember is that merely making Georgia competitive -- which Fox seems plenty capable of doing -- would be a huge step up from where we are now. If you're expecting us to immediately get launched into the Final Four, you're going to be disappointed, but Anderson and Capel would've disappointed you too. If you're expecting to beat Tech on the regular and have a realistic shot to make the Tournament, though, it seems like we're laying a good foundation for that.
Up and Down said...
Looking at it from today, I think Grant would have been a better hire. Georgia basketball needs a some "juice" from the media to at least get the in-state kids interested. Grant at least has a little juice-a little media interest associated with his name. Fox does not.
Initially (and remember, a new coach is only going to get three years to get things going) Grant would have been able to better compete for in state talent. As for Fox's coaching ability being better than Grant's, a Nevada poster (who is a Fox fan) said on the UGASPORTS board that Fox runs a low post offense and has questionable substitution patterns. Didn't I just watch that movie?
StandupifyourUGA! said...
Love the hire. He fits everything we needed. He just isn't loved by T. Moore and D. Bradley at the AJC. Even Better! All you complainers need to decide if you are going to be a Dawg fan or a football fan. Stop bitching. I will be expanding my season tix to 4 next year and again rooting for these kids every game that wear the RED AND BLACK! And if anyone mentions Bobby Knight again, they should be banned from all UGA blogs for being an idiot.
SSB Charley said...
I agree with the poster that said this hire was a double. It won't excite the fanbase, but quite frankly, I don't think we were going to get anyone that would excite the fanbase. This was the sort of hire we were capable of, and had Damon and Adams managed expectations a little better, folks would probably be a lot more positive about the hire.
I'd equate this with a solid Big Ten hire. Most coaches in the Big Ten aren't the flashiest guys or uber-recruiters, but they are, for the most part, excellent with the Xs and Os. And given the poor level of Xs and Os in this league (I generally think Donovan, Pearl, Stansbury, Kennedy, Lebo and possibly Grant are average or worse in that regard), hiring a coach like Fox gives us at least some advantage over our rivals. If (and it's a big if, admittedly) he can recruit Atlanta decently, he can elevate us to the top third of the league pretty quickly. I didn't realize that he coached under Roy Williams until this morning, so between him and Johnson, he's had pretty good mentors on the Xs and Os.
A couple of other things I learned during this coaching search: money doesn't matter near as much as I thought it did. That we couldn't get some guys to look at us was pretty shocking. Second, that PWD was more plugged into this search than the beat writers who cover UGA for a living. Great job, Paul.
There were also some who said Herschel Walker would never succeed in Division 1 football because he played at Class A Johnson County. We all know how that turned out.
Jman781 said...
What's the love with Grant? Are we so certain that Bama wouldn't have ended up with him anyway? Regardless, Grant and Anderson were off the table. Given what was left (not what people think we should have done in the past), who is a CLEARLY better hire? Remember that we are UGA and not Kentucky. We can't just hire anyone. Everyone has issues. Plus, it's not like Anderson would have definitely brought UGA to the promise land.
I am assuming that fans are like this everywhere (I hope so), but the negativity is terrible. I recall post after post about how Ringer was going to run all over UGA in the bowl game. Yep. Those must be the same people panning this hire. Support your team and be optimistic. At least be open-minded.
P.S. How many CBI tourneys has UGA been to? NITs? Even Nevada has been to more NCAA tourneys than Felton's UGA.
Pearl might be sitting on a house of cards about to crumble at Tennessee.
Seems like the inmates are running the asylum.
I think of him as Spurrier-like....when he has the talent to run his system, not anyone better. But, he when doesn't, he refuses to adapt, and voila....you have South Carolina.
Jarred said...
While I like the hire, I think expectations got out of hand. Everyone expected us to land some huge name, and we were quickly slapped in the face when Anderson turned us down, for substantially less money. At that point we needed to hire someone quickly, or we'd be facing rejection after rejection. Lets face it, a ton of schools are upgrading their facilities, and our stadium is nothing to look at, so thats a split at best.
Our draw was the SEC and money, and I was surprised that didn't land a big name coach. I am all for Fox, and he could be a diamond in the rough, but I'd hate to miss again. It was a tough year to go looking for coaches.
Squarebush said...
Looks to me like a comparison can easily be made to the hirings of Pearl and Donovan.
Those two seemed to turn out okay.
After reading some of the Nevada fans comments they had both positive and negative things to say about the coach.
Positive - He is an amazing recruiter, and his kids WILL play hard for him for the whole 40 minutes. His teams play tough defense. His rants/tantrums were the best in the WAC, and if he throws one, it is worthy of the admission price and the technical foul that will be received.
Negative - He cannot make quick changes in game. His offense go for long stretches without scoring.
Overall it's an upgrade, but I will be very disappointed if DE is paying him anything close to 2 mill.
It might be the lunatic fringe that left all the comments, but it seems like most of the Nevada fans were happy to see him go.
#1 CBI tournament is a pay tournament. A school has to pay in order to play in the tournament.
#2 His recruiting isn't so hot until recently, if you look at Scout and Rivals rankings. Give him credit for his class last year and Babbitt, but he's from Reno. His other star recruit was a JUCO. Will he be able to recruit at UGA? Who can know?
#3 He's never had to build a program like it he'll have to do at UGA. He took over a successful program.
#4 How do you think he compares to the other coaches in the SEC East: Calipari, Donovan, Pearl, Stallings, Horn?
"Negative - He cannot make quick changes in game. His offense go for long stretches without scoring."
Isn't that Dennis Felton?
That may be Dennis Felton, but looking at Nevada....it looks like he had about 3 options offensively.
If he can't recruit more than that to Georgia....he will fail here.
Nevada newspaper columnist not impressed:
"Is it the right move for Georgia? Is it the right move for Fox?
The answer to both seems to be a resounding yes. But when you look beyond the wins and losses and championship trophies, when you look at all the variables that come into play -- the high-profile players who all but landed in his lap, the couple of embarrassing off-the-court incidents and what can only be described as a perceived level of friction between Fox and some of his players -- it's difficult to blindly share that optimism.
Truth be told, in a few years we might come to learn the biggest winner today is the Wolf Pack and its fans."
http://www.rgj.com/article/20090403/SPORTS06/904030409/1018/SPORTS
About the message boards complaints from Nevada fans:
A friend of a friend talked to a UGA Alum who lives in Reno last night. He's a big b-ball fan, and a Nevada season ticket holder for a long time.
He's thrilled with the hire for UGA. He says Fox runs an intelligent offense with good spacing and good player/ball movement.
As for the comments about sub patterns. How many B-ball fans don't complain about sub patterns from their coach? It's the most obvious thing to complain about.
Paul- I agree totally that this is a strong hire. You would think based on most of the feedback on the AJC and such that we just hired a Division III coach with a winning % under .500 or something. I am excited to see what he can do. The only thing I'm a little concerned about is his temper.
I can already see the student section T-shirts:
"Fox and The Hounds"
I like it Dawg 19. I've been trying to think of one you have found a winner
Stegeman = "The Fox Hole"
The "Fox and the Hounds" is lame. But then so is this hire.
Anon 11:53 is lame. Then again, so are his jorts.
WHAT A REFRESHING UPGRADE!
You Dawgs stole one from us... Fox was our hidden secret that a small school like Nevada wasn't going to be able to keep for long. He can coach any level of talent and make the student-athlete better, he can recruit the hidden gems that make a program prosper and he will make your community excited about the next (winter, i.e. after football) season. I selfishly want Georgia to go even further in the basketball tank, but in a couple of years you'll be very good. The only reason our Wolf Pack teams weren't better was because our pro-players left early... hard for a mid-major to absorb. Good luck and enjoy the ride / rise to the top.
12:01 is dumb but what does one expect from someone with a I.Q. of 50.
gizzyman123 said...
You east of the Rockies types crack me up! Fox brought teams into YOUR house and knocked you off 2-0. If the mighty SEC UGA can't beat itty-bitty wittil NV, you have nothing to gripe about regarding this hire.
You have NO idea what a nugget you blundered onto in Fox. He'll energize your tired old conference and make your team winners...you folks are still losers, however.
Thanks, gizzyman. I hope you are right about the winning, and I could ot agree with you more about the losers who are disappointed with this hire.
Great hire , you Grant people are just looking for a reason to fuss.Welcome coach Fox.
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Home / Hong Kong / Sonya Fu
Sonya Fu
Meet artist and graphic designer from Hong Kong, Sonya Fu.
I’m an artist and graphic designer based in Hong Kong. I was also born and raised in this magical city. I mainly work with digital media and I create my work on the computer using a drawing tablet. I’m greatly inspired by my dreams and spiritual metaphysics.
Describe the city you’re living in and what it’s like to live there.
Hong Kong is a very busy and densely populated city where east meets west. If I have to describe Hong Kong in a fun and accurate way, I would call it a “Blade Runner” and “Ghost in the Shell” kinda city. You will find many cyberpunk elements throughout our city – historical buildings and temples among futuristic-looking skyscrapers, neon signs and sleepless wanderers!
Living in Hong Kong is both difficult and easy. The difficult part is our ridiculous high rent and the fast-paced stressful lifestyle, also the lack of personal space. The easy part is you can pretty much get anything just around the corner, fast and relatively affordable internet services, shops and restaurants that open till late or 24/7, this place just doesn’t sleep!
If I have to describe Hong Kong in a fun and accurate way, I would call it a “Blade Runner” and “Ghost in the Shell” kinda city.
What is the best and worst thing about living in your city?
The best thing about living in Hong Kong is its multicultural background which makes it not boring and everything is pretty fast and convenient. The worst thing has got to be the ridiculous rent that makes everyone’s life really stressful, you can even sense unhappiness in the atmosphere.
Give us 3 words that describe what it’s like to be a creative in your city.
Shrug, Frustrated, Surreal
How did you start your career in art?
I worked as a graphic designer until 2010 then I started to pay more serious attention to my art. I used to post my work in an online community and got invited to my first group art exhibition. I had many doubts about it at first, since being an artist in Hong Kong is mostly considered unrealistic. I’m thankful that my first exhibition turned out kind of successful, it had given me the confidence I needed.
I used to post my work in an online community and got invited to my first group art exhibition.
Were the people around you supportive of your decision on working as a creative?
Yes and thank goodness! My family, relatives, and friends are all very supportive and open-minded about my choice of career. It’s lucky that I’m surrounded by loving and supportive people knowing that there are still many misconceptions about the whole artist thing here, you know not everyone is as open-minded.
What are some goals and ambitions you have for your future work?
I would like to show my work in countries that I have never shown in previously. I would also like to collaborate with brands on fun projects.
If you could collaborate with any person in the world who would it be?
Bjork, I guess I don’t need to explain why here!
How would you describe the women around you?
They are strong women, especially my grandmother and my mom. My grandmother lost my grandfather when she was still young and she raised all 7 children single-handedly with the assistance of my mother for being the eldest among her siblings. I didn’t grow up in a rich family, my father was a hard-working and reliable man but life wasn’t easy back then, my mom also had to work to support our living when my brother and I were little. Meanwhile, she took good care of us and our home, yet she has never complained nor neglected housework. She is a competent housewife and a loving mother.
Were there any local female creatives that you looked up to when you were growing up?
I wish I knew better! I grew up in an era where the internet didn’t exist, plus I didn’t have the opportunity to be exposed to the creative world until I was old enough to work. I went to local schools which they didn’t really care about art education, art was considered unimportant and art class was sometimes substituted with other “more practical” classes. To be honest, I had never thought that I would become an artist one day!
Are there any challenging aspects of being a female in your industry?
So far, not much, maybe I’m lucky! It’s not gender-related, I have encountered challenges due to my chosen medium though, as digital art is still not a widely accepted art form here.
Believe in your work and yourself.
Do you have any advice to young women who are aspiring to work in your field?
Oh yea, really, believe in your work and yourself. Though it also doesn’t hurt to listen to constructive criticism, it somehow enriches you. Most importantly, be humble and thankful!
Photos courtesy of Sonya Fu.
sonyafu.com
@sonyafu
@SonyaFuArt
sonyafu
art artist Asia asian design digital female fine art girl graphic art Hong Kong painting portraits Sonya Fu surreal woman
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Home / Merchant Services / The changing face of fraud
Cybercrime perpetrated worldwide in 2016 cost the global economy more than $450 billion and added 2 billion personal records stolen to an already extensive tab, based on statistics from small business insurance provider Hiscox Inc.
Visible gains in online commerce have also contributed to card-not-present (CNP) fraud as many predicted would happen when the U.S. transitioned to less fraud-friendly EMV (Europay, Mastercard and Visa) chip cards for card-present transactions. Javelin Strategy & Research estimated that year-over-year CNP fraud spiked 40 percent in 2016, and the incidence of identity, new account and account takeover fraud inched upward as well.
Conversely, POS malware attacks declined by 93 percent from 2014 to 2016, according to SonicWall Inc.'s 2017 Annual Threat Report, which measures data collected from daily feeds from more than 1 million security sensors in nearly 200 countries. Over the same period, Secure Sockets Layer/Transport Layer Security (SSL/TLS) encrypted traffic grew by 38 percent as cloud-based application usage spread across global networks.
"While this trend toward SSL/TLS encryption is overall a positive one, it also merits a word of caution," wrote SonicWall. "SSL/TLS encryption makes it more difficult for cyber thieves to intercept payment information from consumers, but it also provides an uninspected and trusted backdoor into the network that cyber criminals can exploit to sneak in malware" and thus create attack vectors only deep packet inspections can detect.
But a number of security-focused companies are working vigorously to deflect fraud with technologies that detect malware, spot transaction laundering, gather merchant intelligence, assess consumer behavioral patterns and monitor for illicit web content, all part of a growing arsenal of defenses to stop fraud at the outset in real time.
Trustwave Holdings Inc., for example, developed a web-risk monitoring portfolio that ISOs can leverage to identify, prevent and remediate illegal ecommerce activity in merchant portfolios. It also helps with compliance obligations and delivers value-added protections beyond what merchants can normally manage on their own.
"From the time the merchant becomes a customer of the ISO and throughout that customer engagement, our service can be used to ensure compliance with card and industry standards," said Michael Petitti, Senior Vice President of Global Alliances at Trustwave. "If I can tell my merchants that I'm scanning their websites for malware, that's valuable to the merchant." And like other companies in the fraud prevention space, Trustwave can customize monitoring services to meet ISOs' merchant-specific requirements.
Institutional targets responsive
In an age when heightened government and institutional oversight seeks to cut off financial sources to potential terrorists, any entity that processes payments internationally, or even locally, must remain vigilant about monitoring data transiting networks. Implementing detailed reporting standards helps ensure that legitimate legal business practices are being enforced.
Flywire, whose platform supports international consumer payments, has seen an increase in fraud attempts directed at individuals who transact overseas for such things as healthcare and higher education. Both are lucrative markets. The education market processes $53 billion annually for international students, and medical care takes in about $40 billion per year from patients seeking care outside of countries in which they reside.
"Some scammers represent themselves as government agencies and demand payment of an 'international student tariff,'" said Peter Butterfield, General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer at Flywire. "Others claim to be agents endorsed by schools and offer discounts for processing the tuition payment through their firm."
After obtaining student login information, imposter agents proceed to make tuition payments using stolen credit card credentials, which are then rejected and reversed, while the discounted tuition amount paid to fraudsters, typically by wire, vanishes without a trace. Phishing scams offering fake tuition grants represent another growing problem, he noted.
"While there are a number of new technology approaches to fraud, we are encouraging our clients to also take a manual commonsense approach by designating preferred payment channels for their students that they know are secure and convenient," Butterfield said. He urges institutions to communicate with payors and to work closely with processors to develop risk profiles and behavior patterns to detect fraud early on. Another emergent trend entails online money laundering involving fraudsters that steal and resell loyalty rewards points or goods. To address this issue, credit union services provider PSCU recently introduced technology that applies advanced authentication processes to validate all parties engaged in the redemption loop as an extra layer of protection for its CURewards program credit union members.
"This is a new criminal angle our members are not sensitized to, so we found they appreciated knowing that we were monitoring redemption activity for them and holding all suspicious redemptions for confirmation of legitimacy before allowing them to be fulfilled," said Liz Fee, Vice President of Payments and Deposits at Citadel Federal Credit Union in Exton, Pa.
Collaboration plays central role
Two companies long recognized for advancing the science of fraud detection and prevention are Brigherion Inc., which counts as clients Mastercard, banks, governments and other global entities; and CardinalCommerce, which serves a number of major retailers and now operates as a wholly owned subsidiary of Visa Inc. following its acquisition by Visa in December 2016.
While each delivers unique technologies to combat fraud, both agree a collaborative approach to cybersecurity is most effective. CardinalCommerce developed its core technologies to support authenticated payments, secure transactions and alternative payment brands. Brighterion evolved artificial intelligence to support real-time applications in payments, healthcare, homeland security and other security-sensitive markets.
"The big danger in fraud today is acting in a silo and not sharing and leveraging enhanced enriched data across the network, so together the card issuer and the merchant can make the best decision not only to catch fraud and stop fraud, but also to allow good orders to get through and not stop good people from buying and transacting," said Tim Sherwin, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at CardinalCommerce.
Not only can lack of sharing be detrimental to cash flow, but it can also endanger brand reputation. "We have an interface sitting on the merchant side, and we collect data from the merchant and get it over to the card issuer in real time so that the card issuer can authenticate the transaction, or say, no, this is fraud, and provide that response or knowledge back to the merchant before you've even run it through the authorization network," Sherwin said.
Because this type of risk-based authentication performs silently in the background, it delivers seamless commerce experiences in often-complex environments. "You need to have the infrastructure monitoring in place and the network of merchants driving the scale and the volume through so you can stay on top of this very chaotic and very distributed payments system where there are tens of thousands of issuers with hundreds of BINs running authentication in all different ways," Sherwin stated.
To further complicate matters, U.S. merchants have an extensive catalog of online shopping cart options, which potentially connect to over 30 major gateways, and within both components multiple versions exist. Online marketplaces offer abundant possibilities. In the past, shopping cart providers built integration for payment into gateways, but more recently many have decided it's easier for third parties to build modules that connect the shopping carts to gateways, Sherwin noted.
AI digs into fraud behaviors
Artificial intelligence (AI) in its many forms has gained prominence as a dynamic security protocol. Dr. Akli Adjaoute, founder, President and Chief Executive Officer at Brighterion, is a former university professor who holds a Ph D in AI. He is one of the pioneers behind Brighterion's patented Smart Agent technology.
"When we started, we were purely in the payments industry, working with issuers and acquirers like Worldpay, Mastercard, BNP, Deutsche Bank, JCB, Bank of America and many others," Adjaoute said. "Then we moved to cyber and homeland security." The European Commission selected Brighterion to support the Passenger Names Records project to thwart terrorist networks.
Smart Agent technology can link data for one-to-one behavioral profiling. "We create a Smart Agent for each customer," he said. "A Smart Agent is a virtual representation of a customer. Because we do that for a customer, or it can be a merchant or cardholder or family, every transaction related to you goes through your Smart Agent as an incremental use that will be added to your Smart Agent, so that we have a 360-degree view."
For cybersecurity clients, some agencies send up to 62 types of social data through Brighterion's AI system. All totaled, 10 artificial intelligence technologies, including case-based reasoning and fuzzy logic, work in combination to adaptively learn behavior and share intelligence to stop previously unknown fraud schemes in real-time.
Operating behind the scenes, Brighterion's technology is also fast. "We currently do 12,000 transactions per second with less than 3 millisecond response time," Adjaoute noted. "We're the only company that guarantees by contract 100 percent vulnerability" when companies agree to use accepted Linux boxes, which are not considered expensive.
Because its technology works with any data in any format and doesn't use predefined rules, the average customer can go live in a few weeks in most cases. "We do not use predefined rules, because they have poor detection rates; it's old technology," Adjaoute said He also pointed out that database systems are not necessarily a good choice because they don't scale well in adaptive learning situations and tend to be more expensive.
He believes the key to fraud prevention is to learn from every transaction in real time and through sequence analysis to determine that customers buying airline tickets would also be expected to purchase hotel rooms or rental cars without triggering false positives in payment systems.
With fuzzy logic, merchants are able to add more risk, which can reduce false positives by as much as 20 percent, he said. That's because it creates an allowance to look for data for smoother decisioning. For example, a purchase above $100 that would normally trigger a flag with fuzzy logic would be grouped with items priced within the same range, say $99.99, which is less abrupt when monitoring for potential fraud activity.
