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The Sin of Marketing Offers
Filed under: Christianity, ethics, music — Tags: CCM, Christian artists, Christian ethics, contemporary Christian music, exclusive offers, iTunes, Lifeway, music offers, open source, partiality — paulthinkingoutloud @ 8:43 am
Early in the week, I was contacted to see if I knew how someone could get their hands on a song by Casting Crowns titled Listen to Our Hearts. They believed it was on the album Come to the Well, but they couldn’t locate it there.
A little research later, I determined that the song was a bonus track which was only sold to people who pre-ordered the album on iTunes.
It’s not the first time something like this has happened.
In the past few years there have been entire albums by Christian artists which were only available at LifeWay stores. Here, I need to point out that there are no LifeWay stores in Canada or the UK, so fans of the artists in questions simply could not obtain the product, no matter how hard they tried.
There’s something about this that just strikes me as wrong.
I saw an article the other day about “The Sin of Partiality.” Not surprisingly it began in the book of James (2:1-4):
My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
My brain connected the article with the song request.
I know Casting Crowns needs to make money, and I’m not saying they should give their songs away for free — the influence of Keith Green notwithstanding — but somewhere between open source and restricted access there should be a balance.
I posted a fan-posted YouTube edition the song on Twitter as a type of protest. That way some people got to hear it that day. I added that a year, or two years later, “the song never surfaced in any form.” That brought this reader response:
Paul, how is non open sourced music shameful? Are they, their producers, songwriters, publishers, not worthy of marketing their product as they wish?
If Max Lucado offered a short story he wrote to those who pre-ordered his book, is that shameful?
Honest question, not angry!
— Mark Lehman (@PMarkLehman) February 12, 2018
To which I responded,
Your Max Lucado example is a valid objection. However, six months to a year down the road I would want to see that short story available on the open market, or in a collection. I see exclusivity in a case like this the way Jesus saw partiality. I know I'm being idealistic, though https://t.co/UQXFx6eHtG
— Paul Wilkinson (@PaulW1lk1nson) February 12, 2018
I realize that Christian retail is fraught with moral and ethical perils. The one I hear the most is, “The Bible should be free.” (I always have free copies to meet that objection.) I don’t expect the people at iTunes to live by Christian standards, but surely the people at LifeWay must know, in the back of their minds, that at the same time they’re doing something for their customers, they are denying others, right? (In a future article, we’ll look at the related idea of giving greater discounts to people buying in quantity, which is always an ethical dilemma.)
I just think anytime you say “exclusive offer” you’re letting some people in and shutting some people out.
At that point, the connection to what James says about favoritism is valid.
Note: The song was a collaboration between three artists. The versions by Steven Curtis Chapman and Geoff Moore have proved equally elusive in 2018.
When Christians Presume Upon Your Good Nature
Filed under: Christianity — Tags: charismatic, Christian character, Christian ethics, Christian integrity, Christian journalism, Christian publishing, Christian writing, pentecostal — paulthinkingoutloud @ 9:17 am
The article which appeared here on the weekend is currently being suspended as the story has taken an unexpected turn which is hopefully leading to resolution. I don’t usually pull back stories — if it happened, it happened — but in the spirit I sensed coming through several emails this morning from two different people, I don’t wish to leave negative publicity online. The party concerned did not request this; I’m doing this of my own accord.
What Americans Wanted
Filed under: Christianity, current events, politics — Tags: American Christianity, Christian ethics, Christian morals, closing borders, following Jesus, Golden Rule, humility, loving our neighbor, moral responsibility, refugee crisis, Syria, WWJD — paulthinkingoutloud @ 9:53 am
“These presidential orders are what many Christians voted for. This is the fruit of their political labor, but it’s not the Fruit of the Spirit.”
“For the last few years Christians have been singing worship songs that include lyrics like “keep my eyes above the waves, when oceans rise …” and yet have rejected refugees who’ve seen loved ones die beneath waves, who themselves have literally struggled to keep from drowning in oceans. Those American Christians — particularly white evangelicals — continue to sing the words: “Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders …” but fail to realize the shameful irony that they’re largely responsible for refusing shelter and opportunity to some of the world’s most helpless and oppressed people…”
…Continue reading Stephen Mattson’s article American Christianity Has Failed at Sojourners.
.@realDonaldTrump
When you welcome the stranger, you welcome me.
When you do not welcome the stranger, you do not welcome me. -Jesus
— Shane Claiborne (@ShaneClaiborne) January 28, 2017
Our gospel witness and neighbor love aren't canceled out by fear. Refugees around the world and in our communities need the love of Christ.
— Russell Moore (@drmoore) January 28, 2017
Implementing a Muslim ban and using torture tactics will unify and inspire terrorists. Trump fell into the trap of extremism. He joined them
— Donald Miller (@donaldmiller) January 28, 2017
Don't feel safe in a country that discriminates based on religion just because it's not your religion being targeted. Your turn will come.
— Joshua Harris (@HarrisJosh) January 28, 2017
We turn away refugees like the Jews were turned away. We close the door on those who suffer most. We have forgotten. And we are anti-life.
— James Martin, SJ (@JamesMartinSJ) January 28, 2017
Specific Prayers for Your Children
Filed under: Christianity, parenting, prayer — Tags: Christian character, Christian ethics, Christian life, Christian living, Christian values, Christian virtues, daily Bible study, intercession — paulthinkingoutloud @ 7:04 am
As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him;
Psalm 103:13 NIV
Even if you’re not a parent, you might be a grandparent, Godparent, aunt, uncle, brother, sister, teacher, Children’s ministry leader, etc. Or perhaps you can use this as a checklist to see how you measure up yourself! This first appeared at Into The King’s Garden by Angel Koerner Bohon. Click the title below to get the source for this and think of someone who has children in their sphere of influence you can send it to. Also remember, if your kids are in their 30s or 40s, it’s not too late to pray these prayers. (The reference in each section alludes strongly to scripture passages you will recognize, but if you want to study them further, copy and paste into BibleGateway.com)
Virtues to Pray for Your Children
1. Salvation — “Lord, let salvation spring up within my children, that they may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory.” (Isa. 45:8; 2 Tim. 2:10)
2. Growth in Grace — “I pray that my children may grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” (2 Pet. 3:18)
3. Love — “Grant, Lord, that my children may learn to live a life of love, through the Spirit who dwells in them.” (Gal. 5:25; Eph. 5:2)
4. Honesty and Integrity — “May integrity and honesty be their virtue and their protection.” (Ps. 25:21)
5. Self-Control — “Father, help my children not to be like many others around them, but let them be alert and self-controlled in all they do.” (1 Thess. 5:6)
6. Love for God’s Word — “May my children grow to find Your Word more precious than much pure gold and sweeter than honey from the comb.” (Ps. 19:10)
7. Justice — “God, help my children to love justice as You do and act justly in all they do.” (Ps. 11:7; Mic. 6:8)
8. Mercy — “May my children always be merciful, just as their Father is merciful.” (Luke 6:36)
9. Respect (for self, others, and authority) — “Father, grant that my children may show proper respect to everyone, as Your Word commands.” (1 Pet. 2:17)
10. Biblical Self-Esteem — “Help my children develop a strong self-esteem that is rooted in the realization that they are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus.” (Eph. 2:10)
11. Faithfulness — “Let love and faithfulness never leave my children, but bind these twin virtues around their necks and write them on the tablet of their hearts.” (Prov. 3:3)
12. Courage — “May my children always be strong and courageous in their character and in their actions.” (Deut. 31:6)
13. Purity — “Create in them a pure heart, O God, and let that purity of heart be shown in their actions.” (Ps. 51:10)
14. Kindness — “Lord, may my children always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else.” (1 Thess. 5:15)
15. Generosity — “Grant that my children may be generous and willing to share, and so lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age.” (1 Tim. 6:18-19)
16. Peace-Loving — “Father, let my children make every effort to do what leads to peace.” (Rom. 14:19)
17. Joy — “May my children be filled with the joy given by the Holy Spirit.” (1 Thes. 1:6)
18. Perseverance — “Lord, teach my children perseverance in all they do, and help them especially to run with perseverance the race marked out for them.” (Heb. 12:1)
19. Humility — “God, please cultivate in my children the ability to show true humility toward all.” (Titus 3:2)
20. Compassion — “Lord, please clothe my children with the virtue of compassion.” (Col. 3:12)
21. Responsibility — “Grant that my children may learn responsibility, for each one should carry his own load.” (Gal. 6:5)
22. Contentment — “Father, teach my children the secret of being content in any and every situation, through Him who gives them strength.” (Phil. 4:12-13)
23. Faith — “I pray that faith will find root and grow in my children’s hearts, that by faith they may gain what has been promised to them.” (Luke 17:5-6; Heb. 11:1-40)
24. A Servant’s Heart — “God, please help my children develop servant’s hearts, that they may serve wholeheartedly, as if they were serving the Lord, not men.” (Eph. 6:7)
25. Hope — “May the God of hope grant that my children may overflow with hope and hopefulness by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Rom. 15:13)
26. Willingness and Ability to Work — “Teach my children, Lord, to value work and to work at it with all their heart, as working for the Lord and not for men.” (Col. 3:23)
27. Passion for God — “Lord, please instill in my children a soul that ‘followeth hard after thee,’ one that clings passionately to You.” (Ps. 63:8)
28. Self-Discipline — “Father, I pray that my children may acquire a disciplined and prudent life, doing what is right and just and fair.” (Prov. 1:3)
29. Prayerfulness — “Grant, Lord, that my children’s lives may be marked by prayerfulness, that they may learn to pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers.” (1 Thess. 5:17)
30. Gratitude — “Help my children to live lives that are always overflowing with thankfulness and always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Eph. 5:20; Col. 2:7)
31. A Heart for Missions — “Lord, please help my children to develop a desire to see Your glory declared among the nations, Your marvelous deeds among the peoples.” (Ps. 96:3)
Theology in Story
Filed under: books, Christianity, issues, reviews — Tags: apologetics, Christian beliefs, Christian ethics, church life, doubts, Faith, novels that teach, social issues, TGC, Trevin Wax — paulthinkingoutloud @ 7:51 am
Rather unexpectedly yesterday, I found myself devouring all 160 pages of a 2013 novel by Trevin Wax Clear Winter Nights: A Journey Into Truth, Doubt and What Comes After (Multnomah). What attracted me to the book, besides some familiarity with the author’s many years of blogging, was the concept of using a story to teach.
As a huge fan of three novels by David Gregory which use this format — Dinner with a Perfect Stranger, Day with a Perfect Stranger and Night With a Perfect Stranger — I see the value in a genre for people who would never pick up a more commonplace ‘Christian Living’ title, let alone a book on basic theology. This is a book which has a storyline, but at the same time is using the plot at the front door to allow a lot of truth to enter through the back door.
Two words come to mind here, the first is didactic. The storyteller is truly the teacher. But the second, better word is the very similar dialectic, using a conversational style to impart knowledge, as did writers like Plato. This can also be called Socratic dialog or the Socratic method.
The banter is between two central characters, Chris Walker a disillusioned church planter whose job promise and engagement have both been broken; and Gil his grandfather, a retired pastor. You could call this Weekend with a Perfect… oh, never mind; that doesn’t work here; it’s a different dynamic.
Without giving away too much, I couldn’t get over how many of the topics Chris and Gil cover resonated with me. The book isn’t afraid to tackle some tough issues facing the church collectively and individual Christians, yet does so with tact, humor and grace. The key characters being male also makes this an ideal gift for men, something that is rarity in the world of Christian fiction, though I still prefer the dialectic label to override the fictional nature of the story.
While Trevin Wax and I are from vastly different tribes — he writes for The Gospel Coalition and works for LifeWay — I didn’t allow that to influence my reading and it doesn’t stop me from giving this book my full recommendation. In fact, a couple of times my eyes watered as the conversation unfolded. Clear Winter Nights works on many different levels.
Another author who writes in this genre is Andy Andrews. We reviewed The Traveler’s Gift and The Noticer.
Another fiction title that used the dialectic method was Chasing Francis by Ian Morgan Cron.
My review of Dinner With A Perfect Stranger by David Gregory was more of an explanation of the DVD series which came from the first two books. He did the first two books with Waterbrook, part of the same publishing group as the title by Trevin Wax we’re reviewing today; but the third was published by EMI Worthy, who wouldn’t send a review copy, so I did the write up of Night With a Perfect Stranger in bullet points.
Apologies to UK, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand readers for spelling dialogue the American way. I know. What are we going to do?
Content Not Copyrighted
Filed under: blogging, Christianity, writing — Tags: blessed to be a blessing, blogging, blogging etiquette, Christian blogging, Christian blogosphere, Christian ethics, Christian living, Christian writing, copyright, freely you have received, generosity, gifts from God, humility, intellectual property, Jesus' teachings, open source community, ownership of writing, possessions, pride, reblogging, royalties, sharing of ideas — paulthinkingoutloud @ 5:50 am
There is no limit on what can be done for God as long as it doesn’t matter who is getting the earthly credit.
There’s a worship song currently making the rounds that goes, “It’s your breath, in our lungs, so we pour out our praise; pour out our praise…” To me, the song is a reminder that it’s God who gives us breath, gives us abilities, gives us opportunities and one of the best uses of that is to offer back praise to him.
For the third time in nearly 2,000 posts, this week we got a take-down order at Christianity 201. Yes, it would be nice to have a staff and be able to contact writers in advance and say, “We think your writing would be a great addition to C201 and we’d like to include what you wrote last Tuesday in our gallery of devotional articles.” But I just don’t have that luxury. So we pay the highest compliments to our writers by encouraging our readers to check out their stuff at source, while at the same time archiving it for the many who we know statistically don’t click through.
The one this week offered some lame excuse about how I was disturbing his Google analytics by publishing his works, and reminded me that he could sue me. Nice attitude, huh?
These days, most of the authors are appearing for the second, third or fourth time, and many write (both on and off the blog) to say how honored they are that we find their material helpful.
I honestly can’t remember the name of the first two authors, but I know one had some recognition in Calvinist circles; so when the lightning struck again this week, I checked out the guy’s Twitter to look for clues and guess what?
That got me thinking about something I wrote here about 16 months ago…
The Bible has a lot to say about the accumulation of wealth and the hoarding of possessions. Probably the classic statement of scripture on the matter is,
NASB Matt. 6:19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal…
MSG Matt. 6:19-21 “Don’t hoard treasure down here where it gets eaten by moths and corroded by rust or—worse!—stolen by burglars. Stockpile treasure in heaven, where it’s safe from moth and rust and burglars. It’s obvious, isn’t it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being.
The Bible doesn’t say, ‘Don’t have any treasure whatsoever.’ True, when Jesus sent his disciples out he told them to travel light, advice that extends through all of life:
NLT Matt. 10:9 “Don’t take any money in your money belts—no gold, silver, or even copper coins. 10 Don’t carry a traveler’s bag with a change of clothes and sandals or even a walking stick.
But in everyday life, the Bibles teaching presuppose you will have a home or a donkey or bread that you may or may not choose to give your neighbor when he comes knocking late at night.
This week it occurred to me that at the time the Bible was written, one thing that we can possess that they didn’t was intellectual property. There was no Copyright Act; no Letters Patent. Did Jesus’ earthly father, Joseph the Carpenter have a special way of doing a table that would cause him great consternation if Murray the Carpenter down the road started copying the idea? You get the feeling that everything was open source.
I think it’s interesting that in the prior verse of Matthew 10, Jesus makes the often-quoted statement, “Freely you have received, now freely give.”
Personally, there’s nothing on this blog that isn’t up for grabs, provided it’s cited properly and quoted properly and being used non-commercially. Like this article? Help yourself. Yes, in the past I have been paid to write and could thereby consider myself a professional writer; but this is only a blog and it’s vital not to get too caught up in your own sense of self-importance; and I say that not out the spirit of someone who is loaded with wealth, but as a person who has had no specific fixed income for 19 years.
I also thought it was interesting that the one person who was so upset about the use of his material on other than his own website was complaining about a particular article that was about 50% scripture quotations. More than 50%, I believe. Oh, the irony. I can just hear Jesus saying, ‘Uh, could you just link to my words in the Bible rather than print them out on your own website?’
That said, I am consciously aware that a double standard exists in the Christian blogosphere. We both permit and excuse the copying of text, but there is far less grace for poachers of cartoons and photographs. (I guess a picture really is worth a thousand words.) If you take what belongs to them, it’s like trying to wrestle a t-bone from a pit-bull.
In the early days of this blog, the weekly link list included cartoons from Baptist Press. Not any more. Baptists can be very litigious, which is too bad, because the cartoons were worthy of an audience beyond a single denomination. Everybody loses, but that’s the Baptist way, I guess.
Words are cheaper however. I respect intellectual property rights in general, but hey, guys, it’s only a blog.
I really think when the writer is a little older, they will look back and see the foolishness of trying to hang on to what really isn’t yours to begin with.
Think About It: Some things simply didn’t exist when the Bible was written, such as smoking cigarettes or driving over the speed limit. It’s the same with intellectual property. We have to appeal to the timeless, grand themes of scripture to make behavioral determinations.
The corollary to this is that if I do choose to copyright my blog writing here, I am basically saying this is mine; I wrote this, I created it, it was my talents and my gifts that went into creating it.
I’m glad the Biblical writers didn’t feel that way. If you believe in plenary inspiration — that God birthed ideas within them but they stylized it and added their individual touch to the writing — then even if you hold that “all Scripture is inspired” (which I do) you could still make a case that they could copyright the particular words used.
But some would argue that even if you say, “This came entirely from God and I shouldn’t really take any credit for it;” if you want your writing to reach the greatest number of people, then you’ve got to put somebody’s name underneath the title.
That’s essentially the case with Jesus Calling. I don’t want to get into the larger debate on that book, because it’s been done elsewhere (with many comments) but if, like the classic God Calling, the “authors” feel that this book is the equivalent to Dictation Theory in Biblical inspiration, realistically, nobody’s name should appear on the cover. I wonder if “by Jesus” or “by God” would sell more or fewer copies than “by Sarah Young.”
You can however engage the commercial marketplace and at the same time take no money (or very little) for your wares. Keith Green is a name that some of the younger generation don’t know, but Keith basically said that if anyone couldn’t afford his records or cassettes, he would send them copies free of charge. It was radical at the time — this was before free downloads — and Keith took ribbing that perhaps he was also going to ship stereo systems to people who had nothing on which to play the music.
Keith Green would have loved blogging — he’d have about ten of them — and would be fighting hard for the open source blogosphere mentioned above, and also when the first writer protested. (The post then was triggered by an irate blogger at C201 as well, so we’re running one complaint every 700+ articles, which isn’t bad.) In fact, Keith would argue for open source thinking in a variety of Christian media and art.
Bottom line: We have to be careful about holding too tightly to the things of this world including possessions that are tangible and those which are intangible such as intellectual property.
Moving forward: We’ll try to stick to repeat authors and original devotional material. If you’ve ever wondered if you could write devotional material — and it’s both a rare and challenging calling — check out the submissions guidelines at C201.
“It’s your breath, in our lungs, so we pour out our praise…”
The Sin of Embellishment
Filed under: Church, ethics — Tags: Christian ethics, church life, church metrics, honesty, personal integrity, speech — paulthinkingoutloud @ 6:55 am
Nightly News host Brian Williams was in a war zone traveling in a convoy of airplanes. One came under attack. It was not the plane in which Williams was a passenger. But over time the story morphed into one in which the aircraft he was in sustained mortar fire. Or something like that. The allegation is that the story was therefore falsified by a person of trust, a network news anchor.
He certainly embellished the story. Or fell victim to false memory syndrome. As a result, he’s been suspended, without pay, from hosting the NBC national newscast for six months.
Some say it’s the end of his career.
For readers here, I couldn’t help but notice the similarity between Williams’ embellishment and Mark Driscoll’s plagiarism, though in Driscoll’s case, it may have been but one of many issues that brought down the end of the Washington state megachurch franchise known as Mars Hill.
But when it comes to embellishment, we do this don’t we?
By this I mean both we as individuals, and we as the church.
Individually, we paint an artificial picture of ourselves on social media. We idealize our children’s accomplishments and our recent vacation. We make sure our profile picture minimizes silver hairs or bags under the eyes. We minimize reports of failures and defeats.
Corporately, churches are known for enhancing numbers: Attendance figures, budgets, baptisms, altar call responses, and the number of kids on the Sunday School bus. Whether you call it an ethical lapse or deliberate dishonesty depends on how you interpret what’s been said, where you set the bar, or perhaps recollection of your own failings in this department.
It’s certainly akin to the fishing story; each time around the size of the fish caught gets larger and longer.
We can avoid being guilty of deceit or falsification — those are harsh words after all — by using terms like “approximately” or “as I remember” or even the euphemistic “evangelically speaking;” but the fact remains we tend to recollect the data in an upwards, not downwards direction.
So we need the Brians and the Marks; they serve to remind us that being ‘lax with the facts’ can catch up to us, that sometimes we have to pay the price for not being people whose accounts of things are reliable and dependable. We have to face the consequences of what scripture might describe as not ‘letting our yes be yes and our no be no.’
Southern Baptists Condemn All “Heaven” Books
Filed under: books, ethics, media, testimony — Tags: afterlife stories, Christian ethics, christian films, Christian movies, conservative Evangelical, heaven and back stories, Heaven is for Real, LifeWay bookstores, religious movies, SBC, Southern Baptists, Todd Burpo — paulthinkingoutloud @ 6:20 am
If you haven’t heard, this week’s Southern Baptist Convention convention (redundancy intended) included a resolution that basically said, ‘To hell with heaven books.’ Blogger Kristine McGuire summarizes the story accurately in this introduction,
There is an article on Charisma News which is reporting that the Southern Baptist convention has issued a resolution stating books (and now presumably movies) such as Heaven is for Real and others like it (such as My Journey to Heaven by Marvin Besteman, To Heaven and Back by Dr. Mary Neal, and 90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper) are not in line with “the sufficiency of Scripture regarding the afterlife” and are determining to remove Heaven is for Real from Lifeway Christian Stores.
And it’s taken them how many years to come to this decision? Heaven is for Real has been in stores since 2010…
Christian Retailing reported the same story:
…The parent body of LifeWay Christian Stores stopped short of calling for such products to be pulled from the retail chain, however.
Delegates—known as messengers—to the Baptist body’s assembly focused on “the sufficiency of Scripture regarding the afterlife,” cautioning against putting books about personal heaven experiences on the same level as the Bible’s description of the hereafter…
But certainly the rule here should be caveat lector, let the reader beware. By extension, isn’t any Christian book in danger of being elevated to the same status of the Bible? And doesn’t this already happen in certain circles, where the words of both Charismatic and Reformed superstars are given an almost divine authority.
Black Christian News reported:
In another cultural pushback, Baptists affirmed “the sufficiency of Scripture regarding the afterlife” and criticized best-selling movies and books that have focused on heaven and suggested descriptions of it.
“Many of these books and movies have sought to describe heaven from a subjective, experiential source, mainly via personal testimonies that cannot be corroborated,” they said.
In the same session where the resolution was passed, a messenger asked that Heaven Is for Real be removed “for theological reasons” from LifeWay Christian Stores, which are affiliated with the SBC. The request was ruled out of order.
J.D. Hall at the blog Pulpit and Pen notes:
What’s forgotten is that Burpo’s book (and Wallace’s movie by the same name, Heaven is for Real) is nothing new, novelty, or unique. Phil Johnson gives a good list of books with similar testimonies that have become so prominent in the evangelical marketplace that Tim Challies has come to call the genre “Heaven Tourism.” Johnson gives the list including My Journey to Heaven: What I Saw and How It Changed My Life, by Marvin J. Besteman; Flight to Heaven: A Plane Crash . . .A Lone Survivor . . .A Journey to Heaven—and Back, by Dale Black; To Heaven and Back: A Doctor’s Extraordinary Account of Her Death, Heaven, Angels, and Life Again: A True Story, by Mary Neal; 90 Minutes in Heaven: A True Story of Death and Life, by Don Piper; Nine Days In Heaven, by Dennis Prince; 23 Minutes In Hell: One Man’s Story About What He Saw, Heard, and Felt in that Place of Torment, by Bill Wiese.
His article is titled “Heaven is for Real: Is Discernment Dead?” and makes the point that in the final analysis, “the details of the book ought to strictly and immediately raise the red flag of discernment for even the most elementary of Christians – let alone those serving as provost of Southern Baptist seminaries.” But he seems to disagree that giving so much stock to the child’s story as to render it worthy of condemnation is the wisest move. Good, personal discernment is all that’s needed.
Many articles noted that LifeWay did not actually end up having to remove the book from sales. There’s too much money to be lost, and LifeWay is a cash cow for the denomination. In various places here we’ve reported on instances where the company puts profit over principles, such as Southern Baptists’ wholesale condemnation of women in ministry, while at the same time publishing and promoting the ministry of Beth Moore.
By falling just shy of condemning the book outright at LifeWay, the company leaves itself open to carrying the DVD, certain to be both popular and profitable. The film has earned $89,007,517 in the U.S. so far according to Box Office Mojo, and ranks 15th for 2014. The movie is scheduled to release on July 22nd from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, with an initial MSRP of $30.99 for DVD and $40.99 for Blu-Ray.
LifeWay Continues Walk Tightrope Between Profit and Principle
LifeWay Publishing Shows Its Total Hypocrisy
LifeWay Backpedals on Banning NIV-2011
The World Vision Story Irony
Filed under: charity, Uncategorized — Tags: charitable organizations, Child sponsorship, Christian ethics, Christian principles, philanthropy, World Vision, World Vision hiring, World Vision LGBT, World Vision policy reversal, World Vision retraction — paulthinkingoutloud @ 11:58 am
Despite my frequent rant that more balanced journalism comes with the luxury of time, I wanted to quickly document some of the early reaction to World Vision’s reversal of their hiring policy change before suppertime on Wednesday night. Okay, let’s be honest, I just wanted to be one of the first out with the story. So you ended up with this quick post, which was frequently updated, not the least of which updates were to include my wife’s observation that this was, within 48 hours, a microcosm of the “New Coke” story. I do believe that this is the religious news story of the month, and will certainly end up in the top five for the year.
Bene D. went down the same paths as I did and took the time to copy some extracts that give you a more readable story. But a quick note from Bene this morning alerted me to the excellent piece at Internet Monk by Michael Bell (which includes an excellent David Hayward cartoon).
Without overly dumbing down what Michael wrote, I want to give you Cliff’s Notes version so you don’t miss this. Here are the bullet points:
The issue for Evangelicals here is homosexuality.
A discussion of homosexuality invariably leads to the use of the term sodomy.
Many Bible commentators would have it that the sin of Sodom was neglect of its poor.
On Monday, some Evangelicals withdrew their support from World Vision over the issue in (1) above, and thereby were guilty of (3) above.
If nothing else, it’s interesting to think that (again, according to many interpreters) if you pulled your child support between Monday and Wednesday night, you were guilty of sodomy. I don’t however recommend you actually telling that to anyone who withdrew their support.
(Of course, this take doesn’t eliminate other Bible passages on the subject that cannot be so interpreted.)
Then, Michael goes on to note the interesting timing on this vis-a-vis another recent religious news story:
Do you know how much these young people are repulsed by Fred Phelps sign “God hates Fags”? Well, in the minds of many you have just held up another two thousand signs. Fred Phelps died last week, and many said “good riddance”. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that so many would step up so quickly to take his place.
…Let me hasten to add here something that I placed in a comment on Wednesday. It was because of the very high percentage of donor money that World Vision spends on fundraising that I/we never sponsored a child. But a few years ago, my oldest son decided to sponsor a child through Compassion.
Seeing the relationship he has through the mail with someone on the other side of the world has made me realize what we missed out on. We’ve already sent two donations to Compassion’s unsponsored children fund and I do encourage people to consider sponsorships through Compassion, Gospel for Asia, Partners International, etc. Most of these agencies place a high, or perhaps higher priority on the proclamation of the good news about Jesus alongside their humanitarian relief and development efforts.
Filed under: links — Tags: altar calls, British legal system, car fish, Christian blogs, Christian books, Christian ethics, Christian gift ideas, Christian Music, Christian websites, Christian writers, Christians in restaurants, Church coffee, dealing with death, Dr. Russell Moore, evangelicals, Fred Phelps, funeral director blog, gay Christians, gender roles, God's Not Dead movie, Hillsong, John MacArthur, Lakewood Church robbery, Lesbian Christians, Michael W. Smith, New York Spanish Church, Newsboys, pastoral ministry, spiritual abuse, vocational ministry, World Vision — paulthinkingoutloud @ 9:11 am
We’re back with another mid-week link meeting! Here’s what your brothers and sisters from random parts of the big ‘C’ church were up to this week. Clicking any of the links below will take you to PARSE, the list’s benevolent patron.
What’s the difference between a canoe and a Christian in a restaurant? A canoe tips. [Rim shot!] Now a website is dedicated to giving food servers a chance to describe their experiences with church people at Sundays Are The Worst.
Pastors: Be careful what you offer in a sermon, especially if it’s not in the church budget.
Marketing Christianity: A special offer from pastor and radio host Steve Brown allows you Three Free Sins.
A funeral director whose blog deals with how we face death offers suggestions as to the proper etiquette of dealing with loss on the internet…
…The same author once noticed that at funerals, almost all pastors are universalists.
A secular news website looks at the various blogs that highlight survivor stories of spiritual abuse in fundamentalist sects.
Strange Cloud Conference: It doesn’t sound like John MacArthur will be buying a ticket for the Heaven is For Real movie adaptation.
Gay Christians in same-sex marriage are now eligible for employment at World Vision…
…but the World Vision shift brings a quick response from Baptist ethics writer Russell D. Moore.
Pastors often suffer from depression. Here are seven ways God can use that.
Essay of the Week (1): When it comes to personality tests, I think I’m an HIJK. Is that a thing? Anyway here’s Why English Majors Make Lousy Fundamentalists.
Essay of the Week (2): Two lesbians walk into a church. No, it’s not a short story and there is no punchline. But there is quite an ending.
Houston Crime-Stoppers will pay you $25,000 for information leading to an arrest in the theft of $600,000 at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church.
For a member of The Newsboys, his involvement in the movie God’s Not Dead is the continuation in a chain of events begun when Billy Graham visited Australia in 1959…
…while the movie’s opening weekend landed it in the top five.
With everyone in the U.S. thinking basketball, I thought we’d take a different route and offer this delightful religious gift idea for the football fan. (Pictured above.)
The British Law Society is one step closer to a legal system that accommodates Islamic law. (Wait, what?)
Meanwhile, Jewish News Service is reporting that in countries where they are a minority, there has been a major exodus of Christians in the face of religious extremists.
So who’s up for a good debate? On Moody Radio a look at the decline of altar calls in Baptist churches. (Click the link for the 54 minute program.)
YMin: One of the big challenges to youth ministry is the reality that the kids all attend different schools.
Intermission: A pause while we pay a tribute to church basement coffee.
Thanks for the Complementarian: Is Cedarville University planning to restrict a particular course to women only?
Jamie the Very Worst Production Consultant breaks her Non-Disclosure Agreement and tells what was going on in the desert that day.
Analogy of the Week: To this writer, fellowship is like oxygen.
While reading Brad Lomenick’s latest list of young influencers, I learned that on Hillsong’s popular song Oceans, the lead vocal belongs to Taya Smith.
Since PARSE is part of Leadership Journal which in turn is part of Christianity Today, I’m sure they weren’t happy with this shot taken by Frank Schaeffer…
…but I did think that Karen Spears Zacharias had an insightful, deeper look at the late Fred Phelps and what he is now experiencing…
…and in Fred’s home town of Topeka, Kansas, the local newspaper provides a family tree of sorts.
Source Unknown Department: Every pastor’s prayer.
A Spanish church occupied the first floor and basement of a building that was destroyed in the New York City gas explosion. Some church members perished in the blast.
Book Review: A look at Renegade Pastor, a book encouraging those in ministry not to settle for average.
Time Warp: Michael W. Smith is releasing a new album.
Here’s another infographic from Josh Byers, this one showing the harmony of the gospels’ telling of the Passion Week narrative.
Internet Diversions Department: 27 indicators you grew up Evangelical. (Yes, I know, the whole internet is a diversion.)
Finally, specialization has hit the automotive fish industry. Now your car icthus can have special meaning. (Including a Southern Baptist fish icon.)
Stay in touch with Paul Wilkinson during the week on Twitter.
Our closing cartoon is rather interesting, don’t you think? The artist is Jess MacCallum and you can click the image to see more.
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April is Financial Literacy Month: Resources from Greenpath Financial Wellness
By Pawn Detroit | from Staff, Lifestyle, Uncategorized
April is Financial Literacy Month and American Jewelry and Loan is proud to partner with Junior Achievement, Operation Hope, and Greenpath Financial Wellness, to offer Financial Literacy workshops for our customers. Learn more about upcoming events HERE.
From our partners at Greenpath Financial Wellness, here are five quick tips to help you on the path to financial wellness this year.
1. Open a separate savings account to force yourself to build an emergency savings fund. Make it separate from your main financial institution, with no ATM card, so you will be forced to go into a branch to withdraw money.
2. Educate yourself. Check out some books on personal finance or subscribe to a magazine or personal finance blog.*
3. Pull your credit score and report. A good way to start the year is to find out exactly where you stand financially. Download your credit report (one free each year from each of the three main reporting bureaus) at www.annualcreditreport.com.
4. Plan ahead. Get in the habit each night of preparing for the next day: Packing lunches, prepping breakfast and dinner. That way you will not be tempted to buy convenience food on the run, because you are rushed.
5. Unsubscribe. Remove the temptation of impulse buying online by unsubscribing from retail email. This can take some time, but, ultimately, you will save time and money by not being bombarded with emails “deals”, tempting you to buy.
Read the full article at www.greenpath.com.
Click HERE to RSVP for our Financial Literacy Workshop in Pontiac!
Financial Literacy Workshop coming to Pontiac
By Pawn Detroit | In the News
In October 2016, American Jewelry and Loan was proud to host a Financial Literacy workshop that’s the first of its kind in the nation. In partnership with Junior Achievement, Operation Hope, and Greenpath Financial Wellness, the aim was to help people understand how to make smart decisions about money. The response was overwhelmingly positive.
Now, a new workshop date and location is being announced. On Tuesday, May 16th, 2017, American Jewelry and Loan will host a Financial Literacy workshop for Alternative Lending customers from 5-7 pm at their Pontiac Location. That store is located at 546 North Telegraph Road in Pontiac. (Click HERE to RSVP)
The workshop will teach attendees “good habits that build good lives,” said Margaret Trimer-Hartley, President and CEO of Junior Achievement of Michigan, which is one of the groups hosting the workshop.
“We’re trying to just raise awareness,” she said, and “we’re doing it at an earlier age.”
Trimer-Hartley said financial literacy can be taught through explaining investment strategies as simple as opening a savings or checking account.
According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., 7 percent of Americans did not have a bank account as of June 2015.
Without a bank account, households are often left with no choice but to turn to check-cashing services and other non-traditional methods to make transactions most Americans see as routine. Others often take loans that dive-bomb their credit scores because the terms of the loans aren’t often clear or easy to understand.
The workshop aims to mitigate some of those problems.
American Jewelry and Loan and its partners hope to bridge a gap he sees between his customers and people who turn to banks for loans. “My customers don’t have access to the traditional banking system,” he said. “Our customers deserve the same opportunities as everybody else … An informed customer is a better customer.”
His family has had a pawn shop in Detroit since the 1940s. Gold said the workshop stems from conversations he had with the Detroit Chamber of Commerce at the Mackinac Policy Conference over the summer, where financial literacy was often talked about.
He intends to define the difference between a loan from a pawn shop and loans from banks and other agencies that, if not paid back, can damage someone’s credit.
Trimer-Hartley said the workshop will touch on investment options, teach the importance of saving for retirement, of health insurance, and will help attendees understand the difference between renting and buying homes and the importance of good credit.
Having a checking or savings account is considered a cornerstone of financial stability in the U.S. Without one, households must rely on check-cashing services, prepaid debit cards and other costly ways to pay bills and make routine transactions. But the situation is improving: For every 10 households that were unbanked in 2013, one of those households is now banked.
While the gains were modest, the results of the survey from the FDIC offered an encouraging sign. The FDIC report was the most recent piece of data showing that the economic recovery is beginning to positively affect those at the bottom.
The improving economy likely had some effect on why more Americans opened bank accounts. Not only did more Americans making less than $15,000 open bank accounts between 2013 and 2015, but the number of Americans making less than $15,000 also declined.
“The poor have more money in their pockets, and more are able to afford bank accounts,” said Aaron Klein, a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution.
There are several reasons why people choose not to have a traditional bank account. Some do not trust banks or want to avoid their fees, or they have privacy concerns, according to the FDIC’s report. There is also a perception among the unbanked that bank accounts are not for the poor. More than half of unbanked households said they believe banks are “not at all interested” in serving households like theirs, the report said.
But the No. 1 reason why Americans say they do not have a checking or savings account is that they believe they do not have enough money to get an account. The FDIC said roughly 57 percent of all unbanked households cited lack of money as a reason not to have an account, and roughly 38 percent of those same people said that was the main reason.
*NOTE: This article is comprised largely of information first reported in a Detroit News article.
RSVP to Financial Literacy for Alternative Lending Customers
By Pawn Detroit | Uncategorized
This workshop invites alternative lending customers to learn more about their options and understanding their options when they need access to short-term cash. Thanks to our presenting partners, attendees will also learn more about breaking the cycle of debt, budgeting, and improving their credit scores.
American Jewelry and Loan Pontiac
546 N Telegraph Road
Pontiac, MI 48341
Attendance is free and refreshments will be provided, but seating is limited, so please RSVP below:
Day Three- Entrepreneurship Master Class
By Pawn Detroit | Business, from Staff
ENTREPRENEURSHIP OAKLAND–MASTER CLASS
At the third and final segment of our Entrepreneurship Oakland Master Class, the panel shared insights that continue the conversation about success in business leadership.
This week’s expert panelists included: Vladimir Gendelman from Company Folders, Tonya Acha from Asentiv, Matthew Farrell from Core Partners, Damany Head from the Pontiac Regional Chamber and TNE Ventures, Wesley Mathews from High Level Marketing, and Rob Cote from Security Vitals.
Most of our distinguished panelists are members of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization – Detroit Chapter. Learn more about EO Detroit at www.eonetwork.org.
Three Tuesdays in March: March 14, 21, 28th
8-9:30am
546 N Telegraph Rd, Pontiac, MI 48341
COST: $185 per person
Includes: Attendance at all three sessions, materials, certificate of completion, refreshments, and a FREE Individual membership in the Pontiac Regional Chamber
SESSION ONE: TUESDAY, MARCH 14TH
Negotiating for Entrepreneurs
Business Planning Basics
Untangling the Red Tape
SESSION TWO: TUESDAY, MARCH 21ST
How to Conduct Market Research
FREE Community Resources for Business Owners
Finding the funding
Legal & Financial Considerations
Marketing, Advertising, and PR
SESSION THREE: TUESDAY, MARCH 28TH
Accounting and banking basics
eCommerce and Digital Marketing
Business Wisdom from a Pawnbroker
Learn more in this article from Crain’s Detroit.
DOWNLOAD A FLYER.
Presented in conjunction with the Pontiac Regional Chamber:
AJL was opened in 1978, and has since become one of the largest and most recognized pawn shops in the world. It is the setting of the record-breaking reality show, Hardcore Pawn, but remains a dedicated, full-service pawn shop for the Metro Detroit area and beyond.
Sign up for the Pawn Detroit Newsletter!
We will never give your information to third-parties or send spam.
© 2020 American Jewelry and Loan | As Seen on Hardcore Pawn | Pawn Detroit.
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Tag Archives: attraction
First Group of "Traditionalist" Anglicans in Britain Votes to Enter Catholic Church
ROME, November 6, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a move that is a surprise to no one, the UK branch of the Traditional Anglican Communion (TAC), the largest of the groups that broke away from the mainstream Anglican Church over the ordination of woman and the latter’s support for active homosexuality, has been the first to formally accept the offer of Pope Benedict to enter into communion with the Catholic Church en masse.
Although the TAC is not large, being made up of only 20 or so parishes, the vote by the group to accept the invitation is expected to be a strong symbolic blow to the mainstream Anglican Church in its motherland of Britain, where it has been a leader in the acceptance of woman clergy and homosexuality. It is widely acknowledged that the Vatican’s decision to extend its hand to traditionalist Anglicans comes in response to repeated requests, made public last year, by the TAC.
In a surprise announcement on October 20, the Vatican said that a document was being prepared that would create “personal ordinariates” that will allow “traditionalist” Anglicans to come into the Catholic Church in groups while retaining their liturgical and pastoral traditions, including the possibility of a married clergy. William Cardinal Levada, the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said that the move had come in response to many requests from Anglicans around the world, clergy, laity and bishops, who objected to the growing acceptance of homosexuality in Anglicanism, especially in North America and Britain.
The website of the TAC in the UK reported last week, “This Assembly, representing the Traditional Anglican Communion in Great Britain, offers its joyful thanks to Pope Benedict XVI for his forthcoming Apostolic Constitution allowing the corporate reunion of Anglicans with the Holy See, and requests the Primate and College of Bishops of the Traditional Anglican Communion to take the steps necessary to implement this Constitution.”
The leadership of the Traditional Anglican Community in Canada told LSN in an interview late last month that the life and family issues are a major factor in the attraction of the Catholic Church. Bishop Carl Reid of the Traditional Anglican Communion in Canada, told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN), “When it comes to issues of morality, especially family and pro-life, our membership is very strongly on the same page as are Roman Catholics.”
The pope’s offer to Anglicans who adhere to traditionally Christian moral doctrine has infuriated the left in both the secular and religious worlds. Benedict XVI has been attacked most recently by former Catholic theologian and notorious opponent of Catholic moral teaching, Hans Kung, as well as innumerable journalists and editors who see the move as the Vatican turning back the ecclesial clock towards a pre-1960s traditional style. Kung accused Benedict, his former university colleague, of ecclesiastical “piracy” and said that the move undermines the decades-long work of “ecumenical dialogue.”
John Allen, the leading American “liberal” Catholic journalist in Rome, gave a more sedate analysis, saying that the invitation to the Anglicans who are in agreement on the nature of truth, doctrine and biblical inerrancy, is indeed part of the pope’s greater plan to combat the growing secularist “dictatorship of relativism” that the pontiff has warned is undermining the very structure of our civilization.