Another effective AI tool, constraint programming creates constraints over time associated with individual profiles, such as increased spending when a new school year begins, or on paydays or when vacationing, developing greater precision as profiles build.
Adjaoute advises clients in the market for fraud prevention technologies to try products before buying them and to test more than one product since the product they select will eventually touch a company's risk, brand, bottom line and reputation.
Insurance rises to the challenge
Faced with the persistent barrage of fraud threats, many companies are turning to cyber insurance, a budding segment for insurers. Insurance provider Lloyd's of London saw a 50 percent increase in such policies written in 2016. And the AGCS Cyber Risk Guide estimated that 90 percent of cyber policies being written today are for U.S.-based companies.
In January, Frates Insurance & Risk Management introduced a Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) insurance program for members of the Electronic Transactions Association. In describing its new breach insurance policy, Frates said it "indemnifies a portfolio of merchants for the PCI liability they face as a result of a breach." The company also provides protection against chargebacks, CNP fraud and other related coverage valued by the payments industry.
As fraudsters continue to develop new schemes to defraud legitimate businesses and their customers, the counteroffensive surges forward. Although complete protection may never be fully realized, fraud detection and response times are being accomplished at record speed. This should offer some relief to online merchants, since 1 of every 97 online transactions during the 2016 holiday season was a fraudulent attempt, according to ACI Worldwide.
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Home > Cybersecurity > Data-stealing spyware traced to Lebanon
Data-stealing spyware traced to Lebanon
January 22, 2018 Meredith Bradshaw
A security bug that has infected thousands of smartphones has been uncovered by campaign group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
Working with mobile security firm Lookout, researchers discovered that malware in fake messaging designed to look like WhatsApp and Signal had stolen gigabytes of data.
Targets included military personnel, activists, journalists and lawyers.
Researchers say they traced the malware to a Lebanese government building.
The threat, dubbed Dark Caracal by the researchers, looks as if it could come from a nation state and appears to use shared infrastructure linked to other nation-state hackers, the report said.
The malware takes advantage of known exploits and targets mainly Android phones.
Data was traced back to a server in a building belonging to the Lebanese General Security Directorate in Beirut, according to researchers.
“Based on the available evidence, it is likely that the GDGS is associated with or directly supporting the actors behind Dark Caracal,” the report said.
“People in the US, Canada, Germany, Lebanon, and France have been hit by Dark Caracal. Targets include military personnel, activists, journalists, and lawyers, and the types of stolen data range from call records and audio recordings to documents and photos,” said EFF director of cybersecurity Eva Galperin.
“This is a very large, global campaign, focused on mobile devices. Mobile is the future of spying, because phones are full of so much data about a person’s day-to-day life.”
Mike Murray, vice-president of security intelligence at Lookout said: “Dark Caracal is part of a trend we’ve seen mounting over the past year whereby traditional advanced persistent threat actors are moving toward using mobile as a primary target platform.”
In a statement published on the Lookout blog, Google said it was confident that the infected apps were not downloaded from its Play Store.
“Google has identified the apps associated with this actor, none of the apps were on the Google Play Store. Google Play Protect has been updated to protect user devices from these apps and is in the process of removing them from all affected devices.”
The researchers believe Dark Caracal has been operating since 2012 but it has been hard to track because of the diversity of seemingly unrelated espionage campaigns originating from the same domain names.
Over the years Dark Caracal’s work has been repeatedly misattributed to other cybercrime groups, the researchers said.
In November, Afghanistan moved to ban WhatsApp and Telegram as a way to stop insurgent groups from using encrypted messaging. And in December, Iran moved to restrict use of the apps after a series of anti-establishment protests.
Use of an app that can steal data would give nation states much more information than simply banning them, said Prof Alan Woodward, a cybersecurity expert at the University of Surrey.
“It is always hard to prove that a nation state is involved. During the Cold War, countries made use of mercenaries and that’s what we are seeing online now.”
He said it was unclear where the infected apps had been downloaded from.
“Google is saying that they were not downloaded from there but it is difficult to know where else they came from. It may be that people are getting suckered into something that looks like an official site. People need to be careful what they are downloading.”
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26. The Curse Of Castle McDuck 0
Episode 26: '26. The Curse Of Castle McDuck' Scrooge goes to Scotland... for some reason. Pop culture references include: Pulp Fiction, Spinal Tap, Star Wars, Eric Clapton, The Crying Game, Full House, Austin Powers, The Great Escape, Grease, The Wizard Of Oz, Mad Max, Smokey The Bear and the guy who is the spokesperson or lamb in Australia.
25. Pearl Of Wisdom 0
Join dynamic Australian husband and wife team, Michael and Sarah as they watch every single episode of the classic 1987 Disney series DuckTales and then talk about them for your auditory pleasure.
Episode 25: 'Pearl Of Wisdom' This episode of DuckTale kinda spends half of its runtime just spining it's wheel so expect tons of tangents from Michael and Sarah. The biggest surprise in this episode is that one of the bad guys share his name wit a guy they both know. If you don't know anything about The Simpsons, time to worry because Sarah can't stop quoting it.
Hey! You reading this! Pretty pretty please rate and review 'It's A Duck Blur' on iTunes. It helps other people find the show.
24. Top Duck 0
Episode 24: 'Top Duck' Sorry about the sound, we've had a malfunction. It'll be all fixed for next week. This episode is about Launchpad and his family and an experimental jet and vacum cleaners and the Beagle Boys and redemption and McDonalds toys.
Pretty pretty please rate and review 'It's A Duck Blur' on iTunes. It helps other people find the show.
23. Much Ado About Scrooge 1
Episode 23: 'Much Ado About Scrooge' This week's episode is all about Shakespeare, therefore Sarah and Michael talk about cranberry juice adverts, The Muppets Christmas Carol, Titanic, The Nutty Professor, The Music Man, Neighbours, Fraggle Rock, The Jetsons and of course, Marty Feldman.
Would you like an 'It's Duck Blur' T-shirt or other merch go to: www.zazzle.com/itsaduckblur
22. Down & Out in Duckburg 0
Episode 22: 'Down & Out in Duckburg' Scrooge looses all his money to a fox with knowledge of contract law. Sarah and Michael make up a new radio station and discover a new sign-off.
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Who likes Jessica?
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D Pope
Location: Grubville
Postby D Pope » 10 Sep 2010 13:43
She's smart, pretty, and deadly, she also comes close to being as avoidable as the Harkonnens. I understand the nessesity behind 'terrible desisions' she has to make but given all that Frank wrote about her, is her desision to give Leto a son realistic? That and her offering her life just for Paul to see what the Fremen are made of are her most human acts. The rest of the time she's conniving, manipulating, and a little egocentric. Sure, she does it all for the Atredies, and i'll say she loves Leto so she defies the BG and Paul isn't Paulett. The question about her intentions and giving birth to the KH aren't really explored, "I sensed the possibility," i'm not buying. With all that she has to do even Mohiem exhibits more likeability in the first chapter than Jessica guarding the door. The closest she comes to having a moment where she isn't acting for a paticular effect is when she's interacting with Ghanima & Leto II.
Leto II is gone for good, except for OM. The "pearl" was just that; a miniscule portion of what Leto was, and not a compressed version of the whole. The pearl that the worms have do not make them Leto, or in any way similar to him.
-Omphalos
merkin muffley
Location: War Room
Re: Who likes Jessica?
Postby merkin muffley » 10 Sep 2010 16:42
I think Jessica's flaws are part of why we love her. Sure, she probably sets events into motion that lead to the death of billions of people, but nobody's perfect. I probably wouldn't want to read Dune if everything went according to Bene Gesserit plan.
I guess I'm saying that she's a great character, and she's a great character because she's deeply flawed. Do you mean, "Would I like her if she was a real person?" Yes, she makes huge mistakes, but for very sympathetic reasons. I'd do her.
"I must admit, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor...."
That's not what I mean, your points are indisputable (except for her sympathetic reasons) but her personality makes her feel like a corporate tool. If it weren't for Paul and her dialog with the grandkids she'd have no redeeming qualities at all, she just happened in on the good guys team. Her choice to bear a son boarders on being out of character.
"Would I like her if she was a real person?"
That's what I mean, if you got the chance to talk to her, you'd never be sure why she said anything she said. I guess you could say that about anyone in Dune, maybe not the fremen, but I think it'd be worse with her.
Leto & Ghanima loved Harah & Stilgar. Ganima was sympathetic with Jessica, I think Leto didn't much care for her.
It's interesting to think about because Jessica's such an interesting character. I think she's unpredictable in a very believable, very "human" way, and I like that her character defies the BG and then goes back to their agenda in CoD.
She is a Bene Gesserit deep down, and that would make her difficult to trust. I remember when I first read Dune, at about the age of 13, and Paul realizes that his mother is contributing to the jihad and is his enemy, and I really identified with that as a squirrelly adolescent.
Jessica is definitely a morally ambiguous character who is aligned with negative things a lot of the time. It's an interesting question.
I'm sure I would like her, even if it was bad for me.
Well mate, i'm reading Dune again now, it's been far to long. I'll try to come up with some examples.
D Pope wrote: Well mate, i'm reading Dune again now, it's been far to long. I'll try to come up with some examples.
Cool. I think you could make a very strong case that Jessica is such a flawed person that she would be unlikable, and that it would be very easy for a good person to be in a position to despise her, or see her as an enemy.
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Postby Aquila ka-Hecate » 11 Sep 2010 23:05
I think I would like her.
I see her as a product of a manipulative hierarchical system, rather than manipulative in her essential self.
The last scene redeems much of what she is and could be, when she understands the amount of harm she has caused, through her son.Paul sys something like "There are no innocents anymore" and she replies" Tell that to Chani.
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Postby Shaitan » 12 Sep 2010 01:08
It's funny how despite being described in the original novel as "an ugly lump of a man" even without the horrible inkvine whip scar, every on-screen Gurney Halleck has somehow come off as ruggedly handsome and like some kind of Irish musician-warrior that Jessica could hardly help but make sweet, sweet Bene Gesserit love to in the years after the two of them return to Caladan. The inkvine scar is barely noticeable as a small, almost trivial affair because I'm sure the cost/difficulty of portraying it true to the books in a fashion that wouldn't detract from the on-screen experience was prohibitive for both the Hollywood and Syfy productions.
I've had to obsess for decades now over how I want to deliver the experience of my ideas for good science fiction (not sci-fi, for those who understand the implied difference between the two terms), and after many years working with both industries in various jobs as well as being a voracious student of all forms of creative media, I have arrived at the very clear conclusion that both Hollywood and most TV production studios would inevitably crush the soul out of anything ambitious, as it always does. Even the traditional text publishing routes are rife with BS, as I've seen discussed on these forums more than a few times.
But I digress.....we're talking about Jessica.
Who wouldn't want a hot Bene Gesserit cougar?! I found it thoroughly amusing the way that the Syfy "Children of Dune" two-book mash-up played on the sexual tension between Jessica and Farad'n Corrino as she trained him in Prana-Bindu techniques leading toward the "Weirding Way."
I just wouldn't want to have to have Muad'dib as a stepson! Paul Atreides, sure....sounds like a nice young lad. But Muad'dib? Hey man, I like a drum made of your enemy's skin as much as the next guy, but I'd rather not BE the drum, y'know?
Last edited by Shaitan on 21 Nov 2010 22:54, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby lotek » 13 Sep 2010 08:16
I think that we should remember the reason why Jessica conceived a son, and that's love for Leto I.
Like most characters in Dune Frank doesn't take a straight manicheist approach to her character, like all humans she's not perfect. (as opposed to the one sided ne'er changing dumbasses in the nudunes)
At the beginning of the series, she's a skilled BG and bound concubine, but her becoming a wild RM must change her.(see Murbella's transformation into BG finalized by the Agony. Do you think that a "wild Agony" would have the same determining effect without all the Sisterhood's influence?)
I think she struggles to balance between the demands of her training and those of her "heart"(just like Paul in that respect)
(check out the final sequence in Dune with Chani "History will call us wives.")
In fact do you think that's pride talking or love in thi quote?
Spice is the worm's gonads.
inhuien
Location: right here as in not (all) there
Postby inhuien » 13 Sep 2010 10:14
I don't think it's a prideful statement at all, iirc she's trying to comfort Chani at the the time by putting Pauls marriage into some context and prevent her being unduly harmed or aggressive towards Princess Irulan.
inhuien wrote: I don't think it's a prideful statement at all, iirc she's trying to comfort Chani at the the time by putting Pauls marriage into some context and prevent her being unduly harmed or aggressive towards Princess Irulan.
woups that was exactly my point
Must have not expressed it properly!
I think that like all destined to rule in Dune Jessica has been imbued with that noble pride(that Paul, and Leto II will fight to)
And that the Dune final statement was indeed a mark of her humanity and feelings
HarryCanyon
Postby HarryCanyon » 20 Nov 2010 17:42
One of my fave characters in the saga.
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Postby Freakzilla » 20 Nov 2010 17:53
lotek wrote: I think that we should remember the reason why Jessica conceived a son, and that's love for Leto I.
I think it's what forced her back to The Sisterhood. It's OM that defines them as BG. With it one can't be anything but.
Paul of Dune was so bad it gave me a seizure that dislocated both of my shoulders and prolapsed my anus.
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Postby Shaitan » 21 Nov 2010 22:56
Freakzilla wrote: I think it's what forced her back to The Sisterhood. It's OM that defines them as BG. With it one can't be anything but.
Agreed. Certain experiences are so intense and unique that one can't help but be transformed and brought together with others of common experience....
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Postby Kojiro » 22 Nov 2010 17:31
Yeah, I'd like her. She was a ballsy rebel for a time and in the end you're still not exactly sure where she actually stood. For that, I still like her as I have a soft spot for Machiavellian characters.
Has not religion claimed a patent on creation for all of these millennia?
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from Muad'dib Speaks
georgiedenbro
Postby georgiedenbro » 04 Sep 2014 13:14
Jessica and Leto are the most human characters in Dune, I think. Their decision-making was strategic, but their motivation was love. Jessica gave Leto a son out of love, and later risked everything time and time again to give Paul a chance to succeed; not for a cause, not for the BG, not for herself - for love of her son. That they operated through love and loyalty as a guiding force is why the Atreides had so much potential to be a major force. Even Paul, whose perspective we mainly have in Dune, seemed less like his father than did Jessica; more of a tool than a decision-maker. Paul did what he had to, never what he wanted to.
How could I accept that Jessica was flawed in the course of Dune? She was able to break out of the habit trained into her by the BG and made a living, vital decision of her own. Is this not the very kind of freedom that Leto II eventually suffered so long to make possible? He wanted no one to ever be subjected to universal rule again, either to be vulnerable to death en masse, or enslavement en masse. Each person to make his own destiny, not to have it chosen by others.
When the mentality of the day was to look backward for wisdom (the BG) or to look forward (the Guild), it is a good sign of life that someone like Jessica could come out of this system and have the wherewithal to exist in present reality and to give it its due respect. It's probably Leto who made it possible, who drew this out of her, but still I think that Jessica is a remarkable woman, aside from her various specific talents. From what we know, having a strong respect for the present is a BG tenet, and yet they are blocked from doing this fully by their OM, their plans, and their centralized command structure. I think Jessica was an exemplar of what a BG should have been; but her way precludes the ability to so rigidly control fate! The question to be asked is - should the BG have been more in line with their own beliefs about living, or more clear about being long-term planners? Leto II seemed to believe the latter, that they should be less 'like themselves' and more like him, to take up his cause. I guess it all boils down to whether the present is to be sacrificed for the future, or whether the present should take precedence and let the future do what it will. Jessica chose the present, and it's remarkable that Frank could frame it in such a way as to make this choice seem revolutionary
"um-m-m-ah-h-h-hm-m-m-m!"
I always meat to write more about this, never did...but-
She broke with the BG and had a son-out of love- but still allowed them to potentially pass a death sentence
on Paul in a test that isn't usually administered to men. That takes a different kind of love. Beneath it all,
she has no problem sitting in judgement on her family, less than none for Atreides vassles.
All I meant was that her motivation is questionable because she says and does what will get her through the
moment, with a goal in mind. No lie is too big to tell when you've a greater goal... self preservation, family
honor, and she's really not that cool/smart about it either. Why else side with the BG against Leto II ?
Except for the instances I noted, at the beginning, every facet of her existence was bent toward some
calculated manipulation. During the interview with Mapes she even asks herself why she's bragging (performing for).
When talking to Ghanima, she realizes the only way to get what she wants is to stop with the crap... In other
words, finding herself in a situation she can't fake, she's forced to drop all defenses and hope her grand daughter
agrees with her goal, all the while planning to send Leto on the worm trip. No,mate. She's so bound up in herself
who's to say that she chose to have Paul out of love for her Duke. Likely, she thought without a male heir, she'd
get dumped.
"The hate comes from pains I must never forget, the love..." That's just the basic fact Mohiam says, if I could
finish Jessicas sentence, "it's to get what I want."
Postby Freakzilla » 04 Sep 2014 16:06
Wow, y'all are harsh! I think she was just hardcore BG. She may have had Paul out of selfish motivation to preserver her Lady status, but keep in mind that she was an adept of the MP, trained to manipulate entire peoples. That probably doesn't wear off after a few years.
I don't exactly know what arrangement the BG have with nobles who take from among them as concubines, but I don't think the males have the choice about whether to have sons or daughters, and I suspect they can't just threaten to ship the concubines back to get control over them. That's sort of the whole point - if a duke could just blackmail or threaten the concubine to make her comply then the whole BG breeding system wouldn't work.
That said I suppose I take it from the tone of Jessica's thoughts and from her comments that she had no ulterior motive in having Paul. She said she suspected Paul might be the KH, but I think this was her hoping the BG plan might work after all despite her betrayal. I'm sure there was some vanity in wanting to be the mother of the KH, but still I believe her main motive was love of Leto.
As far as the rest goes, I can't agree that she was anything short of masterful in how she handled the events on Dune. As Freak said, once she became a RM everything changed for her, and the motives behind her behavior would be totally new. I think this is why she seems so different in CoD compared with the first half of Dune.
Things changed, method not motive.
Did her instructions regarding Letos education came from a 'For The Empire' mindset
or simple payback justified by high ideals?
Just think about how baffled & envious she is when Paul offers up the coin that buys
the loyalty of Kynes. She labels it naive because honesty is so far from her being that
the concept has no meaning for her.
In short, the only difference I see in Jessica, Dune/CoD, is the resources she can play.
To be fair, she IS a Harkonnen.
Freakzilla wrote: To be fair, she IS a Harkonnen.
Cpt. Aramsham
Postby Cpt. Aramsham » 06 Sep 2014 13:46
D Pope wrote: Just think about how baffled & envious she is when Paul offers up the coin that buys
That's a pretty tendentious reading:
"It could be a fault in their education," Paul said. "You say you're not for sale, but I believe I've the coin you'll accept. For your loyalty I offer my loyalty to you . . . totally."
My son has the Atreides sincerity, Jessica thought. He has that tremendous, almost naive honor--and what a powerful force that truly is.
She saw that Paul's words had shaken Kynes.
"When I say totally," Paul said, "I mean without reservation. I would give my life for you."
"Sire!" Kynes said, and the word was torn from him, but Jessica saw that he was not now speaking to a boy of fifteen, but to a man, to a superior. Now Kynes meant the word.
In this moment he'd give his life for Paul, she thought. How do the Atreides accomplish this thing so quickly, so easily?
Rather than "baffled" and "envious", I would say she's "impressed" and "admiring". To say she doesn't understand honesty is... without basis in the text. (On the contrary, she's too trusting of Dr. Yueh, because she places such immense faith in the essential honesty of the Atreides retainers.)
On the other hand, it's simplistic to say Paul is being "honest" here. (I'm reminded of the quote about politics: "The most important quality for success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made.") Yes, he means what he says, but his offer is also calculated: he has a pretty good idea (or instinct for) what the outcome is going to be, and that it will be in his favor. Just as when he offers his life to Thufir at the end of the book. And if Kynes had lived, do any of us doubt that "loyalty" would be on Paul's terms, interpreted to suit his ambitions?
He was warrior and mystic, ogre and saint, the fox and the innocent, chivalrous,
ruthless, less than a god, more than a man. There is no measuring Muad'Dib's
motives by ordinary standards. In the moment of his triumph, he saw the death
prepared for him, yet he accepted the treachery. Can you say he did this out of
a sense of justice? Whose justice, then? Remember, we speak now of the Muad'Dib
who ordered battle drums made from his enemies' skins, the Muad'Dib who denied
the conventions of his ducal past with a wave of the hand, saying merely: "I am
the Kwisatz Haderach. That is reason enough."
-from "Arrakis Awakening" by the Princess Irulan
Mr. Melange
Location: Certainly not Arrakis.
Postby Mr. Melange » 06 Sep 2014 15:46
It seems that maybe you are vilifying the BG too much. Yeah they weren't really doing the BEST job manipulating mankind for the better, but I'de like to believe they were trying. If you buy that, its entirely possible for Jessica to have been an honest and loving person at times, despite a thought process that would appear to us as calculating.
Also in HoD, it was implied that love was only then considered an extremely dangerous practice for a BG. They called it the "Jessica Example" or something, but being many of the BG have the Atreides genes, they would have the memories of Jessica's motivations for having a son.
"Imagine being told that the forging of the ring was really not a plan of Saurons, he just helped - and it was really for the good, because it was needed to defeat these mega-spiders which were somehow related to Shelob (in a way inconsistent with the Silmarillion)...
Meanwhile, a hobbit named Norma becomes a valar because she dies horribly due to a spider-bite, returns to Middle Earth and walks around a bit, inventing everything interesting you ever hear of in LoTR."
-Lundse
How do the Atreides accomplish this thing so quickly, so easily?
This is Jessicas internal question that set me off, so to speak. I can totally see a manipulative
personality coveting the answer for self serving reasons. And, I completely agree with your
assessment of Pauls motivation (for lack of a better word) for playing this gambit. We, as
readers, can get our head around why it worked so why does Jessica have such a hard time?
Yeah they weren't really doing the BEST job manipulating mankind for the better, but I'de like to believe they were trying.
I think Letos message to the future in the Tabr Hoard sums up my thoughts on BG motivation
during the time of the Prophet, they lacked Noble Purpose! (implying something self-serving
about their cause) Then again, he could just be screwing with their heads, I once looked
straight up and flipped off the sky hoping to get a rise out of an unknown satellite image analyst.
I'll admit that I may be reading my own prejudice into the text but I would like to know if
you can see my point. Other memory from Heretics & Chapterhouse' time makes a strong
argument against mine but I could (weakly) point out that they may simply be in the same
boat. I guess I just want to know that I'm not completely off base, remember that for the
first few years after reading Dune, the one thing I couldn't stop thinking about was how these
whims of the powerful affected the commoners.
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Every beat, every line, every word, every time
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café career magazine
Careers Work in Curriculum
uploaded 20th February 2008
Bill Law
There were two keynote speakers at the recent Victoria Careers Education Conference. Bill was pleased to share the platform with Gideon Arulmani, Director of the Promise Foundation - based in Bangalore. Both Gideon and Bill argue for a rethink of how we attract interested attention to our work - in the media, from policy and among our clients and students.
Gideon urges that we take more sensitive account of ‘pride and prejudice’ in the developing-world - and among its people facing the impact of global economics.
Bill argues for an appreciation of how global technologies are changing the way all people now learn for career – both in the developing world and in the so-called developed world.
Bill takes this line of argument to a radical re-think on what we need to do in curriculum.
go straight to Gideon’s published work on Pride and Prejudice
go straight to the monograph on which Bill's lecture is based
big issues for work-life
Work-life is not just about recruitment but belonging, not just performance but commitment, not just for me but for others I care for. Ideas of ‘work’, ‘career’ and ‘enterprise’ are bigger than we always find time to appreciate.
Bigger? Well, start with a look as these work-life stories for Australia.
the apprentice - performance and experience
A group of management trainees is set a simulated task of getting a boat across a river. Candidates know themselves to be in competition, with performance criteria on which they will each be scored. But the boat is entirely unmanageable – they can find no solution. And they blame each other for their failure.
A second group knows about boats and quickly realises that this is not going to work - there is so solution. They find the boat funny – and are reduced to back-slapping uncontrollable laughter.
Who gets hired and fired? The first group are from the families of European immigrants – scripted for achievement and stressed out. The second comes from the indigenous population – and they‘ve seen enough to know when they’ve been had.
Tick-box performance and real-life experience – getting them together is a big work-life issue.
'tick-box performance and real-life experience – getting them together is a big work-life issue'
the director - meaning and technology
A creative director is working on an early twentieth-century story. The director values and expects innovative impact above everything – all other bets are off. The drive is to find out what up-to-the-minute technology can deliver - and deliver it. The result is unruly - but lively.
A few years earlier the same director re-developed a classical work. It is faithful to the original conception, making only one change: the action is moved from sixteenth-century Verona to twentieth-century Los Angeles.
Should either of these Baz Luhrmann films be one you see before you die? - Moulin Rouge or Rome and Juliet. The earlier Romeo values engagement, and is thoughtfully disturbing. The later Moulin values in-your-face impact - impossible to ignore.
Commitment-to-meaning morphed into a command-of-technology – big issue for work-life.
'commitment-to-meaning made over to command-of-technology – big issue for work-life'
the activist – failed expectations and new commitments
A twenty-one year-old accepts the help of his family in getting a well-paid factory job. Thirty years later he is diagnosed with a terminal lung condition, directly attributable to that work. He is forced to retire early.
His remaining years are given to fighting for the rights of his workmates in that factory. It is a family matter, both brothers are also seriously ill. He works for them all, voluntarily, until the day he dies.
When did Bernie Banton’s career end? His life ends in Sydney in December. He goes knowing that his former employer has set aside $4 billion for more than a hundred workmates and their families.
Taking damage and realising the commitment – no bigger work-life issue.
'damage and commitment – no bigger work-life issue'
Work stories worth telling speak of stress and pleasure, getting a buzz and finding a meaning, taking damage and doing something about it. They raise issues of trust and deference. They tell of people struggling with work-life balance. They show our clients becoming more-and-more wary about taking on work that harms them, their families, their communities and the environment. More wary and increasingly savvy.
Work once formed a big part of our sense of personal identity. But identity is as likely, now, to be formed around sporting, shopping, gaming and on-line preferences. And, for some, identity is formed by the commitments a person feels driven to take up - driven by social. political, environmental, ethnic and religious allegiances.
Work and identity are going through some serious re-positioning in people’s lives.
'work-life balance: people more wary about taking on work that harms - more wary and more savvy'
out of what box?
Careers workers know about this, and work with it. But, things being as they are, we work with it in a piecemeal, situation-by-situation way. Practice has always been more quickly adaptable than theory - it takes a while for thinking to catch up with experience.
But, also, maybe we get boxed in by a too-familiar mind-set - limited assumptions? narrow beliefs? habits-of-mind? Could that happen in our work? And, if it could, how would we know?
Try these seven issues for contemporary careers work. Nobody would agree wholly with the left or right on the issues set out. And you don’t have to abandon the one in order to embrace the other. Like life, the scales are for shading in possibilities rather ticking off positions.
But how far to left and right should you colour in? How much of the possibilities should we be trying to cover? Colour in as much as you feel is possible and good - and share it with a colleague.
'limited assumptions? narrow beliefs? habits-of-mind? - could that happen to us and, how would we know?'
in the box?
how much should we cover?
out of the box?
'life is for colouring in, not ticking off'
our general social-and-economic impact
specific diagnoses of what we do well and less well
success criteria
work-life employability
life-wide well-being
significant influence
central policy expectations
local social-and-economic needs
client learning
impartial and up-to-date information
life-long learning-to-learn
qualified expertise
informal experience
individual fulfillment
response to, with and for other people
setting for our action
information advice and guidance
active-learning curriculum
Contemporary careers work increasingly means working with both the excluded and the competitive, both host and guest communities, both stressed-out and creative, depressed and unruly - and, at times, both damaged lives and angry people.
People are changing the way they manage those pressures, issues and conflicts. What they know comes from more sources, is exchanged and checked out in more ways, and takes on board more influences. There is growing belief in the value of everyday experience and diminishing belief in exclusive claims to expert authority. Including ours.
It is not that what we have been thinking is not useful, or that what we have been doing is not necessary. It is that what we have been offering is no longer sufficient - certainly not for those in serious need. And that is now most people.
Because people are changing the way they manage their careers, we are changing the way we help them. And those changes need to be supported by changed thinking.
'as people change the way they manage their careers, we change the way we help them - and that needs changed thinking'
getting to work on the national curriculum
We have clients and students now who will work into the twenty-second century. They need to be ready for anything. The biggest challenge to how we help them with that is what we do about curriculum.
Contemporary careers work needs a curriculum which enables people to learn for action which is fulfilling and sustainable. It takes time to build from what they know to what they need to know. We can most help by enabling them to interrogate what they find. And they need to do that for both what they find in informal experience and what they get from us.
It means seeing students in rounder terms than candidates for selection. And in deeper terms than customers to be pleased. They must become partners in learning - their own researchers, theorists and biographers. We succeed when they take sustainable control of their own stories.
Most of all this is for people fired-up for learning. There has never been a time when people have more needed to find out what is going on, and to work out what to do about it. That’s what we do.
But we can’t do it with tick-box schedules for cut-and-paste learning.
'in rounder terms than candidates for selection, and deeper terms than customers to be pleased, they are our partners - taking control of their own stories'
You are in the magazine section of
The Career-learning Café
www.hihohiho.com
download a monograph pdf setting out these ideas in more detail, backed up with technical panels, and fully referenced.
have your say on 'Careers Education Out of the Box' - use the Café's feedback form
tell a colleague: e-mail the url - www.hihohiho.com/magazine/features/cafbox.html
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Jason Ekstrand's Graphics Blog
Transform feedback is terrible, so why are we doing it?
In the latest Vulkan spec update from Khronos (version 1.1.88), there's a new extension called VK_EXT_transform_feedback. Some of you might be thinking, "Finally! Why'd it take them so long to add this obviously useful feature? It should have been there on day 1." The answer to that question is that transform feedback (or streamout in D3D lingo) is a terrible feature that we all regret putting into OpenGL and OpenGL ES and we didn't want that baggage in Vulkan.
Why is transform feedback terrible?
Transform feedback didn't start off terrible. When it was first added to OpenGL in 2006, it provided some very useful functionality. You could now take the result of your geometry pipeline and use for whatever you wanted. You could read it from the CPU and feed it back into your physics engine or you could re-use it directly on the GPU and feed it back into another draw call. In some ways, this was OpenGL's first form of compute shaders. Since the only other way to get data out of shaders prior to transform feedback was glReadPixels and friends, it was a pretty neat feature.
The real difficulty with transform feedback is a subtle requirement that isn't explicitly stated anywhere in the spec that the data land in the transform feedback buffer in the same order as the input data. The OpenGL and Vulkan graphics pipelines are specified in terms of a theoretical pipeline which is executed one primitive at a time. Even though a modern GPU has thousands of shader cores all executing in parallel and potentially out-of-order, the end result has to be as if they executed serially. This is very important for things such as blending and depth/stencil testing because those calculations are potentially non-commutative and you can't get consistent results without controlling the order in which those calculations occur. The reality, however, is that GPUs don't have accomplish this by processing the primitives in-order; the only real requirement is that they process the blending operations in-order on a per-pixel basis. So, while on one part of the image, the GPU is blending primitive 17, it may be blending primitive 182 in some other part of the image.
With transform feedback, you have a similar ordering requirement. Without this requirement the feature would be almost useless since you wouldn't be able to match input data to output data. However, this requirement is also the feature's Achilles' heel. While the serialization required for blending only occurs at the very end and happens on a per-pixel basis, the serialization required for transform feedback happens much earlier in the pipeline and serializes across the entire draw call and not just per-pixel. In 2006, when the feature was first added to OpenGL, GPUs still had lots of fixed-function hardware and very few shader cores. On modern GPUs with thousands of shaders in-flight at any given time, the primitive ordering requirement becomes much more painful.
You may be thinking, "What's the big deal? You know the order the data came in, can't you just write out-of-order but in the right spot in the buffer?" If only life were that easy... With a simple pipeline containing only a vertex shader, yes, you can do that. However, transform feedback also has to interact with geometry and tessellation shaders which produce an unknown number of primitives. Since transform feedback is specified using OpenGL's theoretical serial execution model, that means that you first get all the primitives resulting from input primitive 0 followed by all the primitives resulting from input primitive 1, followed by 2, etc. Because you have no idea up-front how many output primitives will be produced from any given input primitive until the entire pipeline has been run, you really do have to wait until the last shader stage for primitive 41 has been executed before you know where to put the data resulting from primitive 42. Most desktop GPU vendors are carrying special hardware just to sort all this out without running the entire pipeline serially.
There's a second issue that has arisen since 2006 which is also somewhat non-obvious: the rise of tiled architectures. Tiling GPU architectures have been around for a long time but in 2006, tiling had fallen out of favor and all three of the GPU vendors implementing OpenGL were immediate-mode renderers. On a tiled architecture, you frequently run part of the vertex pipeline up-front to perform the binning step and then re-run the pipeline a second time per-tile to actually generate all the information needed by the fragment shader. This means that the vertex shader may get run multiple times for any particular vertex. It may sound crazy to do duplicate work like that but it does end up being more efficient on those architectures and it's allowed because the vertex shader doesn't have any side-effects and the only thing it does is dump data into the fragment shader. The moment transform feedback is enabled, all that goes out the window because you have to process all the primitives in full (can't drop any output) and in order. This leads to a significant performance drop because they can no longer play all their binning games and keep that data on-chip. It's worth noting that tiling architectures do run into similar issues without transform feedback if you enable a geometry or tessellation shader but transform feedback certainly isn't helping.
To sum it all up, transform feedback isn't as great as it looks on the surface. In the modern world, we have compute shaders which can do basically everything that people actually need transform feedback to do. Want to transform some geometry and feed back into your physics engine? Use a compute shader. Want to compute some geometry for use in a future draw call? Use a compute shader. There isn't nearly as much need for transform feedback now as there was then. Transform feedback does provide one bit of functionality over compute shaders which is that you can generate an arbitrary amount of output data from a single piece of input data and it's guaranteed to be in-order. However, that feature isn't nearly as useful as it sounds because you can't figure out where that piece of data is in the output stream without starting at the beginning and adding up all the geometry shader outputs.
In light of the fact that transform feedback is painful to implement, comes at a significant performance cost on some architectures, and doesn't provide significant functionality over compute shaders, we decided not to put it in Vulkan. This is a decision I supported then and I still support now. It should be considered legacy functionality and not used in new software.
So why are we implementing it?
Hopefully, the last section convinced you that transform feedback is a terrible legacy feature and doesn't belong in a modern graphics API. The question then naturally arises, "Why are we adding it now?"
The answer is API translation. Over the course of the last year, many projects have arisen which attempt to translate other graphics APIs to Vulkan: DXVK, VKD3D, ANGLE, Zink, and GLOVE just to name a few. One thing that's common among all of them is that the API which they are attempting to translate has some form of transform feedback. There are also tools such as RenderDoc that use transform feedback to capture the result of the geometry pipeline for debugging purposes.
For simple geometry pipelines containing only vertex shaders or where you can statically determine the number of primitives produced by the geometry shader, there are other options. If the Vulkan implementation supports vertexPipelineStoresAndAtomics feature, you can simply add SSBO writes to the last shader stage and compute the offset in the buffer to write based on gl_VertexId or gl_PrimitiveId. If the implementation does not support SSBO writes from vertex and geometry shaders, you can still fairly easily translate it into a compute shader at fairly little cost. For the more complex geometry and tessellation shader cases, however, the ordering guarantees come into play and cause significant headaches.
Initially, our answer to these complex use-cases was the same as our answer to new application developers: "Use compute shaders." While compute shaders are a better fit for most applications, taking a entire geometry pipeline which has already been described in terms of vertex, tessellation, and geometry shaders and translating that into a compute shader is a giant pain. Such a translation is also likely to be significantly slower than what the GPU's dedicated hardware can do. If we were only looking at one or two translation layers and we didn't care about performance, that would likely still be the answer. However, with people wanting to run D3D games at full frame-rate on Vulkan via layers like DXVK and VKD3D, that's not really a good answer.
In the end, then, we decided that the functionality was needed badly enough that we begrudgingly drafted the extension and accepted the burden of supporting the legacy functionality. As is explicitly stated in the extension text, the intention is that VK_EXT_transform_feedback will likely never become core Vulkan functionality that new applications (or even Vulkan ports of old ones) should find some other way to transform geometry on the GPU. However, for those cases where it really is needed, the functionality is now there.
As someone using DXVK on Linux, thank you for this concession. Your work is much appreciated and this was very good reading even for someone with no background in graphics APIs.
Thank you for looking at the situation ideally and being willing to do the "practicle" thing.
Practicality is very important and the net effect is no doubt that players will benefit and be very happy.
Francis October 14, 2018 at 5:42 PM
Thank you for documenting your insight into this topic.
Ángel November 24, 2018 at 7:59 AM
this is very complete and explained
Optimizing DXVK apps
Theme images by Matt Vince
Jason Ekstrand
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March junk drawer
Welcome to the junk drawer, part of a series of monthly posts in which I dump all the stuff that I couldn't develop into full blog posts this month...
---snip---
Two step, member of CSM6 and now CSM7, has written an interesting little piece about the amounts of ISK entering and leaving the EVE economy. His information is based on a lot of projections of data provided by CCP Diagoras in his frequent "stat tweets". For instance, in several cases, he tweeted the amount of ISK that entered the economy in a single day of rat bounties, for instance. Two step then projected that figure to a full month. As a result, the figures can't be regarded as anything but very raw estimates. Interesting nonetheless, though!
It was also kind of interesting to me how CCP got their thunder stolen when someone pulled the models for the new missile launchers off Sisi and then made a Youtube video of them. In particular, the missile launcher models have "reload" animations, something the turret models don't have that I've ever noticed. Kind of makes you wonder if reload animations will be added to the turret models...
As I've already said, the team that developed the new missile launcher models did an incredible job, and should feel very proud of themselves.
Incidentally, I really like the new bomber models, too. They're nice work done in a very short period of time. The bombers had to be changed to fit the new bomb launcher model (which is unrefined awesome). When I saw the unauthorized preview of the bomb launcher on Youtube, the first thing that occurred to me was "how are they going to fit all those interior details on the Hound?" (which famously has absolutely nowhere to hide its ammunition and cargo, much less interior details). The Nemesis didn't occur to me since I've never flown one, but it has the same problem.
The art team is going to have to work hard to make those torpedo launchers not look ridiculous on the bombers. We'll see how they do.
What happened with Mittens wasn't the only controversial event that happened at Fanfest. CCP is keeping it rather quiet, but apparently there were problems with the "Sisters of EVE" tour this year. One of my alliance-mates came back with a tale of an over-turned four-wheeler and some of the people on this tour having to be checked out at the local hospital... I hope everyone is OK!
In addition, word also came out during Fanfest that CCP Dropbear was let go. This one turns out to be a false rumor: Dropbear voluntarily quit for personal reasons, and it happened well before Fanfest. The responsibility for in-game live events is passing to CCP Goliath. Hopefully we'll have more of these very soon!
Three more CSM items that don't really rate their own posts.
I'll have more to say about this in two posts over the next day or two, but Seleene, Two step, Trebor Daehdoow, and The Mittani appeared on EVE Radio yesterday to talk about the Alliance Panel debacle and its aftermath. The part of this story that doesn't deserve its own post is that what remains of the CSM had a long discussion with CCP Xhagen this week, where several things were decided:
CSM7 will start with 13 people. Korvin will not get the 14th seat; and,
there will not be a revote, nor will there be any extraordinary measures taken regarding redistributing Mittens's 10,000+ votes; and finally,
who the CSM chair will be was apparently decided.
It was made very clear that this last point is under NDA until it's announced by CCP (possibly on Monday). Trebor mentioned that the solution "is consistent with the White Paper and with past precedent." That's not an exact quote, but it's very close.
Second, almost forgotten in Mittens's participation in the Alliance Panel was his participation in the CSM Panel. Something that happened during the panel Q&A that I found very amusing was that one of the questioners stepped up, and while looking straight at Mittens, bemoaned the fact that the he believes the same people get elected year after year after year. Mittens had to gently explain to him that he'd only been on the CSM for one term. The response: "Really?" Hee!
Kind of ironic, in retrospect.
Third and finally, the CSM Panel video isn't up on Youtube yet, but when it does go up, watch it. While you're doing so, you'll note that the director alternates between close-ups of the person answering a question, and wide shots of the entire CSM that was present. When things go to a wide shot, ignore the person answering the question and check out the body language of the other CSM members. It's really quite enlightening. Example: pay attention to the rest of the CSM when Meissa Anunthiel answers the question about wormhole stabilizers.
A quickie: I went to fill in a bug report and I could not for the life of me find the bug report web page in the new EVE Online website (and I tried). I ended up Google searching "EVE Online bug report" to find it. For reference, here it is:
http://bugs.eveonline.com/
Should be easy to remember.