“Benedict XVI is opening the door to … traditionalist Anglicans in part because whatever else they may be, they are among the Christians least prone to end up, in the memorable phrase of Jacques Maritain, ‘kneeling before the world,’ meaning sold out to secularism,” Allen wrote in a column today.
Fr. John Zuhlsdorf, an American priest-blogger with connections inside the Vatican, has commented that with this decision (one that was fought by many bishops in his own Church), the pope has earned the title, “Pope of unity.”
The Anglicans who may take advantage of the new “canonical structure,” Zhusldorf wrote, “are Christians who are separated from clear unity with the Church. Pope Benedict stresses the importance of his role as Pope as being one of promoting unity. It is not just that they a Christians who tend to agree with him. They are separated. He is trying to reintegrate them.”
“If we are going to fight the dictatorship of relativism,” Fr. Zuhlsdorf continued, “we need a strong Catholic identity. If we are going to evangelize, we need a strong Catholic identity. If we are going to engage in true ecumenism, we need a strong Catholic identity. Liturgy is the key component in his ‘Marshall Plan’ for the Church.”
This Report from LifeSiteNews.com
www.LifeSiteNews.com
Posted in Anglicans, Canada, Christianity, Church of England, Roman Catholicism, United Kingdom, USA | Tagged accept, acceptance, active, advantage, agree, agreement, allowing, American, analysis, Anglican, Anglicanism, Anglicans, Apostolic Constitution, assembly, attraction, Benedict, biblical inerrancy, bishops, blogger, blow, branch, Britain, Canada, canonical, cardinal, Carl Reid, Christianity, church, civilization, clear, clergy, clock, colleague, college, column, combat, communion, component, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, connections, constitution, corporate, create, decision, decsion, dialogue, dictatorship, doctrine, document, door, earned, ecclesial, ecclesiastical, ecumenical, ecumenism, editors, en masse, engage, enter, evangelize, factor, family, Father, fight, first, formally, former, forthcoming, fought, greater, group, groups, growing, Hans Kung, head, Hilary White, Holy See, Homosexuality, identity, implement, importance, infuriated, inside, invitation, issues, Jacques Maritain, John Allen, John Zuhlsdorf, journalists, joyful, key, kneeling, laity, largest, leader, leadership, left, Liberal, life, liturgical, mainstream, major, married, Marshall Plan, meaning, memorable, moral, morality, motherland, move, nature, necessary, North America, notorious, objected, opening, opponent, ordinariates, ordination, parishes, pastoral, personal, phrase, Piracy, plan, pontiff, Pope, possibility, prepared, priest, Primate, pro-life, promoting, reintegrate, relativism, religious, repeated, representing, requests, reunion, role, Roman Catholic, Roman Catholicism, Roman Catholics, Rome, secular, secularism, secularist, sedate, separated, sold, steps, stresses, strong, structure, symbolic, TAC, teaching, thanks, theologian, title, Traditional Anglican Communion, traditionalist, traditions, true, truth, UK, undermines, United Kingdom, unity, University, USA, Vatican, vote, votes, warned, Website, William Cardinal Levada, women, world, worlds, XVI | 1 Comment
Conclusive scientific evidence: homosexuality is treatable
The U.S.-based National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) has just released its long-awaited comprehensive review of over 125 years of scientific research on homosexuality, reports Family Watch International.
This groundbreaking report, “What Research Shows,” dispels the myths that are commonly used to promote the legalization of same-sex marriage and the mainstreaming of homosexuality throughout society and in the public schools by force of law.
NARTH is a professional association of scientists and mental health professionals whose stated mission is to conduct and disseminate scientific research on homosexuality, promote effective treatment, and to protect the right of individuals with unwanted same-sex attraction to receive effective care.
While one might think that such a mission would be viewed as both commendable and relatively non-controversial, the reality is just the opposite. Homosexual activists try to suppress research on same-sex attraction because one of the pillars of homosexual advocacy is the falsehood that homosexuals are “born that way” and cannot change their orientation. Since the NARTH report proves that homosexuality can be changed through therapy in the same way conditions like alcoholism and other addictions can be changed, the whole case for mainstreaming homosexuality into society crumbles. Another myth the NARTH report disproves is that therapy to help people with unwanted same-sex attraction is ineffective and even harmful.
The extensive research and clinical experience reviewed by NARTH makes it clear even to a layman that these claims are false. Homosexual activists spread these misconceptions about homosexuality and even persecute their own who seek treatment because they know that public opinion polls show that people who believe homosexuals are born that way are more likely to support the homosexual agenda. NARTH is one of the very few credible, professional organizations anywhere in the world that is successfully challenging this propaganda.
Specifically, the NARTH report substantiates the following conclusions:
1. There is substantial evidence that sexual orientation may be changed through reorientation therapy.
“Treatment success for clients seeking to change unwanted homosexuality and develop their heterosexual potential has been documented in the professional and research literature since the late 19th century. …125 years of clinical and scientific reports which document those professionally-assisted and other attempts at volitional change from homosexuality toward heterosexuality has been successful for many and that such change continues to be possible for those who are motivated to try.”
2. Efforts to change sexual orientation have not been shown to be consistently harmful or to regularly lead to greater self-hatred, depression, and other self-destructive behaviors.
“We acknowledge that change in sexual orientation may be difficult to attain. As with other difficult challenges and behavioral patterns—such as low-self-esteem, abuse of alcohol, social phobias, eating disorders, or borderline personality disorder, as well as sexual compulsions and addictions—change through therapy does not come easily.”
“We conclude that the documented benefits of reorientation therapy—and the lack of its documented general harmfulness—support its continued availability to clients who exercise their right of therapeutic autonomy and self-determination through ethically informed consent.”
The NARTH report warns that “The limited body of clinical reports that claim that harm is possible—if not probable— if a person simply attempts to change typically were written by gay activist professionals.”
3. There is significantly greater medical, psychological, and relational pathology in the homosexual population than the general population.
“Researchers have shown that medical, psychological and relationship pathology within the homosexual community is more prevalent than within the general population. …In some cases, homosexual men are at greater risk than homosexual women and heterosexual men, while in other cases homosexual women are more at risk than homosexual men and heterosexual women. …Overall, many of these problematic behaviors and psychological dysfunctions are experienced among homosexuals at about three times the prevalence found in the general population—and sometimes much more. …We believe that no other group of comparable size in society experiences such intense and widespread pathology.”
You can read NARTH’s executive summary of the report on our Web site here.
Posted in Homosexuality, USA | Tagged abuse, acknowledge, activists, addictions, advocacy, agenda, alcohol, alcoholism, assisted, association, attain, attempts, attraction, autonomy, availability, based, behaviors, believe, benefits, body, borderline, born, cannot, care, case, cases, challenging, claims, clear, clients, clinical, commendable, commonly, community, comparable, comprehensive, compulsions, conclude, conclusions, conclusive, conditions, conduct, consent, consistently, continued, continues, credible, crumbles, depression, develop, disorder, disorders, dispels, disproves, disseminate, documented, dysfunctions, easily, eating, effective, efforts, ethically, evidence, exercise, experience, experiences, extensive, false, falsehood, following, force, found, gay, general, greater, groundbreaking, group, harm, harmful, harmfulness, health, help, heterosexual, heterosexuality, homosexual, Homosexuality, homosexuals, individuals, ineffective, informed, intense, lack, law, layman, legalization, limited, literature, long-awaited, low, mainstreaming, marriage, medical, men, mental, misconceptions, mission, motivated, myth, myths, NARTH, National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, non-controversial, opinion, opposite, organizations, orientation, pathology, patterns, people, persecute, person, personality, phobias, pillars, polls, population, possible, potential, prevalence, prevalent, probable, problematic, professional, professionals, promote, propaganda, protect, proves, psychological, public, reality, receive, regularly, relational, relationship, relatively, released, reorientation, research, researchers, review, reviewed, right, risk, same-sex, schools, scientific, scientists, seek, self-destructive, self-determination, self-esteem, self-hatred, sexual, shown, significantly, simply, size, social, Society, specifically, spread, stated, substantial, substantiates, success, successfully, support, suppress, therapeutic, therapy, treatable, treatment, typically, unwanted, USA, viewed, volitional, warns, What Research Shows, whole, widespread, women, world, written | 3 Comments
FOREMOST UK GAY ACTIVIST ADMITS THERE IS NO GAY GENE
One of the untouchable dogmas of the homosexualist movement is the assertion of the existence of a “gay gene”, or a genetic marker that causes same-sex attraction. The assertion of a genetic factor in homosexual preference has never been demonstrated by scientists and now at least one prominent campaigner in the British homosexualist movement has admitted this fact, reports Hilary White, LifeSiteNews.com.
Peter Tatchell, an Australian-born British homosexual activist who founded the “direct action” group OutRage! that specialises in media stunts such as disrupting Christian religious services, wrote on Spiked Online that he agrees with the scientific consensus that there is no such thing as a “gay gene.”
Contrary to the findings of some researchers who have tried to posit a purely genetic origin for same-sex attractions, Tatchell wrote, “Genes and hormones may predispose a person to one sexuality rather than another. But that’s all. Predisposition and determination are two different things.”
Homosexual activists have adopted the “gay gene” theory to bolster their assertion that any objection on moral grounds to homosexual activity is akin to objecting to left-handedness or skin colour. It has supported the accusation that Christians and others who object to the homosexual movement are racists and bigots.
Tatchell even went as far as to acknowledge the existence of some who have changed their “sexual orientation.” “If heterosexuality and homosexuality are, indeed, genetically predetermined… how do we explain bisexuality or people who, suddenly in mid-life, switch from heterosexuality to homosexuality (or vice versa)? We can’t.”
Sexuality, he wrote, is “far more ambiguous, blurred and overlapping than any theory of genetic causality can allow.”
“Examples of sexual flexibility… don’t square with genetic theories of rigid erotic predestination.”
Bill Muehlenberg, a Christian writer and philosophy lecturer, called Tatchell’s admission a rare and “refreshing” and “very revealing case of homosexual honesty.” Muehlenberg said that he has been “howled down” by homosexual lobbyists for years for saying the same things about putative homosexual determinism. Whoever is saying it, he wrote, the conclusion must be the debunking of the myth that homosexuals are “born that way” and cannot help, or change, their inclinations.
The “gay gene” theory has been used by gay activists “to deny choice, to make it appear that homosexuals cannot help it, and to argue that any criticism of the gay lifestyle is as silly as criticism of being left-handed or red-haired.”
“And this has been a deliberate strategy by homosexual activists. They have done a very good job to convince a gullible public that homosexuals are born that way and cannot change.”
Posted in Australia, Homosexuality, science and research, United Kingdom | Tagged accusation, acknowledge, activity, admission, admits, admitted, adopted, agrees, allow, ambiguous, appear, argue, assertion, attraction, attractions, Australia, Australian, Australian-born, bigots, Bill Muehlenberg, bisexuality, blurred, bolster, born, British, campaigner, causality, causes, changed, choice, conclusion, consensus, contrary, convince, criticism, debunking, deliberate, demonstrated, deny, determination, determinism, different, direct action, disrupting, dogmas, erotic, examples, existence, explain, fact, factor, findings, flexibility, foremost, founded, gay, gay activist, gay gene, genes, genetic, genetic marker, genetically, grounds, group, gullible, help, heterosexuality, homosexual, homosexualist, Homosexuality, homosexuals, honesty, hormones, inclinations, job, lecturer, left-handedness, lifestyle, lobbyists, media stunts, mid-life, moral, movement, myth, objecting, objection, origin, outrage, overlapping, people, person, Peter Tatchell, philosophy, predestination, predetermined, predispose, predisposition, preference, prominent, public, putative, racists, rare, red-haired, refreshing, religious, researchers, revealing, rigid, same-sex, saying, scientific, scientists, services, sexual orientation, sexuality, silly, skin colour, specialises, Spiked Online, strategy, supported, switch, theories, theory, UK, United Kingdom, untouchable, writer | Leave a comment
ARSON SUSPECTED IN BLAZE AT GOV. SARAH PALIN’S CHURCH
A blaze swallowed Gov. Sarah Palin’s evangelical Christian church on Friday and caused severe damage that fire officials say was likely the work of arsonists, reports Kathleen Gilbert, LifeSiteNews.com.
The damage to the 2 1/2-year-old Wasilla Bible Church building is estimated at $1 million. Five women, and possibly a couple of children, were inside the church when the flames erupted, but escaped with no injuries.
Palin’s spokesman, Bill McAllister, said that Palin stopped by the church the following day to apologize in case the fire was connected to the “undeserved negative attention” the church has received since her unsuccessful run for the vice presidency. Palin was not present when the fire started, and did not attend Sunday services temporarily held at a local middle school, as she was on state business in Juneau.
Fire Chief James Steele told the Associated Press that the blaze is being investigated as a case of arson. He said investigators had no leads to discern whether the arsonist had a political motivation.
“Whatever the motives of the arsonist, the governor has faith in the scriptural passage that what was intended for evil will in some way be used for good,” McAllister said.
John Doak, associate pastor at Wasilla Bible Church, expressed the communion of faith that united churchgoers after the devastating blaze. “The definition of the church is the body of Christ, made up of God’s people,” said Doak after the Sunday service at Wasilla Middle School, attended by about 1,200 people. “The church is still there. We are the church.”
During Sarah Palin’s VP run on the Republican presidential ticket with John McCain, her home church came under harsh scrutiny from media analysts who found fault with the church’s teachings. In particular, homosexualists were outraged when it was discovered that the church advertised a Focus on the Family conference inviting homosexuals to overcome their same-sex attraction.
The Bible Church also made headlines for having hosted Jews for Jesus leader David Brickner. Political commentators warned Palin that the church’s decision to host Brickner would alienate her from the Jewish community, as Brickner’s organization has been criticized for “targeting Jews for conversion with subterfuge and deception.”
Posted in Alaska, Christianity, crime, Focus on the Family, Jews for Jesus, John McCain, Politics, Sarah Palin | Tagged advertised, alienate, amalysts, apologize, arson, arsonists, associate pastor, Associated Press, attend, attended, attention, attraction, Bill McAllister, blaze, Body of Christ, building, business, chief, children, Christian, church, churchgoers, commentators, communion, community, conference, connected, conversion, criticized, damage, David Brickner, deception, decision, definition, devastating, discovered, erupted, escaped, estimated, Evangelical, evil, expressed, faith, fault, fire, flames, Focus on the Family, good, harsh, headlines, homosexuals, hosted, injuries, investigated, investigators, inviting, James Steele, Jewish, Jews for Jesus, John Doak, John McCain, Juneau, leader, local, media, middle school, motivation, negative, officials, organization, outraged, overcome, political, presidential, reports, Republican, same-sex, Sarah Palin, scrutiny, services, severe, spokesman, started, state, stopped, subterfuge, suspected, swallowed, targeting, teachings, temporarily, ticket, undeserved, United, unsuccessful, vice presidency, warned, Wasilla Bible Church, women, work | Leave a comment
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Tag Archives: ruined
Muslims in Pakistan Kidnap, Rape Christian Girl
Five men threatened to kill her unless her father allowed one to marry her.
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, June 16 (CDN) — Five Muslims here kidnapped and raped a Christian girl after threatening to kill her unless her father allowed one of them to marry her.
Lazarus Masih said one of his three daughters, 14, was kidnapped on May 29 by five men identified only as Guddu, Kamran, Waqas, Adil and Ali.
Police recovered her on June 6 in a raid on the home where she was being held, though the suspects escaped.
“They threatened that if I don’t get her married to Guddu, they would kill her,” Masih said. “One of them said, ‘We attended an Islamic religious convention, and the speaker said if you marry a non-Muslim or rape a non-Muslim girl, you will get 70 virgins in heaven.”
He said that when he and his wife returned from work at around 11 a.m. on May 29, their 14-year-old daughter was not at home; his other daughters had been at school and said they did not know where she had gone.
During the family’s search for her, they heard from Masih’s brother-in-law, Yousaf Masih, that he had seen five Muslim men follow her earlier that morning.
“In the morning around 7:30 a.m., I saw that [name withheld] and another girl were sitting in a rickshaw and five Muslim guys – Guddu, Kamran, Waqas, Adil and Ali – followed the rickshaw,” Yousaf Masih told the girl’s father.
Family members said the suspects took her to a house near Islamabad, where they gave her a drug that rendered her unconscious, and raped her. A medical report confirmed that she was given drugs and raped.
Lazarus Masih, who lives with his daughters and wife in Mohalla Raja Sultan, Rawalpindi, filed a First Information Report at the Waris Khan police station on June 1 against all five men. He said Guddu, Kamran and Waqas sell and use drugs.
He also contacted advocacy organization Ephlal Ministry, which along with representatives of Life for All and Peace Pakistan met with police chief Mazhar Hussain Minhas and demanded immediate action for the recovery of the girl.
“This is a very sad incident, and we will do whatever we can to recover the girl,” Hussain Minhas told them.
Devastated family members said the girl remained frightened and was not speaking to anyone.
“It is such a shame that the religious leaders teach inhuman acts,” said the Rev. John Gill of Shamsabad Catholic Church. “This incident has ruined the life of an innocent child.”
The family formerly belonged to the Catholic parish but now affiliates with a Protestant church, New Life Ministry in Rawalpindi.
Posted in Christianity, crime, Islam, Pakistan, Roman Catholicism | Tagged 14, action, Acts, Adil, advocacy, affiliates, Ali, allowed, anyone, attended, being, belonged, brother-in-law, chief, child, Christian, Christianity, Christians, confirmed, contacted, convention, daughters, demanded, devastated, drugs, Ephlal Ministry, escaped, family, Father, filed, FIR, First Information Report, follow, formerly, frightened, girl, grug, Guddu, guys, heard, heaven, held, home, house, identified, immediate, incident, inhuman, innocent, Islam, Islamabad, Islamic, John Gill, Kamran, kidnap, Kidnapped, kill, Lazarus Masih, leaders, life, Life for All, lives, married, marry, Mazhar Hussain Minhas, medical, members, men, met, Mohalla Raja Sultan, morning, Muslim, muslims, name, New Life Ministry, non-Muslim, organization, Pakistan, parish, Peace Pakistan, Persecution, police, police station, Protestant, raid, rape, raped, Rawalpindi, recovered, recovery, religious, remained, rendered, report, representatives, returned, Rev, rickshaw, Roman Catholic, Roman Catholicism, Roman Catholics, ruined, sad, school, search, sell, shame, Shamsabad Catholic Church, sitting, speaker, speaking, suspects, teach, threatened, threatening, unconscious, unless, use, very, virgins, Waqas, Waris Khan, wife, withheld, work, Yousaf Masih | Leave a comment
Republic of Somalia’s jihad-related chaos and violence
Posted on March 21, 2010 by particularkev
In a report that comes as no surprise to many counterinsurgents, officials from the United Nations released a sharp rebuke of war-torn Somalia’s government. In its report, the UN officials called the Somali security and federal transitional government "ineffective, disorganized and corrupt" despite international assistance, reports Law Enforcement Examiner.
"Despite infusions of foreign training and assistance, government security forces remain ineffective, disorganized and corrupt — a composite of independent militias loyal to senior government officials and military officers who profit from the business of war and resist their integration under a single command," the report reads.
"Efforts to restore peace and security to Somalia are critically undermined by a corrosive war economy that corrupts and enfeebles State institutions… Commanders and troops alike sell their arms and ammunition – sometimes even to their enemies. Revenues from Mogadishu port and airport are siphoned off. Some government ministers and members of parliament abuse their official privileges to engage in large-scale visa fraud, smuggling illegal migrants to Europe and other destinations, in exchange for hefty payments," states the UN report.
According to officials, the extensive report should be released in New York City this week so members of the UN Security Council may peruse the contents.
"During the course of the mandate, government forces mounted only one notable offensive and immediately fell back from all the positions they managed to seize," the report read. "The government owes its survival to the small African Union peace support operation, AMISOM, rather than to its own troops."
During the 1990s, a group of Saudi-educated, Wahhabi militants arrived in Somalia with the aim of creating an Islamic state in this dismal African country. Also, the renowned Al-Qaeda established an operations base and training camp. They would routinely attack and ambush UN peacekeepers. In addition, they used Somalia to export their brand of terrorism into neighboring Kenya.
Leading members of Al-Qaeda continue to operate, mostly in secrecy, in Somalia and have built up cooperation with some of the warlords who control food, water and medicine. And the people of Somalia starve, mourn and die.
Since 2003, Somalia has witnessed the growth of a brutal network of Jihad with strong ties to Al-Qaeda. In fact, when the US forces faced a bloody battle in 1995 during what became known as the Black Hawk Down incident, it was Al-Qaeda joining with a local warlord who killed and wounded US special operations soldiers.
Somalia has been without a functioning national government for 14 years, when they received their independence from Italy. The transitional parliament created in 2004, has failed to end the devastating anarchy. The impoverish people who live in the ruined capital of Mogadishu have witnessed Al-Qaeda operatives, jihadi extremists, Ethiopian security services and Western-backed counter-terrorism agents engaged in a bloody war that few support and even fewer understand.
In an incident that gained American press attention, Somali-based terrorists armed with rocket-propelled grenades launched an unsuccessful attack on Seaborn Spirit as it rounded the Horn of Africa with American, British and Australian tourists on board. For unexplained reasons, the attack is being treated as an isolated incident and the terrorism link is being all but ignored by journalists. The term "pirates" is routinely used with only a few reporters calling the attackers "terrorists."
The ship came under attack during the early morning hours when the heavily armed terrorists in two speedboats began firing upon the ship with grenade launchers and machine guns. They assailents were repelled by the ships crew who implemented their security measures which included setting off electronic simulators which created the illusion the ship was firing back at the terrorists.
According to passenger accounts of the attack, there were at least three rocket-propelled grenades or RPGs that hit the ship, one hit a passenger stateroom without inflicting injuries.
When a Somali Federal Government was established in 2004, it remained a government in exile since the capital of Mogadishu remains under the control of a coalition radical Islamists who’ve instituted Sharia law and a justice system known as the Islamic Courts Union.
In the winter of 2006, Al-Shabaab initiated a large-scale insurgency using the same tactics as al-Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah, complete with assassinations of government and military officials and suicide bombings targeting aid workers and transitional government officials.
In their report, UN officials blame the government for its failure to control Somalia and point to a lack of professional commanders, and a military that resembles an amateur militia rather than a professional Army.
The UN report points out that The Somali National Security Force was meant to have 8,000 soldiers fully trained and deployed. However, as of the beginning of the New Year, there are fewer than than 3,000 fully trained and equiped soldiers.
"One of the reasons the Islamic Courts Union and Al-Shabaab have both been somewhat popular is because people were sick of clan-based politics," according to the UN report.
Western governments fear that Somalia’s instability may provide a safe haven for international terrorist groups. Al-Shabaab members have cited links with Al Qa’ida although the affiliation is believed to be minimal. The group has several thousand fighters divided into regional units which are thought to operate somewhat independently of one another.
The US has launched selected air attacks against Al-Shabaab leaders thought to have ties to Al Qa’ida, but analysts say this has only increased their support among Somalis.
The Western-backed Ethiopian military invaded Somalia in 2007, but many analysts believe this too augmented Al-Shabaab’s military campaign against the transitional government. The Ethiopians withdrew in January of last year after over 16 months of Al-Shabaab attacks on its forces.
The transitional government is preparing a major military offensive to retake the capital Mogadishu from Al-Shabaab and various other militant groups in the coming weeks.
Posted in Africa, Al Qaeda, al Shabaab, Australia, Christianity, Ethiopia, European Union, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islam, Italy, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, United Kingdom, United Nations, USA, War on Terror | Tagged 1995, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007, abuse, accounts, affiliation, African, African Union, agents, aid workers, aim, air, airport, Al Qaeda, al Shabaab, amateur, ambush, American, AMISOM, ammunition, analysts, anarchy, armed, arms, army, arrived, assailants, assassinations, assistance, attack, attackers, attention, augmented, Australian, base, battle, began, beginning, believed, Black Hawk Down, blame, bloody, board, bombings, brand, British, brutal, built, business, camp, campaign, capital, chaos, cited, clan-based, Coalition, command, commanders, complete, composite, contents, control, cooperation, corrosive, corrupt, counter-terrorism, counterinsurgents, country, course, created, creating, crew, critically, deployed, despite, destinations, devastating, die, dismal, disorganized, divided, economy, efforts, electronic, end, enemies, enfeebles, engage, equipped, established, Ethiopian, Europe, exchange, exile, export, extensive, faced, failed, failure, fear, federal, fighters, firing, food, forces, foreign, fraud, fully, functioning, gained, government, grenade, grenades, group, growth, Hamas, heavily, hefty, Hezbollah, hit, Horn of Africa, ignored, illegal, illusion, implemented, impoversih, incident, increased, Independence, independent, ineffective, inflicting, infusions, iniated, injuries, instability, instituted, institutions, insurgency, integration, international, invaded, Islamic, Islamic Courts Union, Islamists, isolated, Italy, Jihad, jihadi, joining, journalists, justice, Kenya, killed, known, largescale, launched, launchers, law, leaders, leading, link, live, local, loyal, machine guns, major, managed, mandate, measures, medicine, members, migrants, militants, military, militia, militias, minimal, ministers, Mogadishu, mounted, mourn, national, neighboring, network, New Year, New York City, no, notable, offensive, officers, officials, operate, operation, operations, operatives, Parliament, passenger, payments, peace, peacekeepers, people, peruse, pirates, Politics, popular, port, positions, preparing, press, privileges, professional, profit, provide, radical, reasons, rebuke, received, regional, related, released, remained, renowned, repelled, report, Republic, resembles, resist, restore, retake, revenues, rocket-propelled, rounded, routinely, RPGs, ruined, safe haven, Saudi-educated, Seaborn Spirit, secrecy, security, seize, selected, sell, senior, services, setting, Sharia, sharp, ship, sick, simulators, single, siphoned, small, smuggling, soldiers, Somali, Somali National Security Force, Somali-based, Somalia, Somalis, special, speedboats, starve, state, stateroom, strong, suicide, support, surprise, survival, system, tactics, targeting, term, terrorism, terrorists, ties, tourists, trained, training, transitional, treated, troops, U.N. Security Council, UN, under, undermined, understand, unexplained, United Nations, units, unsuccessful, USA, violence, visa, Wahhabi, War, war-torn, warlords, water, Western-backed, withdrew, without, witnessed, wounded | Leave a comment
Pakistani Muslims Accused of Rape Allegedly Attack Sisters
Fearing conviction, five suspects said to beat 15- and 21-year-old into dropping charges.
LAHORE, Pakistan, March 18 (CDN) — Five Muslims allegedly ransacked the house of an impoverished Christian in this capital city of Punjab Province last month and angrily beat his daughters in an effort to get the family to withdraw rape charges.
Muhammad Sajjid wielding a pistol, Muhammad Sharif brandishing a dagger and Muhammad Wajjad and two unidentified accomplices carrying bamboo clubs arrived at the Lahore home of Piyara Masih the afternoon of Feb. 26, Christian leaders said. The Muslims allegedly ransacked the house and began thrashing his two daughters, a 15-year-old and her 21-year-old sister, Muniran Bibi, according to attorney Azra Shujaat, head of Global Evangelical Ministries, and Khalid Gill, president of the Christian Liberation Front (CLF).
Muniran said Sharif stabbed her four times with the dagger.
“They ripped apart my clothes, as well as my sister’s,” she said. “In the meantime, Muhammad Sajjid kept firing into the air to terrorize us.”
The family accuses the men of raping her then-13-year-old sister in 2008. Their frail father said that the gang leader, Sajjid, commanded his accomplices to abduct both Muniran and her sister in the most recent attack, without success. A neighbor who requested anonymity said that a large number of people gathered in front of the house upon hearing the cries of the Christian family, causing the five Muslims to flee.
The alleged attacks on the family were predicated in part on the assumption that, as Christians, they will get little help from a justice system biased against non-Muslims and easily swayed by threats, bribes or other means of persuasion from Muslims, Christian leaders said. When the family approached Nishtar Colony police for help, officers refused to register a case.
Attorney Shujaat said that in refusing to file assault charges, police bowed to the power of wealthy area Muslims. Shujaat, who is providing pro-bono counsel for the family, said he registered a First Information Report (FIR) at the Lahore High Court, accusing the men of ransacking the house and illegal weapons. Only after the high court order for police to file an FIR and strenuous efforts by him, Christian politicians and clergymen did the Nishtar Colony police register one against the Muslim gang.
Police did not register the FIR until March 2, he said, on orders of Additional Sessions Judge Justice Mahr Muhammad Yousaf.
The Christian family said they were still receiving death threats.
Gill, who besides being president of CLF is head of the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance, said the alleged rape took place on Easter Sunday, April 8, 2007, when Sajjid, Sharif, Wajjad and an unknown accomplice attacked the family.
“The chastity of [name withheld], who was 13 years old then and youngest among her sisters, was ruined by all four Muslim gang members, and later they abducted her and kept her at an undisclosed locality,” Gill said.
Police later recovered her, and a medical examination proved that she had been repeatedly sexually abused, Gill added.
Shujaat said the four men were being prosecuted for rape and abduction of the girl in District and Sessions Court. Sources told Compass that the alleged rapists were granted bail and secured liberty soon after their apprehension.
Shujaat said evidence at their trial showed they were responsible for the rape, and that a conviction was imminent.
Ferhan Mazher, head of Christian rights group Rays of Development Organization, said the only way for the “perverse Muslim criminals” to do away with the court’s judgment was to convince the Christian family, through threats and violence, to drop the charges.
“Therefore the Muslim men invaded the house of the Christian family to exert intense pressure on them to quash the case,” Mazher said.
Posted in Christianity, Islam, Pakistan | Tagged 2007, 2008, ;province, abduct, abducted, abduction, accomplices, accused, accuses, Additional Sessions, against, air, All Pakistan Minorities Alliance, allegedly, angrily, anonymity, apart, apprehension, approached, area, arrived, assumption, attack, attacked, attorney, Azra Shujaat, bail, bamboo, beat, biased, bowed, brandishing, bribes, capital, carrying, case, causing, charges, chastity, Christian Liberation Front, city, clergymen, CLF, clothes, clubs, commanded, conviction, convince, counsel, cries, criminals, dagger, daughters, death threats, District and Sessions Court, drop, dropping, easily, Easter, effort, efforts, evidence, exert, family, Father, fearing, Ferhan Mazher, FIR, firing, First Information Report, flee, frail, front, gand, gathered, girl, Global Evangelical Ministries, granted, group, head, hearing, help, high court, house, illegal, imminent, impoverished, intense, invaded, Islam, judge, judgment, justice, Khalid Gill, Lahore, Lahore High Court, large, leader, leaders, liberty, little, locality, Mahr Muhammad Yousaf, means, men, Muhammad Sajjid, Muhammad Sharif, Muhammad Wajjad, Muniran Bibi, Muslim, muslims, name, neighbor, Nishtar Colony, non-Muslims, number, officers, Pakistan, Pakistani, people, Persecution, persuasion, perverse, pistol, Piyara Masih, police, politicians, power, predicated, President, pressure, pro bono, prosecuted, providing, Punjab, quash, ransacked, rape, rapists, Rays of Development Organization, register, requested, responsible, rights, ripped, ruined, secured, showed, Sister, sisters, stabbed, strenuous, success, Sunday, suspects, swayed, system, terrorize, thrashing, threats, trial, undisclosed, unidentified, unknown, violence, wealthy, weapons, wielding, withdraw, withheld, youngest | Leave a comment
KENYA: CHURCH STRUGGLING AFTER ISLAMISTS DESTROY BUILDING
Six months after attack, Muslim assailants still at large; weary congregation faces heat, rain.
GARISSA, Kenya, March 5 (Compass Direct News) – Six months after a gang of Muslim youths ruined a church building in this town in northern Kenya, Christians still worshipping in the sweltering heat of the open air say they feel disillusioned that officials have done nothing to punish the culprits or restore their structure.
On a sunny afternoon last Sept. 14, when angry Muslim youths threw more than 400 members of the Redeemed Gospel Church out of their church building, the Christians hoped they would be able to return to the ruins of their former structure. That hope is quickly giving way to anger, hopelessness and despair.
“After six months in the open, the church feels tired and cheated,” said pastor David Matolo. “We are fed up with the empty promises from the government administration.”
He said the church, which began worshipping in Garissa in early 2001 with only a dozen members, is fast shrinking.
“Our church membership has decreased, which is of great concern to me,” he told Compass. “The church thinks that the government has decided to buy time – almost every month I do book appointments with the relevant authorities, who on several occasions have given us a deaf ear.”
Since the attack, church members have been meeting at the town show grounds. Just a few miles from the Somali border, the site has few trees to protect the congregation from the scorching sun, with temperatures ranging from 92 to 104 degrees F (30 to 40 degrees C).
Asked why he thought government officials were reluctant to grant the church a permanent place of worship as promised, an irritated Matolo did not hesitate to reply.
“The administration has decided, ‘kutesa [inflict pain on us],’ always making promises that never come to pass,” he said. “At times the provincial commissioner deliberately decides not to take my phone calls. I have had a painful experience.”
Matolo said he has asked the administration either to allow the church to build a new structure on land lying idle near a police training college or to let them return to their original site. “We are ready for any eventuality,” he said. “We feel that the administration is not concerned about our spiritual welfare.”
Asked about the pastor’s complaints, provincial police officer Stephen Chelimo told Compass, “The issue at the moment is not within my docket, but wholly rests upon the provincial commissioner.”
But Provincial Commissioner Stephen Maingi said the onus rested on the district commissioner. “Let the district commissioner sort this issue with the pastor,” Maingi said.
District Commissioner Onyango Ogango, in turn, indicated the church itself was the source of problems.
“If the church is allowed to return to their original site, we will expect a fight to erupt with the Muslims,” Ogango said. “Earlier on, the church began very well during its initial stage of inception with controlled worship, but later it turned out to hold noisy prayers and loud songs.”
Further questioned about these allegations, however, Ogango said he would call the pastor to discuss a resolution. Even so, Matolo said previous contact with the district commissioner did not leave him with high expectations.
“Our district commissioner seemed to have no feelings for our predicament,” he said. “The faces of the congregation members speak a lot.”
A glance at the worshippers confirmed his appraisal. They looked weary and anxious, with impending April rains expected to add to the indignity of their situation. Matolo said his congregation feels that soon it will be difficult to worship at all.
Even a temporary home did not appear to be forthcoming. The pastor said their request for a site near the provincial commissioner’s residence was dismissed on the grounds that it would create a security concern.
Radical Islamic Influence
Tensions between Christians and the Muslim-majority population in the semi-desert town of 20,000 people began in June 2007, when Muslims built a mosque too close to the church building – only three meters separated the two structures.
Matolo said pleas to District Commissioner Ogango did nothing to reverse the encroachment of Muslim worshippers.
Land issues alone have not been responsible for tensions in the area. The Rev. Ibrahim Kamwaro, chairman of the Pastors’ Fellowship in Garissa, said Matolo had offended Muslims when he preached to a lame Muslim man. Muslims were said to be upset that the pastor persuaded the disabled man to stop going to the mosque and instead join his church.
Matolo’s alleged promise to the disabled man of a better life offended area Muslims, Rev. Kamwaro said.
Christians feel increasingly hunted and haunted as the spread of Islamic extremism is fast gaining ground in this town, located about 400 kilometers (249 miles) from Nairobi, the capital. In neighboring Somalia, newly elected President Sharif Sheikh Ahmed on Feb. 28 offered the introduction of sharia (Islamic law) in exchange for a truce with a rebel extremist group said to have ties to al Qaeda, al Shabaab; the rebels said they would keep fighting. Many fear that Muslim youths in this lawless part of Kenya will be tempted to adopt the radical, uncompromising posture of the fighters.
To date, the gang of more than 50 Muslim youths who attacked worshippers and brought their church to ruins have not been apprehended. Members of the congregation feel justice is increasingly elusive.
In Garissa, Muslims restrict churches in other ways. Christians are not allowed to pray, sing or use musical instruments in rented homes owned by Muslims. No teaching of Christian Religious Education in schools is allowed; only Islamic Religious Knowledge is taught.
Garissa has more than 15 Christian denominations, including the East Africa Pentecostal Church, the Redeemed Gospel Church, the Anglican Church, Deliverance Church, Full Gospel Churches of Kenya and the African Inland Church.
Posted in African Inland Church, Al Qaeda, al Shabaab, Anglicans, Christianity, East Africa Pentecostal Church, Full Gospel Church, Full Gospel Churches of Kenya, Islam, Kenya, Pentecostalism, Somalia | Tagged administration, adopt, African Inland Church, afternoon, Al Qaeda, al Shabaab, allegations, allowed, anger, Anglican, angry, anxious, appear, appointments, appraisal, apprehended, asked, assailants, attack, attacked, authorities, better, book, border, build, building, built, buy, calls, capital, chairman, cheated, Christian, Christianity, Christians, church, churches, close, college, commissioner, complaints, concern, concerned, confirmed, congregation, contact, controlled, create, culprits, David Matalo, deaf ear, decided, decides, decreased, deliberately, Deliverance Church, denominations, despair, destroy, difficult, disabled, discuss, disillusioned, dismissed, district, docket, East Africa Pentecostal Church, education, elected, elusive, empty, encroachment, erupt, exchange, expectations, experience, extremism, fast, fear, feel, fight, fighters, fighting, former, forthcoming, Full Gospel Churches of Kenya, gaining, gang, Garissa, glance, government, grant, great, grounds, group, haunted, heat, hesitate, high, home, hope, hoped, hopelessness, hunted, Ibrahim Kamwaro, idle, impending, inception, including, indicated, indignity, inflict, influence, initial, instead, instruments, introduction, irritated, Islam, Islamic, Islamists, issue, join, justice, Kenya, knowledge, kutesa, lame, land, large, law, lawless, life, loud, lying, majority, man, meeting, members, membership, moment, mosque, musical, Muslim, muslims, Nairobi, neighbouring, new, newly, nisy, northern, nothing, occasions, offended, offered, officer, officials, onus, Onyango Ogango, open, open-air, original, pain, painful, part, Pastor, Pastors' Fellowship, people, permanent, Persecution, persuaded, phone, pleas, police, population, posture, pray, prayers, preached, predicament, President, previous, problems, promise, promised, promises, protect, provincial, punish, questioned, radical, rain, rains, ranging, rebel, rebels, Redeemed Gospel Church, relevant, religious, reluctant, rented, reply, request, residence, resolution, responsible, rested, restore, restrict, rests, return, reverse, ruined, ruins, schools, scorching, security, semi-desert, separated, Sharia, Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, show, shrinking, sing, site, situation, Somali, Somalia, songs, source, speak, spiritual, spread, stage, Stephen Chelimo, Stephen Maingi, stop, structure, struggling, Sun, Sunny, sweltering, taught, teaching, temperatures, temporary, tempted, tensions, thought, threw, ties, time, times, tired, town, training, trees, truce, uncompromising, upset, weary, welfare, worship, worshippers, worshipping, youths | 1 Comment
KENYA: ISLAMISTS ATTACK CHURCH IN NORTHERN TOWN
Posted on September 30, 2008 by particularkev
Effort to replace building with mosque injures 10 Christians, ruins structure.
GARISSA, Kenya, September 29 (Compass Direct News) – A longstanding effort to replace a church with a mosque in Kenya’s northern town of Garissa culminated in an attack by 50 Muslim youths this month that left the worship building in ruins.
The gang stormed the building of Redeemed Gospel Church on Sept. 14 and pelted the congregation with stones, sending many Christians fleeing while others became embroiled in fistfights. Ten Christians received hospital treatment for minor injuries and were released.
Church leaders said the Muslim mob also destroyed pews, damaged the church building’s walls of corrugated iron, smashed the glass-mounted pulpit and burned the church banner with its stand.
“We had just started the Sunday service when, without warning, a rowdy group of about 50 Muslim youths invaded the church, pelting stones at us and destroying our structures,” said the church youth chairman, identified only as Suma.
Local media reported that the 10 church members were hospitalized, but a district nurse at the hospital told Compass that no one was admitted due to the violence. A church elder at East Africa Pentecostal Church in Garissa, about 400 kilometers (249 miles) from Nairobi, confirmed that the church members were treated at the hospital and allowed to go home.
Tensions between Christians and the Muslim-majority population in the semi-desert town of 20,000 people began simmering after Muslims built a mosque next to the church plot at No. 21 Windsor in June 2007. Purchasing its land on Nov. 1, 1999, the church had begun worshipping there by early 2001, eventually growing to 400 members.
Church leaders complained to the district commissioner in June 2007 that the new mosque was built too close to the church – only three meters separate the two structures – and that it was blocking the church entryway.
“Prior to that, the owner of that land had promised to use half of it and sell the other half to the church,” the church leaders reported to the district commissioner in June 2007. “But in 2007, she changed her mind and gave it to the sheikhs to build the mosque. We reported the matter to the DC’s office that it would not go well with the church.”
Officials had ruled that no further permanent structures were to be set up on the land by either party until a later date to be determined by the district commissioner.
“The church faithfully obeyed, but the Muslims defied the orders and began immediately to put up a permanent structure,” according to the letter church leaders wrote to the district commissioner. The building of the mosque was allegedly sponsored by M.K. Roble, a wealthy Muslim in Garissa, according to the letter.
“The problems between the church and the Muslims began and have escalated since then,” it states.
Government security intelligence had reported that Muslims planned to destroy the church if it continued to operate within the residential area, District Commissioner (DC) Alois Okango told Compass. The administration had proposed a new site for the church to worship, Jamhuri Club, but two days before the attack church leaders wrote two letters to Okango saying they would remain worshipping in their building.
“We would like to notify you that our church members have decided to have our Sunday service at our usual place on September 14 and not at the new site of Jamhuri Club,” they wrote in one of the letters, “because we have come to realize that the new site is only temporary, and we will only move out of our premise if we are guaranteed a permanent place of worship.”
Okango told Compass that to avert a crisis, the administration has decided that the church should relocate temporarily to a site near an agricultural showground. The government also advised the church to sell its property near the mosque and buy another piece of land, preferably outside Garissa town center.
This suggestion, Okango told Compass, did not augur well with church members, who felt they had already established the church at the site and that it was the mosque that should be moving.