Finally, a really interesting one that doesn't quite merit its own blog post here, mostly because I wasn't involved. Still, I find it fascinating.
One of the tricks that POSs can do is tell you their exact distance in space from other POSs owned by the same corp. The purpose to this functionality is to make building jump bridges easier. Jump bridges have a range of 5 light-years and as a result, the functionality was included in the POS information so that you can tell if the two POSs you're thinking about linking are close enough. These days, I suspect most people just use the dotlan EVE maps to design their jump bridge chains.
But the functionality exists in-game, and that's nice too.
Some very smart people decided to use this functionality to try and determine how far wormhole systems are from each other, and from known space. This is something they called Project Compass and it was very, very clever! It's been known for quite a while now that w-space systems tend to cluster, both with each other, and with common systems in k-space. But this was the first attempt to try to "map the network."
CCP caught word of what they were doing and removed the functionality of mapping distance from w-space POSs in Crucible 1.5, so Project Compass had to be shut down. I think Poetic Stanziel probably has the best overall write up of the project and its aftermath.
Why did CCP remove this functionality? There are all kinds of theories from simple "dickish behavior" to more complex "they want to retain the mystery of w-space." Certainly, nobody from CCP has said anything about this. One of my alliance-mates brought up a very interesting theory. Don't know if it's original or not, but he surmises that wormholes don't take you to another place, they take you to another time. Specifically, wormholes take you to the past, before the arrival of the first human colonists to New Eden. Therefore, CCP took out the POS distance functionality because the distance calculations are not possible: the two POSs exist in different timelines!
He brings up a lot of lore to back this theory up, and frankly, I don't know enough about the lore myself to know whether this theory holds any water or not. Sure is an interesting possibility, though!
And that's it, junk drawer is yet again empty. :-)
Posted by Jester at 10:48 PM 21 comments:
Labels: Beta, CCP, CSM7, EVE Blogs, EVE Online, Jump Mechanics, Junk Drawer, Meta
Kill of the Week: Polish the sneaker
It takes a lot to get thrown out of TEST Alliance, but this pilot apparently managed it:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=12843846
Every pilot in New Eden has a different idea about how much ISK you should spend on fitting out a hull after you've assembled it. I've seen really expensive interceptors lined with faction and dead-space gear. I've seen bargain-fit Machariels. Still, if you were to distill all of these choices down to an average, I suspect you'd find that most EVE players agree that you should spend about as much to fit a ship as it cost you to buy it.
Did you spend 150 million on a Guardian, or 200 million on an Abaddon? Then pump some money into faction hardeners and Tech2 rigs. Did you plop down 350 million ISK for a Tengu hull and subsystems? Then sure, a trio of Caldari Navy Ballistic Control Systems are a good call. Bhaalgorn leave your wallet a billion ISK lighter? Then pimp that fit out some because that's a hull that deserves it. On the flip-side, though, you don't go nuts covering a Tech1 cruiser in all Tech2 hardware; it probably won't live long enough to enjoy it.
And you don't fit 400 million ISK in hardware to a 40 million ISK Drake. Just... just don't.
Remember, all that high-end hardware works on base percentages. And if your base percentages aren't all that good, then multiplying them by a few more percent is simply not worth the ISK... or the risk of loss. In this case, 75 million ISK purchased another whole 1000 effective hit points. Or about a fifth of second (really!) under that gank squad's DPS. And that 300 million ISK in faction BCSs gained this pilot a whole 20 DPS... 80 fewer DPS than what he would have gained from firing Tech2 missiles using plain old Tech2 BCSs instead.
No matter how hard you try, you can't polish a sneaker. Save the expensive hardware for a higher end ship.
Ten minutes after losing this ship, this pilot was kicked out of his corp. There are limits to what even the most "no shits were given" alliances in EVE will accept. ;-)
Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't mention this bit of idiocy:
This is an Erebus. It uses hybrids. Hybrids like Magnetic Field Stabilizers. If you don't know this, then you have no business with a titan. Donate it to me. ;-)
Labels: EVE Online, In-game Money, KOTW, PvP
Comment of the Week: Busy week
There have been 280 comments written on the blog so far this week, by far a record. Thank you to everyone that's written for your thoughts! I'm not interested in starting a forum around here, but sometimes it feels like I have one already, heh. ;-)
I try to read every word of every comment, and I respond to many of them. Comments are moderated here because I receive enough hits on the blog that I'm a constant target for comment spam. Other than the spam, I've only not published two comments. One was a one word comment with no value. The other was a direct private message to me. Everything else gets published, even if the comment calls me names or tells me I'm flat out stupid. ;-) Some comments get published faster than others, and for that I apologize. I try to get comments published every couple of hours if I'm awake, and from time to time, I miss valid comments that get flagged by the spam filter and there's a longer delay on those.(1)
Anyway, in a very busy week for comments, I liked this one the best. In my "Hats" post, I essentially went to bat for Mittens and argued why he shouldn't be removed from CSM7. This Anonymous comment gave the most succinct reasoning why the commenter felt CCP's actions were correct:
The point is that [Mittens] should not have been discussing RL suicide in game, at all. There was no way for him to know, at the time, if the player in question was or was not actually suicidal. [Mittens] should have reported the player to a CCP GM and discontinued the in game convo. [Mittens] is simply not qualified to make such a judgement call, esp. when drunk.
And, he certainly should not have exacerbated his mistake by encouraging this sort of behavior from other players in a public forum.
Plain and simple, [Mittens] violated the EULA/TOS - twice, if you want to be technical about it (the first time in game, and the second time at the Alliance Panel). He was stupid and he got called on it.
[Mittens] was just lucky that the player in question was *not* suicidal, or he might be under criminal investigation now, for real.
Role-playing is not an excuse. Being drunk out of your skull is not an excuse. CCP was rather lenient; a court of law would have been much less so.
And yeah, I have to admit that's a really good way of putting it, and makes a quite valid counter-argument. The same commenter, in another comment, made it clear that:
What he did was not only "morally reprehensible" but also illegal in many countries represented in the player base. Using communication technology to harass, offend, bully, gets people jail sentences. A student jailed last week for 2 months for a drunken rant on twitter in the UK for instance.
Yeah, that too. Thanks for your comments!
(1) I still haven't figured out how the spam filter works, or why it flags the comments that it does.
Posted by Jester at 8:25 AM 22 comments:
Labels: CCP, COTW, CSM7, EVE Online
Washing lettuce
Like a lot of GenX EVE players, two of the first multi-player games that I played seriously were StarCraft (released in 1998) and Homeworld (released the following year), a space RTS very similar in its way to EVE. One of my favorite tactics in both games was related.
In Homeworld, I liked to rely for home defense on a unit called the Attack Bomber. The bomber was thin-skinned and slow, but had a heavy forward weapon that was quite good against enemy capital ships, and it was cheap to build. I'd devote my cheap bombers to taking out ridiculously expensive enemy Heavy Cruisers, which were the biggest units in that game. In StarCraft, when playing Zerg facing Protoss opponents, I would nearly always devote about 10% of my economy exclusively to the production of Scourges, a one-use anti-air bomb that was quite good against Protoss Carriers. I'd place cheap little blobs of them behind my lines, each blob the exact number needed to take out one Carrier, plus one for insurance. Sooner or later, I knew I'd need them.
Dear Heaven, did these tactics get me yelled at.
That said, the thing about both of these units is that they're essentially defensive.(1) There's no real offensive doctrine around using a Homeworld Attack Bomber or a StarCraft Scourge. Try it, and you'll find they're no better than cannon fodder and aren't going to kill much of anything. So, while they're cheap, they're essentially one-trick ponies. Didn't matter to my opponents, though, because I was using a mass of cheap quick-to-build units to take out a big, expensive, time-consuming-to-build unit. That was obviously clearly unfair.
Which brings me to the last point I wanted to make this week about titans.
There's a fun little conversation in the movie Coming to America. In this flick, a prince of a fictional wealthy African country, played by Eddie Murphy, travels to the U.S. For his own reasons, he wants to remain incognito. He hides his identity and goes to work at a fast food place. While mopping the floor there, he has a conversation with Maurice, another employee of the fast food place:
Maurice: Hey, I started out mopping the floor just like you guys. But now... now, I'm washing lettuce. Soon I'll be on fries; then the grill. And pretty soon, I'll make assistant manager, and that's when the big bucks start rolling in.
The hidden irony of this line of dialogue is that the person it's being spoken to could buy the entire restaurant many times over. But he feigns being interested, and casually mocks Maurice for his goals without obviously appearing to do so.
On the titan topic, I'm feeling increasingly like Maurice, busy washing lettuce. I'm obviously just really bad at this game. ;-) Seleene said in the Voice from the Void podcast that I mentioned yesterday, "I lost a Titan to Russians. But then again, who hasn't? That's something everyone needs to check off when they play EVE." The statement has a remarkably Marie Antoinette feel to it, and to be fair to Seleene, he nearly immediately realized it and back-pedaled.
But Elise Randolph, on the show with him, makes no such distinctions... has no such concerns. Later in the pod-cast, he's casually chatting about how EVE players facing enemy titans can counter them. He lists various possibilities, wrapping up with fleets of Tengus, then says, "I guess Tengus are a bit expensive, but alliances are rich these days."
Er. OK? Which alliance is passing out free Tengus, please?
But if you have a thought about killing titans with those Tengus, forget about it. Elise lists all of these "counters", then clarifies that you can counter Titans with sub-caps... but you can't actually kill them or make them go away. But you can neutralize them while you try and kill their sub-cap support fleet, so there's that.
These are two of the voting members of CSM7.
It comes down to risk. Seleene doesn't come right out and say he feels the same way in the podcast, but he does. When I specifically asked during the CSM campaigning "should fleets of Rifters be able to tackle titans?", his answer was:
"No. Because of No."
Keep that in mind, because that's why the "high warp strength" proposals that you see bandied about to replace super-cap mid-slot e-war immunity will never get anywhere. If you don't own a titan, a "fleet of a thousand Rifters" catching, tackling, and holding down a titan sounds awesome. It sounds like a news story that would make the gaming news websites and be something that EVE players would talk about and dream about happening to them.
But while I was allowed to kill a Heavy Cruiser in Homeworld with a fleet of Attack Bombers, or a fleet of Protoss Carriers with a swarm of cheap Scourges, you and I don't get to do that to a titan. Because of No.
We're EVE players, so that means we all love our spreadsheets. There's lots of discussion on the forums about what titans should and should not be allowed to do... what role they should have at some theoretical future time. In the meantime, at the 70 minute point in the pod-cast, there's a very casual revelation about exactly how PL used their spreadsheets to determine mathematically what they could use their titans to kill and how many volleys it would take to kill one ship versus another under various scenarios. That's an amusing way to look at risk-reward balancing, I guess.
These are quite often the very same people saying that there's not enough risk to how the rest of us play EVE while we're mopping floors and washing lettuce and dreaming of an assistant manager position, by the way. ;-)
"[CCP] set the scan radius to five and then moved on to making the Bellicose worth a shit," Seleene complains about the proposed (and now rejected) titan scan res nerf. At the risk of sounding like a 99%'er, Seleene... I can afford a Bellicose. I can fly a Bellicose. It would be nice if it was worth a shit. As badly as Seleene put this, though, I do know where this comment is coming from. EVE doesn't have a naturally defined end-game, but this line of thinking just naturally assumes that a titan is the end-game that all EVE players want.(2) Seleene wants that end-game to be something worthy to aspire to. This is already a fallacy; I said before what you should think about people who tell you what your end-game is. But let's assume that is indeed you: your end-game is a titan.
The natural assumption seems to be that once you have that titan, you should never ever have to worry about losing it to scrubs, and you should have endless hours of hysterical risk-free gaming enjoyment out of blapping countless numbers of said scrubs.(3) The scrubs shouldn't be able to kill you, or make you go away, but they can fly around you and envy your giant space penis while you kill the dumb ones in their midst.
And they can dream about having a risk-free space penis of their very own. In the meantime, there's lettuce to wash and floors to mop.
(1) I got quite a reputation for my effective use of defensive tactics in StarCraft, but that's probably a subject for another blog post.
(2) At one point, there's discussion about titans giving mining bonuses, or there being "industrial titans" or something. I was too busy choking on my drink to hear this part clearly.
(3) Unless of course, you're outside of PL, in which case you should immediately lose the titan because you're stupidly sitting in a POS to which a PL awoxer has the password, I guess.
Posted by Jester at 5:34 PM 65 comments:
Labels: CSM7, EVE Blogs, EVE Online, In-game Money, Titans
So they made me their chief
Can't seem to be left alone to finish my day of titan ranting. ;-)
If you haven't heard by now, The Mittani has decided to forgo the position of Chair of CSM7. Here is his official statement on the EVE Online forums, and here is the companion e-mail he sent to the Goons.
What this means, in essence, is that Mittens will be "just another CSM member" with exactly the same power that he had this morning. What he's giving up is the bully pulpit of the chairmanship and the media attention that goes with it. It won't be Mittens being interviewed by the gaming media or put in front of a camera in Reyk if something goes wrong, it'll be someone else. But he'll still have the same ability to influence events and would retain the option of flying to Iceland for the May and December summits.
We'll see if CCP allows him to keep this post but again, I see no particular reason why they wouldn't.
EDIT (28/Mar/2012): CCP has issued an official statement, and it is an extremely hard-line response. See the epilogue at the bottom of this post.
You might be asking: what happens now?
Believe it or not, there's actually a formal document that outlines how the CSM is supposed to operate, the CSM White Paper. I read it in detail before I ran for CSM6. It is, for the most part, a fluff sociology paper of very little interest. Still, once it gets past the fluff, it does lay down process and procedure for a number of situations, one of which is what happens if the CSM Chair resigns, steps down, is removed, or declines the post upon being selected for it. It is this last case that is obviously of interest to us now.
Specifically, the White Paper says:
If the Chairman decides to step down or rescind his responsibility at any time for any reason, a vote must be held among Representatives to elect another Chairman – should the Chairman voluntarily step down as one he is still eligible for the position during the vote for a new Chairman.
The use of the word "Representatives" here is interesting. The White Paper makes a specific distinction between Representatives, which are (at that time) the nine voting members of the CSM, and Alternates, who are non-voting members. The nine Representatives were also those that traveled to Iceland. The new model for CSM7, however, altered this structure such that it was the top seven vote recipients that would travel to Iceland, not the top nine. If asked, I would therefore interpret this situation to say that the top seven are likewise the Representatives that will receive voting rights for this decision.
tl;dr: A vote should be held among the top seven vote-getters to decide who the Chairman of CSM7 will be. Six people are eligible: Two step, Elise Randolph, Greene Lee, Trebor Daehdoow, Kelduum Revaan, and Seleene. Those six people receive a vote, and The Mittani receives a vote.
Positions eight and nine are held by UAxDEATH and Hans Jagerblitzen, respectively. If they chose to push a strict interpretation of the White Paper, they could argue that they should not only receive a vote in this matter, they should be able to put their name forward as a candidate for Chair. Still, I suspect CCP Xhagen (who manages this process for CCP) would agree with my interpretation and they will not be eligible either for the position, or to vote for the position. The White Paper is clear that the remaining CSM members are both ineligible for the position and ineligible to vote, though of course they can make their opinions known.
So, that's what happens next, and CSM7 has until April 11 to choose its officers. You're caught up.
EDIT (28/Mar/2012): As I was finishing the final editing of this post, CCP issued an extremely hard-line official statement, and a follow-up to a previous statement issued earlier today.
Calling The Mittani's actions "morally reprehensible", the statement acknowledges his apology, but says the following:
The panelist has subsequently posted a public apology as well as a private apology to the victim of his attack. He has also resigned from his position as Chairman of CSM 6 and has forfeited his right to serve on CSM 7. As per our policies, this candidate may be eligible to run at a later date subject to candidacy review.
Emphasis mine. If this position stands, then The Mittani would lose his seat in CSM7, would not be recognized as a CSM representative for the term beginning April 4, and UAxDEATH would be elevated to the seventh representative position. As such, UAxDEATH would receive both a vote for who the new Chair would be and would be himself eligible to be selected as the Chair by vote of the seven representatives.
The previous statement also has several interesting things to say about CCP generally, which I will cover in a follow-up post. Needless to say, I will be delaying my final titan rant blog post until tomorrow so that I can follow developments.
Wow! Stay tuned.
Labels: CCP, CSM7, EVE Online, Meta
Too busy ratting to post a Quote of the Week
A bonus titan post. The longer one will be published in a few hours.
So, CCP Diagoras is back to posting semi-random statistics now that Fanfest is over, and this morning, he posted this one:
The top killer of NPCs killed 3,472 of them yesterday. #tweetfleet
That, naturally, led me to jokingly ask if that account would be banned today, since that number of rats represents 2.5 NPC kills every minute for 23.5 hours straight. In short, I assumed that the account might be a bot. Diagoras stunned me a bit by setting me straight:
The character was also a titan pilot. In fact, several of those in the top 10 killers of NPCs yesterday were titan pilots.
It's quite important to remember that the scan-res nerf doesn't only impact PvP titan pilots. It affects their ratting brethren as well. This is particularly true because often, these people are one and the same. A good portion of the forum rage about this issue almost certainly came from people objecting to losing their titan ratting backbone.
Let's put aside for a second the notion of bot titans (if they're not out there already, they're coming). Rather nonplussed, I asked Diagoras if he could share the total bounty value of those 3472 rats. He hasn't, but really, we don't need him to. Some quick back-of-the-envelope calculations will suffice just fine. And let's keep in mind an important number: 80 billion ISK. This is the amount of ISK tossed around lately as the budget for a new titan, including a combat fitting, blap fitting, Slave implants, et cetera.
Let's assume that the titan pilot is doing Angel Sanctums, and just to balance things out a bit, we'll assume that it's the "station sanctums" that are being done. "Ring sanctums" are more profitable, havens are less profitable, but the station sanctum probably represents a nice compromise between the three. This sanctum is worth about 35 million ISK in bounties before you take into account the occasional escalation or faction spawn. A station sanctum also represents about 50 ships or so, not counting frigates, which a titan pilot could either safely ignore or handle with a second support account with a drone-heavy ship. Either way, it's not going to be the titan shooting the frigs, which means that Diagoras's number almost certainly represents 3472 cruisers and larger rats.
In other words, this titan pilot did about 70 such sanctums yesterday, with a pay-off of 35 million ISK each.
That's just under 2.5 billion ISK, or enough money to rack up the 80 billion ISK for a second titan in about one month. That's just one titan. Remember, "several of those in the top 10 killers of NPCs yesterday were titan pilots." That means that several titan pilots made 2.5 billion ISK or close to it yesterday, each.
Yesterday was Tuesday, putatively a work day. Just for fun, let's look at it another way. A PLEX is about $17.50 U.S. for about 500 million ISK. On those rare occasions I did sanctums myself, last year at this time, at my best, I could finish a sanctum in about seven minutes. That was with about 3000 DPS at my command. A titan puts out between two and three times that amount. Let's be conservative and say those sanctums were done in six minutes each, including scanning and warping time. That's seven hours to complete 70 of them. In that time, the titan pilot generated five PLEXes, or $87.50... or put another way, he made $12.50 per hour yesterday. More if he could do the sites faster.
I think there's a lot of people out there that would sign up for that.
One more post on this topic today, then I'll move on to other things.
Posted by Jester at 1:00 PM 9 comments:
Labels: 0.0, EVE Online, In-game Money, QOTW, Titans
Picture of the Week: Surprise sex
Going around the EVE-o-sphere today:
Needless to say, I'm quite amused. Check out the prosecutor's face. Check out the judge (harder to see). It needed Elise's face shopped in for Mr. Erebus's defense counsel, tbh.
Posted by Jester at 9:30 AM 1 comment:
Labels: CSM7, EVE Online, Meta, POTW, Titans
In the midst of the outcry over The Mittani's actions this past Thursday, CCP Greyscale has quietly dropped a post into the Ships and Modules section of the EVE Online forums announcing that they are neutering the only upcoming nerf to Titans that really mattered. Titans will be retaining their insanely high Scan Resolution values. The scan-res will not be reduced to a 5mm base as previously announced.
Of course, a typical combat Titan doesn't have the 200+ scan-res of the blap Titans in my previous post. But a more typical combat Titan will still have a scan res of 150mm or more, gained through a combination of expensive Sensor Boosters and the Quafe Zero booster. In short, Titans will continue to lock targets faster than battleships. I'm sure this is a relief to the few hundred pilots that are affected by this; the thread announcing the change had grown to a 134-page threadnaught and clearly models the way for how to deal with CCP for all future nerfs. Simply stamp your feet and refuse to go away, collectively posting several times a minute until CCP has no choice but to capitulate to your endless bitching and whinging.