“The Christians threatened to go and worship in the ruined premises if no action was taken,” Okango said. “They said they were ready to die for the sake of their faith.”
The government is striving to avert further incidents by preventing the Christians from returning to the ruined structure, according to a Provincial Police official identified only as Chelimo. With tensions expected to rise during the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, he said police were taking precautionary measures to ensure that the congregation never returned to their property.
“To allow this would be suicidal,” Chelimo told Compass. “We have deployed five security guards every day to make sure that the members of the church will not enter its structure.”
Elusive Justice
Wondering why those who attacked the church had not been arrested and charged in court, Redeemed Gospel Church pastor David Matolo said the government should punish the assailants.
“The church has the right to be protected by the government – allowing the minority Christians to suffer is quite wrong,” Pastor Matolo told Compass. “Why should the Muslims interfere with the church’s worship? I as their pastor cannot shy away when my members are ill-treated. We are ready to pay the price, but we want justice to be done.”
He said church leaders had agreed on an alternative site only to have the district commissioner suddenly revoke it.
“The DC had promised to locate us to the provincial residential area, and we had cleared the said site, only to be stopped without prior notice,” Pastor Matolo said. “Now we have no place to worship.”
A missionary from Tanzania who works in the area informed Compass that Muslims have distributed leaflets threatening to destroy all churches in Garissa. They have also threatened to burn Garissa’s open-air market operated by Christians from “down Kenya,” that is, non-Muslims, he said.
The missionary said the safety of the more than 2,000 Christians in Garissa is in jeopardy, and he appealed to the government to protect the right of worship of all people.
“It is quite unfair that the Redeemed Gospel Church has been displaced and is now praying under a tree in an open space with no amenities,” he said.
District Commissioner Okango said that the administration must protect Muslims from the noise of worship emanating from church at night that has disturbed residents, as well as prevent clashes. In both the mosque and church, loud speakers had been set up facing each other with confrontational messages blaring from each.
“The government is sensitive to the feelings of the people,” Okango said. “We cannot allow disorder to reign in North Eastern Province in the name of religious patriotism.”
Land issues alone have not been responsible for tensions in the area. The Rev. Ibrahim Kamwaro, chairman of the Pastors’ Fellowship in Garissa, said Pastor Matolo had offended Muslims when he preached to a lame Muslim man.
Muslims were said to be upset that the pastor persuaded the disabled man to stop going to the mosque and instead join his church. Pastor Matolo’s alleged promise to the disabled man of a better life offended area Muslims, Rev. Kamwaro said.
Muslims restrict churches in Garissa in various ways: Christians are not allowed conduct prayers, sing or use musical instruments in rented homes owned by Muslims. No teaching of Christian Religious Education in schools is allowed; only Islamic Religious Knowledge is taught.
Garissa has more than 15 Christian denominations, the main ones being the East Africa Pentecostal Church, the Redeemed Gospel Church, the Anglican Church, Deliverance Church, the Full Gospel Churches of Kenya, the Africa Inland Church and African Christian Churches and schools.
Posted in Christianity, Islam, Kenya, Pentecostalism | Tagged 10, action, administration, admitted, Africa, African, agricultural, alleged, allegedly, allowed, Alois Okango, alternative, ammenities, Anglican, appealed, area, arrested, assailants, attack church, attacked, augur, avert, banner, better, blaring, blocking, building, built, burned, buy, center, chairman, changed, charged, Chelimo, Christian, Christianity, Christians, churches, cleared, close, Club, commissioner, complained, conduct, confirmed, confrontational, congregation, corrugated, court, crisis, culminated, David Matolo, decided, defied, Deliverance, denominations, deployed, destroy, destroyed, determined, die, disabled, disorder, displaced, distributed, district, disturbed, early, East Africa Pentecostal Church, education, effort, elder, elusive, emanating, embroiled, enter, entryway, established, eventually, faith, faithfully, feelings, fellowship, fistfights, fleeing, full, further, gang, Garissa, glass, gospel, government, group, growing, guaranteed, guards, Holy, home, homes, hospital, hospitalized, Ibrahim Kamwaro, identified, immediately, incidents, informed, injures, injuries, inland, instead, instruments, Intelligence, interfere, invaded, iron, Islam, Islamists, issues, Jamhuri, jeopardy, join, justice, Kenya, knowledge, lame, land, leaders, leaflets, letter, letters, life, local, locate, longstanding, M. K. Roble, main, majority, market, measures, media, members, messages, mind, minor, minority, missionary, mob, month, mosque, mounted, musical, Muslim, muslims, Nairobi, noise, North Eastern Province, northern, notice, notify, nurse, obeyed, offended, office, official, officials, open, open-air, operated, orders, owned, owner, Pastor, pastors, patriotism, pelted, people, permanent, Persecution, persuaded, pews, place, planned, plot, police, population, prayers, praying, preached, precautionary, premise, premises, preventing, price, prior, problems, promise, promised, property, proposed, protected, provincial, pulpit, punish, purchasing, Ramadan, realize, received, Redeemed Gospel Church, reign, released, religious, relocate, remain, rented, replace, reported, residential, residents, responsible, restrict, revoke, right, rise, rowdy, ruined, ruins, ruled, safety, sake, schools, security, sell, semi-desert, sending, sensitive, separate, service, sheikhs, showground, simmering, sing, site, smashed, Space, stand, started, stones, stop, stopped, stormed, striving, structure, structures, suggestion, suicidal, Suma, suufer, Tanzania, taught, teaching, temporary, tensions, threatened, town, treated, treatment, tree, unfair, upset, usual, various, violence, walls, warning, wealthy, well, wondering, works, worship, worshipping, wrong, wrote, youth, youths | 1 Comment
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Tag: state constitutional amendment
ENDORSEMENT: NO on Missouri Personhood Amendment
The Republican-controlled Missouri House of Representatives advanced a so-called “personhood amendment” to the Missouri Constitution out of committee on a party-line vote. If placed on the ballot by both houses of the Missouri General Assembly and approved by voters, the so-called “personhood amendment” would grant more legal rights to zygotes, embryos, and fetuses than women, and, in effect, ban abortion, many forms of contraception, and stem cell research in Missouri.
Should the so-called “personhood amendment” be placed on the Missouri ballot, I strongly encourage Missouri voters to vote NO on the proposed amendment.
The so-called “personhood amendment” effectively grants more legal rights to fetuses, which are dependent on the would-be mother for survival, than women. Unlike what Republicans and bible-thumping bigots claim, life legally and biologically begins at birth, not conception or at any other point before birth. The so-called “personhood amendment” would strip Missouri women of their legal right to control their own body and make their own health care decisions.
Voters in states like North Dakota and Mississippi have rejected similar measures in recent years, and I believe that Missouri voters should, if it appears on their ballot, vote NO on the so-called “personhood amendment”.
fetal personhood
Missouri Constitution
Missouri General Assembly
personhood amendment
prohibit
state constitution
state constitutional amendment
The Progressive Response to the State of the State of Illinois Address
Earlier today, Bruce Rauner, the Republican governor of our state that we instinctively know as Illinois, outlined his plan to drive down wages, infringe on the rights of Illinois workers, and destroy an already weak Illinois economy.
Prior to giving his State of the State address, Rauner went around the state using PowerPoint slides to publicly bash our state’s public employees, whine about public employees being, in his view, overpaid, spread lies about worker’s rights and public employee pay, and blame public employees for our state’s fiscal problems. Additionally, it was reported yesterday that Rauner strongly hinted that he wants to eliminate collective bargaining rights for our state’s public employees. Given that Rauner has given his top administration officials pay raises and appointed a $100,000/year chief of staff to his wife despite the fact that his wife has no official duties whatsoever, for Rauner to give his cronies pay raises while wanting to drive down public employee salaries is blatantly hypocritical.
In his State of the State address, Rauner called for gutting our state’s workers’ compensation system, lowering property taxes while our state and local governments have billions of dollars in unpaid bills, allowing local governments and/or voters to bust unions at the local level, prohibiting project labor agreements, eliminating prevailing wage laws, and privatizing public education to benefit his political cronies. Rauner did have a few good ideas that he talked about in his address to the people of Illinois, such as banning trial lawyer donations to judicial campaigns, merging the offices of state comptroller and state treasurer, and increasing funding for early childhood education.
While there is no disputing the fact that our state is in a fiscal mess for a large number of reasons, the primary reason why our state is in such a fiscal mess is because the wealthiest Illinoisans, such as Rauner himself, don’t pay enough state income taxes thanks to an ridiculous provision in the Illinois Constitution that prohibits the General Assembly from passing legislation to tax the incomes of wealthier Illinoisans at a higher rate than the incomes of poorer Illinoisans. The flat tax requirement in the Illinois Constitution prohibits our state from raising the revenues that would be needed to pay off our state’s unpaid bills and put our state on solid financial footing. I would strongly support a proposed amendment to the Illinois Constitution to allow the General Assembly to levy a progressive state income tax in order to raise income taxes on the wealthiest Illinoisans, cut income taxes for the poorest Illinoisans, and put our state’s finances back on track. Additionally, I would strongly support eliminating all tax breaks for businesses, such as the ridiculous tax break that Sears and CME Group received a few years ago, as this would also bring in more revenue to the state that can be used to pay off unpaid bills.
Regarding public employee pensions, another reason why our state is in a fiscal mess, I would strongly support a pension reform proposal that would phase out the current public employee pension systems in our state, but still allow public employees who have paid into the current pension systems to still receive the benefits they’ve earned once they retire, and require all new state and local elected officials, appointed officials, and hired public employees who receive a full-time salary but had not previously paid anything into the current public employee pension systems in our state to pay into a newly-created public employee pension system that is designed to be fully-funded and provide our state’s future elected officials, political appointees, and public employees with a steady retirement income once they retire. Make no mistake about it, I will strongly oppose any pension reform proposal that cuts benefits for those who have currently paid into the pension systems, creates a 401(k) system for public employees, and/or turns an existing pension system into a 401(k) system.
Regarding cutting spending, I would support an audit of the entire state government and every single county, township, city, town, village, and other type of local government entity in our state in order to find actual wasteful spending and propose common-sense solutions to cut actual wasteful spending and help save the state money in both the short term and the long term. Make no mistake about it, I will strongly oppose cuts to public education, social services, and other government services that reduce the quality of service by our state and local government agencies.
Regarding strengthening our state’s economy, I strongly support raising the state minimum wage here in Illinois to $15/hour and indexing automatic, annual minimum wage increases to productivity. Additionally, I strongly support creating a North Dakota-style economic development bank here in Illinois to issue and/our guarantee loans to factories, farms, small businesses, and other types of businesses that have to be repaid in full with interest. These two proposals would lift thousands of Illinoisans out of poverty, establish a minimum wage that values work, and help entrepreneurs start up new businesses and create jobs without pocketing government benefits to simply pad profits. Busting unions and driving down wages is something I strongly oppose because those policies would do absolutely nothing to strengthen our state’s economy or empower Illinoisans.
Regarding campaign finance, ethics, and government reform, while a federal constitutional amendment to repeal the Citizens United v. FEC U.S. Supreme Court decision that helped Rauner and his cronies buy the last gubernatorial election would be required to allow Illinois to enact meaningful campaign finance reform, I strongly support eliminating the conflicts of interest that are currently allowed by our state’s campaign finance system, such as a couple of conflicts of interest that Rauner mentioned, prohibiting unions from donating to candidates for public office that they’d have to collectively bargain with if said candidates are elected and prohibiting trial lawyers from donating to judicial candidates, and one that Rauner did not mention because he’s effectively opposed to it, prohibiting business owners and managers from donating to candidates for public office that could use the public office in question to directly benefit said business owners and managers if elected. Additionally, I would support setting the maximum campaign contribution for a statewide office here in Illinois at $250 and enacting even lower limits for state legislative and local offices. Additionally, I strongly support implementing a pair of public campaign finance systems, one for judicial elections and one for other non-federal elections. The judicial public campaign finance system would prohibit judicial candidates from receiving campaign contributions from other people and/or funding their own campaigns, require that all judicial candidates receive a set amount of campaign funds from the state, and require that judicial candidates receive the same amount of campaign funds from the state that their opponents receive. The public campaign finance system for other offices would allow candidates for those offices to receive $4 of state funding for every $1 they receive in contributions and/or self-fund their campaigns with. Additionally, I would support enacting what I like to call the Bruce Rauner Rule, which would outright prohibit candidates for statewide office here in Illinois from donating or loaning more than $100,000 of their own wealth to their campaign, and set even lower self-funding limits for other offices. On term limits, I would support limiting the offices of governor and lieutenant governor to one elected term, limiting the other state executive offices to two elected terms, limiting state senators to five elected terms, and limiting state representatives to eight elected terms, and anything stricter than that would receive my opposition. Some other government reform ideas I support include allowing Illinois voters to recall all non-federal elected officials, converting the Illinois General Assembly into an unicameral legislature with at least 177 members via a state constitutional amendment, and amending the Illinois Constitution to establish a truly non-partisan redistricting process for congressional and state legislative districts.
Regarding reforming the criminal justice system, I strongly support legalizing, taxing, and regulating recreational marijuana, which would reduce the incarceration rate in our state and provide our state with much-needed tax revenue. Additionally, I’m open to various ideas to reform the criminal justice system in order to make our prison system more about rehabilitating convicted criminals instead of simply punishing them and make our criminal justice system more fair. For example, one idea that I strongly support would be requiring independent investigations of deaths that occur in the hands of state and local police here in Illinois.
Regarding education, I strongly oppose implementing school voucher programs here in Illinois, expanding charter schools, or any other school privatization scheme. I strongly support repealing Common Core State Standards and replacing them well-rounded, developmentally appropriate K-12 academic standards developed by the state and are held accountable by measures other than assessments and standardized tests. Additionally, I strongly support getting rid of the emphasis on career preparation in K-12 education, since I believe that career preparation should be the responsibility of higher education institutions, not the K-12 system. Also, I strongly support increasing funding for public schools in our state and making our state’s K-12 school funding system fairer to poorer school districts.
Illinoisans are worth more than speeches, political buzzwords, and PowerPoint presentations about driving down wages, busting unions, and making our state’s economy even weaker than it currently is, and Illinoisans are certainly worth more than Bruce Rauner’s far-right policies to drive down wages, bust unions, and destroy our state’s economy. It’s time for Illinoisans to push for progressive policies to protect workers’ rights, strengthen our state’s economy, put more money into the pockets of poor and working-class Illinoisans, provide a world-class education system for our state’s K-12 and college students, and provide for a more perfect Illinois.
Wednesday, February 4, 2015 Wednesday, February 4, 2015
Bruce Rauner
driving down wages
government waste
IL-Gov
Illinois Governor
independent redistricting
local right-to-work
local right-to-work-for-less
minimum wage increase
non-partisan redistricting
pension theft
progressive income tax
progressive response
progressive response to the State of the State Address
progressive response to the State of the State of Illinois Address
public campaign financing
public financing
raise the wage
recall election
redistricting reform
school vouchers
state central bank
state economic development bank
State of the State of Illinois
State of the State of Illinois Address
unfunded mandates
unicameral legislature
unicameral state legislature
unneccessary spending
war on workers
ENDORSEMENT: NO on Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Amendment
On the April ballot in Wisconsin, there will, more than likely, be a proposed amendment to the Wisconsin Constitution to give justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court the power to elect one of their own to be the chief justice to the court (currently, the most senior justice is automatically chief justice).
I strongly encourage Wisconsinites to vote NO on this proposed amendment.
This amendment, if ratified, would make an already polarized and politicized Wisconsin Supreme Court, whose conservative majority is more concerned about implementing a right-wing agenda by judicial fiat than actually interpreting the law, even more polarized and politicized. However, unlike the corporate media, I’m not about to give up and concede that this amendment is going to be ratified with voters without a fight, and I hope Wisconsin Democrats and progressives don’t concede to the right-wingers without a fight.
Wisconsinites should send a strong message against Scott Walker’s court packing scheme, which also includes a proposed mandatory retirement bill, designed to force the lone moderate justice and the current chief justice off of the bench of Wisconsin’s highest court entirely, that will not be on the ballot, by voting against allowing the Wisconsin Supreme Court justices to select their own chief justice.
Thursday, January 22, 2015 Thursday, January 22, 2015
Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court
intitiative
no vote
Shirley Abrahamson
WI-Init
WI-SC
Wisconsin Constitution
Wisconsin Legislature
Wisconsin Supreme Court
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Suspect robs 82-year-old Little Neck woman by cashing in fraudulent checks: cops
Photos courtesy of the NYPD
Police are looking for a suspect who stole an 82-year-old Little Neck resident’s account by cashing checks.
According to police, on April 2 an 82-year-old woman was at her home in the vicinity of Little Neck Parkway and Nassau Boulevard when she received a call from her bank. The representative on the phone told the victim that they had closed her bank account due to fraudulent activity.
An ongoing investigation found that on April 1, the suspect cashed two of the victim’s bank checks, totaling $931, at two Chase Banks in Manhattan.
The suspect is described as light-skinned woman with her hair in a ponytail. She was last seen a black jacket, a dark colored sweater, light colored pants, and black and white sneakers.
Anyone with information in regard to this incident is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website or on Twitter @NYPDTips. All calls are strictly confidential.
111th Precinct
DCPI
Little Neck Parkway
Nassau Boulevard
Cops investigating death of a 92-year-old woman who was found in the middle of a Richmond Hill street
While hate crimes and murders rise, New York City crime stats hit record lows in 2019
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Conservatives Under Fire in Hollywood
Hollywood is known for liberal politics, which means people with conservative views often feel the need to keep quiet.
FOX's Michelle Pollino has part one of our series on "Conservatives in Hollywood":
Conservatives are being targeted in what some say is a form of blacklisting happening again. The Hollywood blacklist was a 1950's list of of writers, actors and others accused of being communist sympathizers. Studios were pressured not to hire them.
Hollywood loves this story, they've told it dozens of times. I spoke with three members of a conservative group of entertainment industry workers, known as the friends of Abe, as in Abe Lincoln.
The monthly meetings are a time where they feel free speak their political thoughts and ideas without fear. One member, an actor and screenwriter, wanted us to to electronically alter his voice, saying the atmosphere is:
"Toxic if you have any leaning toward Donald Trump."
In Hollywood, Michelle Pollino, FOX News.
Follow Michelle Pollino on Twitter: @MichellPollino
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Sick Songs [Bonus Track]
by Electric FrankensteinElectric Frankenstein
The spirit of the Ramones and Iggy and the Stooges is what hovers over the tunes aboard this eight-song album of mayhem from this quintet of power-punk rockers from New Jersey. Almost everything is played in the same key and everything sports the pre-punk approved two-beat rhythm played at warp factor speed ten. Since attitude is everything on these types of records, the band succeeds mightily; the music is well played, the sounds are predictable and whatever meaning the lyrics had are long gone in the molten-lava metal mix of guitar riffs vying for space with tons of thudding bass and drums. Catchy though derivative, tunes like "I'll Be Standing," Learn To Burn" and "Born Wild" nonetheless stick in your brain and although this album was recorded in 1996 and '97, it sounds like it could have emerged out of anybody's garage studio in the late '70s or early '80s.
Nesak International
Action High
I'll Be Standing (On My Own)
Not With U
Pure & Simple
I Wish I Could
Learn to Burn
Back at You
Clock-Wise
Out There (F-Word)
Performance Credits
Electric Frankenstein Primary Artist
Donato Canzonieri Bass,Group Member
Sal Canzonieri Guitar,Group Member
Electric Frankenstein Composer,Producer
Sal Canzonieri Composer
Steve Miller Composer
The spirit of the Ramones and Iggy & the Stooges is what hovers over the tunes aboard this eight-song album of mayhem, Sick Songs, from N.J. power-punk quintet Electric Frankenstein. Almost everything is played in the same key and everything sports the pre-punk-approved two-beat rhythm played at warp factor speed ten. Since attitude is everything on these types of records, the band succeeds mightily; the music is well played, the sounds are predictable, and whatever meaning the lyrics had are long gone in the molten-lava metal mix of guitar riffs vying for space with tons of thudding bass and drums. Catchy though derivative, tunes like "I'll Be Standing," "Learn to Burn," and "Born Wild" nonetheless stick in your brain, and although this album was recorded in 1996 and 1997, it sounds like it could have emerged out of anybody's garage studio in the late '70s or early '80s. [This version of the album includes bonus material.]
All Music Guide - Cub Koda
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Full text: NBA reacts to DSS court invasion, Sowore’s rearrest
Sowore in court a few moments after DSS operatives had rough-handled him inside the Federal High Court, Abuja on Friday
The Nigerian Bar Association has reacted to the Friday invasion of the Federal High Court, Abuja, by operatives of the Department of State Services in an attempt to rearrest Mr. Omoyele Sowore, who had been released less that 12 hours before.
See the full statement:
DESECRATION AND ASSAULT ON THE FEDERAL HIGH COURT BY DSS: NBA URGES ALL NIGERIANS TO DEFEND THE RULE OF LAW
The Nigerian Bar Association is greatly dismayed at the exhibition of primitivity, thuggery, insane passion for lawlessness, contempt and disrespect for the rule of law by the agents of the Department of State Services (DSS) within the precints of the Federal High Court, Abuja while attempting to re-arrest Citizens Omoyele Sowore and Olawale Bakare earlier today.
Eventually Sowore and Bakare were re-arrested by the DSS inspite of being on bail granted by the Federal High Court.
The NBA has been properly briefed – beyond the shameful videos of the incident in public domain- by our members who witnessed the disgraceful and crass violation of the hallowed precincts of the law by the officers of the Department of State Services, an agency of the Federal Government of Nigeria. The NBA finds it disgraceful that this ‘court riot’ occasioned by the high handedness and insensitivity of the security operatives interrupted judicial proceedings and made the Presiding Judge to abandon judicial proceedings because of safety concerns.
SEE ALSO: Sowore: NBA demands suspension of DSS boss
The Nigerian Bar Association strongly condemns the action of the Department of State Security, which is another in the series of impunity and lawlessness exhibited by the DSS. The invasion of the court by the agency of the Gederal Government of Nigeria runs contrary to the avowed assurances of the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria that he will ensure that the Federal Government and agencies under it obeys court orders. The disrespect of the court by the DSS is legendary and unrivalled.
Few days ago, the officers of the Nigerian Police Force exhibited similar traits when it also invaded the precincts of the High Court, Effurun to arrest Mr. Ademi-Akpeto, Chairman of Sapele branch of the NBA. Many Nigerians are still in unlawful custody and not charged to court. Nigerians are now under siege by security agents who have no regards for the law and the courts.
SEE ALSO: Sowore: Discipline Osinbajo, other lawyers in cabinet, Falana tells NBA
The NBA urges all Nigerians to be alive to their responsibilities as citizens of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and is ready to partner with all Nigerians and civil society organisations to ensure that the rights of Nigerians as guaranteed by Chapter 4 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 as amended are not trampled upon by by any agency of government.
The NBA therefore, demands as follows:
1. That the Federal Government of Nigeria and the National Assembly immediately investigate the shameful conduct by the DSS and ensure that all persons found culpable are duly punished in accordance with the law.
2. The immediate suspension of the Director General of the Department of State Security from office. We make this demand bearing in mind the fact that the DSS under his leadership has established itself as a brutish and irresponsible agency that derives immense pleasure from violating the fundamental rights of Nigerians and disrespecting court orders.
3. That the National Assembly should review the laws setting up the DSS and indeed all security agencies in Nigeria with a view to repositioning them to be more responsible and responsive to the public.
4. That the Attorney General of the Federation, being the Chief Law officer of the Federation takes over all the political cases or cases involving politically exposed persons presently handled by the DSS.
The above demands of the NBA is without prejudice to the consultations presently going on amongst critical stakeholders in the legal profession and the judiciary on how best to ensure that this sad incident does not re-occur.
SEE ALSO: Ruiz Jr vs Joshua 2: Sagamu residents confident as Anthony Joshua attempts to reclaim titles
NBA thanks all lawyers and Nigerians who have expressed displeasure over this sad incident. NBA shall keep lawyers and Nigerians alike informed of our further engagements with critical stakeholders.
Kunle Edun
National Publicity Secretary, Nigeria Bar Association
DSS invades court DSS rearrests Sowore Nigerian Bar Association
Lloris makes Tottenham comeback after three months against Norwich
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Home / Reviews / Show Review
Powerwolf (w/ Kissin’ Dynamite, Amaranthe) @ SWX (Bristol, UK) on January 21, 2019 [Show Review]
Niki Flynn - Jan 26, 2019 at 11:00AM Comments
Just looking at the lineup, Bristol knows that tonight’s crowd are in for one hell of a party. Despite the genre-clashing line-up, Powerwolf, Amaranthe, and Kissin’ Dynamite are known for exceptionally fun live shows, and each had their section of fans enticed to come out for a night of rock n’ metal celebration.
Kissin’ Dynamite are the first band on, blitzing onto stage with “I’ve Got the Fire,” filling the room with their hard-hitting brand of eighties stadium rock. For a new band to the UK – they only played their first show in this country last year, funnily enough also supporting Powerwolf – Bristol wholeheartedly appreciates them with bobbing heads and pumping fists as they soak up the multitude of guitar solos and smoking vocals. Lead singer Hannes Braun’s mirthful interactions with the audience are touching to watch as the crowd respond to his enthusiasm with euphoria, and he is visibly, genuinely honoured to be receiving such a reaction.
Miss then show? Here’s Kissin’ Dynamite performing “I’ve Got The Fire” at SWX.
After Kissin’ Dynamite exit the stage to cheers, it is not long before the lights dim for Amaranthe. The milling crowd is proof to the notion that the appearance of the Swedish electro-metal act on this tour is highly anticipated. Bursting onstage with a thumping beat and a cryptic introductory voice-over, the three (!) lead vocalists break straight into “Maximise” amid a riot of smoke machines and lighting. Although erupting with enthusiasm, the vocals are unfortunately slightly muffled across the speaker system, whilst the instrumentation is crisp and clear. They most certainly have stage presence and their crowd interaction is fantastic, but the impact is slightly lost with the indecipherable vocals in amongst the precise instrumentation.
After this unfortunately underwhelming set, theatrical power metal band Powerwolf look set to pick up the pace – in fact, the crowd are chanting their name before they are even on. The atmosphere is electric within this intimate venue. The Germans storm into action with newer track “Fire and Forgive”, and the crowd goes wild as vocalist Attila Dorn addresses them after the first song, amping up their emotions further.
Amaranthe performing, well, “Amaranthine”, at SWX January 21st.
Throughout the show, Dorn’s opera-tinged vocals are spectacular, the guitars from the Greywolf brothers are on form and drums and keys are impeccable as always – Powerwolf truly are in a class of their own when it comes to performances, and their music comes into its own when witnessed live – whether in the classics of “Amen and Attack”, “Blessed and Possessed” and “We Drink Your Blood”, or cuts from newest record The Sacrament of Sin.
Coupled with dynamic lighting, crisp sound and confetti falling from the ceiling through the stirring ballad “Where the Wild Wolves Have Gone,” they always put on a fantastic show that draws metal fans of all stripes. Their camaraderie with the audience is charismatic and full of gratitude - including a heart-warming operatic exercise between the imposing lead singer and the followers of the metal mass gathered before him.
This display tonight shows both Powerwolf and Kissin’ Dynamite in their finest form, proving they deliver one beast of an explosive live show. Bristol well and truly had a headbanging time.
We wouldn’t be doing our jobs if we didn’t add this 3rd live video. This is “Sanctified with Dynamite”!
Powerwolf’s Setlist:
01. Fire and Forgive
02. Army of the Night
03. Incense and Iron
04. Amen and Attack
05. Let There Be Night
06. Demons are a Girl's Best Friend
07. Killers with the Cross
08. Armata Strigoli
09. Blessed and Possessed
10. Where the Wild Wolves Have Gone
11. Resurrection by Erection
12. Stossgebet
13. All We Need is Blood
14. We Drink Your Blood
15. Lupus Dei
16. Sanctified with Dynamite
17. Coleus Sanctus
18. Werewolves of Armenia
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The Pene Drops!
When wet tracks need a figure …
By Phil Purser
To continue enjoying our wealth of articles, just complete our quick registration form.
Phil Purser runs the Just Racing website (www.justracing.com.au) and is a regular contributor to PPM. His new book, of some 628 pages, has just been released. This is an extract from the book.
In the hi-tech world we live in, punters expect every skerrick of information to be placed before them in their quest to spot an elusive winner.
The penetrometer – a device used to accurately assess a track rating – has had both its admirers and its critics over time.
Long before penetrometers came on the scene, I personally felt many track ratings that were given out were incorrect. One or more of the race club committees, stewards and course curators would often engender enthusiasm in punters’ hearts by declaring a track surface “dead”, when in fact it was later that same day proven to be “slow”, as evidenced by times run in races.
The simple and probable actual happening would be that a downgrade in a track rating may well lead to a downturn in betting turnover! Accurately measured, the penetrometer gives the punting public an exact reading when it is taken on race morning.
Doomben Racecourse Manager Warren Williams has been using the penetrometer at Doomben for some time. Doomben and the Gold Coast clubs each take a penetrometer reading on race mornings. Brisbane’s other metropolitan track at Eagle Farm doesn’t use a penetrometer.
Records taken over time, in my opinion, will show penetrometers give an accurate assessment of the track rating. On rain-affected tracks of “slow” and “heavy”, I have found that horses will perform to a consistent level on the same track given similar penetrometer readings.
Penetrometer readings are unique only to the track they are taken on, due to different soil compositions of individual tracks. For instance, in the most recent Saturday meeting when both venues of Doomben and the Gold Coast raced on the same day (May 30, 2005), a “dead” track was posted by stewards at both tracks.
The Doomben penetrometer read-ing was 5.03 (with the rail out four metres the entire course), whilst at the Gold Coast, even though their track was “dead” also, their penetrometer reading was way below Doomben’s at 4.23. The Gold Coast rail on the day was out varying distances up to eight metres.
Down south, on the same day, Rosehill raced on a “good” track with the rail out six metres and their penetrometer was 4.15. Sandown (Hillside) was Melbourne’s venue that day and they had a “good” track with the rail in the true position and yet their reading was well above Sydney’s at 4.81.
So, let’s summarise those penetrometer readings from May 30, 2005 in the table below, to help us conclusively understand that penetrometer readings are like fingerprints and are therefore unique to each individual track:
Doomben 5.03 4m Dead
Gold Coast 4.23 8m Dead
Rosehill 4.15 6m Good
Sandown (H) 4.81 True Good
It is a good idea from a punting perspective to keep a book and list the penetrometer readings and rail placements for each track you bet on and also at the end of each day to write the winners’ names down. It becomes even more relevant for future “slow” and “heavy” ratings.
The other thing to understand is that the penetrometer readings are generally done in the 6am to 7am timeframe on race morning. If a fine day with a top of 35 degrees is forecast, naturally the track will dry out further between 6am and the first race at, say, 12.30pm.
So a 4.35 penetrometer 6am raceday reading at Doomben would become probably about 4.15 if a penetrometer reading was taken before the first race and the weather had stayed fine and was heading towards 35 degrees.
Conversely, if showers happen during the morning or afternoon the penetrometer reading will go in the opposite direction – the margin of change being commensurate with the amount of rain.
Track drying out is influenced by the season as well. Understandably, a summer track will dry out far quicker than a winter track.
So, what does a penetrometer look like and how does the Racecourse Manager arrive at his reading on raceday? Doomben’s Racing Manager Warren Williams kindly explains about penetrometers and I take this opportunity to publicly thank him for his input. Warren’s article reads:
Penetrometers have been used for many years to assist Racecourse Managers and Stewards with track ratings. This device comes from the road building industry where they used a device to measure the road profile prior to the final surfacing of asphalt. This device was then modified to measure soil hardness in turf.
Penetrometers are used in the thoroughbred industry by many metropolitan tracks and also some major provincial clubs. The penetrometer is constructed out of metal (stainless steel) and is currently manufactured in Melbourne.
The penetrometer description is as follows:
A one kilogram weight is released by a trigger action and falls one metre down a shaft, which in turn hits a 1cm square rod into the soil profile. The 1cm square rod has 1cm increments as the measurement for the depth the rod has entered into the soil profile. This action is undertaken three times in the one position, therefore ,giving three readings, e.g. 2.5, 4.5, 6.5.
A formula is used to calculate the reading and is based on the average figure for the entire course. To obtain this figure there are six readings taken every 200m around the course. Three of the six readings are taken 2m from the running rail and then the remaining three readings are taken 4m from the running rail. Each reading is recorded and then all figures are entered into a formula that will provide an average. This average then becomes your race day penetrometer reading and will correspond to your set ratings:
For example, Track – “Good”, Penetrometer reading – 4.25.
PRACTICAL PUNTING MONTHLY – DECEMBER 2006
A horse who failed as a jumper 10 months ago is set to provide the fairytale story of the Standish Handicap, the feature summer sprint at Flemingto...
Seven-year-old Epona Miss may have won only two races but trainer Dean Saxon isn't afraid to let her take on the best summer stayers in the Bagot H...
First positive in France to blood agent
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Category: 5D Columbus
US Army 3rd Recruiting Brigade training forum prepares leadership teams for FY20 success
FORT KNOX, Ky. — U.S. Army 3rd Recruiting Brigade hosted a three-day training forum for battalion and company leadership teams here Sept. 20-22.
New TRADOC Commanding General visits 3rd Recruiting Brigade (Marauders) at Fort Knox
FORT KNOX, Ky. — The 3rd Recruiting Brigade Commander Col. Eric Lopez briefed the new commanding general of U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command Gen. Paul E. Funk II, in the briefing room at USAREC HQ, Fort Knox on 31 July.
Shelbyville Recruiter has family support
FORT KNOX, Ky. — An Indianapolis Recruiting Battalion Army Reserve recruiter received a career-validating honor when she won the 2018 Association of the United States Army Active Guard Reserve Recruiter of the Year. Staff Sgt. Ashley Munger, assigned to the Shelbyville Army Recruiting Center in Shelbyville, Indiana, joined other AUSA winners in attending a breakfast and meet and greet with Sergeant Major of the Army Daniel Dailey at the Association of the United States Army annual meeting in Washington, D.C.
From Fat to Fit: Army Recruiter inspires applicants
GALLATIN, Tenn. — We have all read stories where an Army recruiter helped an applicant lose weight to join the Army, but have you ever read one where the recruiter purposely gained weight to help their applicants enlist in the Army? Staff Sgt. Ashley Shannon is an Army recruiter who went above and beyond to help her applicants enlist in the Army in an unconventional way.
Newly commissioned 2LT to train as Black Hawk pilot
Nashville, Tenn. — A newly commissioned Army officer credits a lifelong love of all things science, technology, engineering and math and the help of her husband and an Army recruiter with helping her reach her goal to fly Black Hawks.
CASA and local general synergized in Cincinnati
Cincinnati, Ohio — The goal of every recruiting leader is to get in front of the American public to tell their Army story, build trust, develop lasting relationships, and find tomorrow’s leaders to win in future complex and uncertain environments.
U.S. Army 3rd Recruiting Brigade Conducts E-Game Demo
Hoffman Estates, IL — The U.S. Army 3rd Recruiting Brigade participated in an esports demonstration during leadership training March 5. The demonstration provided battalion leadership teams hands-on experience to better understand the value of esports in the modernizing of recruiting efforts. .
Mike's Carwash joins Army PaYS
LOVELAND, Ohio — U.S. Army Recruiting Battalion Columbus welcomed Mike's Carwash as the newest Partnership for Youth Success partner here in Loveland Feb. 28.
Congressman Warren Davidson joins Springfield Recruiting Station at Leadership Conference
Springfield, Ohio — Clark State Community College and U.S. Army Springfield Recruiting Station conducted 14 leadership workshops from October to February in preparation for the 2019 Leadership Conference and Workshop. These workshops each had a different theme; Awareness, Decisiveness, Empathy, Accountability, Confidence, Honesty/Optimism, Focusing and Inspiration- each of which was to help promote healthy community relationships with faculty and students.
Operation Reserve Rush Award Ceremony
FORT KNOX, Ky. — U.S. Army 3rd Recruiting Brigade Commander, Col. Eric Lopez presented awards to winners of the brigades mission referral initiative ‘Operation Reserve Rush’ in a ceremony at Olive Theater. U.S. Army Reserve Soldiers and the 3rd and 7th Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) Brigades, were recognized for helping to increase enlistment and support the recruiting mission of the U.S. Army.
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Title: Section 358-6.6 - Corrected decisions and reopened hearings.
358-6.6 Corrected decisions and reopened hearings. (a) Corrected decisions.
(1) The Commissioner may review an issued fair hearing decision for purposes of correcting any error found in such decision.
(2) After review, the commissioner may correct any error occurring in the production of an issued fair hearing decision including, but not limited to, typographical and spelling errors.
(3) After review, on notice to the parties, the commissioner may correct any error of law or fact which is substantiated by the fair hearing record.
(4) During the pendency of any review of an issued fair hearing decision, the original decision is binding and must be complied with by the social services agency in accordance with the provisions of section 358-6.4 of this Subpart.
(b) Reopened hearings. On notice to all parties, the commissioner may reopen a previously closed fair hearing record for purposes of completing such record. If such reopening occurs subsequent to the issuance of a fair hearing decision, the provisions of paragraph (a) (4) of this section apply.
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Random Musings – Wednesdays Blues
Posted by Omni on August 15, 2007 August 15, 2007 Bleach / Claymore / Random Musings / Romeo X Juliet
Home Bleach Random Musings – Wednesdays Blues
School Days – 07
Looking Beyond: The Borderline of Censorship
As had been previously mentioned, there’s no episode of Bleach today. In addition, there’s also no episode of Romeo X Juliet this week, and there’s no new episode of it next week either. In it’s place, CBC will be airing a half-hour series overview episode next week on August 22nd before airing episode 20 on August 29th. Now, CBC usually airs the first episodes of Romeo X Juliet every week on Wednesday, but in the wake of this brief hiatus, it’s possible that SUN-TV will take over and get to air the first episodes every week on Tuesday instead. In short, there’s a chance SUN-TV will air episode 20 on Tuesday, August 28th before CBC does on Wednesday, August 29th. We won’t know for sure until SUN-TV updates it’s online schedule, and that won’t be for another week or so.
For those of you watching Claymore, web Newtype has some interesting spoilers up for future episodes that seem to confirm it’s going to end differently from the manga. Show Spoiler ▼
It seems that Raki will witness Priscilla eat someone, and he’ll make his way to Pieta and see Clare Awakening, but be unable to stop her. In addition, Isley and Priscilla will sense the Yoma energy of Teresa from Pieta. Seems a bit odd that they mention that, but perhaps it means a showdown is coming. Either way, we appear to be in for an anime original ending.
ftp!! RAWR
GStrike-
August 15, 2007 at 4:29 pm 12 years ago
Shimatta… I was waiting so exited episode 20… damn it!
But I don’t know oen thing. There’re 24 or 26 episodes? Can you tell me.
Syaoran Li
Based on the current schedule and what the production blog has said, Romeo X Juliet will be 24 total episodes.
I shudder each time I hear the words “anime original”. In my mind they are synonym with sucky, bad, annoying and retarded.
It’s a pity that after 19 great episodes, things start to go down the drain with Claymore.
bearzerger
What a lame original ending.
Hum my 1st comment, great blog Omni ! ^^
Apparently Claymore doesn’t have much “manga materials” left. Wait & see, maybe they won’t pull a sucky, bad, annonying and retarted ending ( yep quite optimistic … )
Glouglou
well what else can be done, I mean the manga is still ongoing and they already caught up to it. I mean unless you want a revisit of D-gray man or Bleach, I think it’s better that they end it now with a satisfying ending rather than drag it on forever and ruin it
They should take a break! I love what the manga is doing/did, so this original story sounds not so great.
they’re going to hit the end of the Northern Campaign soon. there isn’t enough material post-Campaign, there’s hasn’t even been any new main story chapters the past 2 months, only side stories (from what i understand Norihiro’s not continuing the main story til Nov). the reality is they never actually said there was going to be a second season, ppl have just been assuming that. and they have to end the season some how. and if y’all have read the manga at least to the end of the Northern Campaign, its not a very good ending. its a great set-up for the stuff after it.
but as an ending for a series of anime, its horrible.
ahhh crap thats just sad i mean as claymore fan i would not mind waiting for a year to see a second season cause its worth it unlike some anime “coughnarutocough”
Orphen
ya they could have ended it after the invasion of pieta and then made a second season in a year or 2.but if we get to see a battle Show Spoiler ▼
between a awakened clare and the abysmal ones it might be worth a new ending.
Well can’t really opiniate on the matter, I’ll just wait for the episodes and ending to come to a conclusion.Just because they go on a different route won’t mean that it is going to be horrid.
Well, let’s hope they don’t botch this one up.
Anime Claymore ending = fail
@bearzerger, anime original endings aren’t THAT bad, take mai hime for example, it strayed from the manga but it was still a great series. And the Full Moon anime was soooo good, it’s one of my favourite animes
blaho
Aww crap, anime original ending? Oi! The series had so much potential. Another fanboy crushed.
*sheds manly tears*
Shinn Agami
@Blaho,
In the case of Mai-Hime, both the anime and manga came out the same time. Neither was base on the other.
Xellos-_^
You want some cheese with that whine?
Seriously kiddos, you haven’t even heard anything about the ending, and already I see so many bawling infants by the side of the road. Could you please get a grip on yourself?
The only thing we know is that the anime is obviously going to massively deviate from the manga now. Omni’s Newtype spoiler only covers episode contents up to episode 23 of 26. How it’s going to end we don’t know. Therefore, HUSH.
Yes, they’re taking a risk with it. On the other hand, maybe they do manage to pull off something good. And then we still have the manga for the original advocates to follow.
Mentar
@blaho: I never liked Mai Hime neither manga, nor anime, but they were completely different right from the beginning if I remember correctly.
Ending it with the battle at Pieta would have been best. There’s already such a nice cliffhanger in the manga and in two years they would have enough material for another season.
Actually, given the rate at which the Claymore manga comes out, it’d take around 5 years for there to be enough material for a (24~26 episode) second season.
losrit
So… this pretty much kills my hopes for an eventual second season. It’s true that the anime has almost caught up to the manga (the two-three volumes left do not yet make a complete storyline and wouldn’t make any sense to be included in this season), but I was really hoping that it would eventually go this way… The anime was so faithful to the manga, it would only be natural. Damn.