Frankly, I think I preferred it when CCP would double down on unpopular policies when challenged.
Goons, you'll need to rename the station in CCP-US again.(1) And needless to say, I find the timing rather amusing. Mittens was of course a major champion of the Titan nerf and displayed his smug for all to see when it was announced by Greyscale. Now that Mittens is under threat of losing his position, the issue he championed suffers with him at the same time. I'm sure it's just coincidence. But just in case, someone photoshop a picture of Mittens lying on his back like Arwen Evenstar in Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, with Elrond seriously intoning "His fate is bound to the Titan nerf now" over his shoulder.
I'm going to have a lot more to say about the Voices from the Void podcast featuring Elise Randolph and Seleene later today. But I was extremely pleased that Dani, one of the hosts, directly linked the Titan nerf to the Sanctum/Haven nerf announced last year at this time. Both Elise and Seleene were on the CSM at that time, but neither spoke out about "kicking the can down the road" about that issue. Unless I'm mistaken, the CSM was completely silent when that happened. Unfortunately, Dani didn't think to call them out on this and the two of them were content to let the comparison go by unremarked.
Iterations are so out this season. Instead, we don't implement change until we can completely re-engineer the Titan's role in the larger context of its future battlefield role.
If only that had been the philosophy in 2011. Certainly, the entire balance of risk/reward regarding 0.0 ratting, incursions, and L4 missioning in high-sec should be addressed in a top-down perspective looking at all elements. And certainly, I think both Greyscale and the CSM would agree that this is the case. But at the time, this iteration on sanctums and havens was done, and it was adjusted in a second iteration later in the year, and will almost certainly be the topic of future iterations. But it's fun to think about where we'd be today had CCP folded on the sanctum/haven nerf bitching the same way they're folding on the Titan nerf bitching.
For Titans, though? Not so much. No touchie until a high-level top-down review of their entire battlefield role is performed. A comparison with a really bad movie comes to mind: Chancellor Valorum in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, asking Queen Amidala if she will table her request about the invasion of her planet pending a fact-finding mission to Naboo by the Galactic Senate. In this version of the tale, Amidala meekly says "sure, sounds good", goes back to her quarters on Coruscant, and eats bon-bons for a couple of years while she waits.
And while we wait two years for our fact-finding mission on Titans, blap-blap-blap-blap-blap-blap...
(1) Yes, I know it was already renamed. It needs to be renamed again, again. ;-)
Labels: CCP, CSM7, Meta, Titans
Fit of the Week: Blap Titan
Welcome to Titan Day at Jester's Trek. We're going to be talking Titans today, with three dedicated Titan posts, starting with this one. I thought to celebrate Titan Day, we'd have two "blap Titan" fits, courtesy of Elise Randolph of Pandemic Legion:
[Erebus, Really Hilarious Blap Titan]
Federation Navy Magnetic Field Stabilizer
Republic Fleet Tracking Enhancer
Federation Navy Sensor Booster, Scan Resolution
Federation Navy Tracking Computer, Tracking Speed
Federation Navy Tracking Computer, Optimal Range
Limited Mega Ion Siege Blaster I, Guristas Antimatter Charge XL
Aurora Ominae
Jump Portal Generator I
Large Trimark Armor Pump II
[Avatar, Really Hysterical Blap Titan]
Imperial Navy Heat Sink
Damage Control II
Dual Modal Giga Pulse Laser I, Blood Multifrequency XL
How do we know about this fit? Elise described it to Voices from the Void podcast as a "blap Titan". You can pick him up about 49 minutes in. He describes a blap Titan as needing:
three Sensor Boosters, "so you can lock pretty quickly" and "aren't Cormack's Sensor Boosters but whatever";
two Tracking Computers (the Erebus had an extra mid, so I gave it three... more on that in a second);
four "damage mods"; and,
three Tracking Enhancers ("you just shove more tracking stuff" on).
Just to make things as "fair" to the Titans as possible, I haven't fit a single officer mod. All the mods I've fit are cheap (for a Titan pilot) faction mods. The most expensive mods are those Tracking Computers at 370 million ISK each as of this writing. You use this fit when "you're pretty sure there's zero chance of you getting counter-dropped", after you've put up a bubble at a game and the fleet you intend to blap is in warp to it (and will land in the bubble). Your ideal range is "about 40km" and then you "blap blap blap." I also assume that every Titan pilot would also consume a Standard Drop booster and a Quafe booster. Both are cheap and highly useful for blapping sub-caps.
Before we talk about what these ships can do, let's talk stats.
Avatar Erebus
Volley: 66000+, DPS: 15000+ Volley: 65000+, DPS: 16000+
Scan resolution: 209mm Scan resolution: 185mm
Range: 36km optimal + 24km falloff Range: 31km optimal + 40km falloff
Tracking speed: 0.012 Tracking speed: 0.016
I gave the Erebus an additional Tracking Computer with a range script to get closer to that 40km optimal that Elise talks about. Now, let's talk comparison ships. Our comparison ships will be a standard Geddon Navy Issue and a standard Megathron Navy Issue. I'm not going to bother posting the fits; trust me when I say there's nothing unnatural about them.
Armageddon Navy Issue Megathron Navy Issue
Volley: 2664, DPS: 1029 Volley: 3913, DPS: 903
Range: 17km optimal + 13km falloff Range: 6km optimal + 20km falloff
Tracking speed: 0.042 Tracking speed: 0.09
Pay particular attention to the scan res: both Titans lock just as fast or faster, compared to our battleships. The Avatar, in particular, locks 50% faster than the Neddon. Our test target will be a micro-warping Sabre (more on that in the next post). The Avatar and Erebus lock this ship in four seconds. The Armageddon takes almost six. Unlike the battleship guns, the XL blasters have no problem hitting at the exact same range as the XL pulse lasers. Tracking currently peaks at about 30% of the battleship gun tracking. But remember, I haven't fit a single officer mod. Ironically, that's not realistic; in actual fact, I suspect there are a large number of officer mods on Titans out there.
Volley damage is twenty-five times higher at 2.5 times higher signature. Four damage mods "make a pretty huge difference" to Titan guns, according to Elise.
Two primary targets of blap Titans are Drakes and Maelstroms, usually running under MicroWarpdrive. Both of them have signature radii of more than 1000m (Drake: 2162, Maelstrom: 3331). As a result, both ships will take full damage from the Titan guns. The Sabre's sig radius is 573m, which means it's going to take one-quarter damage: only 16500 hit points from a single volley. A typical Sabre's EHP is 8600. Blap.
And those volleys can be delivered every six seconds or so -- the Titans can lock targets faster than they can volley them.
How do these ships get used? Let's go straight to Elise:
What happens is, when there's a roaming gang, and you're pretty sure there's zero chance that you're gonna get counter-dropped, you take these blap-fit Titans, and you cyno them in while someone's in warp to the gate, and they land in a bubble. You're like 40 kilometers from them. And you blap-blap-blap away. And it's really hilarious! Because you can pretty much track cruisers and battleships really well. And any idiots that don't understand how transversal works... they'll burn directly back to the gate, so they're at zero transversal to the Titan. Which means no matter what the tracking is, you'll always be able to hit.
So that's what blap Titans are.
Sounds like fun. Where do I sign up?
Blap away!
Labels: 0.0, EVE Online, FOTW, Gank, Titans
By now, you've almost certainly read one or more stories about what happened at the Alliance Panel on Thursday, Fanfest Day One. If you haven't, then I strongly recommend Liang Nuren's excellent summation of the facts. As is my custom on this blog, I will give you some background, then summarize what happened Thursday in my own words. Then, the opinion part. Why yes, this is a long post. ;-)
The Alliance Panel is a Fanfest tradition: it is an extremely M-rated event where six or seven representatives from EVE alliances are given the opportunity to brag on themselves for 8-10 minutes each, usually while drunk. Alcohol is a big part of the Alliance Panel, as is biting humor, sarcasm, and satire. Names are named. People, corps, and alliances are mercilessly mocked. It is -- by far -- the most EVE-like part of Fanfest, where people bring their in-game personas and leave their real selves at the door. A CCP employee is present as an ornament, but usually has little impact on the proceedings. All they can do is smile and hang on, because the least nice people in EVEdom -- alliance leaders -- are in the driver's seat.
The Alliance Panel is always roundly hysterical.
And truths are told. Oh my yes, truths are indeed told. In vino veritas.
Fairly legendary among the Alliance Panel presentations is the one given by Darius JOHNSON, at that time CEO of Goonfleet (now CCP Sreegs), at Fanfest in 2009. He showed up very late, in a ridiculously bad costume, obviously drunk and/or stoned out of his mind, and without speaker notes. And then, off the cuff -- and after describing The Mittani as a pseudo-intelligent douche-bag! -- delivered one of the funniest and most memorable presentations ever done at that panel. It is the source of the famous Goonswarm mantra: "Our goal is not to destroy the game. At the end of the day, our goal is to destroy your game." as well as the meme "Giant dicks are cost effective." And then he dominated the entire Q&A session. Nobody seemed to want to talk to anyone else.
Think it bothers Mittens -- who prides himself on his ability to present and communicate -- that the most memorable Goonswarm presentation ever done at the panel wasn't done by him? Bet you he'd deny it and say that he's just happy that it was a Goonswarm presentation that's most remembered. Also bet you my left thumb he'd be lying when he said this.
So that's point number one to remember: the Alliance Panel is alcohol-driven, but it is also ego-driven. Every alliance looks to outdo the ones that have presented before. Enough background.
What actually happened Thursday afternoon? The Alliance Panel at this year's Fanfest opened casually with a presentation from EVE University, but then jumped into a pair of excellent presentations by a pair of wormhole-based alliances. Without getting into a lot of details, the first was well-organized and -presented, and funny as hell, but more or less traditional. The second was entirely a series of unusual "ransoms": recordings of the national anthems of a half-dozen countries, sung by EVE players who were told that if they sang, the ship or system being threatened would be left alone. In both cases, names were named, and individual EVE players were subject to ridicule. By the end of it, the audience was rolling. A great deal of alcohol was visible on the table throughout, and Mittens (who was to present last) didn't drink lightly.
At several points, he was heard to say to each presenter after the W-space guys, "There's no way we're beating that." Still, Gentlemen's Agreement did a pretty fair job, and TEST's MB3 did a fine job. The pressure was on.
Last year, Mittens presented at Fanfest 2011 for Goonswarm. Let's be clear: his presentation wasn't bad. But it was extremely pedestrian and unfunny. It was also... gasp... a serious examination of Goonswarm history! No alcohol was in evidence! Yes! At the Alliance Panel! Believe it or not, if you're looking to learn the history of Goonswarm, this presentation is the best place to do it. But it sure didn't fit with the format or the audience. It made an impression, but that impression was negative.
Mittens was definitely looking to improve his performance this year.
He gets a lot of mileage out of forum porn on his Ten Ton Hammer column and on kugu, and obviously decided to bring that to the Alliance Panel this year. Alcohol would be consumed. Names would be named. Truths would be told.
Really, there was only one problem with The Mittani's performance in 2011: The Mittani didn't show up. Instead, a guy named Alex showed up.
Want to annoy Mittens? Want to really annoy him? Refer to him by his real name on the Internet. He'll never, ever admit this, but it drives him wild. You see, there are actually three people at war with each other in this situation. Three personas, if you will:
The Mittani, former spy, who is the fearsome and scary head of the Clusterfuck Coalition, the largest mass of EVE players ever to play the game, and the largest mass of griefers and gankers in EVE history;
Mittens, the almost-but-not-quite fuzzy, cuddly friendly Chair of the CSM; and,
Alex. He was a lawyer at one time.
Make no mistake: these are three different hats. And they don't go well together. They clash terribly. As a matter of fact, they may well be incompatible. After all, by definition, the Chair of the CSM has to be a player advocate... a nice guy... a champion of the people. The leader of Goonswarm has to be a dick... someone who wants to grief and gank the people.
On Thursday night, The Mittani showed up to the Alliance Panel. Oh my yes, he did indeed. And you know, what? It was perfectly appropriate for him to do so, you see: The Mittani leads Goonswarm. The Mittani is not the Chair of the CSM. Back to what happened.
During the presentation, The Mittani presented a great deal of forum and chat porn while outrageously mocking those that produced it. It was damned funny, but it was also quite mean, almost savagely so. During the presentation, one such bit of EVE mail porn centered on a player that had lost a large number of Mackinaws to Goon gankers, and said he was upset because he had recently gotten divorced and ice mining was the only thing that relaxed him and settled his mind. As humor, this was borderline stuff. Mittens was visibly pounding back Jägerbombs and at one point commented that he was not drunk enough yet to present this material.
Alex was objecting, and possibly, so was Mittens. We've seen a kinder, gentler Mittens this year.
The Mittani was having none of it and pressed on.
Now, do not get me wrong: I am not saying there was any level of schizophrenia here. At all. I'm simply saying that The Mittani persona came out, got drunk, and gave a very Goon presentation. It was borderline, but savagely funny. It couldn't have been any more different from 2011. The problem came at the Q&A session. The Mittani didn't just cross the line. In the immortal words of John Roarke, he lept over it that day. I briefly quote Liang Nuren's transcript of the event:
The Q&A is where all the interesting parts are anyway (@1:11:30):
Questioneer: Just something about the guy with 22 accounts. I think he moved to the Drone Regions and now he’s got kicked out of there as well.
The Mittani: Incidentally, if you want to make the guy kill himself, his name is [name]. It's [spells the name]. He has his own corp. Find him.
What we have here at this point is not The Mittani naming names. What we have here is him directly encouraging EVE players to harass a potentially mentally-unstable individual into a rash act.
Mittens claims to have no direct memory of the event until shown a transcript, and I believe him. He also says that he despises people who use the words "I was drunk" as an excuse, and I believe that, too. He has abjectly (and I believe, sincerely) apologized. He has made an act of contrition toward the pilot affected, saying he's given this player 10.7 billion ISK in compensation, and the player in question has apparently confirmed the gift.
And Mittens has quietly offered to "resign", though whether that means "resign from the CSM" or "resign from being the Chair of the CSM, but not from the CSM itself", he has left open to interpretation.
If you've read more than a few posts in my blog, you know that I love quotes from movies, particularly quotes from bad movies. The one that sprung unerringly to mind in this situation is from a little flick called EdTV. Made years before the first reality show, it tells the story of a man who is hired by a network to put his entire life, 24/7, on TV. Late one night while nervous on a date, Ed (the star of the show) is spontaneously making out with his date on a dining room table when -- in the throes of passion -- he rolls off the table. A pained cat's meow is heard on Ed's landing and the date ends with Ed transported to the hospital and the cat to the vet. On live TV. Commiserating later, one of his buddies offers some sympathy:
John: Look, Ed, you put anybody on television sixteen hours a day, and sooner or later they're going to fall off a table and land on a cat.
Mittens feels awful about what's happened, and I believe that completely. You put anyone in the spotlight for this long, and sooner or later, they're going to fall off a table and land on a cat. It's now happened.
And it happened to the CSM Chair.
But not while he was wearing the CSM Chair hat. This is critical!
Remember, this incident happened in the context of The Mittani's role and duties as the leader of Goonswarm. The Chair of the CSM was not present. "Jester, you idiot, they're the same person!" you say, and sure, yeah, that's true. But kinda, not really, too.
Here's the truth of the matter, kids, and pay attention, because this is important: people are human. Even smart people. They make mistakes. People occasionally do really stupid, dumb-ass things. There's no "save game" button in real life, and no check-point that you can roll back to. And if you jump immediately to "fire him" every time someone makes a mistake, you're not going to have very many people left around you. If you do something stupid, all you can do is apologize and try to make it right.
The Mittani dropped character, became Alex, and is doing that. And I sincerely believe that he means it. Does that mean The Mittani is gone? Hell no, he'll be back.
Bad pennies always turn up.
But Alex is back there trying to make this right. Let's talk consequences.
Should Mittens lose his position as CSM Chair over this? My feeling is no, he should not. His offer to resign is noble, but not warranted. There should definitely be consequences from this, and the act of contrition and the ISK are a great start. But he should not lose his CSM position nor his Chairmanship over this in my opinion. Smart people do dumb things. Bill Clinton performed a sex act with a woman not his wife in the White House. No one has died here, been harmed, or been publicly humiliated in real life. There's a blue dress here, sure. I doubt Mittens will be wearing a wizard hat or drinking to excess again any time soon. And an EVE player nobody knew has been thrust into the spotlight, but he doesn't currently seem to be in any danger of suicide. In fact, aside from a little bit of apathy (which I'm told by someone with reason to know is actually a bit troubling), he doesn't seem overly impacted or troubled by this at all. I've looked at the EVE Terms of Service, and it would take a real dick to try to argue that they've been breached.
At least, not any more than Goons breach them routinely.
Will Mittens resign from the CSM, or from the Chairmanship? He very well might. As I said, the hat that the leader of Goonswarm must wear doesn't fit well with the hat that the CSM Chair must wear. You might even argue that to be good at one job, you are by definition being bad at the other job, and vice versa.
Still, there's no question that Mittens has been a fine CSM Chair and an excellent player advocate. I might grumble at his methods and his arrogance, but there's no question that they've been effective. Hell, I'd argue that we need him in that Chair. As I've already said and will elaborate on in the coming week or so, this is going to be an important year for EVE players... maybe the most important year in EVE's history. We need a strong advocate. Mittens is the right person, in the right place, at the right time. He might feel the need to resign his CSM Chairmanship over this, but I sincerely hope he doesn't.
And this is me saying it. ;-) I've had my reasons to be skeptical of Mittens, but I was wrong and I don't mind admitting that. He's made a believer out of me. Mittens, I hope you'll stay on. I like Two Step, but we need you.
We do need to see how CCP (and possibly just as important, Sony) react to this. As I write this, the work day is just starting in Reyk and in London. We'll see how it plays out. The next 12 hours or so are critical.
Should there be further consequences? Yes, there should, in my opinion. Mittens was acting as a representative of Goonswarm in this matter. I suggest a hefty fine, and a ban from the Alliance Panel at Fanfest 2013. Goons have presented the last three FFs anyway. Let them build up some more stories and present again in 2014. And the fine will be a deterrent to another alliance trying to push the boundaries next year. But the Alliance Panel itself should also continue, and in more or less its current form. David Reid tells us EVE Online is hard-core and is going to remain hard-core. Let's not make him a liar, CCP. The Alliance Panel is one of the most popular events at Fanfest for very good reason.
Whew! This has been an outrageously long post, but important, I think. Probably get grilled for it, too, but that's no different from all my other posts. What do you think, Dear Readers? Burn him on a spit? Or accept Mittens's act of contrition? Discuss.
Labels: CCP, CSM7, Discuss, EVE Blogs, EVE Online, Geek Philosophy, Jester, Meta, Syndicated
Am I going to weigh in on what happened at the Alliance Roundtable?
After the drama level dies down a bit to mere human levels.
In the meantime, Mittens seems sincere in an offer to resign if that will quell the controversy, calm the waters, and protect CCP and the CSM. Short version, though (even if this gets me flamed): that's noble, but I personally do not feel that it's necessary, or warranted.
More tomorrow or the next day.
EDIT (26/Mar/2012): As I put it on Twitter:
I feel an offer by @TheMittani to resign from #csm7 (if sincere) is noble, but not warranted. An apology, though? Definitely. #tweetfleet
@Mara_Rinn @TheMittani There's a difference between the person and the persona. This situation clearly shows that.
And indeed, Mittens has apologized. That's a lovely start. Again, I'll have more to say about it tomorrow, but what's above is the gist of my opinion.
Scramming chads
I wanted to do a final wrap-up on the CSM7 election, now that I've had a couple of days to think about the results.
First, fair warning: anything that I write against any given CSM candidate is automatically going to piss off between 250 and 10000 people. I accept that. But please keep in mind, these are just my opinions about the individual candidates... what they did well and what they did poorly. If you feel the need to defend your chosen candidates, go ahead, but recognize that these comments aren't intended as personal attacks on you or your choices of who to vote for. ;-)
First, let's talk about Mittens. Mittens ran alone. It will be tempting for a lot of people to say "Why did The Mittani run as the solo Goon candidate? Goons could have easily gotten two people into the top seven, the same way they did last year?" In particular, if Mittens did have good exit polling data about how many votes he was receiving, he presumably easily could have directed those votes where he needed to.
These are just guesses, but I think there were three reasons behind why there weren't two Goon candidates:
Mittens wanted 10,000 votes. Call it vanity, call it whatever you like, but he wanted to hit that nice round number. But honestly, I suspect this was the least important reason.
Mittens guessed that -- given that there were fewer candidates -- that there would be more votes per candidate, particularly with the more popular candidates. As a result, I think he was concerned that if he split the Goon vote, someone might pull the Chair out from under him. Can't have that. And finally...
I think Mittens was concerned that having two Goons out of the top seven on CSM7 would be self-defeating in the long-term.
That last one deserves its own paragraph. It was quite possible in this election -- even likely! -- that six out of the top seven seats could have been held by large-alliance 0.0 candidates: Mittens, Seleene, UAxDEATH, Elise Randolph, Dovinian, and Greene Lee... with Trebor, Hans, Kelduum, and Two Step all fighting over that last, seventh seat. Had someone made this prediction for the top seven seats, that prediction wouldn't have been thought at all unlikely. And had that happened, I don't think CCP would have been happy once the first summit started. When CCP is collectively unhappy, their first instinct is always to over-react. And an over-reaction on this would have been an over-reaction directly against large-alliance candidates holding too many CSM seats in the future.
Mittens definitely didn't want that. So "loading up" would have worked against his long-term interests, and I think Mittens knew that. That's probably why there weren't two Goon candidates this time.
One final note on Mittens: he did a great job staying "above the fray" for most of the election. He could have used his more or less invulnerable position to stomp on a lot of candidates he didn't like. And for the most part, he resisted. Sure, he launched a few ad hominem attacks early in the proceedings, but he later backed away from that tactic and actively deleted a post he made in that direction. Compared to last year when he actively slung a lot of mud around, he didn't feel the need to do that this year. n1
Two Step ran a fantastic campaign. In my previous post, a WH resident is congratulating the WH community on boosting their candidate so high. I don't think that's what happened at all. Sure, WH residents were a big part of Two Step's voters but I also think that he did a great job of broadening his audience to people who play the game in a similar way. I was telling people myself "If you can't bring yourself to vote for Leboe, vote for Two Step. He's the best ally small-gang PvPers have among the strong CSM candidates." I'm sure other people were advocating him for different reasons. Overall, he did a great job expanding his appeal.
Seleene lost about a thousand votes compared to how he did last year. It's interesting to speculate about how that happened. The easy answer is that he had a lot of -A- voters last year that he didn't have this year since Greene Lee was the -A- candidate. But is that true? Maybe. We'll never know. But I suspect a big part of the vote loss was the new alliance name. Seleene's in Pandemic Legion now, and seems quite happy to be there. But I strongly suspect it hurt him when people walked into the virtual voting booth and saw it next to his name. A lot of people feel very negatively about PL for a variety of reasons and I believe more than one person, given the choice to vote for a PL candidate -- even one they otherwise liked -- didn't.
UAxDEATH also lost about a thousand votes. I think those vote losses were a lot more personal. ;-)
I've already talked about how I feel Dovinian's failure to get into the top seven is a failure on TEST's part. I had a lot of people tell me, "But Dovinian was a douche. That's why he didn't get voted in." OK, fine... but how does that negate TEST's responsibility in the matter? If Dovinian was a douche, why pick him as the official candidate? Why not pick someone who can represent the alliance, and someone alliance members feel comfortable voting for? Several hundred TEST votes went to Mittens, for instance -- probably enough to get a better TEST candidate to Iceland. So... yeah. Still a failure on TEST's part here, and something they'll have to look at next year.
Aiden Mourn over at finders & keepers has an interesting perspective on Darius III. Without bringing up the election at all, he says in essence that Darius is a champion for people who want to make EVE suck for everyone else: griefers, gankers, et cetera. I'm not sure I agree, but the perspective sure is interesting!
I don't really have anything to say about any of the other people that won, so let's move on to the people that didn't.
Starting with Prometheus Exenthal. Compared to last year, Prom's vote count fell by 400 votes. Those 400 votes would have allowed him to take the last alternate seat. What happened? I'm going to get beaten up for saying this, but Prom talked himself out of his CSM seat. Before Leboe jumped into the race, Prom could have easily claimed much if not all of the Rote Kapelle vote. How did Prom lose the Rote vote? By telling Rote what we wanted, instead of listening to what Rote wanted. It's really just that simple. On FHC, talking directly to Prom, I put it this way:
The comparison with Trebor is apt because Trebor listened to what his constituency wanted. You told your constituency what they wanted. Now you seem surprised that they rebelled against you.
Had Prom listened to his constituency, fewer of them would have chosen to run against him and he would have kept his seat. As a result of his choices, Prom split his voters with Leboe from Rote, Fon Revedhort from Darkside, and likely Aleks from Noir and Elise from PL as well.
I respect riverini's work. But riverini also talked himself out of a CSM seat. Hell, every time the guy opened his mouth, he lost two votes. ;-) If you're going to run for CSM, you have to try to avoid specific positions. A specific position will rarely -- if ever -- get anyone to vote for you. But taking a specific position will sure give people a reason not to vote for you! riverini made that mistake with virtually everything he said and everything he did. As a result, he turned what could have easily been a few thousand voters based on name recognition alone into a few hundred. Whoops.
I was sorry to see how poorly Leboe did, and how poorly small-gang candidates did in general. Part of this was voter fragmentation, as I talked about for Prom. The small-gang alliances are going to have to rally behind a single candidate next year if they expect to be represented. In the meantime, how we play the game is going to continue to be marginalized, and perhaps even directly attacked, if Mittens and other reelected incumbents get their way about disabling station services on NPC stations in 0.0 and low-sec.
I'm rather surprised how poorly some of the fringe candidates did. Mintrolio tops this list, but it's also worth naming Mike Azariah, Roc Weiler, and Skye Aurorae. I don't know why, but I was expecting each of these candidates to top 500 votes. Only Mintrolio did, and he only barely. But all four had pretty good name recognition going for them but weren't able to parley that into an alt seat, even if their votes had been combined. If you're going to run as a fringe candidate, it's important to channel your base, and none of these four candidates did that. Scott Manley has almost a thousand Youtube subscribers, for instance, but could only convert that into barely 250 votes. How does that happen? By not channeling your base. It'll be interesting to see if Mike and Roc run again next year.
And I think that's it. CCP Xhagen said this election featured more "space drama than we’ve seen in any election so far". I disagree. This election was actually pretty low-key and relaxed in my opinion. It was great to see the increased participation in the process. It was even better to see the lack of negative campaigning that stained the process last year. Let's hope that's the start of a trend.
Congratulations again to the winners of the CSM7 election! Represent us well!
Labels: CCP, CSM7, EVE Online
Quote of the Week: Human interaction
The Quote of the Week, unsurprisingly, comes from Fanfest:
The founding principle behind EVE is maximizing human interaction.
This is from Reynir Hardarson, CCP Creative Director and one of the founders of EVE Online.(1) Ironically, the quote comes from the World of Darkness presentation that happened early on Day Three of Fanfest.
And the more I think about it, the more it's interesting to me how many of the presentations at Fanfest had this as a subconscious theme. Virtually all of the presentations brought it up in one way or another: "More people! Bigger fights! More people! Bigger fights! More! Bigger!"
Those of us that actually like smaller-gang battles might be in trouble, of course. But the smaller-gang stuff has never particularly been what EVE has been about. EVE's main selling point and its competitive advantage has been in the ability to bring a couple of thousand people into the same system and let them fight it out. CCP Veritas did an excellent job of selling that the two times he presented.(2) The message was pretty clear: keep EVE's existing customers happy, and let as many of them as want to get into the same system and shoot each other.
What was missing from Fanfest this year from a lot of presentations was an appeal to add to the EVE player base,(3) except through what was almost my Quote of the Week:
The focus of this Fanfest is DUST 514.
That one's Chris McDonough, World of Darkness Senior Producer, during the same presentation. And yep, most of the presentations had this as a subconscious (or flatly overt) theme as well. Fanfest was a Dustapalooza. CCP seems to be pinning the bulk of their hopes on DUST. Nowhere was this more blatant than in the framing of the keynote speeches. "Yesterday, we showed you CCP's past and present", the announcer said before the Saturday keynote. The implication: what we're about to show is the future. And what was shown? The focus was clearly on DUST 514. The strategy for 2012 seems to be "let's get a lot of new DUST players, have EVE players bomb them from orbit, and then hope that the DUST players want to participate in that bombing from orbit part themselves."
"We don't need to make EVE something it's not and we don't need Jesus features to get new players," David Reid said during his own presentation on Saturday, talking about keeping EVE a hard-core game. Not in EVE, anyway. DUST wasn't mentioned. ;-)
Tail, this is dog. Try not to wag him too hard.
The most interesting indicator of all? Seven thousand people were watching the DUST 514 keynote on EVE TV Thursday, Hilmar said when it began (I was one of them). And, oh by the way, he also mentioned, very casually, no big deal -- really, it's not very important at all -- but several hundred thousand were watching the keynote on the Playstation Home network.
Several. Hundred. Thousand.
In other words, there were probably more people watching on Playstation Home than there are EVE players... total. Remember what I said last year about order of magnitude jumps in customer bases? Reid wants to make "EVE + DUST the world's largest game universe." That's maximizing human interaction, all right.
(1) Technically, I think his last name is actually spelled Harðarson.
(2) He's also emerging as one of CCP's strongest presenters, and by far their strongest presenter on purely technical matters.
(3) Remember Hilmar last year, almost pleading with EVE players to help CCP introduce EVE to new players?
Labels: CCP, DUST 514, EVE Online, Microtransactions
Picture of the Week: Twins
I wasn't going to post this, but it went public, so now I'm going for it. ;-)
Check out this picture, taken at Fanfest:
The person on the left is Mittens. The person on the right is one of my alliance leaders, Bacchanalian. Or is it the other way around?
It's kind of hard to tell.
Needless to say, Rote Kapelle and Veto membership had a lot of fun with this... So far, Bacch has scammed a third-party transfer of a super-carrier (and pocketed the money), promised docking rights in VFK to Raiden, encouraged Gents and two other alliances to invade Intrepid Crossing space because they'll get Goon help, told 137 pubbies that he'd sponsor their entries into Goonwaffe, and subtly threatened a CCP employee that he was going to get beaten up at the CSM May Summit.
And of course, everyone... everyone in Rote Kapelle and Veto walked up to Mittens and said "Hey Bacch! How's it going?" or something like it.
Even CCP Punkturis apparently had some fun with it.
Labels: EVE Online, POTW, Rote Kapelle
So, the CSM7 results are in. Congratulations to the winners! How did I do with my predictions?
All in all, pretty well! I correctly predicted 12 out of the winning 14 CSM7 members. I didn't predict Issler Dainze in my 14, nor did I predict Darius III. My predictions were riverini (who came in 16th) and Prometheus Exenthal (who came in 20th). I predicted five of the top seven CSM7 members would be bloc candidates; in actuality, four are in the top seven are (I do include Seleene in that category this year).
Things I got right: The Mittani would be Chair. Duh, easy. Two Step, Greene Lee, and Seleene would join him. Alekseyev Karrde's good campaign would allow him to sneak in as an alternate. Meissa Anunthiel would be an alternate. Kelduum Revaan's position would be a little unpredictable.
Things I got really, really right: I predicted the vote tally would come in around 61,000 total votes. The actual total was 59,109, so I was within 3%. I said that about 41,000 of those votes would be cast for winning candidates. Actual total for winning candidates: 44,296. A bit of the difference here can be racked up to Mittens's voters gaming the system; I'll have more to say about that in a second. I also said that it would take 2675 votes to get a top seven seat this year. That, I got exactly right: every candidate with more than that got a top seven seat; every candidate with fewer didn't.
Things I got wrong: I predicted Hans Jagerblitzen would make a very strong showing. Didn't happen. The FW corps did not vote their best interests this year, and they're going to pay for it at the May Summit. Likewise, I predicted Dovinian would get a top seven seat. The fact that he didn't can only be regarded as a massive failure on TEST's part. I don't know where they screwed up, but they've clearly got some work to do if they want to be represented in the top seven next year. It sends the message that Mittens carried White Tree last year.
I predicted Elise Randolph would be in the bottom seven, but Mittens himself set me straight on this one: Elise ran as a NC Reloaded sponsored candidate, and that worked just fine for him. I didn't realize he'd have such strong bloc representation behind him. And I predicted that Mittens would fall short of his 10,000 vote goal, which obviously didn't happen.
Overall though, I'm very happy with my predictions! I did much better this year than I did last year.
There were two big surprises for me this year. First one was Darius III making a CSM7 seat over riverini and Korvin. This has a very amusing parallel for me compared to last year. Darius III bragged on FHC that he had used scamming EVE players to beat better candidates. He did it again this year. Will CSM7 even let him get involved? At all? Smart money says "no": he'll continue to be frozen out of the process. Given that there are six alternates ahead of him this time instead of four, the likelihood that he'll be able to parley the alternate slot into another trip to Iceland is also roughly zero. So, if you voted for Darius, that was a true wasted vote. Shame on you.
Second biggest surprise for me was this graphic:
I had a reason to visit the Goonswarm website during the election.(1) When I did, I was bounced to an interstitial that asked me how I had voted in the CSM election, and what corp and alliance I was part of. Needless to say, I smiled and ignored it. Still, it was kind of funny to run into the Goon "exit polling." One of the most frustrating things about running for CSM is that you have no freaking idea how you're doing until the results appear. You could be getting a few hundred votes, you could be getting a few thousand votes. You just don't know.
This graphic comes from the EVE News 24 article predicting the results of the elections.(2) So there's no way to know if this graphic was an accurate representation of the information coming off the Goon exit polling... or simply an attempt by the Goons to troll EN24.
Either way, though, we know that Goons have conducted exit polls of their members the last two elections. It's a remarkably organized approach to the elections, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if some of the other power blocs started to emulate it just to take the uncertainty out of the process. The interesting thing is how these exit polls could be used to game the system: Mittens probably knew all through the election how close he was to hitting his 10,000 vote goal. For that reason, I think this image is legit. I think it might have even been used to encourage Goon voters to get him there. "3000 votes to go!", et cetera.
Anyway, congratulations again to all the members of CSM7! You guys have your work cut out for you this year, I think. Last year, I envied the CSM6 members their seats a little bit. This year? Not at all. Not even a little bit. From what I've seen of the Fanfest presentations, this is going to be a "be careful what you wish for" year for EVE players. There are about three dozen minefields that the CSM is going to have to help navigate CCP through this year, and far more ways to do it wrong than ways to do it right. Seriously, they've got their work cut out for them.
More on that over the next week or so.
(1) I wanted to see if Goonswarm Shrugged was still running during the election. It wasn't.
(2) I beat riverini's predictions pretty handily, hee.
Posted by Jester at 12:02 AM 17 comments:
Labels: CCP, CSM7, EVE Online, Syndicated
Kill of the Week: Stalking the wily Titan
Really, there's only one kill I can choose this week:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=12761765&nolimit
Lots and lots of people have written about how this PL Titan died. Best coverage of the actual gank is probably from First General at Wolfsbrigade. Take a moment to go read his description, and you might even watch the included video. Best coverage of the background behind the gank is probably from @GamerChick42. Very very tl;dr version, though: a team of faction warfare corps, observing that PL liked to gate-camp with their Titans in Amamake, made a conscious decision to stalk, hunt, and kill one of these Titans with a large fleet of insured glass cannon dreads along with a support fleet of hictors and battleships.
The original intent was "gank and run". The "run" part was blocked by the fact that PL had a super fleet within striking distance to counter-drop. Pity that CCP still hasn't addressed the ability of a large super fleet to project power, but what can you do. Ironically enough, apparently the planners for this op got some of their ideas on ship fittings and tactics from PL's forum dump to kugu last year. Props to them for the interesting use of this data. ;-)
So, I'm not going to talk about the kill itself. It's been covered. Instead of talking about the kill, I'm really more interested in talking about "what it all means."
The response by PL to this Titan being killed has been enlightening to say the least. Mr Blue registered on FHC to report (edited for clarity):
Not to boast or anything, but the [PL] supercap fleet is almost running 12-14 hours a day, so it's kinda hard to avoid hitting anything without having PL supers in gang somewhere closeby...
Aheh. Wow. In other words, hit anything owned by PL anywhere, and you're going to get counter-dropped by a PL super-cap fleet. That's... ummm... impressive. I mean, sure, EVE players by and large believed this was true, but to have it blatantly stated like this was a little bit jarring, at least to me. The smug didn't stop there, though. Mr Blue and Kalorn basically called Odda, the Titan pilot that was ganked, "not so smart" (the r-word came out, but I won't use it).(1) And sure, you can kinda divine that from his Titan fitting. But then Raivi jumped in to say:
Was a good kill. You FW guys did what all of nullsec has been failing to do by actively hunting and killing one of our titans.
Count on PL to give such a left-handed compliment while simultaneously subtly insulting 20% of the EVE player base at the same time. ;-)
Presumably, PL will now be expanding their spy network to include some faction warfare corps, particularly since FW is getting some attention this year and will be the first location where DUST 514 orbital bombardment will be available. I'm sure the FW corps have been easy to overlook in this regard the past couple of years, but I think it was that ability to fly under the radar that allowed them to assemble enough dreads to get this kill. It's not a mistake that PL is going to make again. FW corp CEOs, take note.
On the flip-side, "The Ents are going to wake up and find that they are strong," as Gandalf said in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. As GamerChick correctly notes, the FW corps now represent a pretty significant power in today's EVE world, without seeming to realize that's the case. I think we'll get our first indication of that tomorrow when we see where Hans Jagerblitzen lands in the CSM7 voting.
The original plan apparently called for representation on this op from all four faction militias. Had that happened, it's fun to wonder what would have happened. PL dropped their supers into that situation pretty casually, without the intel about the first Titan-ganking op. Suppose the faction warfare militias had all been gathered, and prepared to counter-counter-drop PL's supers? Like I said, it's fun to think about.
Again, we'll learn if the FW militias can come together in their own best interests when we see how many votes Hans picked up. There are some that are saying it might be Hans giving Mittens a run for his CSM7 Chair money this year. I'm not sure I believe that, but if he's a strong second, gaining more votes than the other bloc candidates? Yeah, I think that'll wake some people up.
Last but not least is the consideration of what it took to kill this Titan. 40-odd dreads were gathered. As I said the other day, when you tackle a Titan, you can nearly always expect a large super-cap support fleet to come in and try to save it. Hell, even before the counter-drop started, there were a couple of carriers providing support for this Titan. "If he hadn't been in a [stupid] fit - he almost certainly wouldn't have died," Kalorn says. I'm forced to agree. Luck played its part here. Had luck not been on the FW side, not only would the Titan not have been killed, but the FW corps would have lost tens of billions of ISK trying.
This is what it takes to try to kill a Titan in EVE today. This is why further balancing of the class is still absolutely required. But more on that in a day or three.
Congratulations to everyone involved in this kill! You did a great job!
(1) Odda's bio (he's Norwegian) now jokes:
"smart norwegians" are next to "german humor" and "swiss navy victories" the 3 thinest books in the world-" Wladomir jed
Wasn't me that said it, and I apologize to anyone who's offended. Would just like to make it clear that Odda's presumably getting trolled pretty hard by his alliance-mates.
Labels: CSM7, EVE Blogs, EVE Online, Gank, KOTW, Low-sec, Titans
Just a quickie.
I'm not at Fanfest this year. Wanted to be there. Couldn't. But I went ahead and bought myself a copy of the HD stream and I'm keeping up as best I can through that, bloggers and alliance-mates who are there, dev-blogs, and forum posts. Maybe next year, I can show up in person.
In the meantime though, standing at a distance, it's interesting to me how Fanfest 2012 seems like a merger of the personalities of Fanfests 2009 and 2011.
Last year at this time, I wrote a commentary on those two Fanfests. In it, I pointed out how virtually everything shown at Fanfest 2011 was something almost immediately deliverable:
First, something that we didn't see at this year's Fanfest that has been a recurring theme at past Fanfests is a lot of over-hype. In previous years, CCP had become quite good at making long strings of promises that there was no way they could deliver on, and certainly not in a year. This year, CCP stuck to making promises about things that they could actually do, and actually do in fairly short order. That's a very positive step, and reflects that a healthy dose of reality has taken hold in Iceland. There's nothing wrong with getting people excited, and they did a great job of that with the EVE Forever video. But they made it clear that EVE Forever is a vision, not an upcoming release. It's not set in stone and a ton of things can change.