Japanese people suck at making good anime endings.
They should have just ran a cliff hanger and told people to buy the manga. Would have been better by far.
Better they end it that way than having to throw OVER NINE THOUSAND filler episodes.
Hangmen
@losrit
i don’t mind waiting that long but they better make sure its on the same par with the first season
I think Naruto was what gave Filler episodes a bad name
August 15, 2007 at 10:02 pm 12 years ago
Teah!! That’s good news for Claymore…
No more manga bullshit
@Typer
If you really think they suck that bad with endings why watch it at all, then again if everything ends with a good ending ppl will get bored. Besides if they create a total copy of the manga what good will that do? They want to create a piece that would be notice for it’s own originality, if you ask me this might have been already planned from the beginning anyways…since they created the animation without the manga even being done.
And if the anime and the manga is completely one and the same, manga ppl won’t even bother watching the anime and vice versa. So stop complaining already!
Aoi_Nozomi
Well it’s hard to hear but somewhat understandable. After all with the manga releasing monthly it’d take about 6 years for them to have enough stuff for a second season. It’s too bad but I guess the producers weren’t optimistic they could get a second season that far down the line. Maybe they thought it was better to give an anime original ending rather than leaving it off for a second season that might never happen.
FlareKnight
August 16, 2007 at 12:13 am 12 years ago
who knows, at least i’ll be looking forward to seeing the result.
Tetsuei
August 16, 2007 at 1:53 am 12 years ago
Well, you don’t NEED 26 episodes of material to do an anime. 13 is more than enough. Based on the pacing of the first season, this means a couple of years.
As for an original ending, I’m cautiously optimistic. And I was wondering why there seems to be too many episodes for the show to end with the Pieta invasion. The problem with an original ending, though, is how it will affect future episodes should it deviate too much from the manga.
Show Spoiler ▼
I’m guessing they already okayed it with the writer. Raki would not appear after this arc, and Clare would get her ass kicked very fast anyway in any sort of skirmish, so they can easily connect with the fall of Pieta and the resulting fake deaths of the 7 survivors. Although you got to wonder how Raki would feel about Isley/Priscilla if he knew they were awakened beings.
Honestly, this is what I had feared happening since I first decided to give the anime a chance. It was kind of like watching a really nice car roll down a hill when you forgot to put on the emergency break. You watch amazed as it stays on the road not deviating or hitting anything as it picks up speed on the way down. Then finally as it begins to near the bottom of the hill and you dare to breath a sigh of relief you notice the headlights of a mac truck about to barrel though the intersection your car is quickly approaching. What’s going to happen next? I don’t know, but to be honest I was rather fond of the idea of waiting 2 years for another 13 episode chunk. It’s a shame, but what can you do. As a fan of the series you just have to hope for the best and pray we get an ending that is at least true to the spirit of the manga.
8GaugeBrett
Why are any of the whiners even watching anime? Did the ending to Mahoratic suck? Yes. Guess what? Faithful to the manga. Did Asa’s arc in Shuffle suck? Yes. Faithful to the erogame. Was Kaede’s arc the most intense arc in Shuffle? Yes. Guess what? They over sensationalized her emotional state. Was Gankutusou good? Yes. Was it a literal adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas’ novel? Hell no. It is far too early to lament the fall of Claymore.
Basically when you are adapting something. You probably want to stay true to the spirit of the series but you have to change some things in an attempt to correct some flaws or simply because what works in one medium doesn’t work in another. Said changes usually have mixed results but aren’t inherently good or bad.
dojikyo
WHat? I have to wait until the 28 or 29th August something to watch the episode 20? OMG
kandidy
Freak! i rather they have a season 2 or smth!
Well, there’s changing the ending, and then there’s deviating from a long story. I’d be cool with an anime-original true ending to Claymore, if it’s done well. But keep in mind that the story is far from over. So this would be more like a “filler”, which has traditionally been crappy no matter which anime you’re talking about. Although I think the most apt comparison is the ending to Shakugan no Shana’s “original” ending, which one has to admit is pretty crappy.
the fact is claymore is only written once a month (if we are lucky and it’s not a side story or something else) so there is no logical way for them to make a 2nd season anytime soon. Maybe in a few years….I could see them doing an anime original ending, but still somewhat open ended for possibly an OVA later.
People follow the manga, but people also just watch the anime. I’d wait to see what happens before complaining it’s going to be bad. Madhouse has been pretty good and have done a great service to the Claymore manga even if they do go for an original ending.
This series reminds me of berserk for some reason, but I think its probably better to end the series, because its taking them forever to release chapters for the manga. I barely remember the ending for the berserk anime, but from what I remember, it just….stopped lol. So i’d rather have them create some ending for the anime, and then carry on with the manga.
Nonn8tive
That was the last part….
Claymore anime has officially ended for me – I wont even bother downloading ep 20………
Unknown Voice
And the ones complaining on how it was Inevitable – lemme say, they have enought material to finish 26 episodes without even reaching the point where manga is….
I belive there will be about 50+ episodes because there are 3 Abyss of the deep and only 2 have been seen and only 1 in her true form and im sure ladies and gentelmen there will be much much more to come im positive on this if not then claymore will be a faliure trust me. they will leave more out of it then they should i mean according to what iv read on wikipedia.org Raki was separated from Clare during her fight with Ophelia in Volume 7. Soon after that, he was apparently captured by slave traders and sent to the North. In Volume 10, he escaped but fell under the care of Isley and Priscilla, although he is not aware of their true identities as Awakened Beings. He is currently studying swordsmanship under Isley. He has yet to make an appearance after the seven year time skip. see and there will be an new arc where the survivors of the Northan war claymores will be abondoned and someone named Clarice has taken Clare’s number or rank #47 😀 so iv got a very good feeling this will be or another season for Claymore 🙂
Wargummi
@Wargummi
It has already been confirmed that it is 26 episodes….
If the anime goes on “orginal ending” = no post-timeskip storyline, no clarice, no Lucky Seven, no Miata, no Isley vs Luciela….
yea it’ll make no sense for them to end it right now…
@Lelouch
aw . . . and i was hoping to see the Isley vs. Luciela battle animated . . . does this mean we won’t even get to see Neko!Luciela?
We won’t see ANYTHING past Pieta >.> and the Pieta stuff will be twisted alot too…Lets take out Jean scene, Reveal the Isley and Priscilla “nature” to raki, lets take out lights going out, Insert Raki going into Pieta here…mess up claire’s scene.
That means no Luciela vs Isley, no Alicia vs army, no timeskip, no lucky seven, no Raki trains by isley, no timeskip arc….
I don’t think the anime will deviate unless Priscilla senses Teresa’s yoma energy and goes on a rampage. If she is merely startled and wishes to investigate, nothing will really change. We’ll still have Isley, Priscilla, and Raki watch Pieta as the Claymores get massacred since it is already hinted that Raki has no major involvement whatsoever. The northern campaign will defnitely fail. Raki will probably go renegade shortly afterwards.
@ix
Read up…Raki KNOWS the truth about isley and priscila…he goes to pieta alone…”Jean pulls back” doesn’t happen
If thats not enough. Episode 23 is called “Critical Point”…
Up Until now every ep was called by manga chapter title.
Critical Point begins the anime-original ending…
Where are the Romeo x Juliet ep 20 screencaps?! *Starts to panic*
ooo :/ i really wanted to watch the time skip in the anime and they CANT leave out galatea’s betrayal. :O i hope it will be good in an other way…
smbdy
oh never mind the episode didn’t air yet;;; My bad.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO should I just cry now or later idk all I can say is fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck…………
Anyone know any good animes like Claymore, it was so much better than Naruto bleach or anything anime imo IM SAD
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Safe Travels with 100ml travel size bottles
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Global Lyme Alliance Partnership Aimed at Lyme Disease Prevention
Katie Curnan
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The most common tick-borne illnesses are carried by blacklegged ticks (called deer ticks) that may also transmit several bacterial diseases including Babesiosis, Ehrlichiosis, and Anaplasmosis, which often result in infections coincident with Lyme. The same blacklegged tick, may also transmit the Powassan virus which can cause encephalitis and meningitis. Experts warn that viral infections may occur in as little as 15 minutes after a tick bite.
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Three shorts. Two features. One Oscar Winner. All Rated.
116 min. Special Guest: Warren Lipka
American Animals is the unbelievable true story of four young men who attempt to execute one of the most audacious art heists in U.S. history. They formulate the perfect robbery, only to discover that the plan has taken on a life of its own.
Warren Lipka, one of the four participants in the heist, will take part in the Q&A.
In a rural village outside Delhi, India, women lead a quiet revolution. They fight against the deeply rooted stigma of menstruation. For generations, these women didn’t have access to pads, which lead to health problems and girls missing school or dropping out entirely. But that is about to change. “Period. End of Sentence.” — a documentary short directed by Rayka Zehtabchi — tells their story.
Bisbee ’17 (2018)
112 min. Special Guest: Robert Greene, Director
An old mining town on the Arizona-Mexico border finally reckons with its darkest day: the deportation of 1200 immigrant miners exactly 100 years ago. Locals collaborate to stage recreations of their controversial past.
Loom (2018)
30 min. Special Guest: Kevin Rothlisberger, Director
In the fall of 1978, Adam and Shelly’s romantic camping trip turns into a fight for survival when they are interrupted by a group of playful backwoods locals who unexpectedly turn menacing and violent. Run like hell, fight like hell, but most importantly howl like hell.
Dust (2018)
24 min. Special Guest: Logan K. Triplett, Director
On the hunt for a story, a young android reporter tracks down “The Developer,” a mysterious synthetic-advocate, and uncovers the truth about his black market software updates.
The Last Séance (2018)
16 min. Special Guest: Laura Kulik, Director
During a terrifying séance, two sisters must defeat an evil demon. This horror flick has gotten acclaim all across the film circuit and won the Audience Choice Award: “Edge of Your Seat” at NFFTY.
Crude Oil (2019)
15 min. Special Guest: Christopher Good, Director
Jenny breaks free from a toxic friendship and learns to harness her magical, useless superpower.
Tall Tale & Zero Sum
Special Guest: Brook Linder, Director
Springfield’s own Brook Linder created these two indescribable short films, featuring child actors all grown up.
This festival pass gets you access to every Rated SGF event, including four film screenings, four Q&A’s with a lead from the film, a killer After Party at Hotel Vandivort and the first 100 will get a swag bag filled with exceptional surprises.
Rewind. Yes, you heard right. The first 100 ticket holders receive a swag bag filled with merch, local goodies and more. Few of these are still available, so act fast!
25% promo code available to students upon request.
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Browse unpublished material collected by significant members of the profession such as letters, case notes, photographs and artwork.
Explore in here for beautiful watercolours depicting veterinary practice and equipment; original notes by an RVC student in 1873; and correspondence discussing the long history of veterinary science.
Browse published material including veterinary books, periodicals and pamphlets.
Explore in here for early veterinary writing by the forefathers of the profession; descriptions of historic methods and cases; and anonymous backbiting between the professors of competing veterinary schools.
Go to the Archive Catalogue
The Archive Catalogue
The archive catalogue provides descriptions of material held within our collections, to help researchers decide which items are most relevant to their interest, before consulting the actual documents.
Archive catalogues are arranged hierarchically, from the general to the specific, and so a general search will return many results, which you can then narrow down to specific items.
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Browse featured works
Photographs of Smith’s laboratory at the Army Veterinary School, AldershotPhotographs relating to the Army Veterinary School in Aldershot, including Smith's laboratory and vaccine institute.
Manuscript notes made by Smith, whilst a student at the Royal Veterinary CollegeThis notebook contains manuscript notes and sketches made by Smith, during his study at the Royal Veterinary College in 1873 to 1874. The notes are about the eye and the foot of the horse. Smith presented these notes to the library of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons...
15 – “Operations”Artworks include: "The present manner of casting a horse for an operation."; "Operations No 6"; "Tracheotomy under Difficulties"; "Tracheotomy No 3"; "Tracheotomy No 2"; "Periosteotomy - Fig 5"; "Periosteotomy Figures 1 to 4";...
9 – Letter to Mary Ann Smith from Frederick Smith, 24 Jan 1900This letter has several sections redacted in black ink, which are assumed to be on personal subjects and not related to Smith's work in South Africa. In this letter, Smith writes on the following subjects: 24 Jan - Smith hearing that the night raid by the British was successful,..
About RCVS Knowledge
RCVS Knowledge is the independent charity associated with the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS). Our ambition is to become a global intermediary for evidence based veterinary knowledge...
About The RCVS Vet History project
RCVS Vet History is a five year project, in which the historically rich, but previously untapped, collections of the RCVS will be preserved and made more accessible to the public. The project will culminate in two major public outputs...
About the Archive Collections
Collections include the papers of Major-General Sir Frederick Smith and the watercolours of Edward Mayhew...
About the Library Collections
Publications include ‘The Veterinarian’, ‘Farrier and Naturalist’ and pamphlets by Bracy Clark
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Archive for category: “Farrier & Naturalist”
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‘Farrier and Naturalist’ Vol 1 Issue 1 – January 1828
30th January 1828 /0 Comments/in 1828 - Volume 1 /by Helena Clarkson
This material has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighbouring rights, and is being made available under the Creative Commons, Public Domain Mark.
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artwork, bird, Bracy Clark, cat, cattle, digestive system, dog, Edward Coleman, elephant, eye, farriery, foot, hoof, horse racing, hunting, ostrich, parasite, pharmaceuticals, Royal Veterinary College, sheep
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https://rcvsvethistory.org/wp-content/uploads/1828/01/FNVol1No1-Fi.jpg 1349 2305 Helena Clarkson https://rcvsvethistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/VH-newlogo-v2.png Helena Clarkson1828-01-30 12:34:322017-07-12 13:53:34'Farrier and Naturalist' Vol 1 Issue 1 - January 1828
‘Farrier and Naturalist’ Vol 1 Issue 2 – February 1828
27th February 1828 /0 Comments/in 1828 - Volume 1 /by Helena Clarkson
anatomy, artwork, cat, contamination, diagram, digestive system, distemper, dog, Edward Coleman, eye, George IV, horse trading, humour, insect, legal trial, poetry, Royal Veterinary College, sheep breeding, shoeing, skin, stomach, tumour, veterinary profession
https://rcvsvethistory.org/wp-content/uploads/1828/02/FNVol1No2-fi.jpg 1461 1445 Helena Clarkson https://rcvsvethistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/VH-newlogo-v2.png Helena Clarkson1828-02-27 14:13:362017-03-14 10:05:23‘Farrier and Naturalist’ Vol 1 Issue 2 – February 1828
‘Farrier and Naturalist’ Vol 1 Issue 3 – March 1828
30th March 1828 /0 Comments/in 1828 - Volume 1 /by Helena Clarkson
alternative medicine, artwork, bird, bleeding, blood, breeding, cattle, Edward Coleman, eye, fowl, horse, horse trading, pharmaceuticals, poetry, Royal Veterinary College, shoeing, veterinary education, veterinary qualifications
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The High Carbon Stock (HCS) Approach is a methodology that distinguishes forest areas for protection from degraded lands with low carbon and biodiversity values that may be developed. The methodology was developed with the aim to ensure a practical, transparent, robust, and scientifically credible approach that is widely accepted to implement commitments to halt deforestation in the tropics, while ensuring the rights and livelihoods of local peoples are respected. The methodology respects local community rights through its integration with enhanced Free Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) procedures, and respecting community land use and livelihoods. It requires participatory community-land use planning and management, applies conservation planning tools to the identified HCS forest areas, and combines with mapped community land use, HCV, peatland and riparian areas to delineate areas for conservation, restoration, community land use, and/or areas potentially available for plantation development. The HCS Approach is a breakthrough for plantation companies and manufacturers who are committed to breaking the link between deforestation and land development in their operations and supply chains. The approach represents the first practical methodology that has been tested and developed in active concessions in Asia and Africa with input from a variety of stakeholders. It is a relatively simple tool that plantation companies can use for new developments while ensuring that forests are protected from conversion. Identification of HCS forests can also help governments fulfil commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions resulting from deforestation because it allows the mapping of forest areas that should be conserved (thus preventing GHG emissions).
Our methodology refers to The HCS Approach Toolkit Version 2.0: Putting No Deforestation into Practice released at 3 May 2017. The key steps into HCS assessment are:
Desktop Analysis: collating all relevant environmental, social and geospatial data to understand the environmental and social context of the project site and surrounding area.
Pre-assessment: visiting the purposed study location, initial engagement with local communities, to include communities in land use planning and integrate the HCS process with Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC): the right of local communities to give or withhold their consent to any development or conservation affecting their lands, livelihoods and environment.
HCS Assessment: full team member consists of 1 Team Leader (HCSA registered practitioner), 1 GIS (HCSA registered practitioner), at least 1 biodiversity expert, 3 tree inventory surveyors, and 2 social experts. The team member are varies regarding to the assessment coverage area.
Analysing HCS forest patches, proposing an Integrated Conservation and Land Use Map,and protection of HCV areas and HCS forest .
Stakeholder consultation: further engagement with the communities The important role that smallholders and communities can play in forest protection is discussed, alongside their needs for relevant support and incentives.
Our registered practitioners:
[photo DRM] [Photo Cecep Saepulloh] [Photo Dian Pratiwi]
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More ESV Global Study Bibles to Yumbe
On February 27, 2014 February 27, 2014 By Jacob LeeIn Discipleship, Evangelism
Setting of the RAU Road Sign
On February 27, 2014 By Jacob LeeIn Building Projects
We have put the road sign together and set it. It was very heavy. It took 10 of us to carry it and put it in placein. No cranes here in the bush of Africa! The Earl Moore family made the frame for it back in Seguin Texas. Thank you Moores! It had a long ride and wait in the container but it made it! They did an excellent job and everything fit together well. May the Lord use the sign for His glory!
The sign with the Moore’s in Seguin Texas before its long journey to RAU.
Assembling the sign on RAU’s front veranda
Deep holes were dug for the posts of the sign. The guys had never seen a post hole digger and they quickly fell in love with it.
RAU has strong and able men ready and willing to work hard!
The sign was very heavy!
When Sam left to take the picture the men on left side struggled to hold the sign.
Getting ready to drop the sign posts into their holes
Mixing rock,sand, and cement for the for the sign post holes. We had to make our own gravel by busting rocks with a sledge hammer.
The sign is set. Thank you Jesus!
Into the Lion’s Den
On February 21, 2014 September 19, 2015 By Jacob LeeIn Discipleship, Missions
Proclaiming Jesus in Yumbe West Nile
I continue to thank the Lord for your prayers and support. The last two weeks of ministry has been very fruitful and the things which were done could not have happened without your prayers and financial support. May the Lord pour out His blessings on you!
“You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.”
In our last newsletter Carol wrote about the Yumbe pastors retreat here at RAU where 17 pastors from Yumbe and 2 from Obongi attended. After they all left RAU, Carol and I looked at each other, smiling, and said, “This is why we are here!” The pastors left full of joy and enriched through the teaching they received and materials they were able to take with them.
Most of this past week was spent in Yumbe itself. In past newsletters I have written much about Yumbe and our desire to see Jesus exalted there. Pastors Ben and Charles, as well as some pastors who were at the retreat, planned discipleship training in Yumbe town and an outlying, hard-to-reach sub county, called Kerwa. One day of medical outreach in Kerwa was also planned, along with open air preaching in a Kerwa market and Yumbe town itself.
(Pictures and video’s of the week are below)
On Monday, when we arrived, we checked in with the Yumbe police and the Criminal Investigation Department. These departments needed to be aware of our presence in the city and district for our protection. Plain clothes officers were assigned to us. These law officials were very kind and helpful! We also visited the District Director of Health Services. He is a Christian as well as a physician and happily received us, giving us permission for our medical outreach in Kerwa. He also found a vehicle to transport us. We just had to provide fuel and pay the drivers for the two vehicles we used from the District.
Tuesday we all headed to Kerwa, which is near the South Sudan border. The road to Kerwa would be virtually impossible in the rainy season unless one has a powerful vehicle.We had discipleship training in the local Anglican church. Anglicans, Baptists, and Pentecostals gather together. Some came from as far away as Juba. We had a wonderful time together in study of God’s Word and worship. One of the video’s which is posted below gives you a flavor of what our worship of the King of kings in Kerwa was like.Carol and Sam shared the love of Christ with many at the local medical clinic. This clinic serves a large population and the personnel were very grateful for all the help. We had purchased medicines in Kampala and they were given out with loving care and counsel. Most of the time, the clinic does not have the medicines they need. Those who needed care were many! It was a very exhausting time for Sam and Carol, but they were refreshed and invigorated by God’s grace. You would all be proud of both Carol and Sam in how they displayed Christ’s love.
At about 6 PM open air preaching began in the local market. It was market day and there many,many people there. Mosques cover Yumbe District like churches in “Bible Belt” of America! Romans 1:16 states, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”. The power of the gospel was evident in this Kerwa market as over 20 people openly chose to say “I follow Jesus”! Thank you for praying!
On Wednesday and Thursday we had discipleship training in Yumbe itself in Pilgrims Anglican Church and open air preaching. I have been greatly encouraged by the Anglicans in the West Nile of Uganda. Though there are not many who are born again in Yumbe District, of the ones which are, Anglicans number the most. They are some real, Jesus-loving brethren! At these discipleship sessions many pastors and leaders attended from all over the district with the exception Kerwa where we were on Tuesday. We had to facilitate their transport, food and lodging. It was so encouraging to open God’s Word with these hungry saints! We are believing for God’s Spirit to be poured out on Yumbe District. Please join us in this prayer.
Lord willing, we will be able to keep hosting pastors from Yumbe at RAU for retreats. There are a number of young men who want to come for mentoring in the fundamentals of the faith. Because of the difficulty of transport to RAU the Yumbe brethren and RAU would like to have a resource center and Inter-denominational training center in Yumbe, aka Hall of Tyrannus- Yumbe Branch. Pilgrim Church has agreed to allow something to be done on their plot of land. Some details still need to worked out between them and the RAU team but it looks promising. I will keep you posted.
I cannot express adequately how much I appreciate you. Your prayers, support, and words of encouragement mean so much to Carol, the RAU team, and me. Thank you!
Jacob (and Carol) Lee
Web Site: www.ReachingAfricasUnreached.com
Blog: www.ReachingAfricasUnreached.org
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ReachingAfricasUnreached
Our “wish lists” may be found at Amazon (Click on the “Wish List” link and type in our names)
The greatest evil is having the gospel and not doing everything within our power to get it to those who do not have it. May the Lord grant each of us His followers the wherewithal to be obedient disciples!
Tax deductible charitable donations may be made via PayPal. PayPal also has a way to make reoccurring monthly gifts. To do so please click their link below. PayPal deducts a small amount from each gift as a processing fee. All gifts given through PayPal are now tax deductible as Reaching Africa’s Unreached has 501 c3 tax exempt status as a charitable organization. If you wish to write a check you may write it out to R.A.U. and mail it to Lifegate Missions, 395 Lifegate Ln., Seguin Texas 78155.
*If you have questions on donations please email me at JacobLeeRAU@gmail.com
Since it is the dry season we hired a car instead of 4 wheel vehicle to take us to Yumbe. A vehicle this in the rainy season would not do. The vehicle was packed with us and supplies “African style”.
In the dry season one does not have to worry about getting stuck however the trade off heavy dust and heat is not much better.
On our way to Yumbe we went by village after village with NO church. They will not hear the gospel unless someone goes to them!
This is the Guesthouse Sam, Carol, and I stayed in while in Yumbe.
We were blessed to have several hours of electricity each evening via generator. We had flushing toilets too!
What a joy to be with Carol on this journey
Yumbe has so many beautiful children!
This is the main street in Yumbe. It has a population of 35,000 with evangelicals numbering less than 1%. May the gospel go forth here in love and power!
Discipleship training in Kerwa.
Carol and Sam spent many hours in Kerwa clinic demonstrating Christ’s love through loving care and dispensing medicines RAU had purchased with donations from faithful givers
Kerwa Health Center II. This clinic serves around 50,000 people with 2 RN’s ,a midwife, and 2 nursing assistants. They have difficulties in keeping enough medicines there. The staff and all the patients were all very grateful for the care and medicines they received from RAU
Many people waited for many hours to see Sam and Carol
Open Air Preaching in Kerwa Market
These pastor are praying and counseling those who have openly chosen to follow Jesus in this Muslim community.
Youth singing before open air preaching in Yumbe town
Open air preaching Yumbe Town
Preaching Jesus!
Discipleship training in Yumbe Town
Pastors and leaders from all over Yumbe district attended RAU’s two day discipleship training in Yumbe town.
Pastors Ben and Charles did an excellent job heading up our four days of ministry in Yumbe District. Please continue to pray for the church in Yumbe District and RAU’s as we work together for god’s glory..
Yumbe Pastor’s Retreat
On February 15, 2014 September 20, 2015 By Jacob LeeIn Discipleship, Missions, News and Status Updates4 Comments
Greetings to all our rope-holding loved ones!
On Friday, the 14th, we watched the van loaded with 17 pastors from Yumbe District make a trail of dust as it left the RAU compound and we felt joy and satisfaction in all that was, by God’s grace, accomplished this last week. From the 11th, when the conference started, to its end on Friday, it was a steady effort to squeeze the maximum good that was possible out of this time. As goodbyes were said and hugs and handshakes were given on the last day, these were done with an appreciation all of us had in growing together in Christ. Jacob and I received a very special blessing in having these men gather around us, lay hands on and pray for us. This blessing was also extended to all those that work at RAU. What a way to end the retreat!
(Pictures and a video are below)
This special event had been in the works since last October. Initially, the plan was for our beloved brother and friend, Kevin Turner, with SWI (Strategic World Impact) to come for this time and bring his gifted friend, Jonathon Fletcher, with him to help us teach our brothers from Yumbe. The Lord apparently had different plans than ours. We have heard Kevin say, “God doesn’t have any plan B’s, only plan A’s,” however, we were saddened to hear that the reason for the change in plans was that Kevin’s wife, Tammy, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer and would require immediate treatment. Please keep Tammy and the Turner family in prayer as she goes through rigorous and aggressive treatment. Understandably, this was a game changer for all of us.
Jacob called on our coworker, Patrick Bukenya (one of RAU’s directors) to help and he was gracious in accepting the invitation to come and teach alongside Jacob. Patrick also brought with him Kaabale David, an elder at First Presbyterian Church Uganda. Both men, as we learned, are excellent and inspiring teachers and served the pastors of Yumbe very well in teaching on principles of leadership! Jacob, Patrick and David each took 3 hour sessions each day and covered important topics of discipleship, leadership, suffering and evangelism. Not only did the pastors express appreciation for the teaching, but begged for future training. Between sessions there were many conversations around developing future events and opportunities and resources. This event was, by no means, the only one of its kind…there will be more with Yumbe leaders who represented different denominations.
One of the many blessings of the retreat was the opportunity to get to know these pastors a little more intimately and to identify the areas of difficulty in their personal lives as well as in their ministries in the context of living in a non-Christian environment.
One of the pastors at the retreat was a witness to the murdering of two American missionaries around eight years ago just outside of Yumbe, and he, himself, narrowly escaped. After the missionaries were bullied and then shot, this Yumbe pastor was locked in a hut which was then set on fire. He decided he would rather escape and be shot to death rather than be burned alive and found a way to climb out of the hut. When the armed men saw him, they told him to run and started shooting at him. By God’s grace he was able to escape without being hit by gunfire. Since that time there has been little help from the church outside of Yumbe. One pastor stated, “We thought that God had forgotten us!” Many times Jacob has been told that RAU is an answer to their prayers!
Part of the discussion during the retreat entailed helping them to strategize a respectful defense of their schools and property as well as giving them ideas to disciple their flocks so that everyone is prepared to give a humble, gentle and knowledgeable response to pressure tactics and a reason for their hope.
Among the prayer requests and accounts of challenges faced by the pastors, a very prominent issue is the low socioeconomic standing that most Christians have in the community. It is hard for them to keep their heads above water, economically speaking, and unexpected illnesses, educational needs and hardships can pull them under completely. This also means that a pastor cannot make his living by the Gospel and he must find means of supporting his family apart from pastoring.
Listed here are some of the specific requests by pastors for prayer: training and discipleship for church leaders, material/resources for training, people to come alongside them in their struggles, personal discipleship, financial resources to help the churches physically (buildings, transportation), illnesses in loved ones, financial resources for putting their children through school, prayer for the youth who are being drawn to the world or into Islam, wisdom in how to navigate, in a Christ-like loving way, political clashes and pressures and everyday living in an Islamic culture, unity among all the denominations that presents a positive answer to Islam, the joining together of all the churches as a united force in the region and so many, many more needs.
The pastors went away from the retreat with a renewed desire to reach their communities for Christ in a loving, gentle and powerful way.
As we move forward from here, this is what is in the works for RAU:
*On Monday, Jacob, Sam, Godfrey, and I will head to Yumbe town and District for a time of teaching, evangelism and medical outreach; this is being coordinated with pastors who were at the retreat. (See below the lists of medicines that were purchased for South Sudan refugees and for outreach in Yumbe this coming week) We will come back on Thursday.
*There is a plot of land available in Obongi for the same purpose of making a resource center and a location for interdenominational discipleship ( Hall of Tyrannus:Obongi Branch).
*There are a dozen or so young men in the pipe line for mentoring/discipleship at RAU for pastoring/church planting.
A few of the young men who want to be mentored at RAU
*We are closely working with the Kampala police and the Japanese Interpol to get our money for the ’99 Land Cruiser which we purchased from Japan refunded so that another one could be purchased. It is difficult and expensive to find vehicles that can take us to more rural areas. Please pray we can recover our money and find another vehicle soon.
*For the first time ever, there is an Aringa New Testament that is currently being published. Aringa is the main language spoken in the Yumbe area. For about $4 a copy (which must be ordered ahead of time) we could purchase Bibles to give out in outreaches to that area.
*Jacob did an interview with a Dinka tribesman and pastor from Bor, South Sudan, who narrowly escaped after hiding himself in the Nile for over a week. They were being shot at by rebel groups. Many drowned in the Nile trying to save themselves. He is now in a refugee camp in Adjumani. Jacob will be posting the video interview on the website. It is here.
*There are at least 3 pastors’ retreats that could be quickly be organized if funds were available. When hosting these retreats RAU transports the pastors to RAU and back to their homes, feeds and cares for them while at RAU, and provides resources for them. Please consider helping fund these retreats and consider coming to teach (if teaching is your gift and passion).
I have been thinking, once again, about how much people in this region need resource and development help from those who are rich in both. There are so many things that can be done in, not only pastoral training, but vocational training. If you are knowledgeable in any areas that could help people build life skills please consider getting a group together to come over and help! The women of the area are very involved in bringing income to the family. They are eager to learn skills that will help them do so.
Your ongoing prayerful support is very much appreciated. Please pray for our safety and health and for provisions for all of these plans. We entrust them to the Lord. May they be accomplished according to His will and purposes!
Carol (for both of us)
The greatest evil is having the gospel and not doing everything within our power to get it to those who do not have it. May the Lord grant each of us His followers the wherewithal to be obedient disciples! JL
*If you have questions on donations please email Jacob at JacobLeeRAU@gmail.com
Good times of fellowship
Prayer before one of our meals
We enjoyed our meals together
Lucy and Gracie prepared excellent meals for us. We had beans,posho,rice, and a variety of vegetables with tea and coffee throughout the day. There were no complaints about not having “meat”. The pastors were very appreciative of the simple cuisine.
We had many times of sweet worship and praise
Prayer time!
Teaching God’s Word
Each pastor received a Global Study Bible and a bag of biblically sound books.
The Yumbe pastors praying over us. What a special time!
Enjoying Carol’s guitar
Benjamin and David
Charles is in the pink and Ben is playing the guitar. Together with them we began planning this event last October
Servants of the Lord…Sam, Godfrey, and Carol!
Getting ready to head back to Yumbe
17 pastors returned to Yumbe full of joy and encouragement from the Lord
Please pray with us that the glory of Christ will shine brightly in Yumbe. Pray for God’s faithful servants who labor there tirelessly.
These are drugs which have thus far been purchased with donations.
1) Coatem(Anti-malarial) 100 adult doses
2)Doxycycline ……………500 caps
3)Ciprofloxaciline tabs…..500 tablates
4)Erythromycine tabs …..1,000 tablets(one tin)
5)Metronidazole tabs…….1,000 tablets(one tin)
6)Cotrimoxazole tabs……..1,000 tablets(one tin)
7)Ascorbic acid tabs……….1,000 tablets(one tin)
8)Albendazole tabs…………500 tablets
9)Magnesium trisilicate……1,000 tablets(one tin)
10)Folic acid tabs…………..1,000 tablets(one tin)
11)Ferrous-sulphate………..1,000 tablets(one tin)
12)Paracetamol tabs………1,000 tablets(one tine)
13)Nystatine/vaginal Pessaries……100 adult doses
14)Clotrimazole1% cream…………..100 creams
15)Benzyl Benzoate………………….20 creams
16)Calamine lotion 100mls…………10 bottles
17)Amoxycillin caps…………………1,000 caps(one tin)
18)Syrups Amoxycillin……………..50 syrups
19)Syrup Chlorophenical……………50 syrups
20)Syrup Ferrous Sulphate/Ferro-B..20 syrups
21)Tetracycline eye ointment…….50 eye ointments
22)Chlorophenical eye ointment….50 ointments
23)Gention violet 25g tin……………1 tin
24)Disposable gloves…………………1 box
25)gauze hydrophyllic 90cm by 91cm…..one
26)Elastic bandage 7.5cm by 45cm
27)Chlorhexidine/cetrimid 1.5/15% 1L
28)Omeprazole 20mg……..500 caps
29)Griseofulvin tablets…….50 tablets
30)Nystatine syrups……….50 syrups
31)Vitamin B……………….1,000 talets(one tin)
32)Vitamin B-coplex……..1,000 tablets(one tin)
First hand report from Bor South Sudan
On February 15, 2014 February 15, 2014 By Jacob LeeIn Mercy Ministries
With Daniel who is a Dinka from Bor South Sudan
Sam and Daniel
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Revival in Western Nuba Mountains
On July 27, 2019 July 27, 2019 By Jacob LeeIn Uncategorized1 Comment
In the YouTube video below I interview three brothers from the Republic of (North) Sudan about the Lord’s work in their homeland. I do believe the country is in the beginning stages of many coming to Christ alone for salvation …please pray!
We finished our 10 day training on July 24th with these young men as well as others from both the Republic of (North) Sudan and South Sudan, along one friend from Yumbe District and Pastor Tobious from the Metu Mountains. They stayed with us at RAU and the training was done in the RAU Hall of Tyrannus. Because of generous gifts of God’s people we are able to transport them from and back to their various refugee encampments, as well as feed and house them. Thank you to those who support and pray for Reaching Africa’s Unreached!
Pastor Jason Andrew Van Bemmel and Bob Brown did an excellent job covering both Church History and Systematic Theology, which is Modules 4 & 5 of Reaching and Teaching International’s 9 Module curriculum. We also had one day of training on “Farming As a Business” with practicals in the RAU demo plot with RAU’s Agricultural specialist, Prince Apiku Emma. Carol also gave a lesson on signs of Ebola as well as practical instructions of prevention.
It is a joy to partner with Reaching and Teaching as well as Forest Hill Presbyterian (PCA) Church and Rocky Point Baptist Church in walking out 2 Timothy 2:2. Rocky Point Baptist was with us in June with Module 3: Hermeneutics.
It is also a joy to be able to give out biblically sound Arabic books given through the Gospel Coalition International Outreach and the specific books related to Church History and Systematic Theology from Jason and Bob.
Jason and Bob left for Maryland on the 25th. Carol and I miss them and are very grateful for their coming as well as for their families ,Forest Hill Presbyterian Church, and New Covenant Presbyterian Church , who sacrificially sent them off!
Thank you to the MANY who through prayer, financial partnership, encouragement, physical presence and loving gifts are very much a part of RAU. We could not do what we do without your action. We are, as we have often said, a conduit of the grace of God flowing through you to the precious ones He means to bless and strengthen and equip for great and mighty things.
Pray for safety and strength and endurance and health. Pray the fruit that lasts would be produced in our lives and in the lives of those we love and serve.
Thank you and God Bless you,
Carol (Jacob) Lee
http://www.ReachingAfricasUnreached.org
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The greatest evil is having the gospel and not doing everything within our power to get it to those who do not have it!
When at least 35% of the world, “the unoccupied fields”, have no access to the gospel, we (believers) must all do all we can to reach them. We who are saved owe the gospel to every lost person, most especially the 2.4 billion who will not hear unless someone breaks into their “unoccupied field” with no thought of their own life!
Sowing seeds of love and kindness should not be separated from preaching the gospel of sovereign grace but completely intertwined with it!
I am sure that none of us will say when in heaven that we prayed too much, we sacrificed too much, proclaimed the gospel too much, and were too passionate to get the gospel to those who have little to no access to this gospel of grace. Let us together press on to make it our ambition to preach the gospel where Christ has not been named!
Our goal in our gospel witness is to take our eyes off the “risk” and place them on the cause for the risk. When God compels us like this he often will not tell us the risks…after all there are no risks for the all-knowing, all-powerful God. So let us be AMBITIOUS (Romans 15:20) to see that ALL are reached with the gospel of grace (Romans 1:16) in ALL places…there are no closed doors to the gospel, just some which are more difficult to go through!
On July 9, 2019 By Jacob LeeIn Uncategorized2 Comments
By Carol Lee
“…but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,“
“For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps.“
“If you believe you can accomplish everything by “cramming” at the eleventh hour, by all means, don’t lift a finger now. But you may think twice about beginning to build your ark once it has already started raining”
― Max Brooks
“When opportunity comes, it’s too late to prepare.”
― John Wooden
“Most people fail in life because they were not prepared for the opportunities when they appeared.”
― Orrin Woodward
Recently, during one of my language lessons, we were reading Ma’di parables and came across one that carries the same meaning as the above quotes. “Mvuka li aci andra kpe!” (“In vain you cut (make) your shoes right before the fire”.) As I was doing my creative brainstorming for this newsletter, what was distilled in my thinking is that the few months since we have been back here at RAU have been this sort of preparation in many areas of the ministry. Times of preparation can seem barren of meaningful activity or effective ministry, but being ready for the “sudden” floodgate of opportunities makes you glad that you did the needful groundwork.
With the “start & finish line” in mind, Jacob painstakingly oversaw the last stages of the new Missionary House Duplex and, before that, the completion of the expanded Hall of Tyrannus, ensuring that the final product was pleasing to the eye and functional for many generations. [Building in this remote region is not easy as tools and supplies are not easily acquired. Every step is very very labor-intensive!] Our goal was to have at least “our side” of the Duplex ready to move into before the team (from Rocky Point Baptist Church Stephenville Texas) arrived for our North and South Sudanese leaders’ retreat. Jacob and I had been looking forward to being settled into our (new) home so that as we approached a very busy season of ministry we would have a haven of rest and feel more prepared. We did move in with only a day or two to spare before the arrival of the Rocky Point ministry team—not as ready as we would have liked to have been, but moved in!
What initially inspired the new building was the vision of having other families come and share the load, the joy of the work of the various branches of RAU ministry and most importantly having a team to pass the baton on to when the Lord takes us home to glory. At the writing of this newsletter, “our side” is complete minus a few small issues. Our expert carpenters, Nkata and Lawrence, returned home for a short break to see their families and rest a bit, after which they will return to finish up the other side of the Duplex and put the finishing touches on our home. Then we will be fully ready for the ones the Lord has in mind to come and share the load.
Another area of intensive labor and preparation has been our 20 acre Agricultural Demo Farm. March and April are typically the busiest as ground is made ready for planting and then the planting and weeding are done. This year, 2019, much like 2017, had an extended dry season. Meteorologists were saying we should anticipate famine for northern Uganda among other areas of Uganda and neighboring countries. Climbing prices of staple food items in the market are already indicating food scarcity. There were reports that both host community members as well as refugees in the near by settlements in our area will not have enough food to sustain them well due to the lack of a timely and adequate rainy season. Tobious, Pastor of Aya Baptist Church in the Metu Mountains, also wrote that the rains seriously delayed to come in sufficient quantity for timely planting in some of the mountain communities where he lives and works. Thankfully, since then, the rains have come and farmers are planting.
In response to this information of potential food shortage, RAU has been preparing in several ways. We are continuing to nurture our banana and mango trees (bananas produce suckers which we sell for a significantly reduced price and the mango seedlings will be grafted for sale as well). Meanwhile we are inter-cropping between fruit tree lines with a Rosette-resistant variety of ground nuts (peanuts) — Serenut 14R. In the past, the local community has experienced > 50% loss of production using the local variety of g-nut. The plan in buying and planting improved varieties of various crops is to multiply seed so that churches and the community can benefit by purchasing improved seed (with increased production) at greatly reduced prices in order to boost their production for sale and consumption. To add to the Cassava (an improved variety which is ready for consumption in 6 months vs the 12-18 months of other varieties) that we harvested, RAU purchased millet from a local farmer that can be ground along with the Cassava for an emergency, nutritional food source. Our vegetable seedling beds have been filled and re-filled as we plant some vegetables for demo and our own consumption and also for selling affordable seedlings to community members for their gardens.
Apiku Emma, our Principal Agricultural Extension Officer (PAEO) is continuing to oversee the demo farm operations and challenge and inspire the local communities on the radio every Thursday evening to see farming as a potential business rather than mere subsistence activity. Recently, Uganda’s President Museveni visited Moyo (as well as other West Nile towns and cities) and charged the citizens to focus on farming for improved livelihood. It was an opportunity to underscore that evening on the radio the Thursday he was in Moyo what RAU has already been doing for the last 3 years since adding an Agricultural component to the ministry: improved farming techniques and technology, farming as a business, and timely extension consultancy. As a response to a need in the community for recommended seed, agro-chemicals and tools and equipment, Emma and his wife, Vivian, started their own business called Apiviva Agrotechno Consult and Supplies, Ltd. As you can imagine, Emma is even busier now as he offers on the spot consultation for farming questions at their shop, in addition to the sale of reliable inputs and equipment. He is also bringing new technology to RAU so that it can be demonstrated for local farmers and increase our own production.
As the RAU team has done its work of preparation, God has been gracious to do His part of sending rain which has, once again, brought life and lushness to the RAU campus. It’s always a stunning sight to see the fertile beauty that is characteristic of “The Pearl of Africa”—Uganda. We are very grateful for Missionary Agricultural Resource Services (M.A.R.S.) which partners with us in agricultural ministry endeavors! They help to keep us afloat in our agricultural endeavors and moving forward!
Just in the nick of time, our prep goals were met (mostly) and then it was “hit the ground running” for the season of ministry for which we had been preparing.
Due to the size of the team, the Rocky Point team was able to fly directly into Moyo’s grass strip on Monday, June 17th, which cut off a good 6-8 hours of extra travel and many potholes! It gave them a little time to unwind before the retreat started the next day—except for the ladies, Lura and Marty—they got to experience the famous Boda ride in to town and the fun shopping and market experience. Hmmm…I think they weren’t too eager to repeat it! Hahaha!
At the time of the retreat, we were blessed to have visiting us our friend and brother, Misengile Samuel, from DRC, who was a great help and a joy to be around!
The Rocky Point Team came well prepared to teach and serve. By 9 a.m. Tuesday morning, we had already received our first Retreat attendees. Thanks to Lura and Marty, the registration process was like a well-oiled machine. As members arrived from various Refugee settlements (Rhino Camp, Morobi, Palorinya, Bidi Bidi and others), they were registered and settled into one of six tukalus or Lydia’s house. After refreshing themselves with a bath and lunch they were ready to start the first session of Module 3 (Hermeneutics—Heads, Church Ordinances —Hands, Several Fruits of the Spirit —Heart) of Reaching and Teaching’s 9 Module Curriculum entitled, “Head, Hands and Heart.” Rocky Point sent 4 excellent teachers to cover the topics. This was a blessing that allowed Jacob the freedom to continue with administrative and managerial duties. Each module is organized as 5 days or 40 hour of teaching. During the week there was an afternoon session on “Farming As A Business”. The teaching team was also able to bring valuable resources in Arabic from “The Gospel Coalition International Outreach”. Jacob loves the idea that the written word is a teacher–a missionary that never grows weary and spans through the generations.
“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”
― Charles W. Eliot
RAU Leaders Retreat #32
The benefit of having the attendees here at RAU is that sessions can start on time and include an evening session as well. The Lord has blessed so that we have the beds for both the attendees and trainers, as well as the ability to feed and transport the men from their various refugee settlements. All of us ladies (in the kitchen as well as Lura, Marty and I) ensured that the men were well-fed and their needs cared for. The retreat started Tuesday morning and ended Saturday at noon. It’s amazing how quickly bonded people become when such a compressed and intense is spent together! [On July 15th-24th, the same group of men will return for Modules 4 & 5 (Church History and Systematic Theology) with Jason Van Bemmel (Forest Hill Presbyterian Church (PCA)) and Bob Brown teaching.]
On Sunday we traveled to Obongi to visit and encourage Pastor Godfrey and Obongi Town Church. Recently, money had been provided for them by a lovely family to build a semi-permanent structure that could protect them from some of the elements. On behalf of the church, Godfrey expressed such gratefulness for this blessing that kept them from being rained on, chased from tree to tree or being beaten down by the sun. Most of us would just not go to church if we were presented with these same conditions on Sunday. Special thanks to the family who had a burden for this dear gathering of brothers and sisters.
Monday was “a day off”—which was anything BUT! Jacob had every single guy using every single talent they had to fix every possible problem (plumbing, electrical, solar, mechanical, IT and internet issues)! And I had recruited Marty and Lura to do some re-organizing projects. They were all such a blessing and what was accomplished will make our lives considerably easier after they have returned to the USA.
Tuesday and Wednesday were slated to be Metu Mountain “white-knuckle mission adventures.” However, on Tuesday, the Land Cruiser developed a clutch problem which could not be resolved in time for the team to go the Gbari/Arapi/Duku/Oyo side of the mountains, much to the disappointment of everyone. Tobious made a special trip the churches there by boda to explain to all the dear ones waiting and to cheer them as much as possible.
By 11 a.m. the next morning (Wednesday) the Land Cruiser seemed to be in shape to try the most strenuous of the remote journeys — to Aya, Ijujo and Cinyi. This trip is the ultimate test for a Land Cruiser, not only the mechanical parts but the tires as well. It took a while to make it up the short-cut road as the rain had washed some very large ruts in the road which required all hands on deck to fill the ruts with stones and sand. There were some very happy people waiting on the other end and it was a joy and blessing for Jacob and the Rocky Point team as well. The team was able to make it safely back to RAU! Very literally, Jacob pulled the vehicle into the garage and the transmission gave out completely! The Land Cruiser apparently was making a bold statement that “Enough is enough!” Thankfully, since then, the Land Cruiser has received some tender loving care through the loving care of dear friends back home who have contributed towards some of the repairs.
Jacob ensuring that everyone tries a little Kalo!
A full and tiring schedule did not keep us from enjoying a few nights of movies with BUTTERED POPCORN!!! The laughter and time spent together was medicine for our souls!
Then…just like that, time was up and the team flew off into the horizon (again, from Moyo)! [We are always amazed at what a fast “race” it is to the finish line—once that starter gun goes off — the race is over in a flash!] The goodbyes were hard! The retreat attendees endeared themselves to us and, of course, the Rocky Point team is like family. There was a gaping hole left by the team’s absence.
In full throttle of preparing for moving into the house and being ready for the retreat, we experienced the grace and kindness of the Lord several times. First, a couple weeks before, Jacob was trying to help get some pieces of wood out of storage and the thing on which he was standing seemed almost to shoot out from under him (as if someone had yanked it out) and he was thrown backward and downward onto the harrow where his back hit a metal bar, missing his spine by an inch. Though the pain he experienced was excruciating and caused him to pass out (scaring the tar out of me, by the way), the physical and visible damage was miraculously disproportionate to the intense pain and the probability of serious injury or worse. We could only conclude that the Lord spared him and has more for him to do. A week or so later, Jacob started experiencing typical malaria symptoms and because the pressure to get things done was so great, we immediately started him on an anti-malarial drug. This, I believe, decreased the duration of his symptoms so he could do what was needful, though the malaria slowed him down and he was forced to take periods of rest. These events were reminders that the Lord has numbered our days AND He is gracious even when we underestimate the limits of our capacities!
The “space” between the last retreat and the next has been full of activity. Jacob has continued to press on with details (everyone around here will attest to the fact that there is NEVER a time when work is finished. No small problem goes unnoticed by Jacob’s keen eye).
Our Ag projects are booming! Every kind of vegetable for demo and consumption has been planted (tomatoes, cabbage, onions, okra, squash, cucumber, air potatoes, carrots, watermelon and others). The Rosette-resistant g-nuts (peanuts) are doing very well. Emma has introduce various technologies for inspiring farmers to try new methods and improve their production (grow bags, seedling trays, spray pumps, improved variety seeds). Our grafted mangoes did very well this year (and we can only expect it to get better, especially if we are diligent to control the fruit fly population, which is what spoils mangoes) and we were able to find a ready market for them. We are no where near break-even in terms of revenue, but every little bit helps to off-set the cost of managing the various crops. Banana suckers have been sold in great numbers as community members have seen how well bananas of several varieties can be grown in this region. We have been selling Namche 5 Upland rice and other seeds which have been multiplied. Ag knowledge and inputs have also been made available to the Refugee community. We are glad to be a part of the many groups who want to bring hope and opportunity for improved livelihood for our local communities, no matter where they come from.
Each retreat (this last one hosted 37 members of the Refugee community) Module has a portion of time set aside for Ag training with an emphasis on Farming as a Business. In addition, this last week, we were honored to host 50 students from an Ag Club within the Palorinya refugee settlement. Jacob took some time at the beginning to implant in them our theme: 2 Timothy 2:2 and the principal of multiplication through knowledge sharing and discipleship. Then, Emma took them around the demo farm, teaching and showing as they went. The significance was not lost on us that these young people will be the architects of their newly-formed country when peace has been secured and the re-building can start in earnest.
Two other very significant events have happened in the past month. Two of our RAU-Uganda board members achieved noteworthy milestones. They have both been a tremendous blessing to the ministry of RAU and we thank God for them and bless them both in Jesus’ Name!
Pastor Patrick Bukenya finished his Westminster seminary coursework and was officially ordained in the Presbyterian Church of Uganda. We were blessed to attend the very unique church service in which previous pastors, including the very first one, were present. It was a celebrated point of interest in the church service that a leader within a church could pass the baton on to the “Timothy’s” and “Tituses” of the next generation of leaders willingly through the process of mentorship and training.
We are also happy and proud to announce the graduation of Nurse Nyombi Samuel, RN with his BSN. It was a long and strenuous run for him. This accomplishment has great implications for him and the medical field is blessed to have a skilled, compassionate and upstanding young man among its ranks. Unfortunately, we were unable to attend the graduation ceremony. It would have been an honor to celebrate with him. We are confident that the Lord has something special in store for him.
As I read and re-read what I have written, I am struck by how much has happened—and yet—how much more needs to be done. In Jacob’s and my prayers this morning were mentioned all the different areas where grace-endowed efforts need to continue or to be started. There was that sense of so much to do and so little time and of being stretched thin. We have received emails requesting trainings to empower youth and other believers in Yumbe to effectively, lovingly and sensitively engage with their Muslim neighbors in sharing the message that is central to our life and hope as Christians. There are still villages in the mountains where no church exists. More and more young men from Uganda, South Sudan, and North Sudan are desirous of biblical training. Their hearts are to plant churches in their unreached tribes and villages. The needs and opportunities to bring about growth (spiritual, socio-economic, personal) seem insurmountable! However, our trust is in the Lord of the Harvest. He commands us to pray to Him to THRUST out laborers. And that is what we are doing. We pray that many more of you will be among those whom the Lord thrusts into the ripe harvest fields all over the world.
“For this is what the Lord has commanded us:
“I have made you
a light for the Gentiles
to bring salvation
to the end of the earth.”
When the Gentiles heard this, they rejoiced and honored the word of the Lord, and all who had been appointed to eternal life believed.” (Acts 13:47-48)…”…I (Jesus) am sending you (Paul/true for all Christ’s disciples) to them (the lost) to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a share among those who are sanctified by faith in me(Jesus).” (Acts 26:17-18)
Let us NEVER FORGET that a solid third of the world still sits in darkness, with little or no access to even hear the gospel message (there are roughly 2.9 billion unreached people groups –>”nations”,scattered across about 7,000 people groups). Pray for the light of gospel to reach these who are in darkness and for those who are seeking to shine Jesus, the light, out to them.
In the midst of our prayer let us actively be involved in reaching our neighbors who are without Christ’s forgiveness!
The Hall of Tyrannus (at night)
We also believe in the principal of multiplication that is mandated and demonstrated in scripture. Our belief and hope is that what we are teaching to faithful people here is being taught to other faithful people who will teach others ==> 2 Timothy 2:2. That’s the way the Kingdom of Christ has expanded in the past. That’s how capacity building has made its impact on cultures and communities. That’s how it will continue to happen. Our goal is not to create dependency on us or what we have to offer but to equip and inspire the ones we came to serve to develop their own God-given capacity to know and grow and then to spread what they know so that change is real and measurable and contagious!
As we pray, prepare (by work and rest) and press on, we also urge and exhort you who read this (as we constantly exhort ourselves and feel the pinch of conscience) to set Christ-glorifying, Gospel priorities. Jacob posted this on the RAU Facebook page by D.A. Carson: “Put the advance of the gospel at the center of your aspirations.” In order to “be ready” we have to believe that there is something worthy and requires our “getting ready”. The emphasis of this newsletter is “being prepared for what lies ahead” and not missing out on opportunities because of a lack of preparation. We will miss out on better things if, as C.S. Lewis says, we behave “like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.” Our focus needs shifting and clarity so we will not be taken off guard when we are called to account in one way or another. I recently heard a song by Jonathan McReynolds entitled, “Make Room”. It starts out with these words: “I find space for what I treasure; I make time for what I want. I choose my priorities and, Jesus, You’re my Number One.” We pray that Jesus and His plans will be your Number One–and ours!! Always be preparing so that, when opportunity arises, you will be prepared!
Continue to pray for the upcoming retreat of back-to-back modules. Pray for safety and strength and endurance and health. Pray the fruit that lasts would be produced in our lives and in the lives of those we love and serve.
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Effect of probiotics (Lactobacillus plantarum 299 plus Bifidobacterium Cure21) in patients with poor ileal pouch function: a randomised controlled trial
J Bengtsson, I Adlerberth, A Östblom, P Saksena, T Öresland, L Börjesson
Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology 2016, 51 (9): 1087-92
OBJECTIVE: Poor pouch function after restorative proctocolectomy for ulcerative colitis is a considerable problem. Pouchitis and functional disorders are the most common reasons. Probiotics seem to have a beneficial effect in pouchitis but have not been assessed in functional pouch disorders. The aim was to analyse the effects of probiotics in patients with poor pouch function.
METHODS: Thirty-three patients were randomized to probiotics (Lactobacillus plantarum 299 and Bifidobacterium infantis Cure 21) or placebo in a double blinded, 1:1 fashion. The treatment effect was assessed by the pouch functional score (PFS; 0-15, 15 worst), pouchitis disease activity index (PDAI; 0-18, 18 worst), and levels of four faecal biomarkers of inflammation (calprotectin, lactoferrin, myeloperoxidase [MPO] and eosinophilic cationic protein [ECP]).
RESULTS: Thirty-two patients were included (probiotics = 17, placebo = 16). There was no difference in change in the PFS from before to after treatment between the groups (median difference: -1.00, 95% C.I. -3.00 to 0.00, p = 0.119). Furthermore, probiotics had no effect on PDAI (median difference: 0.00, 95% C.I. 0.00-1.00, p = 0.786), or on faecal biomarkers. Significant correlations were observed between PDAI and each of the faecal biomarkers at study start. There were no correlations between PFS or PDAI symptom subscore and the biomarkers. PDAI endoscopic and histologic subscores correlated significantly to each of the biomarkers.
CONCLUSION: The hypothesis that probiotics improves pouch-related dysfunction was not confirmed. Faecal biomarkers could play a future role in the management of pouch patients.
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Posts Tagged ‘The Prices Are Too Damn High’
2013 – The Best and Worst of the First Half
So, I know we’re actually a couple of weeks over the first half of the year, but last night we wrapped up the WWE’s 6th Pay Per View of the year out of 12, so this seems a more fitting place to give out awards for the Best of the First Half of 2013.
Best Pay Per View Match – Undertaker vs. CM Punk @ Wrestlemania 29. When this match was first announced, I thought there was a decent chance that Punk could be the one hand-picked to end the Streak, but as the program advanced week to week with Punk getting the better of Undertaker at each and every turn and seeing none of Undertaker’s legendary mind games, it became painfully obvious that Punk was going to be just another victim because there was no chance that Undertaker would get punked week in and week out and then have the streak end all at once. I think it’s pretty clear that if the Streak ends, it’ll be the last match that Undertaker ever wrestles. It’s poetic and would follow the trend set by Ric Flair and Shawn Michaels of glorious Wrestlemania exits. That being the case, with the program set up as it was, there was no way that was the last run we’d see from Undertaker and thus he pretty much was guaranteed the win in my mind. However, that didn’t take away from the quality of their match at Wrestlemania one bit. Punk was at his best psychologically, flashing humorous expressions and hitting the high spots at just the right time to make up for Undertaker’s declining mobility. The image of Undertaker sitting up while locked in the Anaconda Vice and turning the Big Evil glare onto Punk and Punk’s reaction is one of my favorite takeaways from this year’s Wrestlemania. That and Zeb Coulter’s hilarious reaction when Swagger tapped out to Del Rio in the World Heavyweight Championship match.
Best Free-TV Match – John Cena vs. CM Punk – Raw (February 25) – Just an all around great performance, right up there with their match at Money in the Bank two years ago. It’s probably one of the top five matches of Cena’s career. It’s the only time I can remember Cena ever attempting a Frankensteiner and sure, he didn’t do it very well, but the guy went for it. That’s one of the most exciting attempts at a move done by a big guy since Big Show, as The Giant in WCW, last attempted a Moonsault or Brock Lesnar going for the Shooting Star Press at Wrestlemania 19. I used to think Edge was the only one who could bring out the very best in Cena, but Punk does it even better. The two of them have had at least two and perhaps three of the top 10 matches of the last two years (at Money in the Bank in 2011 and this match for sure, plus maybe Night of Champions last year despite the non-finish).
Best Rivalry – Daniel Bryan vs. The Shield (and anything else in his way) – Daniel Bryan has kicked things up to another notch this year during his “weakest link” storyline, putting on the most entertaining matches and some of the most entertaining segments night in and night out over the past 2 months since Team Hell No lost the WWE Tag Team Titles to The Shield at Extreme Rules. And if the rumors are true, he’s managed to parlay the great showing he’s had this year into a SummerSlam WWE Championship Main Event match against John Cena. Goat mode has been activated and there is no stopping it.
Best Performer – Daniel Bryan – (See Best Rivalry) Honorable Mention to CM Punk for easily the 3 best matches of the year so far (vs. Cena on Raw, vs. Undertaker @ Wrestlemania and vs. Jericho @ Payback)
Most Underrated – Antonio Cesaro – In a very short time he went from a dominant United States Champion to a yodeling afterthought. He was consistently posting great matches against The Miz, which I’ve come to expect as a very hard thing to do over the course of Miz’s career, so Cesaro deserves all the respect in the world for that. I don’t know why they decided to stick him with Zeb Coulter now because Cessaro is also pretty darn good on the mic and doesn’t really need a mouthpiece and for that storyline they should have used another actual American to team with Swagger, even though Cesaro does have the Very European, Uber-American thing going for him. Damien Sandow was easily my favorite to win the Money in the Bank Ladder Match last night and I’m very glad he did. His mic skills over the past year or so have surpassed even those of the CM Punk and his overhyped “pipe bombs”, of which there have been few and far between since his infamous Vegas promo. However, if Sandow wasn’t going to be the one to win, Cesaro was easily my second choice of who I would have liked to have seen win the briefcase and become a guaranteed future World Champion.
Best Pay Per View – Payback – This event was one I had pretty much written off, but it really had a lot going for it. The 3 Stages of Hell WWE Championship title match between Cena and Ryback exceeded my expectations and was actually probably the best Pay Per View WWE Championship Match of the year so far, but that’s not saying a whole lot unless you give a lot of credit to the Twice in a Lifetime Cena vs. Rock rematch at Wrestlemania, which just didn’t do a whole lot for me after already seeing it the previous year and knowing that for certain Cena was going to win and get his all important “redemption” when they should have just had him beat Rock last year and ended it there instead of continuing to drag it out for what is probably going to be a Wrestlemania Main Event trilogy. On top of that, you can debate which of Punk’s matches (vs. Cena, vs. Undertaker or this one) was the best, but undoubtedly Punk vs. Jericho on that night was one of the best 3 matches of the year at the very least. On top of that, Del Rio shockingly (to me anyway) won the World Heavyweight Championship back from Dolph Ziggler in a match that just like Bret Hart vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin at Wrestlemania 13 flip-flopped the two, simultaneously turning the heel into the face and the face into the heel by showcasing the guts of the injured heel who was already getting huge reactions from the crowd long before that point. Poor Ziggler now has 2 World Heavyweight Championship reigns, one of which went for 69 days, and he still has never successfully defended the title. However, he put on a good show despite carrying a title for 10 weeks without defending it or even being on Television for half of his brief title run. On top of all of that, Daniel Bryan continued to put on a great show in the WWE Tag Team Title match and for the first time in a long time WWE put a watchable women’s match on the Pay Per View, between Kaitlynn and AJ, even though the program leading up to it was like a very watered down version of Trish and Mickie. There wasn’t really a stinker match on the card, though Dean Ambrose vs. Kane did let me down a little bit, but that’s mostly because I don’t believe disqualifications and non-finishes have any place on a Pay Per View. If you want to put that kind of finish on Raw, go right ahead because we aren’t shelling out $50-$60 to watch it, but if you are going to charge that much for people to watch a Pay Per View, you have an obligation to deliver better than that cheap ass crap to help you promote the next Pay Per View that you’re also going to charge $50 or more for. It’s no wonder WWE has such a problem with internet piracy. I know that they have a lot of deserving workers who need Pay Per View revenue to help cover their salaries, but when you’re ripping off fans at $50 a pop every month, you deserve to be ripped off yourself. It’s called karma. Especially when I believe that you could cut Pay Per View prices down to $10-$15 and sell the show to 4-5 times as many people and make the same amount of profit. Pay Per View buy rates and profits are down purely because, in the words of Jimmy McMillan (the guy from The Rent Is Too Damn High Party), the prices are too damn high.
Worst Match – The Rock vs. CM Punk @ Royal Rumble – Those two just didn’t feel like they had any chemistry to me at all. Moves seemed disjointed and poor Bret Hart was in attendance in the back after participating in the Fan Access panels that weekend and giving Del Rio a rub on his way to the ring, and Bret had to watch The Rock absolutely butcher the Sharpshooter. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if The Great Khali could apply a better Sharpshooter than The Rock. He certainly couldn’t do any worse than The Rock. And to top it all off, they did one of those crappy interference finishes followed by restarting the match only to have the real finish occur less than 15 seconds after restarting the match. It was a nice moment in the career of The Rock and a niece piece of nostalgia for the fans, but it was a god awful stinker of a match.
Best Fan Reaction – Finally stopping the Goldberg chants – Next on the list of stupid crap to quit chanting is the What chant.
Worst Fan Reaction – Fandangoing – Just stop it. The dude has a smaller move set than John Cena, of whose “5 moves of doom” you all love to bitch about so much. Stop it now. Shame on you New York fans for starting that junk.
Most Overrated – Fandango – (See Worst Fan Reaction) Shame on Chris Jericho for being willing to job to absolutely anybody at any given time and thus giving this bozo credibility (I’ve taken to referring to Fandango as Wiener Breath most of the time due to his level of suckitude). Have some standards, please, for the love of all that is holy.
Worst Choice – Fandango going over on Jericho @ Wrestlemania – It’s usually a good thing for a veteran to put over the young talent and I applaud Jericho’s selflessness in being so cool about jobbing to anybody and everybody, but I reiterate for the love of all that is holy, please have some standards Chris.
Best Choice – Zack Ryder – For accidentally kicking Fandango in the head wrong and giving him a concussion, thus allowing Curtis Axel to replace him at Payback, thus saving the world from the disaster that is Fandango winning anything of importance, such as the Intercontinental Championship.
Worst Announcer – Still Michael Cole – Forever and always Michael Cole. You know why. Enough said.
Best Announcer – JBL – He might not have actually been a wrestling God, but he is definitely a commentary God. Bobby Heenan is still my all time favorite commentator, but JBL is easily the runner-up.
Posted in AJ Lee, Antonio Cessaro, Big Show, Bobby "The Brain" Heenan, Bret Hart, Brock Lesnar, Chris Jericho, CM Punk, Curtis Axel, Damien Sandow, Daniel Bryan, Dean Ambrose, Diva's Championship, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Dwayne Johnson, Edge, Extreme Rules, Fandango, Jack Swagger, John Cena, Kaitlynn, Kane, Mickie James, Money in the Bank, Ric Flair, Royal Rumble, Sharpshooter, Shawn Michaels, Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Miz, The Rock, The Shield, Trish Stratus, Undertaker, World Heavyweight Championship, Wrestlemania, Wrestlemania 29, Wrestlemania XIII, Wrestlemania XIX, Wrestlemania XXIX, WWE, WWE Championship, WWE Tag Team Championship, Zack Ryder, Zeb Coulter
Tagged with 5 Moves of Doom, AJ, AJ Lee, Alberto Del Rio, Antonio Cesaro, Big Show, Bobby "The Brain" Heenan, Bobby Heenan, Bret "Hitman" Hart, Bret "The Hitman" Hart, Bret Hart, Brock Lesnar, Chris Jericho, CM Punk, Curtis Axel, Damien Sandow, Daniel Bryan, Dean Ambrose, Diva's Championship, Dolph Ziggler, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Dwayne Johnson, Elimination Chamber, Extreme Rules, Fandangoing, HBK, HItman, internet piracy, Jack Swagger, Jimmy McMillan, Joe Hennig, John Cena, Kaitlynn, Kane, Mickie James, Money in the Bank, Mr. Perfect, Nature Boy, Payback, piracy, Ric Flair, Roman Reigns, Royal Rumble, Ryback, Seth Rollins, Shawn Michaels, Steve Austin, Stone Cold, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Tag Team, The Brain, The Prices Are Too Damn High, The Rent is Too Damn High, The Rent Is Too Damn High Party, The Rock, The Shield, Too Damn High, Trish Stratus, Undertaker, World Heavyweight Championship, World's Toughest Vegan, Wrestelmania XIII, Wrestlemania, Wrestlemania 13, Wrestlemania 19, Wrestlemania 29, Wrestlemania XIII, Wrestlemania XIX, Wrestlemania XXIX, WWE, WWE Championship, WWE Tag Team Championship, Zack Ryder, Zeb Coulter
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Wavelength-time coding for multispectral 3D imaging using single-photon LiDAR
Ximing Ren, Yoann Altmann, Rachael Tobin, Aongus McCarthy, Stephen McLaughlin, Gerald Stuart Buller
Single-photon multispectral light detection and ranging (LiDAR) approaches have emerged as a route to color reconstruction and enhanced target identification in photon-starved imaging scenarios. In this paper, we present a three-dimensional imaging system based on a time-of-flight approach which is capable of simultaneous multispectral measurements using only one single-photon detector. Unlike other techniques, this approach does not require a wavelength router in the receiver channel. By observing multiple wavelengths at each spatial location, or per pixel (four discrete visible wavelengths are used in this work), we can obtain a single waveform with wavelength-to-time mapped peaks. The time-mapped peaks are created by the known chromatic group delay dispersion in the laser source’s optical fiber, resulting in
temporal separations between these peaks being in the region of 200 to 1000 ps, in this case. A multispectral single waveform algorithm was proposed to fit these multiple peaked LiDAR waveforms, and then reconstruct the color (spectral response) and depth profiles for the entire image. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first dedicated computational method operating in the photon-starved regime capable of discriminating multiple peaks associated with different wavelengths in a single pixel waveform and reconstructing spectral responses and depth.
https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.26.030146
Published - 12 Nov 2018
photons
spectral sensitivity
Ren, X., Altmann, Y., Tobin, R., McCarthy, A., McLaughlin, S., & Buller, G. S. (2018). Wavelength-time coding for multispectral 3D imaging using single-photon LiDAR. Optics Express, 26(23), 30146-30161. https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.26.030146
Ren, Ximing ; Altmann, Yoann ; Tobin, Rachael ; McCarthy, Aongus ; McLaughlin, Stephen ; Buller, Gerald Stuart. / Wavelength-time coding for multispectral 3D imaging using single-photon LiDAR. In: Optics Express. 2018 ; Vol. 26, No. 23. pp. 30146-30161.
@article{256b4943c2024d069f1d5f3bacb44ec7,
title = "Wavelength-time coding for multispectral 3D imaging using single-photon LiDAR",
abstract = "Single-photon multispectral light detection and ranging (LiDAR) approaches have emerged as a route to color reconstruction and enhanced target identification in photon-starved imaging scenarios. In this paper, we present a three-dimensional imaging system based on a time-of-flight approach which is capable of simultaneous multispectral measurements using only one single-photon detector. Unlike other techniques, this approach does not require a wavelength router in the receiver channel. By observing multiple wavelengths at each spatial location, or per pixel (four discrete visible wavelengths are used in this work), we can obtain a single waveform with wavelength-to-time mapped peaks. The time-mapped peaks are created by the known chromatic group delay dispersion in the laser source’s optical fiber, resulting intemporal separations between these peaks being in the region of 200 to 1000 ps, in this case. A multispectral single waveform algorithm was proposed to fit these multiple peaked LiDAR waveforms, and then reconstruct the color (spectral response) and depth profiles for the entire image. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first dedicated computational method operating in the photon-starved regime capable of discriminating multiple peaks associated with different wavelengths in a single pixel waveform and reconstructing spectral responses and depth.",
author = "Ximing Ren and Yoann Altmann and Rachael Tobin and Aongus McCarthy and Stephen McLaughlin and Buller, {Gerald Stuart}",
doi = "10.1364/OE.26.030146",
journal = "Optics Express",
publisher = "Optical Society of America",
Ren, X, Altmann, Y, Tobin, R, McCarthy, A, McLaughlin, S & Buller, GS 2018, 'Wavelength-time coding for multispectral 3D imaging using single-photon LiDAR', Optics Express, vol. 26, no. 23, pp. 30146-30161. https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.26.030146
Wavelength-time coding for multispectral 3D imaging using single-photon LiDAR. / Ren, Ximing; Altmann, Yoann; Tobin, Rachael; McCarthy, Aongus; McLaughlin, Stephen; Buller, Gerald Stuart.
In: Optics Express, Vol. 26, No. 23, 12.11.2018, p. 30146-30161.
T1 - Wavelength-time coding for multispectral 3D imaging using single-photon LiDAR
AU - Ren, Ximing
AU - Altmann, Yoann
AU - Tobin, Rachael
AU - McCarthy, Aongus
AU - McLaughlin, Stephen
AU - Buller, Gerald Stuart
N2 - Single-photon multispectral light detection and ranging (LiDAR) approaches have emerged as a route to color reconstruction and enhanced target identification in photon-starved imaging scenarios. In this paper, we present a three-dimensional imaging system based on a time-of-flight approach which is capable of simultaneous multispectral measurements using only one single-photon detector. Unlike other techniques, this approach does not require a wavelength router in the receiver channel. By observing multiple wavelengths at each spatial location, or per pixel (four discrete visible wavelengths are used in this work), we can obtain a single waveform with wavelength-to-time mapped peaks. The time-mapped peaks are created by the known chromatic group delay dispersion in the laser source’s optical fiber, resulting intemporal separations between these peaks being in the region of 200 to 1000 ps, in this case. A multispectral single waveform algorithm was proposed to fit these multiple peaked LiDAR waveforms, and then reconstruct the color (spectral response) and depth profiles for the entire image. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first dedicated computational method operating in the photon-starved regime capable of discriminating multiple peaks associated with different wavelengths in a single pixel waveform and reconstructing spectral responses and depth.
AB - Single-photon multispectral light detection and ranging (LiDAR) approaches have emerged as a route to color reconstruction and enhanced target identification in photon-starved imaging scenarios. In this paper, we present a three-dimensional imaging system based on a time-of-flight approach which is capable of simultaneous multispectral measurements using only one single-photon detector. Unlike other techniques, this approach does not require a wavelength router in the receiver channel. By observing multiple wavelengths at each spatial location, or per pixel (four discrete visible wavelengths are used in this work), we can obtain a single waveform with wavelength-to-time mapped peaks. The time-mapped peaks are created by the known chromatic group delay dispersion in the laser source’s optical fiber, resulting intemporal separations between these peaks being in the region of 200 to 1000 ps, in this case. A multispectral single waveform algorithm was proposed to fit these multiple peaked LiDAR waveforms, and then reconstruct the color (spectral response) and depth profiles for the entire image. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first dedicated computational method operating in the photon-starved regime capable of discriminating multiple peaks associated with different wavelengths in a single pixel waveform and reconstructing spectral responses and depth.
U2 - 10.1364/OE.26.030146
DO - 10.1364/OE.26.030146
JO - Optics Express
JF - Optics Express
Ren X, Altmann Y, Tobin R, McCarthy A, McLaughlin S, Buller GS. Wavelength-time coding for multispectral 3D imaging using single-photon LiDAR. Optics Express. 2018 Nov 12;26(23):30146-30161. https://doi.org/10.1364/OE.26.030146
10.1364/OE.26.030146Licence: CC BY
Published by The Optical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.
Final published version, 5.2 MBLicence: CC BY
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Yes to Europe! The 1975 Referendum and Seventies Britain / Robert Saunders
Until recently, Britain’s first referendum on its membership of the European Community (EC), the forerunner of today’s European Union (EU), had not exactly featured prominently in the nation’s collective memory: few people seem to have known that such a vote had ever taken place at all.
Austrian Reconstruction and the Collapse of Global Finance, 1921-1931 / Matthew C. Kolasa
The biggest surprise in Austrian Reconstruction and the Collapse of Global Finance, 1921-1931 is how timely it is. Many of the same debates about global finance and its influence on the people of Austria, Swiss historian Nathan Marcus of the National Research University’s Higher School of Economics in St. Petersburg writes, were remarkably similar to those of post-2008 Europe.
Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area / Peter Cole
In Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and San Francisco Bay Area, historian Peter Cole compares the union histories of two port cities, the militant struggles of dockworkers against racial discrimination, their response to technology (in the form of containerisation),
A History of Borno: Trans-Saharan African Empire to Failing Nigerian State / Vincent Hiribarren
The title of A History of Borno, Trans-Saharan African Empire to Failing Nigerian State has two ambiguities. Situated in the Sahel, Borno did not span the Sahara. It was Trans-Saharan by being linked culturally and economically to the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, rather than to the Atlantic. Whether the failing state is Nigeria or Borno is also unclear.
Remaking Policy: Scale, Pace, and Political Strategy in Health Care Reform / Carolyn Hughes Tuohy
These days, expenditure on health amounts on average to some 9 per cent of gross domestic product in the prosperous nations of the West. Whether through direct taxation, social security, social health insurance or private means, it’s a substantial amount.
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Comptoller offers BQE alternative, asks city to create truck thruway and parkland
by REW March 22, 2019 March 27, 2019 0237
New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer has released an alternative approach for the rehabilitation of the triple-cantilevered section of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE).
Officials have said that if action is not taken to repair the crumbling highway, trucks will have to be re-routed by 2026 and a full closure will be necessary by 2036.
To date, the City has outlined two possible options to repair the highway, both preserving the mid-century, Robert Moses status-quo of dividing, dissecting, and destroying neighborhoods with noisy and polluting highways.
Comptroller Stringer’s proposal, which he has formally submitted to the Department of Transportation (DOT) for consideration, would convert the triple cantilever and the Cobble Hill trench into a scaled down, truck-only thruway and redesign the remaining roadway into a two-mile linear park with space for ball-fields, dog runs, bike paths, playgrounds, and other amenities.
The reimagined public space would run from the newly pedestrianized middle level of the cantilever to a deck over the Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens trench to an upgraded pedestrian bridge and new park in Red Hook.
It would connect each of these communities to Brooklyn Bridge Park, the Promenade, DUMBO, and Brooklyn Heights — reintegrating neighborhoods that have long been divided by the BQE.
“Repairing the BQE is an opportunity to reimagine a vital section of our city,” said Comptroller Stringer. “But to really do that, we need to broaden our vision and consider all the options.
“We cannot simply preserve the Robert Moses status-quo that nearly destroyed our communities and bankrupted our city. That’s why my office is proposing a balanced way forward that will allow the City to fix the dilapidated highway, limit disruptions to the community, save valuable dollars, and start to build a better, greener, and more vibrant future for our city.”
In a letter sent to New York City Department of Transportation Commissioner Polly Trottenberg, Stringer detailed the urgent need for a different approach to reconstruction and formally requested that the agency consider his proposed option for a new, two-mile linear park and undertake a detailed traffic analysis of the proposal.
Cities incuding San Francisco, Paris and Seoul have removed aging highways in recent years and replaced them with linear, pedestrian-friendly promenades that include both park amenities and enhanced public transit options such as express buses and bike paths.
brooklyn-queens expresswaycomptroller scott stringerdepartment of transportationShare0
Con Ed facing rap for gas safety lapse
Developers unveils $340M bedroom community
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Making sense of the 2016 Census
ARTICLE | January 18, 2019
Jean-Charles Plante, Kateryna Shpir
This article was originally published by The Lawyer’s Daily, published by LexisNexis Canada Inc.
The litigation and insurance communities frequently rely on census data in the determination of income losses. In 2017 and 2018, Statistics Canada released the 2016 census, the seventh quinquennial census. The 2016 census is the most recent collection of social, geographic and economic characteristics of the Canadian populace and households since the preceding Census in 2011. In this article, we highlight common issues in determining income losses and introduce you to the 2016 census, its key characteristics and how it can be of assistance in determining the quantum of damages.
Income losses in personal injury claims are based on the difference between projections of the plaintiff’s earnings, absent and after a tortious act. The expert witness’ role in determining income losses, thus, depends on estimating applicable earning capacities before and after an accident. For a mature adult, the most accurate predictor of an individual’s earnings trajectory, absent an incident, is their historical income and earnings trajectory.
In many cases, however, client-specific information is unavailable. For instance, it is common for individuals working in the restaurant and food service industry to not document or report cash tip income for tax purposes. In other cases, where historical earnings are available, such historical earnings data may be unreliable, as in the case of a self-employed individual who took advantage of significant write-offs for tax planning purposes. Census data is also very helpful in the case of minors and young adults who have not yet established their careers and can be used as a statistical benchmark to compare with an individual’s historical earnings.
Sent to Canadian residents on May 10, 2016, the response rate for the 2016 census was the highest in national census history at 98.4 per cent. For comparison, the preceding 2011 census had a response rate of only 68.6 per cent. The high response rate for the 2016 census is not only impressive but also important in reinforcing confidence in the statistics. A high response rate indicates more accurate survey results and ensures that the statistics are representative of the target population.
The difference between the response rates of the two surveys can be explained, in part, by the structure of the surveys themselves. For the 2016 census, Statistics Canada reinstated the mandatory long-form survey, previously discontinued in 2010 in favour of a voluntary survey for the 2011 census. Thus, the 2016 census questionnaire was comprised of two mandatory components - a short and a long-form version. The short-form survey included 10 questions regarding basic household composition, whereas the long-form survey, sent to randomly selected households representing 25 per cent of the Canadian population, included 53 supplementary questions on social, demographic and economic subjects, such as education, income and labour market activities. Due to its breadth, the mandatory long-form census offered more robust, detailed data on the Canadian population.
In light of the new census data, calculations of income capacity relying on the previous survey may need to be revisited. However, differences between the survey structures and variances in response rates contribute to the complexity of this task. For these reasons, the 2011 and 2016 censuses are not directly comparable, and updating of income statistics from one to the other should be attempted with caution and on a case-by-case basis.
Statistics Canada offers a variety of data tables that summarize the results of the 2016 census. The publicly accessible data tables are available online for different topics of which the labour category, comprised of wages, salaries and other earnings, is most relevant for statistical benchmarking earnings. When relying on population statistics in determining income losses, it is appropriate to apply data most representative of the individual’s characteristics. The publicly available data tables, although useful for a general overview, are not detailed and are therefore only offering statistics with limited alternative parameters.
Custom data tables are available from Statistics Canada, allowing for tailored refinements of the 2016 census. For example, income statistics can be segmented by gender, geography, education, age, occupation, activity level and other parameters. In addition to the 2016 census, other customized tools are available from private research firms, which can also be used in projecting income and may be considered depending on the case facts.
The 2016 census considers different types of income and the data can be used for claims in personal injury, business valuation, expropriation, commercial disputes and other litigation. In personal injury claims, income losses are defined by a reduction in earned income. That is, passive income, derived from endeavours in which the individual is not actively involved and not impacted by the tortious act, is generally excluded. Furthermore, in Ontario, in the case of motor vehicle accidents, the Statutory Accident Benefits Schedule under the Insurance Act requires the calculation of pre-trial income losses at 70 per cent of gross income. Thus, only two definitions of income are of interest in determining the quantum of damages for tort purposes – wages and salaries and employment income. The former refers to active pre-tax earnings from employment and includes overtime pay, commissions, tip income and some compensatory income payments, such short-term disability benefits. The latter combines wages and salaries with self-employment income.
In summary, the 2016 census data is a valuable resource for litigation and insurance professionals, which can be used as a statistical benchmark for comparative purposes or as a basis for income projections. Given the high response rate combined with the reinstatement of the long-form survey, we can be more confident in these statistics when relying on them to calculate income losses.
Jean-Charles Plante
Kateryna Shpir
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Exhibition by Lily Kuonen
Visual Artist, Jacksonville University, Florida
Lily Kuonen received her MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design. Currently she is Associate Professor of Art and Foundations Coordinator at Jacksonville University in Florida. Her work has been included in numerous group juried and invitational exhibitions (over 50 in the last five years) both nationally and internationally including: Sarah Smith Gallery, Yale University; Phoenix Institute of Contemporary Art, AZ; Atelier Gallerie, Lacoste, France; Bargehouse, London; Bakehouse Art Center, FL; Lovey Town, WI; BOCA Museum of Art, FL; The Arlington Arts Center, VA. Kuonen recently traveled throughout the US and abroad, completing a summer long artist residency in Lacoste, France. She is an Arkansas native, where she was born in the kitchen of her parents’ house.
PLAYNTINGS: un[bound] works by Lily Kuonen
Thursday, September 28, 2017 - 9:30 a.m. to Thursday, November 2, 2017 - 4:30 p.m.
Please join us for the Opening Reception on Thursday September 28th from 5-7 p.m. with a gallery talk at 6 p.m.
PLAYNTINGS: un[bound] features hybrid combinations of painting, drawing, and dimensional constructions by Lily Kuonen. She is an Arkansas native, born in the kitchen of her parent’s house, and from her experiences has learned to stretch and repurpose materials, alter forms to connect to place, and respond to surrounding visual and temporal cues through site-responsive works. She constructs layered and at times oppositional surfaces that rely on optical interplays. These visual sources are paired conceptually with forms that explore temporality, fragility, pressure, balance, comfort, interdependence, desire, and self-reliance. The work spans the space of the gallery from the ceilings, walls, and floors, at a full range of scale from both intimate to more expansive.
Lily Kuonen received her MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design. Currently she is Associate Professor of Art and Foundations Coordinator at Jacksonville University, Florida. Her work has been included in numerous group juried and invitational exhibitions (over 50 in the last five years) both nationally and internationally including: Sarah Smith Gallery, Yale University; Phoenix Institute of Contemporary Art, AZ; Atelier Gallerie, Lacoste, France; Bargehouse, London; Bakehouse Art Center, FL; Lovey Town, WI; BOCA Museum of Art, FL; The Arlington Arts Center, VA. Kuonen has recently traveled throughout the US and abroad, completing a summer long artist residency in Lacoste, France, and thus far, in 2017 she adds four more solo shows to her roster. Kuonen regularly contributes interviews and exhibition reviews for BURNAWAY Magazine in Atlanta, GA.