Ironically, with them showing off planetary bombardment yesterday, this means that virtually everything shown at last year's FF has been implemented in the year between that blog post and this one. And that's with this past summer's crises. I find that completely remarkable. Other CCP observers said that it would be completely impossible. Yet here we are a year later, and it's almost all been done. Even more, the presentations themselves were rather low-key: relaxed... almost blithely confident. There was a marked lack of theatrics.
Now, compare and contrast with Fanfest 2009, which was a much more "pie in the sky" sort of experience (again, when viewed from afar).
Lots and lots and lots of "upcoming features" hyped at Fanfest 2009 still aren't implemented: treaties, comet and ring mining, Tech3 frigates and modules, Jove interaction, player-owned Incarna establishments, in-game gambling, "transparent" communication in and out of game, ship formations, DUST 514's release (remember, it was demoed on stage 2.5 years ago!). And "hype" is the right word. Presentations were larger than life, noisy, and there was an expectation that players could and should get really excited about all of these soon-to-be released improvements.
Now we have Fanfest 2012 and it's a been an interesting merger of these two styles. On one hand, we're definitely being shown things that will be implemented or released in the next couple of months: DUST 514 (for sure this time), missile launcher turrets, new Stealth Bombers, a new API, changes to the character creator, et cetera. In the middle, we're being shown things that are "sorta" thought through: crime watch, faction warfare changes, mercenary defenders for war-decs. And on the outside edge, we're also being shown things that might or might not ever be released. A good bit of that will apparently be at tomorrow's keynote, but we've already seen some of it: mining asteroids for moon goo, POSs (again), dropping ship tiers for ship roles and the new skills required for that.
And we're back to a somewhat "larger than life" presentation style, most notably when an actor playing a Gallente DUST 514 foot soldier handed Hilmar his weapon yesterday. I felt kind of bad for Hilmar: the script obviously called for the crowd to spontaneously cheer at the vision of CCP's CEO with an assault rifle in his hands, but the cheering didn't come...
Anyway, I'm not sure I have a conclusion to this, but this merger of styles sure is interesting! Maybe, being 4300 miles away, I'm just imagining it.
Posted by Jester at 11:05 AM 7 comments:
Labels: CCP, DUST 514, EVE Online, Recycling Day
Do you guys ever watch the show?
Up-engage
FOTW: Brick Squad Oracle
Your choice always comes back around
exploitingeveiseasy.com
Comment of the Week: Smarter sandbox
Confluence of numbers
QOTW: Win in a few months
Quafe Edition Kill of the Week
Dumbing up
Kill of the Week: Focus fire
It is known
Fit of the Week: Fleet Stiletto
Quote of the Week: One change
Make a point in 140 characters
Friday is recycling day: Zero sum game
Kill of the Week: Forever alone
Week in the Life: Red vs Blue
Betting card
An elegant solution
Fit of the Week: Vanilla PvP Drake
Comment of the Week: Asshat
End(?) of an era
Snapcount
Serfdom
Censored End-game Quote of the Week
Duck season!
Kill of the Week: Bat phone
It's kind of a small group
A tale of two regions
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Kratos Reports Second Quarter Fiscal 2012 Results
August 2, 2012 at 4:00 PM EDT
Kratos Reports Second Quarter Fiscal 2012 Results 77.7 KB
Formalizes Plan for Divestiture of Non-Core Businesses Now Reported as Discontinued Operations
Updates Fiscal 2012 Revenue, Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted Free Cash Flow Guidance
SAN DIEGO, Aug. 2, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc. (Nasdaq:KTOS), a leading National Security Solutions provider, today reported second quarter fiscal year 2012 revenues from continuing operations of $219.8 million, which excludes approximately $1.8 million of revenues relating to certain non-core businesses Kratos announced today it plans to divest, and which are now reflected in results of discontinued operations. Kratos' Second Quarter Fiscal 2012 revenues from continuing operations of $219.8 million increased sequentially approximately 4.9 percent over the first quarter of fiscal 2012 comparable revenues of $209.5 million, with all of this increase being generated from organic growth. Kratos' second quarter 2012 revenues increased approximately 28.5 percent over the second quarter of 2011, and Kratos' revenue for the six-month period ended June 24, 2012 increased approximately 46 percent over the first fiscal six months of 2011. For the second quarter of fiscal 2012, Kratos reported adjusted EBITDA from continuing operations of $24.3 million, or 11.1 percent. Kratos' book-to-bill ratio for the second quarter was 1.1 to 1.0, with a total backlog of $1.1 billion and a qualified bid and proposal pipeline of $4.1 billion at the end of the fiscal second quarter.
Pro Forma EPS from continuing operations for the second quarter of fiscal 2012 was $0.06. Pro Forma EPS excludes the amortization of purchased intangibles and other costs related to Kratos' strategic acquisitions, the accrual for unused office space expense and other expense and assumes the estimated cash to be paid for income taxes, reflecting the significant expected benefit from Kratos' over $300 million of Net Operating Loss carry forwards.
Kratos' President & CEO, Eric DeMarco, said, "As we discussed last year when we acquired Integral Systems and also at the end of the first quarter, we have now completed our product and market review and have made the decision to divest certain non-core businesses that do not fit the strategic plan of the Company. We have commenced the divestiture process, and we currently hope to have these divestitures completed by the end of this fiscal year."
Mr. DeMarco continued, "Operationally, Kratos' second quarter results came in pretty much as expected, with sequential organic quarter-over-quarter revenue growth, and the business is positioned for even stronger organic sequential growth for the second half of the year. In the second quarter, Kratos' Public Safety and Security (PSS) business generated substantially increased EBITDA margins over those of the first quarter, as we continued the integration of the critical infrastructure business we acquired at the beginning of 2012. We expect Kratos' PSS business EBITDA margins to further expand sequentially quarter—over-quarter in the second half of this year, though not at the rate previously expected, as we have revised the integration plan to ensure successful customer project completion and satisfaction and the collection of the related contract receivables. Accordingly, substantial completion of this integration effort is now planned for the first quarter of next year rather than the second half of 2012. Importantly, we also expect continued sequential organic revenue growth from our PSS business in the second half of 2012, with a substantial portion of this expected revenue currently in booked backlog."
Mr. DeMarco continued, "A second quarter programmatic highlight that we were able to publically disclose was the recent successful launch of a hypersonic propulsion research mission, HIFiRE 2, which was the fourth of a planned series of up to ten flights for this program. Including this successful launch, Kratos'Rocket Support Services business in the second quarter continued to be one of the strongest performers for our Company, along with Kratos' electronic warfare, cyber, satcom and specialty training products businesses. We are 100 percent focused on building our specialty products business, which is reflected in our substantially increased second quarter IR&D spend, where we accelerated some efforts previously scheduled for the second half of the year as a result of near term opportunities with certain National Security organizations. In addition to Kratos' critical infrastructure security business, second half 2012 sequential organic growth is expected from our satellite communications equipment and specialty programs equipment areas, where we received a number of large orders in the first half of 2012 with deliveries currently scheduled for the third and fourth quarters of this year. Additionally, for the second half, we currently expect receipt of certain situational awareness and cyber security related software product orders, of which we had only a limited number during the first half of the year. During the second quarter, Kratos' traditional government contracting services business continued to face an incredibly difficult environment, with the majority of procurements being awarded on a lowest cost, technically acceptable basis. Though traditional government services represent less than approximately 12 percent of our business today, the service business continues to contract in a commoditizing and very challenging marketplace."
Kratos also announced today that it is updating its previously provided fiscal year 2012 revenue and Adjusted EBITDA guidance, reflecting the recent acquisition of Composite Engineering, Inc. (CEI), which closed on July 2, 2012, the planned divestiture of the non-core businesses, which will now be reported as discontinued operations, the revised integration timeline for the previously acquired critical infrastructure security business, and continued reduced government services revenues resulting from the contraction of this business.
As a result of the planned divestiture of certain non-core businesses, the financial results of which are now classified as discontinued operations in Kratos' financial statements, for full fiscal year 2012, approximately $35 million of previously expected revenues will now be excluded from Kratos' financial guidance for continuing operations. All reported Kratos financial information has been and will be recast to reflect these to be divested non-core businesses as discontinued operations.
Kratos will be reporting CEI's operating results in its consolidated financial statements commencing July 2, 2012, the closing date of the acquisition of CEI by Kratos. For calendar 2011, CEI reported revenue and Adjusted EBITDA of approximately $94.1 million and $16.0 million, respectively, with a recent annual organic growth rate of approximately 20 percent. Additionally, approximately $8 million in previously forecasted annual Kratos revenues, which represented sales to CEI of certain electronics, ground flight control stations and onboard avionics for CEI aircraft, will now be eliminated in the consolidation of Kratos and CEI and excluded from Kratos' future guidance and consolidated results of operations.
After taking into consideration the CEI acquisition, the impact of the discontinued operations, the revised integration timeline of the critical infrastructure business and the impact of the traditional government services revenues, the Company is updating its full year 2012 guidance of revenues from continuing operations to approximately $950 million to $1.0 billion and Adjusted EBITDA from continuing operations of approximately $120 million to $125 million. Kratos is also updating its previously provided full fiscal year 2012 Adjusted Free Cash Flow guidance to $50 million to $60 million, with Kratos' first and third fiscal quarters of 2012 expected to generate significant positive Adjusted Free Cash Flow and the second and fourth fiscal quarters of 2012 expected to reflect negative to break even Adjusted Free Cash Flow, primarily as a result of the Company's bi-annual interest payments on its Senior Notes being payable in the second and fourth quarters. For the second quarter of fiscal 2012, Kratos also experienced an Adjusted Free Cash Flow use as a result of an increase in specialty inventory products for certain National Security programs. The products are currently scheduled for delivery in the second half of 2012 and in 2013, once the manufacturing process is complete.
Kratos is currently not expecting to provide fiscal 2013 financial guidance until at least the first calendar quarter of 2013, when the Company announces its fiscal fourth quarter 2012 results, due primarily to the current and expected continued potential significant United States Federal Government budgetary uncertainty, including a possible extended Continuing Resolution Authorization for Federal Fiscal 2013 and the possibility of a Sequestration or other macroeconomic or Federal budgetary related events.
Mr. DeMarco concluded, "We believe that the first half of 2012's operational performance is validating our strategy over the past few years of deemphasizing traditional government services and focusing on building our specialty or niche technology based products business and securing our Nation's critical infrastructure. We fully expect continued sequential organic growth in the second half of the year based on our current backlog and delivery schedules, as well as expanding EBITDA margins and operating cash flow."
Management will discuss the financial results in a conference call beginning at 2:00 p.m. Pacific (5:00 p.m. Eastern) today. Analysts and institutional investors may participate in the conference call by dialing 866-393-0674, referencing the call by ID number 99951815. The general public may access the conference call by dialing (877) 344-3935 or on the day of the event by visiting www.kratosdefense.com for a simultaneous webcast. A replay of the webcast will be available on the Kratos web site approximately two hours after the conclusion of the conference call.
About Kratos Defense & Security Solutions
Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc. (Nasdaq:KTOS) is a specialized National Security technology business providing mission critical products, services and solutions for United States National Security. Kratos' core capabilities are sophisticated engineering, manufacturing and system integration offerings for National Security platforms and programs. Kratos' areas of expertise include Command, Control, Communications, Computing, Combat Systems, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C5ISR), satellite communication systems, unmanned systems, cyber warfare, cyber security, information assurance, and critical infrastructure security. Kratos has primarily an engineering and technical oriented work force of approximately 4,400, many of whom hold an active National Security clearance, including Secret, Top Secret and higher. The vast majority of Kratos' work is performed on a military base, in a secure facility or at a critical infrastructure location. Kratos' primary end customers are United States Federal Government agencies, including the Department of Defense, classified agencies, intelligence agencies and Homeland Security related agencies. News and information are available at www.KratosDefense.com.
The Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc. logo is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=3519
Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
This news release and filing contains certain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, express or implied statements concerning the Company's expectations regarding its future financial performance, bid and proposal pipeline, demand for its products and services, performance of key contracts, timing and expected impact of integration and divestiture activities, and market and industry developments. Such statements are only predictions, and the Company's actual results may differ materially. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements. All such forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they are made, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise these statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Factors that may cause the Company's results to differ include, but are not limited to: risks of adverse regulatory action or litigation; risks associated with debt leverage; risks that our cost cutting initiatives will not provide the anticipated benefits; risks that changes, cutbacks or delays in spending by the U.S. Department of Defense may occur, which could cause delays or cancellations of key government contracts; risks that changes may occur in Federal government (or other applicable) procurement laws, regulations, policies and budgets; risks of the availability of government funding for the Company's products and services due to performance, cost growth, or other factors, changes in government and customer priorities and requirements (including cost-cutting initiatives, the potential deferral of awards, terminations or reduction of expenditures to respond to the priorities of Congress and the Administration, or budgetary cuts resulting from Congressional committee recommendations or automatic sequestration under the Budget Control Act of 2011), risks of increases in the Federal government initiatives related to in-sourcing; risks related to security breaches, including cyber security attacks and threats or other significant disruptions of our information systems, facilities and infrastructures; risks related to our compliance with applicable contracting and procurement laws, regulations and standards; risks relating to contract performance; risks of our subcontractors or suppliers failure to perform their contractual obligations, including the appearance of counterfeit parts in our products; changes in the competitive environment (including as a result of bid protests); failure to successfully integrate acquired operations and competition in the marketplace which could reduce revenues and profit margins; risks associated with our planned divestiture of certain non-core businesses; risks that potential future goodwill impairments will adversely affect our operating results; risks that anticipated tax benefits will not be realized in accordance with our expectations; risks that a change in ownership of our stock could cause further limitation to the future utilization of our net operating losses; and risks that the current economic environment will adversely impact our business. These and other risk factors are more fully discussed in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the period ended December 25, 2011, and in subsequent reports on Forms 10-Q and 8-K and in other filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission by the Company.
Note Regarding Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures
Adjusted Cash Flow From Operations is computed as Cash provided by operating activities from continuing operations excluding the payment of acquisition related items, and Adjusted Free Cash Flow is computed as Cash provided by operating activities from continuing operations excluding the payment of acquisition related items less payments for capital expenditures. Pro Forma EPS is computed using net income excluding amortization of purchased intangibles, acquisition expenses, and unused office space expense less the estimated tax cash payments. Certain of the information set forth herein, including Adjusted EBITDA, excluding losses from discontinued operations, transaction and other acquisition related costs, stock compensation expense and income from SWAP instruments, and the associated margin rates, and Pro Forma EPS are considered non-GAAP financial measures. Kratos believes this information is useful to investors because it provides a basis for measuring the Company's available capital resources, the operating performance of the Company's business and the Company's cash flows from operations, excluding non-operational items and non-cash items such as acquisition related items, that would normally be included in the most directly comparable measures calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP. The Company's management uses these non-GAAP financial measures along with the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures in evaluating the Company's operating performance and capital resources and cash flow. Non-GAAP financial measures should not be considered in isolation from, or as a substitute for, financial information presented in compliance with GAAP, and non-financial measures as reported by the Company may not be comparable to similarly titled amounts reported by other companies.
Kratos Defense & Security Solutions
Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations
(in millions, except per share data)
Three Months Ended Six Months Ended
June 24, June 26, June 24, June 26,
Service revenues $ 112.1 $ 75.3 $ 214.2 $ 155.1
Product sales 107.7 95.8 215.1 138.8
Total revenues 219.8 171.1 429.3 293.9
Cost of service revenues 86.7 58.0 166.5 118.3
Cost of product sales 75.4 67.7 147.7 102.8
Total costs 162.1 125.7 314.2 221.1
Gross profit - services 25.4 17.3 47.7 36.8
Gross profit - products 32.3 28.1 67.4 36.0
Total gross profit 57.7 45.4 115.1 72.8
Selling, general and administrative expenses 32.5 23.8 64.6 39.3
Merger and acquisition expenses 1.5 1.8 2.4 7.6
Research and development expenses 4.8 1.2 8.4 1.8
Unused office space expense and other 1.4 -- 1.4 --
Depreciation 1.2 0.7 2.4 1.4
Amortization of intangible assets 8.9 9.2 19.4 12.6
Operating income 7.4 8.7 16.5 10.1
Interest expense, net (16.2) (13.1) (32.3) (19.8)
Other income, net 0.5 -- 0.9 0.3
Loss from continuing operations before income taxes (8.3) (4.4) (14.9) (9.4)
Provision (benefit) for income taxes 6.6 0.9 2.5 (0.3)
Loss from continuing operations (14.9) (5.3) (17.4) (9.1)
Income (loss) from discontinued operations, net of taxes (2.3) 0.1 (2.8) 0.4
Net loss $ (17.2) $ (5.2) $ (20.2) $ (8.7)
Basic income (loss) per common share:
Loss from continuing operations $ (0.36) $ (0.22) $ (0.47) $ (0.40)
Income (loss) from discontinued operations, net of taxes (0.05) -- (0.07) 0.02
Net loss $ (0.41) $ (0.22) $ (0.54) $ (0.38)
Diluted income (loss) per common share:
Basic 41.7 23.8 37.1 22.6
Diluted 41.7 23.8 37.1 22.6
Adjusted EBITDA (1) $ 24.3 $ 22.7 $ 49.4 $ 35.3
Note: (1) Adjusted EBITDA is a non-GAAP measure defined as GAAP net income (loss) plus (income) loss from discontinued operations, interest expense, net, other (income) related to SWAP instruments, income taxes, depreciation and amortization, stock compensation, amortization of intangible assets, and acquisition related expenses.
Adjusted EBITDA as calculated by us may be calculated differently than EBITDA for other companies. We have provided Adjusted EBITDA because we believe it is a commonly used measure of financial performance in comparable companies and is provided to help investors evaluate companies on a consistent basis, as well as to enhance an understanding of our operating results. Adjusted EBITDA should not be construed as either an alternative to net income or as an indicator of our operating performance or an alternative to cash flows as a measure of liquidity. Please refer to the following table that reconciles GAAP net income (loss) to Adjusted EBITDA:
Reconciliation of Net income (loss) to Adjusted EBITDA is as follows:
(Income) loss from discontinued operations 2.3 (0.1) 2.8 (0.4)
Acquisition expenses 1.5 1.8 2.4 7.6
Interest expense, net 16.2 13.1 32.3 19.8
Other income related to SWAP instruments -- -- -- (0.3)
Depreciation * 3.4 2.2 6.5 3.6
Stock compensation 1.2 0.8 2.3 1.4
Adjustment to the liability for unused office space 1.4 -- 1.4 --
Adjusted EBITDA $ 24.3 $ 22.7 $ 49.4 $ 35.3
* Includes depreciation reported in cost of service revenues and product sales.
Unaudited Segment Data
Revenues:
Government Solutions $ 175.8 $ 145.3 $ 344.7 $ 242.7
Public Safety & Security 44.0 25.8 84.6 51.2
Total revenues $ 219.8 $ 171.1 $ 429.3 $ 293.9
Operating income (loss) from continuing operations:
Government Solutions $ 8.8 $ 9.7 $ 18.4 $ 16.3
Public Safety & Security 2.8 1.7 4.0 2.9
Other activities (4.2) (2.7) (5.9) (9.1)
Total operating income from continuing operations $ 7.4 $ 8.7 $ 16.5 $ 10.1
Note: Other activities in the three months ended June 26, 2011 and June 24, 2012 include acquisition expenses of $4.8 million and $1.2 million, respectively, and for the six months ended June 24, 2012 and June 26, 2011 include acquisition expenses of $8.4 million and $1.8 million, respectively.
Reconciliation of consolidated Adjusted EBITDA to Adjusted EBITDA by segment is as follows:
KGS $ 20.6 $ 20.5 $ 43.7 $ 31.2
% of revenue 11.7% 14.1% 12.7% 12.9%
PSS 3.7 2.2 5.7 4.1
% of revenue 8.4% 8.5% 6.7% 8.0%
Total $ 24.3 $ 22.7 $ 49.4 $ 35.3
Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheet
June 24, December 25
Cash and cash equivalents $ 145.7 $ 69.6
Restricted cash 0.8 1.1
Accounts receivable, net 256.8 245.3
Inventoried costs 86.4 76.6
Prepaid expenses 12.6 12.7
Other current assets 18.8 15.7
Total current assets 521.1 421.0
Property and equipment, net 72.4 72.5
Goodwill 575.6 571.8
Intangibles, net 107.2 124.6
Other assets 23.0 26.3
Total assets $ 1,299.3 $ 1,216.2
Accounts payable $ 61.9 $ 48.8
Accrued expenses 52.9 50.7
Accrued compensation 33.8 39.8
Accrued interest 5.1 5.1
Billings in excess of costs and earnings on uncompleted contracts 37.1 36.2
Other current liabilities 32.1 33.2
Total current liabilities 222.9 213.8
Long-term debt principal, net of current portion 630.2 630.8
Long-term debt premium 20.8 22.8
Other long-term liabilities 33.9 36.2
Total liabilities 907.8 903.6
Preferred stock, 5,000,000 shares authorized, $.001 par value, 0 shares outstanding at December 25, 2011 and June 24, 2012. -- --
Common stock, $.001 par value, 195,000,000 shares authorized; 32,421,135 and 52,518,189 shares issued and outstanding at December 25, 2011 and June 24, 2012, respectively -- --
Additional paid-in capital 819.9 720.6
Accumulated other comprehensive loss (0.4) (0.2)
Accumulated deficit (428.0) (407.8)
Total stockholders' equity 391.5 312.6
Total liabilities and stockholders' equity $ 1,299.3 $ 1,216.2
Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Statement of Cash Flows
June 24, June 26,
Net loss $ (20.2) $ (8.7)
Less: Income (loss) from discontinued operations (2.8) 0.4
Loss from continuing operations (17.4) (9.1)
Adjustments to reconcile loss from continuing operations to net cash provided by (used in) operating activities from continuing operations:
Depreciation and amortization 25.9 16.2
Deferred income taxes 1.3 0.2
Stock‑based compensation 2.3 1.4
Mark to market on swaps -- (0.3)
Amortization of deferred financing costs 2.5 1.3
Amortization of premium on Senior Secured Notes (2.1) --
Provision for doubtful accounts 0.3 0.1
Changes in assets and liabilities, net of acquisitions:
Accounts receivable 11.6 1.8
Inventoried costs (9.6) 6.4
Prepaid expenses and other assets (3.7) 3.9
Accounts payable 9.4 (9.2)
Accrued compensation (6.6) (2.1)
Accrued expenses 0.3 (7.7)
Billings in excess of costs and earnings on uncompleted contracts (2.3) (12.3)
Income tax receivable and payable (1.5) 0.2
Other liabilities (0.6) (0.9)
Net cash provided by (used in) operating activities from continuing operations 9.8 (10.1)
Investing activities:
Cash paid for acquisitions, net of cash acquired (21.5) (249.2)
Decrease in restricted cash 0.3 1.2
Capital expenditures (6.2) (2.7)
Net cash used in investing activities from continuing operations (27.4) (250.7)
Financing activities:
Proceeds from the issuance of long-term debt -- 305.0
Proceeds from the issuance of common stock 97.0 61.1
Debt issuance costs (1.0) (14.6)
Repayment of debt (0.5) (2.2)
Cash paid for contingent acquisition consideration (2.5) --
Other (0.3) 1.0
Net cash provided by financing activities from continuing operations 92.7 350.3
Net cash flows from continuing operations 75.1 89.5
Net operating cash flows from discontinued operations 1.3 0.1
Effect of exchange rate changes on cash and cash equivalents (0.3) --
Net increase in cash and cash equivalents 76.1 89.6
Cash and cash equivalents at beginning of period 69.6 10.8
Cash and cash equivalents at end of period $ 145.7 $ 100.4
Unaudited Non-GAAP Measures
Adjusted Earnings Before Amortization and Acquisition Related Expenses
Loss from continuing operations before taxes $ (8.3) $ (4.4) $ (14.9) $ (9.4)
Add: Amortization of intangible assets 8.9 9.2 19.4 12.6
Add: Adjustment to the liability for unused office space 1.4 -- 1.4 --
Add: Merger and acquisition expenses 1.5 1.8 2.4 7.6
Adjusted income from continuing operations before income taxes $ 3.5 $ 6.6 $ 8.3 $ 10.8
Estimated cash tax provision 1.2 0.7 2.4 1.6
Adjusted income from continuing operations before acquisition and amortization expenses $ 2.3 $ 5.9 $ 5.9 $ 9.2
Diluted income per common share:
Adjusted income from continuing operations $ 0.06 $ 0.25 $ 0.16 $ 0.41
Adjusted Cash Flows From Operations
Net cash provided by (used in) operating activities from continuing operations $ (15.2) $ (6.9) $ 9.8 $ (10.1)
Add: Acquisition related items 0.6 12.2 2.9 13.9
Adjusted cash flows from operations $ (14.6) $ 5.3 $ 12.7 $ 3.8
CONTACT: Press Contact:
Yolanda White
Investor Information:
investor@kratosdefense.com
Source: Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc.
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Full phase and amplitude control in computer-generated holography
Fratz, M., Fischer, P., Giel, D. M.
OPTICS LETTERS, 34(23):3659-3661, 2009 (article)
We report what we believe to be the first realization of a computer-generated complex-valued hologram recorded in a single film of photoactive polymer. Complex-valued holograms give rise to a diffracted optical field with control over its amplitude and phase. The holograms are generated by a one-step direct laser writing process in which a spatial light modulator (SLM) is imaged onto a polymer film. Temporal modulation of the SLM during exposure controls both the strength of the induced birefringence and the orientation of the fast axis. We demonstrate that complex holograms can be used to impart arbitrary amplitude and phase profiles onto a beam and thereby open new possibilities in the control of optical beams. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America
pf Fratz, M., Fischer, P., Giel, D. M. Full phase and amplitude control in computer-generated holography OPTICS LETTERS, 34(23):3659-3661, 2009 (article)
Digital polarization holograms with defined magnitude and orientation of each pixel’s birefringence
Fratz, M., Giel, D. M., Fischer, P.
OPTICS LETTERS, 34(8):1270-1272, 2009 (article)
A new form of digital polarization holography is demonstrated that permits both the amplitude and the phase of a diffracted beam to be independently controlled. This permits two independent intensity images to be stored in the same hologram. To fabricate the holograms, a birefringence with defined retardance and orientation of the fast axis is recorded into a photopolymer film. The holograms are selectively read out by choosing the polarization state of the read beam. Polarization holograms of this kind increase the data density in holographic data storage and allow higher quality diffractive optical elements to be written. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America
pf Fratz, M., Giel, D. M., Fischer, P. Digital polarization holograms with defined magnitude and orientation of each pixel’s birefringence OPTICS LETTERS, 34(8):1270-1272, 2009 (article)
Controlled Propulsion of Artificial Magnetic Nanostructured Propellers
Ghosh, A., Fischer, P.
NANO LETTERS, 9(6):2243-2245, 2009, Featured highlight ‘Nanotechnology: The helix that delivers’ Nature 459, 13 (2009). (article)
For biomedical applications, such as targeted drug delivery and microsurgery, it is essential to develop a system of swimmers that can be propelled wirelessly in fluidic environments with good control. Here, we report the construction and operation of chiral colloidal propellers that can be navigated in water with micrometer-level precision using homogeneous magnetic fields. The propellers are made via nanostructured surfaces and can be produced in large numbers. The nanopropellers can carry chemicals, push loads, and act as local probes in rheological measurements.
Featured highlight ‘Nanotechnology: The helix that delivers’ Nature 459, 13 (2009).
Video - Nanospropellers DOI [BibTex]
pf Ghosh, A., Fischer, P. Controlled Propulsion of Artificial Magnetic Nanostructured Propellers NANO LETTERS, 9(6):2243-2245, 2009, Featured highlight ‘Nanotechnology: The helix that delivers’ Nature 459, 13 (2009). (article)
Absolute Asymmetric Reduction Based on the Relative Orientation of Achiral Reactants
Kuhn, A., Fischer, P.
ANGEWANDTE CHEMIE-INTERNATIONAL EDITION, 48(37):6857-6860, 2009 (article)
pf Kuhn, A., Fischer, P. Absolute Asymmetric Reduction Based on the Relative Orientation of Achiral Reactants ANGEWANDTE CHEMIE-INTERNATIONAL EDITION, 48(37):6857-6860, 2009 (article)
New electro-optic effect: Sum-frequency generation from optically active liquids in the presence of a dc electric field
Fischer, P., Buckingham, A., Beckwitt, K., Wiersma, D., Wise, F.
PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS, 91(17), 2003 (article)
We report the observation of sum-frequency signals that depend linearly on an applied electrostatic field and that change sign with the handedness of an optically active solute. This recently predicted chiral electro-optic effect exists in the electric-dipole approximation. The static electric field gives rise to an electric-field-induced sum-frequency signal (an achiral third-order process) that interferes with the chirality-specific sum-frequency at second order. The cross-terms linear in the electrostatic field constitute the effect and may be used to determine the absolute sign of second- and third-order nonlinear-optical susceptibilities in isotropic media.
pf Fischer, P., Buckingham, A., Beckwitt, K., Wiersma, D., Wise, F. New electro-optic effect: Sum-frequency generation from optically active liquids in the presence of a dc electric field PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS, 91(17), 2003 (article)
Chiral and achiral contributions to sum-frequency generation from optically active solutions of binaphthol
Fischer, P., Wise, F., Albrecht, A.
JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY A, 107(40):8232-8238, 2003 (article)
The nonlinear sum- and difference-frequency generation spectroscopies can be probes of molecular chirality in optically active systems. We present a tensorial analysis of the chirality-specific electric-dipolar sum-frequency-generation susceptibility and the achiral electric-quadrupolar and magnetic-dipolar nonlinearities at second order in isotropic media. The chiral and achiral contributions to the sum-frequency signal from the bulk of optically active solutions of 1,1'-bi-2-naphthol (2,2'-dehydroxy-1,1'-binaphthyl) can be distinguished, and the former dominates. Ab initio computations reveal the dramatic resonance enhancement that the isotropic component of the electric-dipolar three-wave mixing hyperpolarizability experiences. Away from resonance its magnitude rapidly decreases, as-unlike the vector component-it is zero in the static limit. The dispersion of the first hyperpolarizability is computed by a configuration interaction singles sum-over-states approach with explicit regard to the Franck-Condon active vibrational substructure for all resonant electronic states.
pf Fischer, P., Wise, F., Albrecht, A. Chiral and achiral contributions to sum-frequency generation from optically active solutions of binaphthol JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY A, 107(40):8232-8238, 2003 (article)
(article)
pf Chemical Nanomotors at the Gram Scale Form a Dense Active Optorheological Medium (article)
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Can Strip Magazine revive UK adventure comics?
Not long to go now before October's launch of Strip Magazine No.1, the brand new British adventure comic from Print Media Productions. If you want a taster (and in these comic-starved times who wouldn't?) you can read an online copy of issue zero for free at the Strip Magazine website here:
http://stripcomicmagazineuk.blogspot.com/2011/05/read-strip-magazine-issue-zero.html
The preview is just 16 pages but the actual issue one will feature a mammoth 68 pages in full colour for £2.99. Editor John Freeman has just announced that for the first few months Strip Magazine will only be available through direct sale outlets (UK comic shops, not newsagents). "We still plan to widen our sales to the UK high street in 2012," says John, "effectively 're-launching' the title after its initial tranche of content draws to a close".
Readers who were looking forward to buying the comic from their corner shop this year may be a little disappointed with this news but if you ask your nearest comic specialist shop (such as Nostalgia & Comics, Forbidden Planet, Gosh! etc) to order you a copy now you won't miss out when Strip Magazine launches in October. Please don't wait and think "Oh I'll buy it next year when my newsagent has it". The comic needs your initial support for it to grow.
"We see this as an opportunity to 'test bed' the title, in a similar way to partwork publishers who roll out test magazines in a key region to see if the project appeals" says John Freeman.
Make no mistake about it, launching a new British comic today is a brave move and not an easy path to take. There is resistance and apathy from the UK retail trade to any comic that isn't tied into some merchandised fad, and even if the comic is accepted there are huge fees to pay just to get it on the shelves, and no guarantee that the shops will actually display it correctly (or even the right way up).
Some people may use their blogs and forums to berate UK publishers for not putting out more non-licensed comics but talk is cheap. Sure, small press comics can thrive, and many of them feature excellent work on a par with mainstream comics, but to make a comic profitable in this day and age, to earn its creators a living, isn't easy. Shame on the hecklers who think it is.
Strip Magazine is exactly the kind of comic that fans of British adventure strips have been asking for, so I hope each and every one of them supports it. The strips feature top notch talent (John McCrea, PJ Holden, Ferg Handley, Kev Hopgood, and John Ridgway to name but a few), solidly told tales that aren't "mature readers" sex/gorefests, and a variety of stories. Think Lion or Valiant but with a modern twist.
For more details on the comic and to keep up with developments bookmark the Strip Magazine website:
http://stripcomicmagazineuk.blogspot.com/
A new hardcover graphic novel Mirabilis is out now from Print Media and I'll be reviewing it here shortly. (Short review for now: It's fantastic. Buy it!)
Labels: John McCrea, John Ridgway, Strip Magazine
This is the first "traditional" style UK comic I have looked forward to reading in a while so good to see it's still on track. Following the recent disastrous ABC sales figures for UK comics I think it's a canny move to sell the first few months/year via direct sales outlets first. McScotty
Saturday, 20 August 2011 at 09:13:00 BST
barry said...
Damn it, such a huge mistake not distributing through newsagents. I can't see it selling enough through lcs alone. It needs to be in view at cornershops and WH Smiths to get the younger market. As it is they'll just get a few older nostalgic comic readers.
2000ad seems almost to be a dirty word in my lcs so I can't see them pushing this.
I really hope they reconsider this because I really want it to do well.
Sunday, 21 August 2011 at 08:07:00 BST
I'm sure if distribution was available they'd get it into Smiths right now, but cracking newsagents is a big hurdle.
True, some comic shops (and fans) still have a resistance to British comics for some reason but apparently Clint does better in comic stores than newsagents so you never know. Better to have a trial run in lcs than wait until newsagents take it next year surely?
Mike D said...
I've said it before, but I hate the 'big titted girl with big ass weapon' covers. It's almost a reason to leave it on the shelf. Especially if it honestly reflected the magazine's contents...
Still, I *really* hope it succeeds. I guess nowadays, what a comic needs is a big PR spend, newsagent distribution and a tie in TV show...basically a 'bottomless pockets' approach. I'm really intrigued to find out if a smaller campaign can succeed...I wish 'em good luck...
Monday, 22 August 2011 at 13:13:00 BST
Nick Poole said...
"Strip" Magazine? unfortunate title, I think.
It needs to be in newsagents next to Beano Max and the Complete Spider-Man.
Called something else, especially with that sexy girl looking like she's about to reveal her assets.
It will be in newsagents next year. At the moment, comic shops are the option. Better than nothing, surely?
I also have the fear that newsagents would only see "Strip" and big boobs and top-shelf it immediately, BUT that's only judging it by one cover, and it's not even the one that'll appear in newsagents. John Freeman is an experienced editor and I'm sure that by the time newsagent distribution is used there'll be good action-adventure covers to attract kids.
It's a difficult task to gauge how to appeal to today's kids. This is an all-ages title but at the same time it can't look like a 1970s comic. It needs to find its own way, and its own audience, - assuming enough British kids and young adults aren't too apathetic to read.
Tuesday, 23 August 2011 at 15:34:00 BST
John Freeman said...
Great to get feedback on STRIP Magazine. Some points
1) There's good reason for the title - it's an expansion of Print Media's brand ('Strip Magazin' is already on sale in Bosnia and Croatia, which is of no interest here, but to the publisher it's an important element)
2) STRIP has been used as a comic anthology title in the UK before, ably edited by Dan Abnett at Marvel UK. Unfortunately his tremendous enthusiasm for the title was not matched by management support. There is no lack of 'management support' for STRIP Magazine
3) We fully intend to do a news stand launch in 2012. We're talking to a major news stand distributor about this. It will probably cost some £20,000 plus to get the title into newsagents: so as you can imagine we want to be sure it's done right rather than see that kind of spend wasted.
4) Thanks to everyone for feedback. It's all appreciated.
Bad Circulation
Dandy Day!
Commando Preview
Birmingham Comicon Pics
It's time for 2011 B.C.
Dave Bird 1958 - 2011
Comics and Conflicts event - Today!
Commando comic teams with National Army Museum
Francisco Solano Lopez RIP
Have you read 2000AD recently?
Go Toxic!
50 years of the Fantastic Four... or is it 45?
Seaside Fun
Two 1960s classics in the latest Commando editions...
40 Year Flashback: Dandy Summer Special 1971
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Leadership Professional Development For School Principals
Concerning professional development in leadership for public school principals, and, in connection therewith, making an appropriation.
Education & School Finance (Pre & K-12)
School leadership pilot program - appropriation. The act creates the school leadership pilot program (program) to provide professional development for public elementary, middle, and high school principals. During the 2019-20 budget year, the department of education (department) is directed to design and implement the program or contract with a nonprofit entity or institution of higher education (contracted entity) to design and implement the program. The program must include identification of high-quality school principals who will interact with the school principals selected to receive professional development through the program. The program must also include professional development in distributive and collaborative leadership skills with the goal of improving educator retention, school climate and culture, and student outcomes.
School principals may apply to receive professional development through the program during the 2020-21 and 2021-22 budget years. The department or the contracted entity must review the applications and select the participants. Subject to available appropriations, the department must provide grants to the employers of the school principals who participate in the program either as high-quality school principals or to receive professional development.
By March 15, 2020, the department must report to the education committees of the general assembly concerning the design of the program. By January 15, 2022, the department must report to the education committees concerning implementation of the program, including recommendations for whether the program should be continued. The program is repealed, effective July 1, 2022.
For the 2019-20 fiscal year, the act appropriates $272,929 from the general fund to the department to implement the program.
Barbara McLachlan
Rachel Zenzinger
Kevin Priola
State, Veterans, & Military Affairs
Preamended Versions (3 )
04/24/2019 PA3 PDF
Budget Staff Analysis (2)
04/26/2019 SA2 PDF
04/26/2019 | Senate Appropriations (1 )
04/24/2019 | Senate State, Veterans, & Military Affairs (2 )
Adopt amendment L.007 (Attachment E).
Refer House Bill 19-1002, as amended, to the Committee on Appropriations.
04/18/2019 | House Appropriations (3 )
Adopt amendment L.004
Adopt amendment J.002
01/17/2019 | House Education (3 )
Senate Amendments
REPASS
Aye: 51 No: 12 Other: 2
AMD (L.006)
SEN State, Veterans, & Military Affairs
Lost**
HOU Appropriations
HOU Education
05/02/2019 Senate House Considered Senate Amendments - Result was to Concur - Repass
04/30/2019 Senate Senate Second Reading Passed with Amendments - Committee
04/29/2019 Senate Senate Second Reading Laid Over Daily - No Amendments
04/26/2019 Senate Senate Committee on Appropriations Refer Unamended to Senate Committee of the Whole
04/24/2019 Senate Senate Committee on State, Veterans, & Military Affairs Refer Amended to Appropriations
04/19/2019 Senate Introduced In Senate - Assigned to State, Veterans, & Military Affairs
04/19/2019 House House Third Reading Passed with Amendments - Floor
04/18/2019 House House Second Reading Special Order - Passed with Amendments - Committee
04/18/2019 House House Committee on Appropriations Refer Amended to House Committee of the Whole
01/17/2019 House House Committee on Education Refer Amended to Appropriations
01/04/2019 House Introduced In House - Assigned to Education
Rep. B. McLachlan, Rep. J. Wilson
Sen. K. Priola, Sen. R. Zenzinger
Rep. S. Bird, Rep. J. Buckner, Rep. B. Buentello, Rep. Y. Caraveo, Rep. M. Catlin, Rep. L. Cutter, Rep. M. Duran, Rep. D. Esgar, Rep. T. Exum, Rep. R. Galindo, Rep. M. Gray, Rep. C. Hansen, Rep. E. Hooton, Rep. D. Jackson, Rep. C. Kennedy, Rep. C. Kipp, Rep. S. Lontine, Rep. J. Melton, Rep. D. Michaelson Jenet, Rep. M. Snyder, Rep. K. Tipper, Rep. B. Titone, Rep. D. Valdez
Sen. J. Bridges, Sen. L. Court, Sen. S. Fenberg, Sen. R. Fields, Sen. L. Garcia, Sen. J. Ginal, Sen. P. Lee, Sen. D. Moreno, Sen. B. Pettersen, Sen. T. Story, Sen. N. Todd, Sen. F. Winter
Leadership Profl Dev For School Principals
Extend Repeal Early Childhood Legislative Commission
Concealed Carry In Public Schools
Need For Juvenile Behavioral Health Treatment
Colorado's K-12 Achievement Gaps (2014)
State Education Fund Report (2012)
Waivers from State Education Laws (2016)
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