Kuonen writes, "PLAYNTING, a self-prescribed moniker and philosophy for my studio production, involves the synthesis of painting with additional forms, materials, surfaces, and actions (PLAY + PAINTING). I explore visual relationships and material interactions to construct layered and at times contradictory or oppositional surfaces. I respond to visual and structural cues around me, and layer these references with symbolic concepts related to interpersonal relationships, observed cultural paradoxes, and personal desires. These cross-categorical works explore intermediacy, the state of being in between, in order to challenge, subvert, or exploit beyond a base structure of meaning. Within a standard language of form and familiar material, I equalize the purposes of these materials, and a chance for hybridization occurs. It is no longer how one surface is on top of the other, but rather how each is related to the other. This playful integration enables interpretation and promotes interaction through optical interplays of media."
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Reps. McGovern & Davis Introduce “Healthy Breakfasts Help Kids Learn Act”
Contact: Diane Pratt-Heavner
media@schoolnutrition.org
WASHINGTON, DC – Congressmen Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Rodney Davis (R-IL) have introduced H.R. 3738, the Healthy Breakfasts Help Kids Learn Act of 2017, to provide commodity support for the School Breakfast Program (SBP). The bill, endorsed by the non-profit School Nutrition Association (SNA), will allow more students to benefit from a nutritious school breakfast and enjoy a wider variety of American grown foods.
The USDA Foods program supplies schools with 100% American grown foods to serve within school meals. Currently, this commodity allotment is based only on the number of school lunches served. The Healthy Breakfasts Help Kids Learn Act will provide schools an additional 6 cents in commodity support for every school breakfast served. Providing USDA Foods for school breakfast will reduce schools’ food expenditures, helping school nutrition professionals manage rising costs and invest limited foodservice dollars into expanding breakfast programs and improving menus for students.
“When it comes to helping kids learn, healthy meals are just as important as textbooks,” said Congressman Jim McGovern (D-MA.) “Oftentimes, teachers lose an entire day because hungry or malnourished students can’t focus in the classroom. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and the Healthy Breakfasts Help Kids Learn Act will increase access to healthy breakfasts at school for kids across America.”
“The School Breakfast Program is critical to ensuring kids are not starting their day off hungry and instead, can focus on learning,” said Rep. Davis. “I’m proud to introduce this bipartisan bill with Rep. McGovern that will help make this program stronger and provide more healthy meals to students in need.”
With nearly 13 million children living in food-insecure households in the US, school breakfast is critical to ensuring students have the nutrition they need to achieve academic success. Research shows students who eat school breakfast perform better on standardized tests and have improved classroom behavior and attendance.
“Every student should have the opportunity to fuel their day with a nutritious school breakfast. With USDA Foods support, school nutrition professionals can expand innovative breakfast in the classroom or grab and go programs, proven to increase breakfast consumption,” said SNA President Lynn Harvey, Ed.D., RDN, LDN, FAND, SNS. “The Healthy Breakfasts Help Kids Learn Act will support student achievement, strengthen school meal programs and expand markets for America’s farmers.”
Through the USDA Foods program, schools receive high-quality domestic agricultural products including fruits and vegetables, lean protein and low-fat dairy foods, whole grains and oils. USDA Foods currently account for approximately 15-20 percent of the foods served as part of school lunch.
About School Nutrition Association:
The School Nutrition Association (SNA) is a national, non-profit professional organization representing 57,000 school nutrition professionals across the country. Founded in 1946, SNA and its members are dedicated to making healthy school meals and nutrition education available to all students. For more information on school meals, visit www.SchoolNutrition.org/SchoolMeals.
Learn About School Meals
Tray Talk on Facebook
SNA on Twitter
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Superdad (1973)
Posted on December 9, 2016 | Leave a comment
4-Word Review: This movie is awful.
Charlie McCready (Bob Crane) is worried that his daughter Wendy (Kathleen Cody) is hanging out with the ‘wrong crowd’ and dating a guy (Kurt Russell) that has no ambition. He tries spending more time with her and her friends in order to get her to appreciate his more conservative viewpoints, but finds that this doesn’t work. He then concocts a scheme to have her go to a different college than her boyfriend by pulling some strings and having someone on the board come up with a phony scholarship, but when she finds out about this she runs away in a rage and begins hanging out in a hippie commune run by a cult leader named Klutch (Joby Baker) who intends to force Wendy to marry him while Charlie tries his best to stop it.
This was Disney’s attempt at tackling the generation gap phenomenon, but the results are shallow with characters and issues that are too one-dimensional and generic to be considered relevant. There isn’t even any of that patented Disney slapstick, which could’ve at least allowed some diversion from the otherwise tedium. To top it off the music is excruciatingly sappy including an opening tune sung by Bobby Goldsboro, which could be enough to make most people want to turn it off before the film has even barely begun.
In hindsight having Crane cast as a character who preaches old-school values when in reality he was living such an excessively hedonistic lifestyle is the height of all irony. The way his character is so preoccupied with his daughter to the point that he even dreams about her is borderline creepy and makes it seem like he has some sort of latent incestuous obsession with her.
The worst thing though is his acting specifically with the way he would scream out whenever his character is in some sort of danger like when he goes water skiing. Larry Hagman always had the best yell especially as Tony Nelson in the TV-Show ‘I Dream of Jeannie’ as his shrieks sounded masculine while Crane’s sound more like a high pitched scream from a female and are disconcerting instead of funny.
The Wendy character is another weak point. First she has parents who have brown eyes and in Crane’s case jet black hair as well, so if the dark gene is always the dominant one then how where they able to produce a blonde, blue-eyed offspring? Her character is also too transparent and too subservient to adult authority and not like an actual teen at all. There is one brief moment where she rebels by becoming a hippie chick, which could’ve at least added an interesting dimension to the otherwise sterile role, but unfortunately the film drops this thread just as soon as it gets introduced.
The depiction of the cult-like hippie group that is run by a controlling leader who happens to also be a painter, which ironically gets played by actor Joby Baker who later quit his acting career to become a full-time painter, is like with everything else in this movie quite generic. Clearly it was based on the Manson cult, but I got the feeling that the filmmakers were trying to send a broader message by inferring a judgmental view that all hippies ended up this way, which just proves how out of touch they were with the younger generation as they clearly didn’t understand or appreciate their lifestyle at all, which ultimately proved they were unfit to make a movie dealing with the generation gap subject in the first place.
Director: Vincent McEveety
Studio: Walt Disney Productions
Available: DVD, Amazon Video, YouTube
Posted in 70's Movies, College Life, Comedy, Movies for the Whole Family
Tagged Bob Crane, Entertainment, Joby Baker, Kathleen Cody, Larry Hagman, Movies, Review
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Planning Department Unveils Final Castro Streetscape Design
Image: Planning Department
The final plan for wider sidewalks and other pedestrian improvements on Castro Street between Market and 19th Streets was presented at an open house by the Planning Department this week. Overall, the pedestrian environment on Castro will be vastly improved after the skinny sidewalks are widened to as much as 22 feet, and the narrowed traffic lanes should also calm motor traffic.
The new plan for the northeast corner of Market, Castro and 17th. Image: Planning Department via BAR
Few changes were made to the draft plan presented last month. Despite the concerns raised by Peter Straus, an SF Transit Riders Union member and and retired Muni service planner, all car parking (except one space) was preserved by shortening the length of the spaces. That means Muni could see more delays caused by drivers maneuvering in and out of parking spots in front of buses.
Planners also revealed that among the four options for how to spend one portion of the project’s budget, the most heavily favored among survey respondents was a package of permanent improvements to Jane Warner Plaza on 17th and Castro (which haven’t been designed yet). The three other options, which won’t be built since they were less favored, included additional bulb-outs at Castro’s intersections with Market, 18th and 19th.
Some of the more cosmetic neighborhood features, like rainbow crosswalks, sparkle sidewalk surfacing, and historical facts about the Castro embedded in the sidewalks may also be off the table. City staffers say the installation of those features depends on whether or not the contractors’ bids for those improvements are low enough for the project’s $4 million budget.
The Bay Area Reporter has more details on the plan.
Construction is scheduled to take place between January and October of next year.
Filed Under: Muni, Pedestrian Infrastructure, Planning Department, Traffic Calming
Plan for Ped-Friendly Castro Takes Shape: Will Parking Trump Muni Riders?
By Aaron Bialick | Apr 4, 2013
City planners presented detailed options for pedestrian upgrades on Castro Street at a community meeting last night. The improvements, set for construction next year, will include sidewalks as wide as 22 feet, new trees, and pedestrian-scaled lighting. By reclaiming space from Castro’s excessively-wide traffic lanes, the plan is expected to provide more room for people on […]
Planning Dept. Presents Draft Designs for a Ped-Friendly Castro Street
The city’s effort to make Castro Street more welcoming for pedestrians took a step forward yesterday, when the SF Planning Department presented preliminary design concepts at a packed community meeting. The plan [PDF] would improve the pedestrian realm on the commercial corridor with wider sidewalks, sidewalk seating, pedestrian-scaled lighting, small plazas, and greening, while reclaiming some […]
City Moves Forward on a More Pedestrian-Friendly Castro Street
By Aaron Bialick | Dec 20, 2012
San Francisco’s world-famous commercial strip on Castro Street, which gained a popular pedestrian plaza in 2009, is poised to become a more inviting destination as the SF Planning Department develops plans to widen the sidewalks and install other improvements from 17th Street to 19th Street. The sidewalks on Castro, currently 12 feet wide, could reach widths up […]
Some Residents Urge City to Make Bolder Safety Upgrades on Potrero
By Aaron Bialick | Jul 31, 2013
The city’s latest proposal to improve safety and transit service on Potrero Avenue is slightly different than earlier versions of the plan. While the redesign would expand pedestrian space, some residents at a public meeting yesterday pointed out that it could do much more to make the street safer for biking and walking. Staff from the Department […]
Latest Haight Street Plans Replace Most Stop Signs to Speed Up Muni
By Aaron Bialick | Jun 25, 2014
The Planning Department has an online survey about the Haight Street proposals, available until July 3. City planners recently presented their latest plans for Haight Street, which include two overlapping projects from two agencies. The Haight-Ashbury Public Realm Plan is the Planning Department’s effort to expand sidewalks and add aesthetic treatments along the Upper Haight […]
Bulb-Outs: Noe Valley’s Getting Them, Outer Balboa’s Got Them
By Aaron Bialick | Jul 3, 2014
Two business corridors are getting a boost from sidewalk bulb-outs: Balboa Street in the Outer Richmond recently had some finished, and 24th Street in Noe Valley will get them this fall. The dozen-odd sidewalk extensions on outer Balboa were completed in May as part of a larger project under construction since last year that also includes […]
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In Life and In Death...
I saw this in today's Johnson City Press:
Survey: Many in U.S. feel God can best revive dying: More than half trust divine intervention over doctors’ diagnoses, poll shows.
When it comes to saving lives, God trumps doctors for many Americans. An eye-opening survey reveals widespread belief that divine intervention can revive dying patients. And, researchers said, doctors “need to be prepared to deal with families who are waiting for a miracle.”
More than half of randomly surveyed adults — 57 percent — said God’s intervention could save a family member even if physicians declared treatment would be futile. And nearly three-quarters said patients have a right to demand such treatment. (Read More)
I am not surprised by this, but I am disturbed by it. Theological questions regarding divine intervention aside, this is a pastoral issue. Are we (ministers) doing an adequate job of enabling people to face the realities of life and death? It seems to me heartless and cruel that we should tell people to hold out for miracles from God. What happens when the miracle doesn't arrive? If it is really up to divine intervention, why would we request life-support at all?
In times of fear and threat of loss, we hold on to whatever we can. I understand that. I understand the anguish of the one who is called on to make a decision to end or not to start life-support. Feelings of guilt and uncertainty are overwhelming at these moments. We want more than anything to keep our loved one with us. When facing this difficult decision, we need all the support we can get from loving friends, family, physicians, hospital staff, and our ministers.
It would seem more humane and more divine for ministers not to talk about miracles at these times, but rather how God is present in life and in death and how God can help us face death (our own and our loved ones') with dignity and with grace. That is the miracle. We need to prepare people from our pulpits and in our teaching not with false promises, but with courage to face these moments as part of the package of living.
Death is not an enemy, nor a punishment, nor the result of our sin. It is how the Universe works. "In life and in death, we are the Lord's."
Jim Tuesday, August 19, 2008 5:18:00 PM
Last summer we had an event at our church where we invited a Hospice Director, a CPA, and a Chaplain to talk about end of life issues and how to be prepared spiritually, emotionally and financially. It was pretty well attended. At the end everyone received advance directive forms to fill out if they were ready. This will become an event that we will do probably every other year.
John Shuck Tuesday, August 19, 2008 5:32:00 PM
Thanks for that, Jim. Dealing with these things in advance is an important thing.
Joan Calvin Tuesday, August 19, 2008 6:00:00 PM
I don't think we have a good theology of death, despite our confidence in the resurrection. I've just finished Thich Nhat Hahn's Miracle of Mindfulness. He suggests meditating on a corpse, your own if possible, as a way of beginning to acknowledge your own death. My mother was terrified of dying. I was with her and could not believe the fight her frail body, even in a coma, put up against death for five days. I don't know what we do, but we need to be more accepting of death as a part of life. I'll be talking in a few days with a parishioner about her own death.
Well put, Joan! Joan Calvin! Love it, and your blog!
Meditate on a corpse. Yes. Imagine your own death. Thanks!
Paul Schmidt Wednesday, August 20, 2008 4:28:00 AM
Monday I went to a funeral of John W. Robbins a Protestant author, who died of cancer. I also talked to a Catholic friend about it who has terminal cancer. Both have assurance that they will have everlasting life.
Ro 5:12,20-21 "Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin... where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."
Paul Schmidt Thursday, August 21, 2008 5:07:00 AM
Stephanie was home from college. Her parents, Steve and Ginny were happy and content. They had friends and family visiting. But that night, Stephanie had a headache. As her mom held her and prayed, their daughter died of a sudden cerebral hemorrage.
Comfort came from a man who had murdered Steve's father. He became excited because he knew that Stephanie had eternal life. His name is Mincaye and had killed Steve's father, Nate Saint, when Nate came to their land to preach the Gospel of Christ when Steve was a boy. Mincaye later converted to Christianity, as did many in his tribe.
The story of how Steve and Mincaye became friends was made into a movie: The End of the Spear.
This is a song that was sung in our Church:
Natalie Grant - Held
Two months is too little.
They let him go.
They had no sudden healing.
To think that providence would
Take a child from his mother while she prays
Is appalling.
Who told us we'd be rescued?
What has changed and why should we be saved from nightmares?
We're asking why this happens
To us who have died to live?
It's unfair.
This is what it means to be held.
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive.
This is what it is to be loved.
And to know that the promise was
When everything fell we'd be held.
Presbyman Thursday, August 21, 2008 1:35:00 PM
Craig Barnes has written about how physical miracles, if they happen (and I think they do) are only temporary. After all, Lazarus died again and did not come back; the 5,000 became hungry again and were not fed again (in the same way at least).
Putting one's faith and expectation in miracles takes ones faith and devotion away from the God who points us to Himself. Ironically, relying upon miracles is a form of idolatry, because you focus on what God has made rather than on God Himself.
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Evolution: Bummed or Inspired?
The Obamanation of Desolation
Elisabeth of Berlin
Possible Hate Crime in Johnson City
The Luck and Shuck Show
I'm a Minister: I Can and Need to Say This
The Great Story With Connie Barlow
What Color is Your Christ?
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Reason and Our Confessional Heritage
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Jesus Seminar on the Road Press Release
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Davis Concedes and Decides Not to Pursue Election ...
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Holston Presbytery Responds to Knoxville Shooting
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SubTopic Mobile Unified Communications
UC integration arrives, wrapped up in cloud
UC integration can be on-premises, cloud-based, or a combo
Contextual communication latest UC trend
Momentum for cloud adoption maybe be slow but it's growing
Take a deeper look into CPaaS versus UCaaS debate
UC near-term future focused on collaboration, cloud
UC trends: Evolution is both imperfect and inevitable
UC integration, plus AI tech, both on the horizon
UC crystal ball sees collaboration as a norm
Get your on-premises meeting rooms primed for the future
Huddle rooms, whiteboards and collaboration spaces drive UC
Ask an expert about the role of huddle rooms in UC strategy
Need to keep your huddle rooms on a budget? Here's how
The possibilities for simple, affordable huddle rooms
Make 'huddling' reflect your team collaboration workflows
Rise up and lead, IT pro, on conference room reboot projects
UC use cases lacking when it comes to digital whiteboards
This content is part of the Essential Guide: Integrating unified communications products and other UC trends
The evolution of unified communications technologies
Over the years, unified communications tools have evolved to incorporate different modes of collaboration. Enterprises need to be receptive to this ongoing innovation.
Jon Arnold, J Arnold & Associates
Everything starts from something.
If you believe evolution is the natural state of things, you can see where unified communications technologies are going and why. Of course, you can believe UC simply arrived one day on our desks, fully formed with a perfect user experience that made us wonder how we ever got work done before.
I can't think of any technology that's done that. And, more importantly, five years from now, unified communications technologies still won't be perfect. To understand why, let's look at the UC journey up to now and what UC's evolution can tell us about what's coming.
In the beginning, there were desk phones, typewriters and telecopiers, and businesses seemed to function just fine. Everyone went home at 5 p.m., and most business matters could wait until tomorrow.
As the digital age unfolded, these devices were replaced by switched phone systems, PCs, email and fax machines. The pace of business was faster, these innovations allowed workers to communicate in modern time, and businesses continued to function just fine.
When the internet came along, the pace of business really accelerated, and businesses weren't functioning so fine. That's still the case today, and a key reason is the model for communication was no longer working. PCs have replaced desk phones as the hub of communications. And as internet protocol becomes the common fabric for all data, multimodal communication has become the norm.
The demands of business today require these modes be used in an integrated fashion, rather than the stand-alone basis that has defined the workplace for so long. On top of that, the internet has spawned other communication modes that can be used effectively at work, such as video and instant messaging. Furthermore, mobility has greatly expanded the communications landscape.
Clearly, technology has evolved greatly to bring us to current-day UC. While UC's value proposition may not be intuitive, the islands of communications that worked well in simpler times are not effective today.
Where are unified communications technologies headed?
The dynamics of adopting unified communications technologies are complex. The key issue is an unclear value proposition.
To understand the future, we must first understand the past.
First-generation unified communications technologies were developed primarily by PBX vendors -- not because they had a prescient vision for enterprise collaboration, but because they needed a successor for their phone systems. Times were changing, and this was no longer a growth business for them. As such, their UC offerings were telephony-centric, mainly to make adoption easier, but also to ensure customers didn't go to a competitor when shifting to UC.
That said, the dynamics of adopting unified communications technologies are complex. The key issue is an unclear value proposition. While the need to enable workers to use multiple communication apps has become evident, it was less clear why and how UC would be the solution.
UC is very much a vendor-driven concept. And while first-generation vendors created the market, other technologies evolved at a faster pace.
In terms of unified communications technologies, two major changes were taking place -- namely the rise of messaging and the growing preference for mobility as a mode for working. Additionally, a younger generation of workers introduced new work habits. As a result, enterprises are now faced with a growing contingent of employees who do not use desk phones and prefer messaging over voice communication.
Established UC vendors tend to change slowly. Still tied to phone systems, these vendors lagged in addressing these shifts. Other players entered the market and focused on supporting these new ways of working.
Now, we have two classes of providers with offerings that are distinct from UC. One class is team messaging, best embodied by the likes of Slack; the other is communications platform as a service, or CPaaS, best embodied by the likes of Twilio. Both are providing new and different forms of value to enterprises and represent disruptive forms of evolution for the communication needs that UC tried to address initially.
What can we learn from this?
It's important to be open-minded and ... receptive to new platforms as they come along.
The main takeaway is UC addresses a broad set of needs, both for communications and collaboration. These needs are not easily defined, and clearly there is more than one way to do these things.
Unified communications technologies keep evolving, and new applications will emerge as they respond to changing work styles. Another emerging trend to watch is artificial intelligence, and we're just starting see its effect on enterprise communications.
Decision-makers need to recognize that UC -- and the broader realm of communications and collaboration -- will continue to evolve.
Unlike the PBX, UC is not an investment that lasts 15 years, so your perspective on the value of these technologies may need to change. Choosing the right type of service is important. But it's more important to be open-minded and realize that one service probably won't be the answer, and be receptive to new platforms as they come along.
Expert guide to mobile unified communications: Implementation best practices –SearchSecurity.com
How to Integrate UC with Mobile Device Management –SearchSecurity.com
E-guide: Taking full advantage of the benefits of mobile unified communications... –SearchSecurity.com
Digital Transformation Requires an Autonomous Network –Extreme Networks
Dig Deeper on Mobile Unified Communications
6 reasons to keep your unified communications system on premises
By: Andrew Froehlich
Business desk phones see changing role in the enterprise
Unify launches UC phones that integrate with Circuit
Jon Arnold asks:
In your opinion, what's the future of unified communications tools?
How IT and HR can Partner to Deliver a Better Employee Experience –Citrix
jarnoldassociates - 14 Feb 2018 12:14 PM
sarauzel - 11 May 2018 3:38 PM
Nice Article Jon. You clearly explain the complex and evolving environment. Sara Uzel
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The state of the CPaaS market
Twilio innovates in the CPaaS market
How to evaluate CPaaS and API vendors
Vidyo focuses on video APIs
Examining CPaaS vendors, products and customers
Comparing CPaaS and UCaaS subscription costs
Predicting the future of the CPaaS market
The technology behind CPaaS
APIs connect UC and workflows
What kind of management do APIs need?
Comparing CPaaS and WebRTC for embedded communications
How to assess APIs
How API traffic affects the network
An analytical take on the CPaaS market
How to select the right CPaaS provider
How CPaaS extends UC
CPaaS bundles simplify communication integrations
The pros and cons of communications APIs
Test your CPaaS IQ
This communications API quiz will test your tech skills
CPaaS terms to know
communications platform as a service (CPaaS)
application program interface (API)
communications-enabled business processes (CEBP)
click-to-talk (CTC)
multifactor authentication (MFA)
Short Message Service (SMS)
Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS)
This content is part of the Essential Guide: Take advantage of embedded communications with CPaaS
Do communication APIs complement or challenge UC products?
Luke O'Neill, Executive Editor
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Communication APIs boast a bevy of benefits, but don't expect this newfangled technology to replace unified communications completely.
Organizations and developers can embed communication APIs into existing business applications to streamline communications and workflows. As a cloud-based technology, communication APIs follow the same value proposition as other cloud products. Namely, users ordinarily don't need to worry about infrastructure, carrier connectivity or maintenance support.
Despite their advantages, communication APIs are not going to usurp prepackaged UC products, said Mark Winther, an IDC analyst. Instead, expect APIs to complement, configure and customize existing unified communications services.
On the other hand, Winther added, companies could cap their investments in preconfigured UC systems and use APIs to create customized platforms.
As a nascent technology, some questions hound communication APIs. For instance, are these tools business-grade? Can they support specific business needs, including security, compliance and auditability?
"There are questions about communication APIs," Winther said. The core customer base for APIs has been digital-native firms that wanted to grow quickly and perhaps ignored quality and compliance issues. But in the enterprise world, major banks and government agencies, for example, will think first about these enterprise-grade issues.
In the video above, Winther discussed the relationship between communication APIs and unified communications. He also examined the drawbacks of APIs, their ease of use, cost structure and the "deficit of developers" facing the API world.
Transcript - Do communication APIs complement or challenge UC products?
Communications APIs are cloud communications. Because it's all a cloud platform, the user doesn't have to worry about infrastructure or carrier connectivity or maintenance support -- just like the cloud value proposition. UC is a finished, ready-for-end-user solution. Communications APIs are raw, primitive elements. They're going to complement. I don't think the world is gonna go all deconstruction and everybody's gonna wanna build their own, so let's get rid of our solutions and build our own from the ground up. I don't think that's gonna happen. On the other hand, I think that companies are probably gonna think about capping their investment in preconfigured solutions, so that they'll use APIs to create the customization on top of them.
There are questions, right? Business-grade is a question about APIs. Are these solutions gonna be sufficient to support what a business needs, a bank, a retailer, a government organization, healthcare firm in terms of security, privacy issues, compliance with government regulations, auditability, just the reliability of it? So, you know, there are questions about communications APIs because their core customer base are digital-native firms that have grown up quickly using APIs, and maybe didn't think about quality, compliance. They thought about how fast they can grow and support that. Now you've got Morgan Stanley or Citibank or a federal government agency, they're gonna think first about these issues of enterprise-grade. And so I think this is where communications platforms have to be able to stand up to that. And I think there's a question, can they do it?
APIs are quite easy to use, but you gotta pull it apart a little bit. I mean, an API is like 20 or 30 lines of code, that's what it is. And anybody's API, it's gonna be the same. So the thing is though, the API is just the beginning; it's the wraparound, the kind of support you get, tutorials, helper libraries, use cases -- that's what you wanna look for, because anybody could have an API, but that's step one. To make it easy to use, to make it efficient for you, you wanna have all those wraparound pieces that show you how to do it.
It's developers who use these, and by developers, I mean web developers, like the guys who're building the website or a mobile app. They can use these communications APIs because they're all in languages they're familiar with to use to build a website. So in fact it's typically not the IT department that's using them, it's gonna be a developer who maybe is working with a marketing group to build their website, or edit it, or refine it, or add new capabilities, or who's working with a line of business to build a mobile app, you know, the airline reservation mobile app. They're gonna have developers work on them. So often, communications APIs are not, it's not the IT department. And the beauty of this though is that their developers, they're simple, so their developers are building websites, and there's millions of them, they're not highly specialized software expertise. And that's why this broadens communications out to a much bigger potential.
Companies are moving more and more toward software and applications, part of this is the digital transformation trend that companies are going through. They wanna create all kinds of self-service tools for their workforce, for their customers, for partners, a lot of that is software development. The problem is there's not enough developers that the IT department can hire to support the demand for all these new software applications. So they need another resource, and that's what we call the citizen developer, somebody who is a simple web developer, these are kids often, still in high school, even, we see them developing these things. But they know these new modern software languages, and that's where your resource is to build these. So it's really important there's what we call a deficit of traditional developer resources, so you gotta develop a different way to broaden your pool of resources.
The business model is very simple, it's a metered usage model. You pay per minute of a voice call, or you pay per message of a text message. It's pay-as-you-go pricing. So it's micro-billed, no contract, no subscription, no minimum, just usage-based pricing. That's its beauty, and therefore it is cheaper than just about any other way you can build a communication solution. Now, where the change is coming in as customers scale, this comes into question. Number one, customers are gonna want a contract. "I'm a big enterprise customer. I'm running 5 million, 10 million minutes a month, give me a contract for this so I have predictability in it. I'm beyond the point where I wanna pay per use and manage my costs, but I need it predictable. So give me a clear contract with deep discounts based on my volume." So I think that's where we are now. We're gonna see more of that, we're also gonna see profiles. I want a pricing for my telehealth application, the way that it works, which means I wanna pay for every patient-physician session. I don't wanna pay by the minute, or by the stream, or by the megabyte. I wanna pay per session because that's the way insurance companies would cover the cost. So we're gonna see more of those kinds of use-case-defined pricing.
+ Show Transcript
Luke O'Neill asks:
How might your organization integrate a communications API?
Luke O'Neill - 11 Apr 2017 3:17 PM
When to consider managed SD-WAN services for your business
SD-WAN offers promising benefits, like the ability to use multiple ISP links, but managing those links can prove challenging. ...
How to monitor network traffic in 7 steps
Effective network monitoring is an ongoing process that requires constant vigilance by IT groups. This step-by-step plan can ...
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Tag Archives: Eureka
Blog, DVD, News, Theatrical release
It’s Destiny! Fritz Lang’s Der Müde Tod to get a theatrical release
February 9, 2017 PH 6 Comments
Well, this was clearly meant to be. Fritz Lang’s groundbreaking allegorical fantasy Der Müde Tod (1921) is getting a theatrical release in the UK and Ireland along with a DVD/Blu-ray edition:
Eureka Entertainment have announced the theatrical release of DER MÜDE TOD (aka Destiny), Fritz Lang’s visually ambitious, cinematic allegory starring Lil Dagover and Bernhard Goetzke, in cinemas nationwide (UK & Ireland) and Digital HD from 9 June 2017.
Talking to Françcois Truffaut many years later, Alfred Hitchcock recalled that when he saw Der Müde Tod it made a “special impression” on him. He will have seen it un 1924 under its British release name Destiny, at the Regent Street Polytechnic in London. I wonder if we will have a chance to see it in the same venue?
Continue reading It’s Destiny! Fritz Lang’s Der Müde Tod to get a theatrical release →
Blog, Festival, Screening
Silent films at Scalarama 2014: Sidewalk Stories, Caligari and more screen nationwide
August 26, 2014 PH 2 Comments
Sidewalk Stories (1989)
This is a guest post for Silent London by Duncan Carson, a film event producer who organises the Nobody Ordered Wolves screenings. You can follow Duncan on Twitter at @nowolvesplease
It would be easy enough to despair at our current cinema choices. Although film houses are more comfortable and technologically sophisticated than ever, what is actually on the screen is terrifyingly narrow. Even though almost every cinema in the land is now equipped for digital prints, opening up programmers to a cheap and vast library of films, this hasn’t broken the stranglehold of loud, ephemeral and repetitive Hollywood fare.
Standing as an antidote to this conservatism, Scalarama brings the weird, the underseen, the expanded and emboldened to the cinema and beyond. In its fourth year and now bolstered by BFI funding, Scalarama takes place across September and operates in a similar fashion to the Edinburgh festival fringe: the organisers take no cut of the profits, they only encourage a broadening of what is on offer. Originally created as a tribute to the freewheeling programming of the Scala Cinema in King’s Cross, it attempts to bolster film clubs, give cinemas the confidence to take on riskier programming and move cinema outside of its traditional homes.
Two films that are at the heart of Scalarama’s offering this year are of special interest to silent film lovers. The first will be familiar to all: Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari. The second is almost a ghost to all but a few dedicated film fans: Charles Lane’s Sidewalk Stories.
Shot in 1989, Sidewalk Stories is a modern silent feature film. And it has an impressive progeny: Michael Hazanavicius, the director of the Oscar-winning behemoth The Artist, credits this neglected classic as the direct inspiration for his indie smash. Yet if this might lead you to expect a nostalgic recreation of cinema pre-1928, guess again. Lane’s setting and attitude is more Spike Lee than FW Murnau. Made the same year as Do the Right Thing, Sidewalk Stories is cut from the same cloth as other grimy pre-Giuliani New York city films like Taxi Driver, Serpico and The French Connection.
That said, the plot itself is pure Chaplin: the star (played by Lane himself) finds himself in loco parentis of a young girl when her father is killed. As with Chaplin’s The Kid, our hero’s hapless parenting is the centre of the story here. The dynamic between the two is heartwarming, no doubt because of their connection as real-life father and daughter. Having confessed to loathing silent cinema as an art student, Lane embraces the medium to tell a universal story about homelessness and desperation. It is a story of deep compassion and this is why it is being released in the UK in partnership with Open Cinema, a charity that provides opportunities to access culture and film skills for marginalised people. Londoners have two opportunities to catch the film: Nobody Ordered Wolves (AKA yours truly) will be showing the film at popup cinema Hollywood Spring with a live score by pianist Stephen Horne. Tickets here. Later in the month, Hotel Elephant will also be showing the film. To see where else in the UK this neglected gem is getting an outing, click here.
Continue reading Silent films at Scalarama 2014: Sidewalk Stories, Caligari and more screen nationwide →
2014Charles LaneDuncan CarsonEurekaGerman Expressionismhomelessnessmodern silentsOpen CinemaScalaramaSidewalk Storiessilent filmThe Cabinet of Dr Caligari
Faust: DVD and Blu-ray review
August 17, 2014 PH 1 Comment
Faust (FW Murnau, 1926)
The news certainly caught my attention. Masters of Cinema has upgraded its DVD release of Murnau’s Faust: a German Folktale (1926) to a shiny new dual-format edition. All the beauty of Faust, but in high-definition Blu-ray glory: temptation itself. The even better news is that this is a very beautiful disc indeed.
Faust has always been a feast for the eyes, from the cutting-edge 1920s special effects to the gorgeously, painterly compositions, and the Blu-ray transfer here more than does the film justice. Compared to the DVD, this is just far, far more filmic. There are rich blacks and sumptuous detail, making the most of crowd scenes and shadowy landscapes. On a biggish screen, you’ll notice a texture of soft grain, not sharp pixels. As was familiar practice in the 1920s, Murnau shot Faust with two cameras – one each for the domestic and export versions of the film. His favourite takes remained in the German print, and that is what has been restored here (the grandly gothic German intertitles remain, so you’ll have to turn the subtitles on). This is the best Faust you can get – screening this at home is a seriously impressive movie experience.
Continue reading Faust: DVD and Blu-ray review →
Blu-RayBlu-ray discDr FaustDVDEmil JanningsEurekaExpresssionismFaustFW MurnauGerman cinemaMasters of CinemaMurnausilent film
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Do people with mental illnesses feel the effect more during the full moon?
I have heard many times before that people with mental disorders become hyperactive during the full moon. I have never believed it, but has there been any scientific study carried out to prove it one way or the other?
moon psychiatry
Related: Are more crimes committed during a full moon?, Is there any evidence to support the benefits of lunar planting? and Babies and the lunar cycle – Konrad Rudolph Jul 20 '11 at 18:51
@BlueRaja Sounds like a prime example of confirmation bias. In fact, this is also debunked in the review I cited. – Konrad Rudolph Jul 20 '11 at 19:56
@BlueRaja: Do you have a theory, why they get more rowdy/hyperactiv (user21229)? Because of the light? Don't they use electric light? Do they show the same symptoms at daylight and less so in wintertime, when it is darker in general? If not the light - do you have similar questions about our Sun, Jupiter, Venus and Mars? Why not? BlueRaja: Being sceptic doesn't make you immune against hokuspokus, astrology, religion or racism. – user unknown Jul 21 '11 at 0:42
@BlueRaja: One of the wikipedia-links talks about women, which have a 29.5 +/- 1 day cycle. Wikipedia about moon talks about 27.3 days for a moon cycle. How can we explain the 1-3 days gap, which leads to an async of a half moon phase after 5 to 15 months? Or does +/- 1 day mean, that the cycle varies per woman, once it it 27 days, the next month 29 days? Still not in sync. – user unknown Jul 21 '11 at 2:48
A significant amount of woman can only constantly experience a full moon in a specific part of their cycle, if they are in sync with the moon, or if their cycle is a whole multiple of the moon cycle, or vice versa. If some woman experience a specific phase, and have a slightly longer or shorter cycle, they will not experience this phase the next few months, until they meet again. With an offset of 2 days, it's about 14 times, with a 3-day-offset it is 9 days. Simple, pure math. – user unknown Jul 21 '11 at 19:42
Such studies actually exist. The Skepdic entry for Full moon and lunar effects gives a full list of things that have been studied, but in particular there was insufficient evidence to support that the following correlate with a full moon (that means that such a correlation doesn’t exist):
psychiatric admissions [one study found admissions were lowest during a full moon]
behavioral outbursts of psychologically challenged rural adults
All of which are different effects of mental illness. The list comes from the 1996 review by Kelly, I. W., James Rotton, and Roger Culver, The Moon was Full and Nothing Happened: A Review of Studies on the Moon and Human Behavior and Human Belief
Konrad RudolphKonrad Rudolph
Insufficient evidence to support a correlation can put limits on how large a correlation can be, but it can't rule out a small correlation. – David Thornley Jul 21 '11 at 2:03
A small correlation to what? To the moonlight? What other influence can we think of? – user unknown Jul 21 '11 at 2:52
@David If the hypothesis is “there is a statistically significant correlation” and the numbers don’t support this hypothesis, then it is rejected: no correlation is found. There is no such thing as a “large” or “small” correlation. In particular, we have here an experiment with two possible outcomes – yes and no – not a continuous or multi-value outcome so there is only one possible correlation. If you mean something else, please motivate this statistically. – Konrad Rudolph Jul 21 '11 at 8:28
@Konrad: I agree with your statement but the rejected correlations are only those studied. There may be other correlations like (imaginary example) full moon and depression or suicide attempts. If it hasn't been studied, then we can neither approve or reject it. – ypercubeᵀᴹ Nov 29 '12 at 21:50
@ypercube Of course not. But we can (and must!) use prior probabilities, even though we do not know their exact values (this is a direct application of Occam’s razor). The prior probability of such phenomena is lower than their non-existence: the default position is to be skeptical of them until evidence for them emerges. Like Russell’s teapot, we preliminarily reject any unfounded hypothesis. – Konrad Rudolph Nov 29 '12 at 21:55
Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged moon psychiatry .
Does planting during different lunar phases affect growth?
Are more crimes committed during a full moon?
Are more babies born during full moons?
Are there more mushrooms during full moon?
Is the Moon young?
Is Islam based on a moon worshiping cult?
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Are farmers' lunar almanacs effective?
Does the 'super-moon' have a measurable effect on probability and magnitude of earthquakes?
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The Smiths - double DVD collection - DVD 2: 1985-1987
Go to page : 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Next
Home » Smiths Torrents » Video
waterisnat ®
RETIRED. BETTER QUALITY VERSION HERE.
Here's the second disc of the 2 DVD compilation, covering the years 1985-1987. Overall quality is excellent, as is to be expected seeing that the DVD comes (at the very end) with the "Soundsville International" trademark (thanks a lot, Steve, for putting this together - even if I didn't get it from you personally).
Enjoy... and have a happy 2007, y'all!
Video: Interlaced MPEG-2, 704 x 576
Audio: Dolby Digital (AC 3) - 2 channels - 256 Kbps
01. Panic (promo video interspersed with live footage)
02. Ask (promo video interspersed with live footage)
03. The Boy With The Thorn In His Side - Top of the Pops 10/10/85
04. How Soon Is Now? - US promo video
05. Shoplifters of the World Unite - Top of the Pops 05/02/87
06. Sheila Take A Bow - Top of the Pops 23/04/87
all of the above from "The Complete Picture"
07. The making of Meat Is Murder - Old Grey Whistle Test 12/02/85
08. How Soon Is Now? - Top of the Pops 14/02/85
09. Morrissey interview - Pebble Mill At One 21/02/85
10. Shakespeare's Sister - Oxford Road Show 22/02/85
11. The Headmaster Ritual - Oxford Road Show 22/02/85
12. Morrissey "Back to The Old School" - Oxford Road Show 22/03/85
13. Morrissey interview & "Meat Is Murder" video & "Barbarism Begins At Home" excerpt from The Tube '84 & astrologer analyzing Morrissey - Studio One (ITV) 24/05/85 (15 minutes)
14. Morrissey interview & excerpts of "The Boy With The Thorn In His Side", "Meat Is Murder" and "Shakespeare's Sister (soundcheck)" & "Hand In Glove" (complete) live at Barrowlands, Glasgow 25/09/85 - The Tube 25/10/85
15. Bigmouth Strikes Again (live) - Whistle Test 20/05/86
16. Vicar In A Tutu (live - beginning cut) - Whistle Test 20/05/86
17. There Is A Light That Never Goes Out - EuroTube 05/07/86
18. Panic - EuroTube 05/07/86
19. Johnny Marr interview from a feature on the Red Wedge movement - Eleventh Hour 01/10/86
20. Ask ('Rank' live version with bootleg video footage)
21. Morrissey interviewing playwright Shaun Duggan & "Shoplifters of The World Unite" clip - The Tube 23/01/87
22. Shoplifters of The World Unite - Megamix (Irish TV) 13/02/87
23. Sheila Take A Bow (live) - The Tube 10/04/87
24. Shoplifters of The World Unite (live) - The Tube 10/04/87
25. Johnny Marr interview on collaborating with The The and other artists - 1987
cadm
06-Jan-2007 23:21 (after 11 minutes)
THanks a lot !!!!!!
fki
06-Jan-2007 23:27 (after 6 minutes)
And thank you, Steve.
Last edited by fki on 2007-01-06 23:31; edited 1 time in total
Location: Under The Iron Bridge
06-Jan-2007 23:29 (after 1 minute)
thanks waterisnat!
robbo123
07-Jan-2007 00:37 (after 1 hour 8 minutes)
I was going to hop on to help seed, since I got the DVD direct from Steve. It looks like this one may have been reencoded....my copy is 4.27 GB but the one here is 3.65. Strange...
syncursor
07-Jan-2007 06:39 (after 6 hours)
Thanks for the offer... I don't know what intermediary steps my copy went through. I'm simply passing on what I received. Could it be that PAL was switched to NTSC? I got the two discs from somebody in the States...
Many thanks for this second disc.
07-Jan-2007 09:45 (after 1 hour 44 minutes)
Top one, been waiting patiently for this since i downloaded the first one.
If it´s anything like the first then it was deffinately worth the wait.
Thanks for the time and effort taken in sharing this DVD,cheers.
Location: Sofa
:? :roll:
I think I did both a PAL and an NTSC version of these disks, so they may be different sizes.
I included the complete picture clips, as I wanted the DVD to have all the best versions of the clips I had.
I work from the assumtion that anyone who collects bootleg DVDs already has all the official stuff
And your point is...?
bclark93
07-Jan-2007 17:29 (after 2 hours 10 minutes)
Muchas Gracias una excelente coleccion, Thanks!!!
My point is that i don't want Smithstorrents.co.uk to be banned for hosting torrented official stuff.
We've all caught so many rarities here.
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You are here: Home › Report: SoccerCity Would Produce Millions in Annual Tax Revenue
Report: SoccerCity Would Produce Millions in Annual Tax Revenue
By Zach Spedden on May 10, 2017 in MLS
The SoccerCity development in San Diego could produce millions in local tax revenue, according to a report released by the proposal’s backers.
Conducted by the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp, the report found that when the full build out of SoccerCity is complete, it could produce an annual $8.2 million in tax revenues to city and county governments. As proposed, the development would include a new soccer-specific stadium for an MLS expansion franchise that could open by 2020, but the full build out of the mixed-use development is projected to take seven years.
This report comes as the group behind SoccerCity continues with the process that could lead to a voter referendum. Though the plan still has some hurdles to clear, it is expected to be included in a special election in November, when a simple majority of voters will weigh in on the project’s development at the Qualcomm Stadium site in Mission Valley.
With this report coming on the heels of another positive economic forecast, FS Investors is continuing to cite the benefits of SoccerCity. More from The San Diego Union-Tribune:
The total would then grow over 45 years to a combined $43.5 million due to inflation and ownership turnover.
The findings add to a previous analysis of the project’s economic impact that showed the project would generate 25,750 permanent jobs and $2.8 billion in additional goods and services.
Nick Stone, spokesman for La Jolla-based FS Investors, which is promoting the housing, office, retail and professional soccer stadium project, said the tax revenues exceeded earlier estimates.
“This is a win for taxpayers,” Stone said at a news conference outside the Mission Valley branch library.
Currently, the more than 112,000 signatures from a petition drive on the project are being vetted by the county registrar of voters. If the petition includes the minimum number of verified signatures, it can then be considered by the city council, which has the authority to place the proposal on the November 7 ballot. San Diego is one of 12 contenders for an MLS expansion spot.
RELATED STORIES: FS Investors Submits SoccerCity Petitions; SoccerCity Proposal Could be Placed on November Ballot; SoccerCity Could Have an Annual $2.8 Billion Economic Impact; SoccerCity MLS Proposal Unveiled by San Diego Investors; San Diego, Tampa Bay Make Their MLS Cases; San Diego MLS Plan Unveiled; San Diego Close to Revealing MLS Pitch; San Diego Looks to Advance MLS Stadium Push; Residents Polled on New San Diego MLS Stadium; Padres Owner Among Potential San Diego MLS Leaders; San Diego Eying MLS Team
FS Investors, MLS, MLS expansion, San Diego, SoccerCity
New Orange County NASL Team On Docket for 2018
Portland Moves Forward on Providence Park Expansion
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‘Muslim plot’ school probe slammed
A parliamentary report has criticised recent investigations into Birmingham schools.
Schools inspectorate Ofsted inspected 21 schools last year after a hoax letter claimed there was a “Muslim plot”, known as Trojan Horse, to take them over.
The report by the education committee found the investigations “raised questions about the reliability of Ofsted inspections”.
Ofsted placed in special measures several schools it previously rated as outstanding. The report said inspectors may have “lost objectivity”. It noted that one assistant principal complained that Ofsted was “not impartial”.
There were also several inquiries. The report said this was “far from helpful”.
Their recommendations “went far beyond the situation in the particular schools”. Yet it noted, “No evidence of extremism or radicalisation, apart from a single isolated incident, was found by any of the inquiries and there was no evidence of a sustained plot”.
A warning from Birmingham - Muslims speak out against racist witch hunt in schools
Birmingham protest rejects 'Trojan Horse' scapegoating
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SoulRide
Your Home for Vintage Leisure
Friends of SoulRide
January 7, 2018 August 13, 2019 Gary Wells
This is the Story: The Best Recordings of Elvis Presley Part 4
Let’s get this out of the way: you cannot dismiss all the movie songs as garbage. Really, you can’t call them garbage at all. Here’s the thing: the bulk of the songs that appear in the movies are less songs and more plot devices, used simply to advance the story or comment on the action on the screen.
Some examples are “Song of the Shrimp” from 1962’s excellent Girls! Girls! Girls!. This song’s lyrics are about a shrimp that reads an article in a shrimp newspaper and leaves his parents to see the world starting in New Orleans. Like…really? From the same film, we have “Thanks to the Rolling Sea” – “Abalone steaks and tuna fish cakes taste so heavenly” – and “We’re Coming in Loaded” – “The fishing was great. We’re coming in loaded ’cause we’re all out of bait”. All three of these songs are actually perfectly acceptable in the context of a bunch of men who work together on a shrimping boat. They probably have lots of songs they sing together as they work.
In the ‘lullabies and songs sung to children’ category, we’ve got “Big Boots” from G.I. Blues and “Cotton Candy Land” from It Happened at the World’s Fair. If the action calls for you to interact with a baby or a young child, sure, you may sing them a goofy little song to get them to go to sleep or to quiet their fears. And then – I hate to even bring it up – there’s “Dominick”, sung to a bull in Stay Away, Joe. When a bull won’t breed you sing to it. Don’t you? The problem I have is not necessarily with the songs themselves. Tunes from this ‘lower’ level, like “You’re Time Hasn’t Come Yet, Baby” from Speedway or “Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce” from Girl Happy, are great songs I actually like. The problem lies in the fact that this is ELVIS PRESLEY – the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll – and no matter how many movie tickets you want to sell or how many records you want to sell you DO NOT put “No Room to Rumba in a Sports Car” on an album and release it to the public under Elvis Presley’s name! Elvis is constantly slagged for making bad records in the ’60’s but it wasn’t his fault. “Ito Eats” from Blue Hawaii is cute because the gang is at a luau and they are heckling Ito for eating too much and being fat. Fine, OK, but don’t put it out and call it the latest release from Elvis Presley!! Within the borders of the films, these cute songs advance the plot – sometimes quite charmingly – but that’s where they should have stayed.
Whew. OK. Now that that’s out of way, let’s look at The Best Recordings of Elvis Presley: the Movie Songs.
10. “Hard Luck” (from “Frankie and Johnny”, 1966) — The movie? I dunno…Elvis as a riverboat gambler in period dress? It’s not terrible but because it is a period piece the songs are turn-of-the-last-century in flavour. However, when Johnny (Elvis) hits the skids, he wanders the streets at night singing this stellar blues number. It features stand-out harmonica playing from Charlie McCoy. McCoy is a full-on legend who has played on records by Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash and Loretta Lynn.
9. “So Close, Yet So Far (from Paradise)” (from “Harum Scarum”, 1965) — I often call this the most hidden of all the hidden gems. After all, it’s in Harum Scarum, King’s romp through the Middle East with a turban on his head. There is not much to recommend the film except this powerful song. Johnny (Elvis – Johnny again!) lands in the slammer and is separated from his lady love and puts in a great performance with this stirring number. It builds to a wonderful climax accompanied ably by the Jordanaires. “Here am I, waiting for you. Here am I, praying for you…” When the material was half-decent, he could still fill a song with emotional intensity, no matter what the setting. Written by Joy Byers who wrote many songs for the movies including “C’mon Everybody”, “Goin’ Home”, “Hey, Hey, Hey” and “Stop, Look and Listen”.
8. “Shoppin’ Around” (from “G.I. Blues”, 1960) — The first movies I ever remember seeing in my life were Enter the Dragon, Smokey and the Bandit and G.I. Blues. I’ve loved this Elvis film and the music from it for many, many years. This is one of his films in which he plays a musician so this performance takes place in front of a band in a nightclub. One of Tulsa’s (Elvis) pals wants Tulsa to be a hit with Lili (Juliet Prowse) so he volunteers Tulsa to sing this excellent rocker. Fantastic, beefy guitar from Scotty Moore and a great, fun vocal: “I’m gon’ stop…….shoppin’ around”. I always thought this was the ‘opposite song’ to the Miracles’ “Shop Around”.
7. “Roustabout” (from “Roustabout”, 1964) — I love this song, yes, but here’s the thing: the appeal of Elvis’ films and the joy that you can get from them – what makes them enjoyable – is encapsulated in this film and the title track. Try to explain King’s movie career in a sentence or two and you will likely be describing Roustabout. Elvis plays Charlie Rogers, a free-spirited and sometimes surly drifter who loves him some kicks. He has a way with a song and with the ladies. This basic synopsis of Roustabout could apply to basically all his films. The lyrics reflect this: “‘Til I find my place there’s no doubt I’ll be a roving roustabout” – I mean, that is King Movies in a nutshell. Sung over the opening credits. The soundtrack album went to #1.
6. “Let Yourself Go” (from “Speedway”, 1968) — By 1968, even the soundtracks were featuring more meaty material. Another tune by Joy Byers, this track could also be heard in the “’68 Comeback Special”. Steve (Elvis) is called upon to sing at the local club “The Hangout” – a cool place where instead of at tables you sit in cars. Here’s the thing: Elvis looks spectacular. And he’s wearing ‘the Speedway jacket’ – which I tried on at a Graceland shop but wouldn’t pay the freight. This tune is sexy: “Oh, baby, I’m gonna teach you what love’s all about tonight…kiss me nice and easy, take your time. Baby, I’m the only one a-here in line. All you gotta do is just-a…..”
5. “Young Dreams” (from “King Creole”, 1958) — Another song sung by King in a reasonable setting in a movie. EP plays Danny, a nightclub singer. King Creole is Elvis’ finest dramatic film and was directed by the great Michael Curtiz (Casablanca). Curtiz knew about composition and – along with his cinematographer – would’ve known the best settings in which to shoot King, in terms of lighting, etc. Danny sits and sings this excellent song and it is visually thrilling as well. I listened to this song recently after 30+ years of hearing it and I still shake my head. It’s wonderful. And King plays a bit of ‘shoulder’, too.
4. “Spinout” (from “Spinout”, 1966) — It’s so hard to pick which songs to share links to. Do yourself a favour and look all these up on whatever service you use. This tune contains one of my favourite King vocals and some absolutely amazing drumming. King plays Mike, a stock car racer with a way with a song. He sings this at a shindig at the pad he’s borrowing. The guitar sound to start the tune is unique and is played by a legend – it’s either Scotty Moore or Tommy Tedesco. And it’s a fantastic vocal, the highlight of which is the “prove” in “Don’t you know she’s out to prove she can really score”. When someone says to you “all the movie songs are lame”, play them “Spinout”. “A-let me tell ya, Spinout…”
3. “Almost in Love” (from “Live a Little, Love a Little”, 1968) — OK, y’wanna fight? Listen to this: Elvis’ best soundtrack is the one for the film Live a Little, Love a Little. Annnnd tell me I’m crazy. I can defend this bold statement but I won’t do it here. Suffice it to say that “Almost in Love” is one of the smoothest songs he ever recorded featuring one of his most subdued and sensual vocals. The tune is gorgeous with it’s idyllic strings and gentle trombone solo. As a big fan of bossa nova, I can appreciate the fact that this tune is based on a song from Brazilian legend Luiz Bonfa. The thing about this tune and two others from this film is that they are just the type of song that other singers of the time were singing. They would have fit perfectly on any of Dean Martin’s or Frank Sinatra’s later albums for Reprise Records. Because this is Elvis Presley, the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, they’re dismissed or even disparaged. That’s wrong. This recording is celestial.
2. “What a Wonderful Life” (from “Follow That Dream”, 1962) — We’ve arrived at the top two and I have a confession to make. Part of what makes these two songs rank so highly is my strong personal connection to them. This film was made when there was still some care going into providing quality vehicles for King. In this film, King plays Toby Kwimper and EP displays some of his finest comedic acting. This tune is played over the opening credits. Like “Roustabout”, the lyrics depict the very heart of all of Elvis’ movies: “It’s a wonderful road, this road I’m travelin’…it may go straight or it may detour…don’t know where I’m goin’, don’t care where I’m goin’, like the four winds blowin’ I go on. Laughin’ the day away, lovin’ the night away, ’til the moon is gone. It’s a wonderful life…”. You see what I’m saying? The reason I love his movies is described in these lyrics. It’s a delightful song. I love it.
1. “I Got Lucky” (from “Kid Galahad”, 1962) — Absolutely, the finest song from Elvis’ movies – out of all the songs that do not have a life outside of the movies. This was the title track of a budget Camden release LP in 1971, other than that it was, strictly speaking, a ‘movie song’, unlike, say, “Teddy Bear” or “Return to Sender”, both of which ‘lived’ outside the films they were performed in. Make sense? Kid Galahad is one of Elvis Presley’s very best films. Elvis plays boxing nice guy Walter “Kid Galahad” Gulick and he sings this at a 4th of July picnic. His voice, his voice, his voice. The sound his voice makes on this track. He’s not shouting “Jailhouse Rock” but the key he’s in here makes his voice sound so…I dunno. Just perfect. His tone. The wonderful Boots Randolph plays sax on this track and the Jordanaires also do stand-out work. “So, won’t you tell me that you love me, hurry up and name the day” – listen to him sing that line. THAT is what is so magnificent about his voice. Seriously, this song can make me emotional. Not just because I think it’s gorgeous but also because it means the world to me. I had the “I Got Lucky” album on cassette when I was a teenager. I would drive around in my 1983 Ford Escort and listen to this song and “What a Wonderful Life” and I would be transported. Couple things: this is a great clip. Elvis sings to Joan Blackman who was also in Blue Hawaii. And did you notice Charles Bronson? And this song was co-written by Dolores Fuller, who had a hand in writing other songs for the movies. Dee Fuller was a girlfriend of filmmaker Ed Wood. She is portrayed by Sarah Jessica Parker in the film Ed Wood.
Up next: we try to bring it all together! What are the Top Ten Elvis Presley Songs of All-Time?!
**the images and media used in this post are not mine**
Reprise Records
The Jordanaires
Published by Gary Wells
Welcome to Your Home for Vintage Leisure. Here you'll find a variety of topics discussed; most all relating to mid-century media. Join the conversation - I welcome your feedback. Christ follower (1 Timothy 6:17) View all posts by Gary Wells
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Troy Yeary says:
What I love about your movie tunes list is that it captures the fun, care-free aspects of most of his films. I had never made this connection, but you are spot-on with “Roustabout,” both movie and song, representing a paradigm of the formula.
Wellsy says:
Thank you, Troy.
László Jakabfi says:
In my opinion King of the Whole Wide World, Follow That Dream and Come On Everybody are probably the best movie songs performed by Elvis in his films in the sixties. They have good melodies, and are performed dynamically by Elvis. In the mid-sixties many of his movie songs were mediocre or even poor. Towards the end of his movie career, the quality of the songs improved slightly. For Instance Clean Up Your Own Backyard and Rubberneckin’ were extremely good.
Yes, those are great songs. However, “C’mon Everybody” is SO much better in the film than on record. Definitely some great songs near the end of the ’60’s. They even seem too good to be called “movie songs”. Thanks for your comment.
Is the film version of “C’mon Everybody” a different take? I know it has some overdubs (sound effects) that are not on the master version. I first became familiar with this song through the sound effects version, which I taped off a radio broadcast in 1985. I don’t have every Viva Las Vegas release, but I have never come across this version – other than in the movie. Perhaps the station was playing a bootleg.
Without looking it up, I feel like the master on the LP sounds unfinished, like there is dull silence where the version in the film has drums, for example. The film version is vibrant, the master is dead. I grew up with the “VLV” version and was so disappointed when I heard the master. For my mixed tapes, I would record the version from the movie off of my VHS tape.
Did a little research to answer my own question. The “movie version” is different. It is only available on the FTD album. I have not yet picked up Viva Las Vegas on FTD, because I keep expecting it to be replaced with a 2-CD version. Perhaps I should buy the 1-CD version now in order to hasten the multi-disc release, because that is how the universe works.
Good work looking that up! And, yeah, do us all a favour and buy that 1-CD, please!
Sorry for the multiple replies, but meant to include this link re: the movie version — http://www.keithflynn.com/recording-sessions/630710.html#07
Man, that website is invaluable – must keep bookmarked! So many of these lists of who played on the sessions list 2 drummers, for example, or 3-4 guitarists. Sometimes I want to know and identify who played drums on a specific track but you can’t always.
Yes, that is one of the key Elvis websites. Another one that I use often is http://www.elvisinnorway.no/facts.html.
Searching for Elvis in 2018 | Pastimescapes says:
[…] Top Ten Elvis Presley Movie Songs […]
I wore The Prince today from @rw_co with a pair of @levis Freezing out here. #fashion #clothes #clothing #mensfashion #mensstyle #menstyle #menswear #rwco #levis #www2c #churchclothes #beyourself #homemadestyle #metrosexual #paisley #purple
In the study tonight with a deep cut. From RCA Records in 1975, it’s Jack Jones with “What I Did For Love”. By ‘75, Jack had let his hair grow and began recording in a MOR style. Records like this fascinate me. Who was the intended audience for a record like this? Jack took control of this one, co-writing, arranging and producing. The LP starts off with “After the Lovin’”; a full two years before it was a hit for @thisisengelberthumperdinck Notable performers here include Mike Melvoin, Don Randi, Max Bennett, Al Casey and Jackie Ward. Recorded in Hollywood. #inthestudy #jackjones #70s #70smusic #vinyl #vinylcollection #vinylcommunity #vinylcollector #vinylrecords #vinyladdict #vinyligclub #singer #vocalist
I debuted a new pair of @perryellis pants today. They look a little spring/summery but you could also say they look like the ice we’re dealing with here. Pants $11 @winners Tie by Arrow via @hudsonsbay Magnetic tie clip by @tiemags Jacket by thrift store. 😉 #lifereadysince1976 #winnersfabfinds #hbstyle #fashion #clothes #clothing #mensfashion #menstyle #suit #thrift #thrifting #thriftstorefinds #www2c #homemadestyle #beyourself
Many have claimed to have been Elvis Presley's "friend" including Tom Jones. The Memphis Mafia have scoffed at Tom's claim but many different pictures of EP and TJ together in various locations makes me think they were indeed buds. Once when Tom was performing in Las Vegas, King strolled out on stage to demonstrate some karate. Another time also in the desert EP entered Tom's hotel suite while Tom was in the bathroom. Growing impatient, King eventually just walked in and rousted Tom out of the shower. "Time to roll, TJ!" These pics show TJ visiting King at his homes at Graceland and in Los Angeles - where they jammed together. Can you imagine? They would have kicked me out because I would've been weeping. They also spent time together while vacationing in Hawaii. Coupla blue-eyed soul brothers from different mothers. @realsirtomjones #lasvegas #graceland #elvispresley #tomjones #elvis #elvispresleyfans
Elvis Presley in “King Creole” (1958). His finest film was based on a novel by Harold Robbins called “A Stone for Danny Fisher” which was adapted for the screen by Michael V. Gazzo, who later portrayed Frankie Five-Angels in “The Godfather Part II”. In the novel, Danny is a boxer. “King Creole” also featured - by some margin - the finest cast ever assembled for a King Movie. Michael Curtiz (“Casablanca”) directed this movie that’s set and was filmed in New Orleans. #elvispresley #elvis #neworleans #50s #movies #thegodfather
The contradictions of King Movies are well represented by "Easy Come, Easy Go". Released at a nadir of Elvis Presley's career and personal life, a ridiculous film that EP phones in still has that intangible goofy charm we love so much. Producer Hal Wallis could be considered the man who robbed Presley of the chance to have a satisfying film career. By 1967, Wallis was fed up with the "sure thing" of Presley pictures. Read our latest contribution to Elvis Week. Link in bio. #elvispresley #elvis #elvispresleyfans #elvis_presley #elvisforever #elvisaaronpresley #elvispics #elvispresleyfan #elvispresleyfans #elvisphoto #elvispresleykingofrockandroll #elvisweek #kingmovies #hollywood #60s #halwallis #blogger #blog @visitgraceland @elvispreseleylovers @elvisradio19
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November 15, 2019 10:25AM ET
Lee Brings Back the First Women’s Denim It Ever Made
By Liz Warren
When it comes to vintage denim, heritage brands have an obvious advantage over their younger counterparts—a concept Lee is demonstrating with its latest drop.
This week, it launched Reissue, a collection of its first-edition denim ever made for women. These items aren’t just inspired by the workwear trend that’s flooding the streets and the runway—they’re the authentic designs the brand originally created for the working women, or the “lovely tough girls,” of the ’40s and ’50s.
While the vintage sizing has been updated to reflect modern sizes, the thread choices, hardware and manufacturing processes are the same as they were back then. The brand even worked with longtime partner Cone Denim Mills to recreate its proprietary lightweight Jelt denim needed for extra durability.
“These pieces represent a time when Lee took what was made for men and created jeans made specifically for the female body,” Betty Madden, Lee’s vice president of global design, said. “They were originally designed and worn by what we call the ‘lovely tough girls’: the women who were riding horses, working in factories during the war; who were making things happen and looking cool and effortless while doing so.
“Today’s Reissue,” she added, “is still for those same women—the ones who forge their own path with confidence and grace. The women who don’t believe being a tomboy or a girly girl are mutually exclusive—the lovely tough girls who are still making it happen.”
The collection includes the Lady Lee Rider, the “original boyfriend jeans” created in 1947; the Lee All Purpose Blue Jeans, a high-waisted wide leg introduced in 1950; the Lee Frontier Lady, a high-waisted, side-zip straight leg with pearl accents from 1952; the Lee Riders Jacket from 1949; and a raw denim jacket and jeans set with classic white stitching.
Like many other denim brands, Lee has been riding a nostalgic wave for a while now. Last month, the brand dropped a capsule collection in partnership with streetwear brand Alife to celebrate 20 years of Alife and 130 years of Lee.
The Reissue collection starts at $178 and is available exclusively on the Lee website and in its flagship store, as well as in select boutiques throughout Europe and the U.S.
Private Equity Firm Snaps Up Military Boot-Maker, Plans Expanded Consumer Release
Carhartt Outfits United Airlines Operations Staff With Runway-Ready Workwear
Copenhagen Trade Show CIFF Works with Lee on a New Consumer-Oriented Strategy
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Remembering the Armistice
The Victorian Parliament opened its doors for a day of events to commemorate Remembrance Day on Sunday 11 November.
To honour the Centenary of the Armistice that brought the First World War to an end, a series of musical recitals was streamed live on Facebook.
Short videos were also produced for social media about past members of the Victorian Parliament who served in overseas battlefields during World War One.
The Remembrance Day Recitals featured performances by Matthias Schack-Arnott and Harry Ward, Geoffrey Morris and the Quartz Quartet. Recordings of the performances are available on the Victorian Parliament’s Facebook page.
The Armistice Centenary videos draw on information from the Parliamentary Library’s Re-Member database and use images from the Victorian Parliament’s collection, the Australian War Memorial and family of former members.
And in another interesting link to the war years, Legislative Assembly staff, just days before the Armistice Centenary, uncovered a 1922 letter from a young man who on his 18th birthday enlisted for active service abroad during the First World War and had 252 days service before the Armistice. At 22, he was applying for the position of doorkeeper with the Assembly. We are glad to report that he was successful and worked at Parliament House until the mid-1960s.
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US20160154458A1 - Distance adaptive holographic displaying method and device based on eyeball tracking - Google Patents
Distance adaptive holographic displaying method and device based on eyeball tracking Download PDF
dimensional display
US10101807B2 (en
Meihong Liu
Wei Gao
Wanliang Xu
Shenzhen Magic Eye Technology Co Ltd
SHENZHEN ESTAR TECHNOLOGY GROUP Co Ltd
2014-11-28 Priority to CN201410712422.1 priority Critical
2014-11-28 Priority to CN201410712422 priority
2014-11-28 Priority to CN201410712422.1A priority patent/CN104618705B/en
2015-11-28 Application filed by SHENZHEN ESTAR TECHNOLOGY GROUP Co Ltd filed Critical SHENZHEN ESTAR TECHNOLOGY GROUP Co Ltd
2015-11-28 Assigned to SHENZHEN ESTAR TECHNOLOGY GROUP CO., LTD. reassignment SHENZHEN ESTAR TECHNOLOGY GROUP CO., LTD. ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS). Assignors: GAO, WEI, LIU, MEIHONG, XU, Wanliang
2017-01-18 Assigned to SHENZHEN MAGIC EYE TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD. reassignment SHENZHEN MAGIC EYE TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD. ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS). Assignors: SHENZHEN ESTAR TECHNOLOGY GROUP CO., LTD.
230000003044 adaptive Effects 0 abstract claims description title 26
230000002829 reduced Effects 0 claims description 18
230000000875 corresponding Effects 0 claims description 17
230000000007 visual effect Effects 0 abstract description 8
230000001603 reducing Effects 0 claims description 6
230000003287 optical Effects 0 claims description 5
210000001508 Eye Anatomy 0 abstract 11
241000282414 Homo sapiens Species 0 abstract 2
238000006467 substitution reaction Methods 0 description 1
239000011701 zinc Substances 0 description 1
G06F3/01—Input arrangements or combined input and output arrangements for interaction between user and computer
G06F3/011—Arrangements for interaction with the human body, e.g. for user immersion in virtual reality
G06F3/013—Eye tracking input arrangements
G03H—HOLOGRAPHIC PROCESSES OR APPARATUS
G03H1/00—Holographic processes or apparatus using light, infra-red or ultra-violet waves for obtaining holograms or for obtaining an image from them; Details peculiar thereto
G03H1/0005—Adaptation of holography to specific applications
H04N—PICTORIAL COMMUNICATION, e.g. TELEVISION
H04N13/00—Stereoscopic video systems; Multi-view video systems; Details thereof
H04N13/10—Processing, recording or transmission of stereoscopic or multi-view image signals
H04N13/106—Processing image signals
H04N13/111—Transformation of image signals corresponding to virtual viewpoints, e.g. spatial image interpolation
H04N13/117—Transformation of image signals corresponding to virtual viewpoints, e.g. spatial image interpolation the virtual viewpoint locations being selected by the viewers or determined by viewer tracking
H04N13/30—Image reproducers
H04N13/366—Image reproducers using viewer tracking
H04N13/373—Image reproducers using viewer tracking for tracking forward-backward translational head movements, i.e. longitudinal movements
H04N13/376—Image reproducers using viewer tracking for tracking left-right translational head movements, i.e. lateral movements
H04N13/383—Image reproducers using viewer tracking for tracking with gaze detection, i.e. detecting the lines of sight of the viewer's eyes
G03H2001/0088—Adaptation of holography to specific applications for video-holography, i.e. integrating hologram acquisition, transmission and display
G03H2210/00—Object characteristics
G03H2210/30—3D object
H04N13/302—Image reproducers for viewing without the aid of special glasses, i.e. using autostereoscopic displays
H04N13/31—Image reproducers for viewing without the aid of special glasses, i.e. using autostereoscopic displays using parallax barriers
A distance adaptive holographic displaying method and device based on eyeball tracking are disclosed. The method includes: detecting a human face of a user and acquiring positions of eyes of the user, wherein the positions of the eyes of the user comprise a distance between the eyes and a displaying screen; adjusting the size of an object in a holographic scene along a z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display according to the distance, and displaying the object in the displaying screen; adjusting an emergent direction of the light emitted by the displaying screen to the direction of the left eye and the right eye of the eyes so that the different individual holographic three-dimensional images of the left eye and the right eye are imaged into the left eye and the right eye respectively; and tracking the change of the positions of the eyes, and repeating the aforesaid steps to dynamically adjust viewpoints and the displayed content. The present disclosure can adapt to different groups of people at different distances and conform to the visual principle of human beings, thereby improving user experiences.
The present disclosure generally relates to the technical field of individual holographic display, and more particularly, to a distance adaptive holographic displaying method and device based on eyeball tracking.
Nowadays, owing to development and advancement of the electronic technologies and improvement of user requirements, hardware indices and technical indices are no longer the only standard for judging whether an electronic product is good or bad, and the key to win in the market for manufacturers is to pay more attention to user experiences and feelings.
Many existing electronic products, e.g., mobile phones, tablet computers, and game machines or the like, can operate correspondingly according to actions of users. For example, the electronic product can change the displaying angle of the displaying screen automatically when a user moves, switch the current interface, song or video when the user shakes the body of the electronic product, move the images on the displaying screen accordingly when the user inclines the body of the electronic product, and control the direction of a car displayed on the displaying screen in a racing game when the user swings the body of the electronic product from the left side to the right side.
In the prior art, the aforesaid functions are usually achieved on the basis of the gravity sensing principle, i.e., an internal gravity sensing chip is utilized to determine actions of the user. The drawback of the gravity sensing lies in that the product can only be used within the gravity range, and the functions will be lost when the product is out of the gravity orientation.
Implementations of the present technology will now be described, by way of example only, with reference to the attached figures, wherein:
FIG. 1 is a schematic view illustrating the principle that different distances between human eyes and a displaying screen will result in different viewing angles and different regions of the object covered by the sight of the eyes, in a distance adaptive holographic displaying method based on eyeball tracking according to a first embodiment of the present disclosure.
FIG. 2 is a schematic flowchart diagram of the distance adaptive holographic displaying method based on eyeball tracking according to the first embodiment of the present disclosure.
FIGS. 3A and 3B are schematic views illustrating human eyes tracking and distance measuring in the distance adaptive holographic displaying method based on eyeball tracking according to the first embodiment of the present disclosure.
FIG. 4 is a schematic flowchart diagram of a distance adaptive holographic displaying method based on eyeball tracking according to a second embodiment of the present disclosure.
FIGS. 5A and 5B are schematic views illustrating human eyes tracking and distance measuring in the distance adaptive holographic displaying method based on eyeball tracking according to the second embodiment of the present disclosure.
FIG. 6 is a schematic flowchart diagram of a distance adaptive holographic displaying method based on eyeball tracking according to a third embodiment of the present disclosure.
FIG. 7 is a schematic flowchart diagram of a distance adaptive holographic displaying method based on eyeball tracking according to a fourth embodiment of the present disclosure.
FIG. 8 is a schematic structural view of a distance adaptive holographic displaying device based on eyeball tracking according to an embodiment of the present disclosure.
FIG. 9 is a schematic structural view of a distance adaptive holographic displaying device based on eyeball tracking according to another embodiment of the present disclosure.
FIG. 10 is a schematic view illustrating the change of coordinates of positions of human eyes in the distance adaptive holographic displaying method based on eyeball tracking of the present disclosure.
It will be appreciated that for simplicity and clarity of illustration, where appropriate, reference numerals have been repeated among the different figures to indicate corresponding or analogous elements. In addition, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the embodiments described herein. However, it will be understood by those of ordinary skill in the art that the embodiments described herein can be practiced without these specific details. In other instances, methods, procedures and components have not been described in detail so as not to obscure the related relevant feature being described. Also, the description is not to be considered as limiting the scope of the embodiments described herein. The drawings are not necessarily to scale and the proportions of certain parts have been exaggerated to better illustrate details and features of the present disclosure.
Several definitions that apply throughout this disclosure will now be presented.
To ensure normal implementation of the present disclosure, the device of the present disclosure is a device capable of adjusting viewpoints of a holographic three-dimensional display. Usually, devices of a same version may be used by different groups of different ages, a same group of different ages, and a same group of a same age. Because distances between the two eyes of these groups of people are usually different and viewing positions of these groups of people are also different, the imaging size of the object on the eyes of these groups of people varies and the region of the object covered by the sight of these groups of people also varies. For example, referring to FIG. 1, FIG. 1 is a schematic view illustrating the principle that different distances between human eyes and a displaying screen will result in different viewing angles and different regions of the object covered by the sight of the eyes, in a distance adaptive holographic displaying method based on eyeball tracking according to a first embodiment of the present disclosure. At a position a, a user of which the interval between eyes is L observes an object, and at this point, the region of the object covered by the sight of the user is an area facing the user between a tangency point 121 from the center of a left eye to a left side of the object and a tangency point 120 from the center of a right eye to a right side of the object; at a position b that is at a same distance from the displaying screen as the position a but at a different angle, the user of which the interval between eyes is L observes the same object, and at this point, the region of the object covered by the sight of the user is an area facing the user between a tangency point 111 from the center of the left eye to the left side of the object and a tangency point 110 from the center of the right eye to the right side of the object; and at a position c farther from the displaying screen than the position a, the user of which the interval between eyes is L observes the same object, and at this point, the region of the object covered by the sight of the user is an area facing the user between a tangency point 131 from the center of the left eye to the left side of the object and a tangency point 130 from the center of the right eye to the right side of the object. The region of the object covered by the sight of the eyes of the user at the position c is larger than the region of the object covered by the sight of the eyes of the user at the position a.
Please refer to FIG. 2, FIGS. 3A and 3B together. FIG. 2 is a schematic flowchart diagram of the distance adaptive holographic displaying method based on eyeball tracking according to the first embodiment of the present disclosure. FIGS. 3A and 3B are schematic views illustrating human eyes tracking and distance measuring in the distance adaptive holographic displaying method based on eyeball tracking according to the first embodiment of the present disclosure. The method comprises the following steps:
S101: detecting a human face of a user and acquiring positions of eyes of the user, wherein the positions of the eyes of the user comprise a distance between the eyes and a displaying screen.
A three-dimensional standard coordinate system is established by taking the center of the displaying screen as an origin, with the xy coordinate plane being parallel to the displaying screen, the positive x-axis direction being horizontal and directed towards the right, the positive y-axis direction being vertical to the x-axis and directed downwards, and the positive z-axis direction being directed towards the direction of the human eyes. In practical implementations, the space coordinate system may also be established by taking other positions (e.g., a lower left corner or an upper left corner of the displaying screen) as the origin and other directions as the positive directions. For example, in FIG. 3A, a human face tracking camera 210 and a distance meter 220 are mounted on a display 230 or at positions near the displaying screen (e.g., on a host machine or a desktop). It is assumed that in this embodiment, the distance meter 220 is an infrared distance meter and is located on the y-axis of the coordinate system. In this embodiment, the distance meter 220 and the camera 210 are fixedly disposed at adjacent positions with respect to each other. In this way, when the camera 210 moves or remains still in response to the change in the viewing position of the user, the distance meter 220 can be driven to rotate simultaneously so as to make it convenient for the distance meter 220 to find the positions of the human eyes rapidly. Of course, the distance meter 220 may also not rotate. In practical implementations, the distance meter 220 and the camera 210 may also be disposed separately, and the infrared distance meter used in this embodiment may also be replaced by other devices having similar functions. The face recognition technology may be adopted to detect a human face of the user and acquire the positions of the eyes of the user firstly, then the positions can be transformed into corresponding coordinates according to the established coordinate system, and the distance meter 220 is activated to measure a distance between the human eyes and the distance meter 220 and an angle of an optical axis of the infrared distance meter with respect to a plane of the displaying screen. As shown in FIG. 3B, a point Q represents the infrared distance meter 220, a point A represents a human eye, and a coordinate of the point A in the xy plane of the coordinate system is acquired according to data obtained by the camera 210 and the coordinate system. A point B represents the projection of the human eye A in the yz plane, and a point C represents the projection of the human eye A in the xy plane. A distance QA between the human eye and the infrared distance meter 220 and an angle Z AQC included between the optical axis QA of the infrared distance meter 220 and a plane (xy plane) of the displaying screen are measured by the infrared distance meter 220. Because the point B and the point C represent projections of the human eye A on the yz plane and the xy plane respectively, a triangle AQC formed by coordinates of the point A, the point Q (i.e., the infrared distance meter) and the point C is a right triangle. According to the nature of the right triangle, the distance Z between the eyeball A and the displaying screen is as follows: Z=AC=QA*sin<AQC. As the human eyes are at different positions, the coordinates of the eyes are (xL1,yL1), and (xR1,yR1), (xL2,yL2) and (xR2,yR2), . . . ,(xLn,yLn) and (xRn,yRn) respectively when the eyes move from the position 1 to the position n, wherein L represents the left eye and R represents the right eye. Different distances Z1, Z2, . . . Zn are measured by the infrared distance meter when the eyes are moving, and the distances between the eyes and the displaying screen can be acquired in the aforesaid way. Distances L1, L2, . . . Ln between the two eyeballs are obtained according to coordinate values corresponding to the eyeballs, and each of the angles θ1, θ2, . . . , θn can be calculated according to the coordinate values corresponding to the eyeballs and the distances between the eyeballs when the eyes are moving. Referring to FIG. 10, generally when the user is watching the displaying screen, the line connecting a midpoint between the both human eyes to the viewpoint on the displaying screen is substantially perpendicular to the line connecting the both human eyes. According to the nature of the right triangle, the angle θ can be calculated by the following formula:
θ = 2 arctan L 2 Z
where L is the distance between the both eyes, and Z is the distance between the eyes and the displaying screen 230.
In one embodiment, the objective of this step may also be achieved in other ways to acquire the distance between the human eyes and the displaying screen 230, e.g., by directly taking the distance between the infrared distance meter and the eyes as the distance Z between the eyes and the displaying screen 230, or by calculating the distance Z between the eyes and the displaying screen 230 through use of the coordinates of the distance meter and the eyes in the established coordinate system according to the nature of the right triangle.
S102: adjusting the size of an object in a holographic scene along a z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display according to the distance, adjusting viewpoints of different individual holographic three-dimensional images that need to be projected into a left eye and a right eye of the eyes according to the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction, and displaying the viewpoints in the displaying screen.
Generally, when a human is far away from an object, the image of the object on the human eyes is relatively small; and when the human is next to the object, the image of the object on the human eyes is relatively large. That is, the closer the object is to the human eyes, the larger the image of the object on the human eyes is. For example, when we look down from a tall building, people on the ground seem very small, and may be just as small as ants that we see when we are standing on the ground. Referring to FIG. 1 together, FIG. 1 is a schematic view illustrating the principle that different distances between human eyes and a displaying screen will result in different viewing angles and different regions of the object covered by the sight of the eyes, in an individual holographic three-dimensional displaying method according to a first embodiment of the present disclosure. At the position c farther from the displaying screen than the position a, the user of which the interval between eyes is L observes the same object, and at this point, the region of the object covered by the sight of the user is an area facing the user between a tangency point 131 from the center of the left eye to the left side of the object and a tangency point 130 from the center of the right eye to the right side of the object. The region of the object covered by the sight of the eyes of the user at the position c is larger than the region of the object covered by the sight of the eyes of the user at the position a.
The size of an object in a holographic scene along a z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display and the region of the object that can be covered by the sight of the human eyes are adjusted according to the distance between the human eyes and the displaying screen acquired in the step S101. For example, referring to FIG. 10, when a user moves from the position 1 (at a distance Z1 from the displaying screen) to the position 2 (at a distance Z2 from the displaying screen) farther from the displaying screen than the position 1, the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display is reduced, and the region of the object in the holographic scene in the holographic three-dimensional display that can be covered by the sight of the both human eyes is enlarged; and when the user moves from the position 3 (at a distance Z3 from the displaying screen) to the position 2 (at the distance Z2 from the displaying screen) closer to the displaying screen than the position 3, the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display is enlarged, and the region of the object in the holographic scene in the holographic three-dimensional display that can be covered by the sight of the both human eyes is reduced. The viewpoints of different individual holographic three-dimensional images that need to be projected into a left eye and a right eye of the eyes are adjusted according to the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction and the region of the object that can be covered by the sight of the human eyes, and the viewpoints are displayed in the displaying screen.
S103: adjusting an emergent direction of the light emitted by the displaying screen to the direction of the left eye and the right eye of the eyes so that the different individual holographic three-dimensional images of the left eye and the right eye are imaged into the left eye and the right eye respectively.
A dynamic grating in the display is controlled according to the viewpoints of different individual holographic three-dimensional images of the left eye and the right eye of the eyes acquired in the step S102 so that positions of light and dark strips of the grating change adaptively. That is, the emergent direction of the light emitted by the displaying screen is adjusted to the direction of the left eye and the right eye of the eyes so that the different individual holographic three-dimensional images of the left eye and the right eye are imaged into the left eye and the right eye respectively through the dynamic grating.
S104: tracking the change of the positions of the eyes, and repeating the aforesaid steps to dynamically acquire the different individual holographic three-dimensional images of the left eye and the right eye so that, when the eyes are moving, the left eye and the right eye can always acquire individual holographic three-dimensional images having the correct viewpoints of the holographic three-dimensional display and of the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction.
The change of the positions of the eyes is tracked according to the angle included between the line connecting the eyes to the center of the displaying screen and a normal line of the displaying screen as well as the distance Z between the eyes and the displaying screen when the eyes are moving that are acquired in the step S101. Referring to FIG. 10 together, FIG. 10 is a schematic view illustrating the change of coordinates of positions of human eyes in the individual holographic three-dimensional displaying method of the present disclosure. When the user is at the position 1 at the distance Z1 from the displaying screen, the individual holographic three-dimensional images of the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction are adjusted according to the different individual holographic three-dimensional images of the left eye and right eye and the content of the object in the holographic scene that are acquired in the steps S101 to S103. At the position 2 at the distance Z2 from the displaying screen, the user of which the interval between eyes is L1 and the user at the position 1 are a same user, and the user of which the interval between eyes is L2 and the user at the position 1 are users of different groups or ages; and in this case, the steps S101 to S103 are repeated to dynamically acquire the different individual holographic three-dimensional images of the left eye and the right eye so that, when the eyes are moving, the left eye and the right eye can always acquire individual holographic three-dimensional images having the correct viewpoints of the holographic three-dimensional display and of the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction. For example, at the position at the distance Z2 from the displaying screen, corresponding adjusted viewpoints are acquired and the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction and the content of the object in the holographic scene are adjusted by executing the aforesaid steps for the users, of which the intervals between eyes are L1 and L2 respectively, so that the displaying screen can adapt to users of different ages and groups having different intervals between eyes.
In this embodiment, when the camera tracks the change of the positions of the human eyes, the distance meter will be driven to move together so that the distance between the eyes and the displaying screen can be calculated according to the change of the positions dynamically measured by the distance meter and the angle included between the distance meter and the displaying screen. Meanwhile, according to the visual principle that the object looks smaller when you observe it at a larger distance and looks larger when you observe it at a smaller distance, the viewpoints of the holographic three-dimensional display are acquired and the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction is adjusted in real time according to the change of the data. Thus, the displaying screen can adapt to users of different groups at different distances, thereby improving user experiences.
Referring to FIG. 4, FIG. 4 is a schematic flowchart diagram of a distance adaptive holographic displaying method based on eyeball tracking according to a second embodiment of the present disclosure. The method comprises the following steps of:
A three-dimensional standard coordinate system is established by taking the center of the displaying screen as an origin, with the xy coordinate plane being parallel to the displaying screen, the positive x-axis direction being horizontal and directed towards the right, the positive y-axis direction being perpendicular to the x-axis and directed downwards, and the positive z-axis direction being directed towards the direction of the human eyes. In practical implementations, the space coordinate system may also be established by taking other positions (e.g., a lower left corner of the displaying screen) as the origin. Referring to FIGS. 5A and 5B together, FIGS. 5A and 5B are schematic views illustrating eyes tracking and distance measuring in the distance adaptive holographic displaying method based on eyeball tracking according to the second embodiment of the present disclosure. For example, in FIG. 5A, a human face tracking camera 410 and a distance meter 420 are mounted on a display 430 or a host machine separately. The human face tracking camera 410 and the distance meter 420 are disposed symmetrically with respect to the y-axis so that when the human face tracking camera 410 tracks and captures a human face, the distance meter 420 can also locate the human eyes rapidly according to the symmetrical relationships. In one embodiment, the human face tracking camera 410 and the distance meter 420 may also be disposed asymmetrically. The following positions of the eyes in the coordinate system are acquired according to data obtained by detecting the human face by the human face tracking camera 410 and the space coordinate system: (xL1, yL1) and (xR1,yR1), (xL2,yL2) and (xR2,yR2), . . . ,(xLn,yLn) and (xRn,yRn), where L represents the left eye, R represents the right eye, and n represents that the eyes move from position 1 to position n. Then, the coordinate of the distance meter 420 is adjusted so as to measure the distance between the human eyes and the distance meter 420. The distance Z between the human eyes and the displaying screen is calculated according to the nature of the right triangle as follows: Z=√{square root over (QA2−QC2)}. In practical implementations, generally when the user is watching the displaying screen, the line connecting the center of the face of the user to the center of the displaying screen is parallel to the z-axis of the coordinate system; and when the user moves at different positions, the distance between the infrared distance meter and the eyes can be taken directly as the distance Z between the eyes and the displaying screen.
S302: determining whether the distance is smaller than a first threshold value, and if the distance is smaller than the first threshold value, then the distance is getting smaller, and the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display will not be enlarged; and determining whether the distance is larger than a second threshold value, and if the distance is larger than the second threshold value, then the distance is getting larger, and the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display will not be reduced.
If the distance between the user and the displaying screen is too small, the eyesight and the visual effect may be compromised; and if the distance between the user and the displaying screen is too large, the user maybe cannot watch the screen clearly. In order to avoid the aforesaid problem, an optimal viewing range is set to ensure the visual effect. Adjusting the size of an object in a holographic scene along a z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display according to the distance further comprises adjusting the content of the object in the holographic scene in the holographic three-dimensional display, wherein the content of the object in the holographic scene is the appearance content of the object within the region of the object that can be covered by the sight of the both human eyes. Before the step of adjusting the size of an object in a holographic scene along a z-axis direction, a step is executed to determine whether the distance between the eyes and the displaying screen is smaller than a first threshold value, and if the distance is smaller than the first threshold value, then the distance is getting smaller, and the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display will not be enlarged; and to determine whether the distance is larger than a second threshold value, and if the distance is larger than the second threshold value, then the distance is getting larger, and the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display will not be reduced. The first threshold value is the minimum distance within the optimal viewing range, and the second threshold value is the maximum distance within the optimal viewing range.
S303: determining whether the distance is getting larger or smaller; and if the distance is getting larger, reducing the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display, and meanwhile, enlarging the region of the object that can be covered by the sight of the both human eyes so as to obtain the second content of the object in the holographic scene in the adjusted holographic three-dimensional display; and otherwise, enlarging the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display, and meanwhile, reducing the region of the object that can be covered by the sight of the both human eyes so as to obtain the content of the object in the holographic scene in the adjusted holographic three-dimensional display.
When the distance between the user and the displaying screen is within the preset optimal viewing range, it is determined whether the distance is getting larger or smaller. If the distance is getting larger, then the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display is reduced; and otherwise, the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display is enlarged. Adjusting the size of an object in a holographic scene along a z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display according to the viewing distance of the user further comprises adjusting the content of the object in the holographic scene in the holographic three-dimensional display, wherein the content of the object in the holographic scene is the appearance content of the object within the region of the object that can be covered by the sight of the both human eyes. This conforms to the visual principle that an object seems big when we are close to it and seems small when we are far away from it, and the region of the object that can be covered by the sight of the human eyes varies when we observe the object at different distances. For example, referring to FIG. 1, at the position a, a user of which the interval between eyes is L observes an object, and at this point, the region of the object covered by the sight of the user is an area facing the user between a tangency point 121 from the center of the left eye to the left side of the object and a tangency point 120 from the center of the right eye to the right side of the object; and at the position c farther from the displaying screen than the position a, the user of which the interval between eyes is L observes the same object, and at this point, the region of the object covered by the sight of the user is an area facing the user between a tangency point 131 from the center of the left eye to the left side of the object and a tangency point 130 from the center of the right eye to the right side of the object. The region of the object covered by the sight of the human eyes at the position c is larger than the region of the object covered by the sight of the human eyes at the position a, and the image of the object on the eyes at the position c is smaller than the image of the object on the eyes at the position a.
S304: adjusting viewpoints of different individual holographic three-dimensional images that need to be projected into a left eye and a right eye of the eyes according to the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction and the content of the object in the holographic scene, and displaying the viewpoints in the displaying screen.
The steps S304 and S305 are similar to the steps S102 and S103 in the aforesaid first embodiment and thus will not be further described herein. The viewpoints of different individual holographic three-dimensional images that need to be projected into a left eye and a right eye of the eyes are adjusted according to the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction and the content of the object in the holographic scene acquired according to the steps S301 to S303, and the viewpoints are displayed in the displaying screen. The content of the object in the holographic scene is the content of the object covered by the sight of the both human eyes, and for this, reference may be made to FIG. 1 and the description thereof, so this will not be further described herein. When the eyes are close to the displaying screen, the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction is enlarged and the region of the object in the holographic scene in the holographic three-dimensional display that can be covered by the sight of the human eyes is reduced adaptively, e.g., an object that is in the front of the holographic scene is enlarged, the enlarged object in the front blocks the sight of the content at the back, and the region of the object in the holographic scene in the holographic three-dimensional display that can be covered by the sight of the human eyes is reduced. When the eyes are far away from the displaying screen, the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction is reduced and the region of the object in the holographic scene in the holographic three-dimensional display that can be covered by the sight of the human eyes is enlarged adaptively, e.g., the object that is in the front of the holographic scene is reduced more rapidly than the object at the back of the holographic scene, then the blocked content will show up again, and the region of the object in the holographic scene in the holographic three-dimensional display that can be covered by the sight of the human eyes is enlarged.
The camera tracks the change of the positions of the eyes in real time, and the aforesaid steps are repeated to dynamically acquire the different individual holographic three-dimensional images of the left eye and the right eye so that, when the eyes are moving, the left eye and the right eye can always acquire individual holographic three-dimensional images having the correct viewpoints of the holographic three-dimensional display and of the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction.
In this embodiment, the distance between the human eyes and the displaying screen is calculated according to the coordinates of the distance meter and the eyes, or the distance between the distance meter and the eyes is directly taken as the distance Z between the human eyes and the displaying screen. When the user is within the optimal viewing distance, the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display is reduced if the distance is getting larger; and otherwise, the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display is enlarged. Meanwhile, according to the visual principle that the region of the object covered by the sight of the eyes varies when the user observes the object at different positions, the content of the object in the holographic scene is adjusted and the correct viewpoints of the holographic three-dimensional display is acquired so as to provide optimal visual effect to different groups of people.
Referring to FIG. 6, FIG. 6 is a schematic flowchart diagram of a distance adaptive holographic displaying method based on eyeball tracking according to a third embodiment of the present disclosure. The present disclosure provides an individual holographic three-dimensional displaying method which comprises the following steps of:
S504: adjusting viewpoints of different individual holographic three-dimensional images that need to be projected into a left eye and a right eye of the eyes according to the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction, and displaying the viewpoints in the displaying screen.
The steps S501 to S506 are similar to the steps S301 to S306 in the aforesaid first embodiment, and the specific implementation of the step S501 may be similar to that of the step S101 in the first embodiment and thus will not be further described herein.
S507: acquiring different individual holographic sounds that need to be projected into a left ear and a right ear of ears according to the viewpoints of the holographic three-dimensional display and the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction, and outputting the different individual holographic sounds corresponding to the left ear and the right ear respectively.
To improve the visual effect, different individual holographic sounds that need to be projected into a left ear and a right ear of ears are acquired according to the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction, and different individual holographic sounds corresponding to the left ear and the right ear are output respectively. The sound at a side of the displaying screen that is closer to the user is amplified, while the sound at the other side of the displaying screen that is far away from the user is reduced. For example, when the user is at the right side of the displaying screen, the right channel volume is amplified and the left channel volume is reduced; when the user is at the left side of the displaying screen, the left channel volume is amplified and the right channel volume is reduced; and when the user is at the center but away from the displaying screen, the left and the right channel volumes are reduced simultaneously.
In this embodiment, when the user is within the optimal viewing distance, the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction and the region of the object in the holographic scene in the holographic three-dimensional display that can be covered by the sight of the human eyes are adjusted according to the distance between the eyes and the displaying screen, and different individual holographic sounds corresponding to the left ear and the right ear are output respectively. This makes the effect realistic and improves user experiences.
Referring to FIG. 7, FIG. 7 is a schematic flowchart diagram of a distance adaptive holographic displaying method based on eyeball tracking according to a fourth embodiment of the present disclosure. The present disclosure provides an individual holographic three-dimensional displaying method which comprises the following steps of:
S601: activating a tracking camera to detect a human face of a user.
After the device is powered on, the tracking camera is activated to detect the human face of the user so as to preliminarily determine the position of the user.
S602: activating an infrared distance meter to acquire a distance between eyes and the distance meter.
The infrared distance meter is activated either simultaneously or not so as to acquire the distance between the eyes and the distance meter.
S603: acquiring positions of eyes of the user, wherein the positions of the eyes of the user comprise a distance Z between the human eyes and a displaying screen.
A coordinate system is established in a way similar to that of the first embodiment and thus will not be further described herein. According to the images acquired in the step S601, the human face is detected to find features of the human eyes so as to acquire the positions of the human eyes. According to the distance between the eyes and the distance meter acquired in the step S602, the distance Z between the eyes and the displaying screen is obtained.
The distance Z between the user and the displaying screen is acquired according to the step S604, and the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display is adjusted according to the distance Z. For example, the change of the distance Z is determined so that, when the viewing distance is getting larger, the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display is reduced; and otherwise, the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display is enlarged. The viewpoints of different individual holographic three-dimensional images that need to be projected into a left eye and a right eye of the eyes are adjusted according to the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction and are displayed in the displaying screen.
Referring to FIG. 8, FIG. 8 is a schematic structural view of a distance adaptive holographic displaying device based on eyeball tracking according to an embodiment of the present disclosure. The present disclosure provides a distance adaptive holographic displaying device based on eyeball tracking, which comprises a position acquiring module 710, a displaying module 720 and an adjusting module 730. The displaying module 720 is connected to the position acquiring module 710 and the adjusting module 730 respectively.
The position acquiring module 710 is configured to detect a human face of a user and acquire positions of eyes of the user, wherein the positions of the eyes of the user comprise a distance between the eyes and a displaying screen.
The displaying module 720 is configured to adjust the size of an object in a holographic scene along a z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display according to the distance acquired by the position acquiring module 710, to adjust viewpoints of different individual holographic three-dimensional images that need to be projected into a left eye and a right eye of the eyes according to the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction, and to display the viewpoints in the displaying screen. For specific adjustment operations at different positions, reference may be made to descriptions of FIG. 10 and these will not be further described herein.
The adjusting module 730 is configured to adjust an emergent direction of the light emitted by the displaying screen to the direction of the left eye and the right eye of the eyes so that the different individual holographic three-dimensional images of the left eye and the right eye are imaged into the left eye and the right eye respectively.
The position acquiring module 710 is further configured to track the positions of the eyes, and the displaying module 720 adjusts the different individual holographic three-dimensional images of the left eye and the right eye dynamically so that, when the eyes are moving, the left eye and the right eye can always acquire individual holographic three-dimensional images having the correct viewpoints of the holographic three-dimensional display and of the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction by means of the adjusting module 730.
Referring to FIG. 9, FIG. 9 is a schematic structural view of a distance adaptive holographic displaying device based on eyeball tracking according to another embodiment of the present disclosure. The present disclosure provides a distance adaptive holographic displaying device based on eyeball tracking, which comprises a position acquiring module 810, a displaying module 820, an adjusting module 830 and a sound adjusting module 840. The position acquiring module 810 further comprises a calculating unit 811, an image capturing unit 812 and a distance measuring unit 813. The displaying module 820 comprises a first determining unit 821, a second determining unit 822, a displaying unit 823 and an adjusting unit 824. The calculating unit 811 is connected to the image capturing unit 812, the distance measuring unit 813, the adjusting module 830 and the first determining unit 821 respectively. The first determining module 821 is further connected to the second determining unit 822, the sound adjusting module 840 and the displaying unit 823, and the displaying module 820 is further connected to the adjusting module 830.
The image capturing unit 812 is configured to detect a human face of a user, and the distance measuring unit 813 is configured to measure the distance between the human eyes and the distance measuring unit 813 and transmit the measured data to the calculating unit 811 so as to calculate the position of the human eyes.
The calculating unit 811 is configured to acquire, according to the data obtained by detecting the human face by the image capturing unit 812, the following coordinate values corresponding to the eyeballs of the eyes: (xL1,yL1) and (xR1,yR1), (xL2,yL2) and (xR2,yR2), . . . , (xLn,yLn) and (xRn,yRn), wherein L represents the left eye, R represents the right eye, n represents that the eyes move from position 1 to position n, the xy coordinate plane is parallel to the surface of the displaying screen, and a three-dimensional standard coordinate system is adopted; and acquire a distance Z between the eyes and the displaying screen according to a distance between the distance measuring unit 813 and the eyes measured by the distance measuring unit 813, a coordinate value of the distance measuring unit 813 in the coordinate system, and coordinate values corresponding to the eyeballs of the eyes; or acquire the distance Z between the eyes and the displaying screen according to the distance between the distance measuring unit 813 and the eyes, and an angle of an optical axis of the distance measuring unit 813 with respect to a plane of the displaying screen; or directly take the distance between the distance measuring unit 813 and the eyes as the distance Z between the eyes and the displaying screen.
The coordinate system can be established in the same way as that of the individual holographic three-dimensional displaying method according to the first embodiment of the present disclosure, and thus will not be further described herein.
The displaying module 820 is configured to adjust the size of an object in a holographic scene along a z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display according to the distance Z acquired by the position acquiring module 810, to adjust viewpoints of different individual holographic three-dimensional images that need to be projected into a left eye and a right eye of the eyes according to the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction, and to display the viewpoints in the displaying screen. For specific adjustment operations at different positions, reference may be made to descriptions of FIG. 10 and these will not be further described herein.
The first determining unit 821 is configured to determine whether the distance Z between the eyes and the displaying screen is getting larger or smaller; if the distance Z between the eyes and the displaying screen is getting larger, then the adjusting unit 824 is controlled to reduce the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display; and otherwise, the adjusting unit 824 is controlled to enlarge the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display.
The second determining unit 822 is configured to determine whether the distance Z between the eyes and the displaying screen is smaller than a first threshold value, and if the distance Z between the eyes and the displaying screen is smaller than the first threshold value, then the distance is getting smaller, and the adjusting unit 824 is controlled not to enlarge the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display; and the second determining unit 822 is further configured to determine whether the distance Z between the eyes and the displaying screen is larger than a second threshold value, and if the distance is larger than the second threshold value, then the distance is getting larger, and the adjusting unit 824 is controlled not to reduce the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display.
The adjusting unit 824 is configured to adjust the size of an object in a holographic scene along a z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display and the content of the object in the holographic scene in the holographic three-dimensional display according to the determination result of the first determining module 821, wherein the content of the object in the holographic scene is the appearance content of the object within the region of the object that can be covered by the sight of the both human eyes.
The sound adjusting module 840 is configured to adjust different individual holographic sounds that need to be projected into a left ear and a right ear of ears according to the viewpoints of the holographic three-dimensional display and the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction, and to output the different individual holographic sounds corresponding to the left ear and the right ear respectively. The sound at a side of the displaying screen that is closer to the user is amplified, while the sound at the other side of the displaying screen that is far away from the user is reduced.
What described above are only some of the embodiments of the present disclosure, which are provided to facilitate understanding of the present disclosure but are not intended to limit the technical solutions of the present disclosure in any way or to exhaust all embodiments of the present disclosure. Accordingly, any modification or equivalent substitutions made to the technical solutions without departing from the spirits and scope of the present disclosure shall all be covered within the scope of the present disclosure.
1. A distance adaptive holographic displaying method based on eyeball tracking, comprising the following steps of:
detecting a human face of a user and acquiring positions of eyes of the user, wherein the positions of the eyes of the user comprise a distance between the eyes and a displaying screen;
adjusting the size of an object in a holographic scene along a z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display according to the distance, adjusting viewpoints of different individual holographic three-dimensional images that need to be projected into a left eye and a right eye of the eyes according to the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction, and displaying the viewpoints in the displaying screen;
adjusting an emergent direction of the light emitted by the displaying screen to the direction of the left eye and the right eye of the eyes so that the different individual holographic three-dimensional images of the left eye and the right eye are imaged into the left eye and the right eye respectively; and
tracking the change of the positions of the eyes, and repeating the aforesaid steps to dynamically acquire the different individual holographic three-dimensional images of the left eye and the right eye so that, when the eyes are moving, the left eye and the right eye can always acquire individual holographic three-dimensional images having the correct viewpoints of the holographic three-dimensional display and of the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction.
2. The method of claim 1, wherein adjusting the size of an object in a holographic scene along a z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display according to the distance further comprises adjusting the content of the object in the holographic scene in the holographic three-dimensional display, wherein the content of the object in the holographic scene is the appearance content of the object within a region of the object that can be covered by the sight of the both human eyes, and the step of adjusting the size of an object in a holographic scene along a z-axis direction in the individual holographic three-dimensional display according to the distance comprises the following steps of:
determining whether the distance is getting larger or smaller; and
if the distance is getting larger, reducing the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display, and meanwhile, enlarging the region of the object that can be covered by the sight of the both human eyes so as to obtain the content of the object in the holographic scene in the adjusted holographic three-dimensional display; and otherwise, enlarging the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display, and meanwhile, reducing the region of the object that can be covered by the sight of the both human eyes so as to obtain the content of the object in the holographic scene in the adjusted holographic three-dimensional display.
3. The method of claim 2, wherein the step of determining whether the distance is getting larger or smaller further comprises the following steps of: determining whether the distance is smaller than a first threshold value, and if the distance is smaller than the first threshold value, then the distance is getting smaller, and the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display will not be enlarged and the content of the object in the holographic scene in the holographic three-dimensional display will not be adjusted; and determining whether the distance is larger than a second threshold value, and if the distance is larger than the second threshold value, then the distance is getting larger, and the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display will not be reduced and the content of the object in the holographic scene in the holographic three-dimensional display will not be adjusted.
4. The method of claim 1, wherein when the eyes are moving, each of the distances is acquired in the following way:
acquiring, according to data obtained by detecting the human face, the following coordinate values corresponding to the eyeballs of the eyes: (xL1,yL1) and (xR1,yR1), (xL2,yL2) and (xR2,yR2), . . . ,(xLn,yLn) and (xRn,yRn), wherein L represents the left eye, R represents the right eye, n represents that the eyes move from position 1 to position n, and a three-dimensional standard coordinate system is adopted; and
acquiring a distance Z between the eyes and the displaying screen according to a distance between an infrared distance meter and the eyes measured by the infrared distance meter when the eyes are moving, a coordinate value of the infrared distance meter in the coordinate system, and coordinate values corresponding to the eyeballs of the eyes; or acquiring the distance Z between the eyes and the displaying screen according to the distance between the infrared distance meter and the eyes, and an angle of an optical axis of the infrared distance meter with respect to a plane of the displaying screen; or directly taking the distance between the infrared distance meter and the eyes as the distance Z between the eyes and the displaying screen.
5. The method of claim 1, further comprising the following step of:
acquiring different individual holographic sounds that need to be projected into a left ear and a right ear of ears according to the viewpoints of the holographic three-dimensional display and the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction, and outputting the different individual holographic sounds corresponding to the left ear and the right ear respectively.
6. A distance adaptive holographic displaying device based on eyeball tracking, comprising:
a position acquiring module, being configured to detect a human face of a user and acquire positions of eyes of the user, wherein the positions of the eyes of the user comprise a distance between the eyes and a displaying screen;
a displaying module, being configured to adjust the size of an object in a holographic scene along a z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display according to the distance, to adjust viewpoints of different individual holographic three-dimensional images that need to be projected into a left eye and a right eye of the eyes according to the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction, and to display the viewpoints in the displaying screen; and
an adjusting module, being configured to adjust an emergent direction of the light emitted by the displaying screen to the direction of the left eye and the right eye of the eyes so that the different individual holographic three-dimensional images of the left eye and the right eye are imaged into the left eye and the right eye respectively;
wherein the position acquiring module is further configured to track the positions of the eyes, and the displaying module adjusts the different individual holographic three-dimensional images of the left eye and the right eye dynamically so that, when the eyes are moving, the left eye and the right eye can always acquire individual holographic three-dimensional images having the correct viewpoints of the holographic three-dimensional display and of the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction by means of the adjusting module.
7. The device of claim 6, wherein the displaying module comprises a displaying unit, an adjusting unit and a first determining unit, and the adjusting unit is configured to adjust the size of an object in a holographic scene along a z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display and the content of the object in the holographic scene in the holographic three-dimensional display according to the distance, wherein the content of the object in the holographic scene is the appearance content of the object within a region of the object that can be covered by the sight of the both human eyes;
the first determining unit is configured to determine whether the distance is getting larger or smaller;
if the first determining unit determines that the distance is getting larger, the adjusting unit is controlled to reduce the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display, and meanwhile, enlarge the region of the object that can be covered by the sight of the both human eyes so as to obtain the content of the object in the holographic scene in the adjusted holographic three-dimensional display; and otherwise, the adjusting unit is controlled to enlarge the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display, and meanwhile, reduce the region of the object that can be covered by the sight of the both human eyes so as to obtain the content of the object in the holographic scene in the adjusted holographic three-dimensional display; and
the displaying unit is configured to display the holographic three-dimensional image adjusted by the adjusting unit.
8. The device of claim 7, wherein the displaying module further comprises a second determining unit configured to determine whether the distance is smaller than a first threshold value, and if the distance is smaller than the first threshold value, then the distance is getting smaller, and the adjusting unit is controlled neither to enlarge the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display nor to adjust the content of the object in the holographic scene in the holographic three-dimensional display; and the second determining unit is further configured to determine whether the distance is larger than a second threshold value, and if the distance is larger than the second threshold value, then the distance is getting larger, and the adjusting unit is controlled neither to reduce the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction in the holographic three-dimensional display nor to adjust the content of the object in the holographic scene in the holographic three-dimensional display.
9. The device of claim 6, wherein the position acquiring module comprises a distance measuring unit, an image capturing unit and a calculating unit, and the calculating unit is specifically configured to:
acquire, according to data obtained by detecting the human face by the image capturing unit, the following coordinate values corresponding to the eyeballs of the eyes: (xL1,yL1) and (xR1, yR1), (xL2,yL2) and (xR2,yR2), . . . ,(xLn,yLn) and (xRn,yRn), wherein L represents the left eye, R represents the right eye, n represents that the eyes move from position 1 to position n, the xy coordinate plane is parallel to the surface of the displaying screen, and a three-dimensional standard coordinate system is adopted; and
acquire a distance Z between the eyes and the displaying screen according to a distance between the distance measuring unit and the eyes measured by the distance measuring unit when the eyes are moving, a coordinate value of the distance measuring unit in the coordinate system, and coordinate values corresponding to the eyeballs of the eyes; or acquire the distance Z between the eyes and the displaying screen according to the distance between the distance measuring unit and the eyes, and an angle of an optical axis of the distance measuring unit with respect to a plane of the displaying screen; or directly take the distance between the distance measuring unit and the eyes as the distance Z between the eyes and the displaying screen.
10. The device of claim 6, further comprising a sound adjusting module specifically configured to adjust different individual holographic sounds that need to be projected into a left ear and a right ear of ears according to the viewpoints of the holographic three-dimensional display and the size of the object in the holographic scene along the z-axis direction, and to output the different individual holographic sounds corresponding to the left ear and the right ear respectively.
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Free format text: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNORS:LIU, MEIHONG;GAO, WEI;XU, WANLIANG;REEL/FRAME:037161/0562
Owner name: SHENZHEN MAGIC EYE TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD., CHINA
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Wednesday September 30th 2015, 10:01 pm
All in one hour a sudden flurry of incoming plans, emails, texts, phone, of, oh if they’re coming I wouldn’t miss…!
And suddenly I’m ready to start hanging the Christmas decorations right now.
Let me see if I can get that new kitchen flooring done first, at last. I’d needed some major motivation and there you go.
Post-Equinox
Tuesday September 29th 2015, 9:34 pm
Filed under: Wildlife
A flash of feathers caught my eye–the speed, the size, the color, and it was a Cooper’s hawk swooping down and straight up again in a tight vertical V: it wasn’t chasing, it was herding.
Three potential prey freaked and came towards me and the window. They hit but only barely and ricocheted away–just as a *second* Cooper’s hawk came zooming in after them! Two! Working as a team! Wow!
I went to the other side of the room to where I could hunch down and look up into the camphor tree way to the side. The hawk that was there didn’t seem to have caught anything for all that and as I wondered if I had distracted it too much, immediately it arose, flew across my yard, circled a stand of trees on the other side of the fence line and then back over to near where it had been. More obscured now. Ready to hunt again.
I excused myself to go work on laundry and get out of its way.
Monday September 28th 2015, 10:35 pm
Filed under: Family,Food,Friends,Garden
And look at it now. A weekend ago it was shorter than the stake and all those groups of new leaves were each just one fingernail-sized dormant-looking bud at the branch ends. I suddenly have a lot more mango tree.
Meantime, I grabbed Michelle and treated her to chocolate at our favorite shop to share pictures from our trip and catch up a bit. We walked in and suddenly there were dairy-free truffles created on the spot just for her. In an allergic world where food in public can be a difficult thing, I love how good they are at making her at home.
Someday, when they’re not too busy (but I’m glad their shop is busy), I’ll ask the owners about the timing of tipping that top point. They’re the only people I know who once grew a mango tree.
Oh wait, of course! I take that back: Dani grew up with one. In India, though, so not the same climate. Still…
We explored a little
Sunday September 27th 2015, 11:02 pm
Filed under: Family,History,Life
If you ever wanted to see where the Oz books were written, this was L. Frank Baum’s home.
And the children’s section of the library near it, with Dorothy, the Tin Woodman, Munchkins, the Scarecrow and I think the Cowardly Lion is in there somewhere.
There was a tot-sized area to rest in. Genius. The one who was the most tired is a climber like his daddy was and couldn’t resist. (He was helped down immediately–no matter how enticing it was, let’s not, kiddo.)
There was a huge killer whale of a stuffed animal atop one of the children’s shelves; Hudson asked about it, I found one of the librarians, and she thought out loud a moment with, Well, we don’t normally let children play with them–and then she brought it down and held it out and he petted it on the nose in awe. That was all he’d needed.
We ran into a young family who, when I found out who the dad was, I exclaimed, I used to babysit you!
But no–it had been his older sisters, he’d been born just after they’d moved away from Maryland. That’s right. But same idea: I knew his folks and his sisters as little kids, I’d run into the whole family at a wedding fifteen years earlier and that’s where I remembered the son from, who was now neighbors and friends with our son’s family, and it was all quite the small-world moment.
Hudson had been up late the night before but had been so excited that we were coming that he’d bounced out of bed early. It finally hit him when it was time to leave that glorious library: he clung to the railing. He didn’t want to GOooooOOO!
I scooped him up after a minute and asked, You really like this library?
Uh HUH! And as I said soothing and understanding things he let me carry him almost to the car, then his daddy the last few steps. Conked out as soon as the motor turned on and was still fast asleep when it was time for us to leave for the airport. We opened his door and I silently blew a kiss and hoped he wouldn’t be too upset to wake up to find us gone.
It is amazing how tiny little bundles of energy become when they’re run out of all their awake.
On an entirely different note–but in a way kind of not–back here at home tonight, we watched the eclipse, and I have a question: why did both the photos my iPhone took show twice as much moon as my eyes saw? There was just a corner of red, then at 8:32 half of the moon was lit up brightly, no more.
And yet, the camera saw past the shadows cast by the earth to let the moon shine brightly and whole.
I can’t wait to see them again.
There’s never enough of this
Saturday September 26th 2015, 10:25 pm
There was this sweet face today.
And this one. (And somehow no pictures of the baby? There are in my son’s camera, but still, how did that happen!)
When I went to snap these (it’s the only time anyone was holding still) I said something about my camera and Hudson, perplexed, pronounced, “It’s a phone.”
Yes it is, and in camera mode I showed it to him with my fingers wiggling on the other side of it and showing up on the screen. It was the funniest thing they’d seen all day and they let me know it. Hudson: “Way cool.”
This was the first visit where the boys didn’t have to spend any time warming up to us; they were right there right away claiming us instantly, snuggling for books to be read and Legos to be played with. Even Maddy crawled over a few times and sat up against me sitting on the floor so she could. Her big brothers had vouched for us so we couldn’t be too stranger-y.
A lot of history all at once, some yet to show itself
Friday September 25th 2015, 9:57 pm
Filed under: History,Politics
Five members of the Supreme Court, including Catholics Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, turned down their invitations to witness Pope Francis’s address to Congress. I can only feel that they–and we–missed out. There is a power for good in the example of a person of great love, a clarity offered to one’s sense of purpose. Pope Francis, the Dalai Lama, Thomas S. Monson of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and any others you might want to name from your own experiences or readings: they don’t just preach it, they live it.
Breyer was in San Francisco to give a talk and sign copies of his new book–my daughter is in the audience as I type.
After the Pope left yesterday, two reporters stumbled into the best, most human story on what would be Boehner’s surprise resignation come the morning: Boehner beckoned them to the spot he had stood in to try to feel what he had felt, to experience some part of what the day had been for him. The Washington Post, here, and a Q&A with Speaker Boehner today, here.
The salesman, sold
Thursday September 24th 2015, 10:37 pm
Filed under: Friends,Garden,Life
So we had a guy out to talk about our solar panels. His company was offering something that I don’t think existed when we installed ours: an inverter that separates out each panel, so that if one gets shaded the others still work.
Ours is an all-or-nothing system and there’s a redwood next door, so it was definitely worth getting a quote to replace that part.
When all that was done he was interested in asking about the fruit trees, and it being early evening I walked back out there with him and Richard. He wanted to know what everything was.
“A mango?!” He thought that was so cool.
Cherries, there and there, mandarins, there and there. “Peaches for June July August September,” I said, pointing one two three four, noting that the biggest was only planted in February but it was standard root stock vs the semi-dwarfs and also had better sun.
A few more steps, then, “That lemon tree looks so healthy,” he said, admiring how loaded its branches were with small green fruit. He reached up to touch one. “Meyers are sweeter, right?”
“Yes, they’ve got some tangerine in their parentage.”
“Wow, you guys could open a fruit stand with all that!”
Except… And then he told us about his plum tree, how the squirrels bit into his plums and then threw them down without finishing and made a huge mess he was having to clean up–with the implied thought of, and they don’t even leave me any.
We know how that goes.
It was clear he’d wished for more fruit trees if it weren’t for that. And we knew how that goes, too.
We were standing in front of my plum tree as he mentioned this and I pointed out the clamshells on the apple next to it and why. I told him about the raccoon that ate the plastic (no shards on the ground anywhere), ate the apple, and then never touched another clamshell again, not last year nor this nor any possible descendant of theirs. It had worked.
“Oh so that’s why…” (Yeah, I know they look pretty. Not. But hey it works!)
And over there… “I *love* figs!”
I told him mine was in a pot to keep the shallow roots from causing damage.
He was clearly eager to learn more. It was great fun. I think some nursery is about to make a sale.
Wednesday September 23rd 2015, 10:06 pm
Filed under: Garden
Day three and many of the new branches are four inches long already.
It probably didn’t hurt that it was 92 degrees today.
I haven’t done any pruning at all because it came pre-pruned and two-limbed and in the first year of the mango tree I wanted it to concentrate on becoming solid and strong; I knew if I cut it it would trigger clusters of new branches from each spot. And I wanted it to be easy to cover at night for one more winter before I have to figure out something more elaborate to keep it warm.
At the tip of the one branch that gets just a tiny bit more sun than the rest it burst into four new ones anyway.
That means that, given how they produce, there will now be four times as many future mangoes there. I can manage quite happily with that.
My two limbs have become twelve (at least) all on their own.
It feels like putting yarn next to needles and coming back to find a sweater.
Apple season
Tuesday September 22nd 2015, 10:12 pm
Filed under: Food,Friends,Garden
I put my knitting down and went out a moment…
And picked the first ripe Fuji apples of the season. There were three in this cluster, and yes I should have thinned them to one but I had so few this year that I just let them be for the most part.
The guy who’d helped me prune the thing back last winter cut off most of the fruiting wood. Other than asking him not to do that this year I really can’t complain because he did a fabulous job of shaping the tree, now that the weed eucalyptuses that had been shading it were gone, so that it recovered amazingly well and grew back towards the space they had taken over and it became a nicely shaped tree again. I did not know that was possible in a single season. But it meant passing up on most of a year’s crop.
Richard and I shared the biggest one and it reminded me why I chose that variety twenty-something years ago. Straight off the tree, they are fabulous.
They would have gotten redder had I taken their clamshells off and maybe trimmed back a few leaves and let more of the sun hit them directly, but they would have been gone in a minute. This year, for all the critters’ desperation in the drought, they have not been trying to steal fruit out of those covers. The birds did peck as best they could through the small air holes in the plastic but could only leave just the tiniest marks and that was that.
Bowl by my good friends Mel and Kris. Apples by sun, water (not too much!) and love.
That fast
Monday September 21st 2015, 10:33 pm
Mango trees seem to have growth spurts like 13-year-olds. Maybe five days above a hundred degrees in the past week including today told it to grab summer while it could?
(The first photo shows the tree’s stake, not its trunk.)
After sitting there for over a month with no change that I could see other than a deepening of the green as the leaves matured and the daylight hours slowly decreased, this morning I looked out the window and clearly there was something new out there. I found that all but two of the branch ends had new leaves sprouting out where the day before there had been only a small, green, closed, pointed growth tip that I’d thought was in preparation for next spring.
The rest of the photos were taken this evening. The eighth branch has now popped out two leaves and will finish its circle tomorrow. (The red is a limb spacer.) Now only the lowest and most shaded branch is still in wait-and-see mode.
Look at all that! The center branch in the big photo sent out not only beginning leaves but four new branches producing those leaves. We have the word overnight in the language, but clearly we need its flip side: it happened overday!
Sunday September 20th 2015, 9:58 pm
Filed under: Friends,Life
When our 84-year-old friend Shirley passed away a week ago I wondered when or if we would ever see her kids again, now that their folks were gone.
The youngest showed up at our church today, even though it was an hour’s drive. We had a good chat.
His older brother was two and a half hours away from his home yesterday when we randomly ran into him in Oakland. Instant joy.
It was so good to see those two. And even when it’s been decades when you see an old friend, you pick up right where you left off as if there had been no time between, you just have all the more to talk about as you catch up.
I’m sitting here thinking of several old friends who really could use a vacation to California. Hint hint.
Craning my neck to see
Saturday September 19th 2015, 9:50 pm
Filed under: Family,Friends,Wildlife
Our friend Alice was at the wheel, I was on the passenger side, Richard behind me as we drove back from Oakland this afternoon.
Her eyes steadfastly on the road and not even glancing to the side, being an avid birder she motioned towards what had caught the corner of her eye, saying, simply, “Look.” Knowing I would want to.
White dots in the distance and nearer, a single crane standing sentinel, alone. A closer flock appeared as the road continued past the cracked-brown edges of the shore: there in the gray-blue water of the Bay, the white pelicans’ plumage shone brilliantly in the sun.
They circled to play a game of Go Fish and a beak of orange-gold was raised in success.
Tick tick clocked
Friday September 18th 2015, 10:38 pm
Filed under: Family,Food,History,Life
So apparently there’s a Twitter meme going on whereby former teenage nerds are offering Ahmed Mohamed a show of support by building clocks themselves and taking a picture of wires and all and posting theirs.
My sweetie happened to take his with him to Timothy Adams tonight to show our daughter; thus we have a chocolate shop going on in the background and empty truffle wrappers in front. (And they were very very good.) I wish we could share those with Ahmed, too; maybe Mark Zuckerberg could bring him in after his tour of Facebook headquarters.
Back at last
Filed under: Friends,Knit,LYS
Finally, finally I got to go to knit night at Purlescence. I almost went last week but felt like, no, after that flu and two days’ break and then a cold, one more week. Just to be sure I don’t give any of that to anyone.
I got the BIGGEST hugs! I tell you. I’d missed those guys so much.
And towards the end I ripped out most of what I’d knit there because I hadn’t caught an early goof. It still felt good because now I know it’ll come out perfect. It’s a shawl that’s been waiting awhile for me to proof-knit it a second time because I do that when I’m intending to publish a pattern. I hadn’t gotten around to it and hadn’t gotten around to it so finally I’d given the second-done one away so I would have to.
Begin. The rest is easy. And it is! Man, that Malabrigo Silky Merino is nice stuff.
Tick tick ticked
Filed under: Family,History,Life,Politics
By now you’ve probably heard of Ahmed Mohamed, a 14-year-old who built a clock and took it to show to his engineering teacher at his new high school in Irving, Texas.
Now, being married to a nerd, we have a lot of motherboards and various other parts kicking around here. Lots. He’s actually got my yarn stash beat. (Note which one of us is writing this.)
The Heathkit company of our youth quit making electronics kits ages ago. Even I built some of their kits–it was a requirement in a college electricity course. My clock finally died after 35 years but the alarm in case the standing freezer gets too warm is still at work in the garage.
So into that vacuum stepped the folks who started Raspberry Pi after looking at how expensive gadgets had gotten; few parents would want to let their kid take, say, an iPad apart and explore its innards, and they decided budding nerds needed to have access to electronic parts to tinker with and to be able to make things at a reasonable price–and I mean exceedingly reasonable.
And thus we have, for instance, the controller that turns the Christmas lights on my mango tree on and off depending on the temperature range I set for it. Had we bought such a gadget prefab it would have been prettier but also more expensive and this way my sweetie has made himself a part of that tree’s success. He built that.
This is the hubby who decided one Christmas years ago when the kids were little that the usual setup of chairs across the hallway with blankets draped over it to block their view of the goodies ahead wasn’t enough. The rule was that you wait for Mommy and Daddy and Mommy and Daddy are allowed to sleep till a semi-reasonable hour after trying to assemble that #*% rocking horse till 2 am (second page of instructions, line 17 halfway down: “Before you start, make sure you…” And so forever after it had a screw missing because there just was no way.)
No peeking.
A motion sensor, a tape recorder, and the very unexpected sound of Daddy’s voice: “Go. back. to. BED, Richard!”
And so it was with some amazement that I listened to my ever calm peacemaker of a husband take off on that principal and those cops. “They should be in JAIL!” He was just outraged. In his own youth, he told me, he had gotten permission from the school, made fireworks (me: You *made* fireworks? him: Yes, I made fireworks!) and had brought them in.
They called Ahmed’s clock a bomb and when he confirmed his last name and refused to say that it was a bomb, after having illegally questioned him without allowing him to notify his parents much less in their presence, they marched him across the school in handcuffs, hauled him to police headquarters and arrested him.
Let’s see: false imprisonment, false police report, false charges, under color of authority, lack of parental notification, libel, and even after they found out that it really was just a clock the school still said he was suspended for three days as if he were somehow guilty for embarrassing them–and then they sent home a letter to the other kids’ parents about how their children were being kept safe (from, basically, terrorists by the sound of it) and that there had been an incident but everything was fine now.
Now, if they’d thought it was really a bomb, would they have left it sitting in the school as they blasted this child? But they did.
Would they have evacuated the school? But they did not.
It all comes across as the English teacher and the principal with the cops piling on trying to show that smart brown kid with the Muslim name just exactly who had the power around here.
But then, thank heavens, the aftermath began. President Obama on Twitter: “Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It’s what makes America great.”
Mark Zuckerberg, NASA (he was wearing their t-shirt when it happened) and a growing number of places: You want to come tour our headquarters/lab/etc? We want smart people like you and we would love to show you around here.
Mohamed’s father, an immigrant from Somalia, thanked all those who stood up for his son: I love America. When we see something wrong we stand up.
The school is utterly unrepentant.
Some lawyer is totally going to clean their clock.
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Stories that Empower
116 Leah Reinhart
December 2, 2019 December 2, 2019 Sean
Leah had traumatic experiences, including the loss of her mother. She was seeking acceptance, love and validation. Initially, Leah joined circles, which led her to drugs, alcohol and violence. Then, she started to understand the energies associated with fear and love. Leah surrounded herself with supportive people and realized that she had been empowered all along. This enabled her to become an entrepreneur at a very young age. Leah is now enjoying your new journey as an author. She shares these powerful nuggets of life wisdom:
love and acceptance starts from within
be mindful of our energy
our past does not define us
surround yourself with those that lift you up
we are responsible for our own happiness
express gratitude
universe is working for you
find the life lesson
Leah E. Reinhart is a hair stylist and angel card reader turned author. When the market crashed and business was slow, her hair clients encouraged her to write a memoir after hearing some of her stories about her unusual childhood in Oakland, California. She started writing and a whole new journey began as she began to fall in love with writing and reading. Leah E. Reinhart is a mother of two and a wife, and currently works in her not-so-ordinary salon, Wellness Garden Tool Shed.
https://leahereinhart.com/
https://www.facebook.com/LeahE.Reinhart/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/leah-e-reinhart-author
https://twitter.com/leah_e_reinhart
tags: Leah, Reinhart, storiesthatempower.com, stories that empower, empowering stories, empowerment stories, stories of empowerment, stories of empowering others, self empowerment stories, stories empower, inspire, inspiring, inspiration, uplift, uplifting, upliftment, hope, light, Sean
115 Donna ODonnell Figurski
November 25, 2019 November 25, 2019 Sean
When Donna’s husband experienced a brain injury, everything stopped on a dime. She became his full time caregiver. Whereas, she used to prefer to ‘let things ride’, she realized that as his advocate it was up to her to save his life. Donna didn’t think she had it in her. She challenged the doctors and nurses. In the process, she became empowered. Donna shares these powerful nuggets of life wisdom:
– practice self care
– make time for yourself
– you are more capable than you think
https://www.donnafigurski.com/
https://www.facebook.com/donna.odonnellfigurski.5
https://twitter.com/DonnaFigurski
https://www.pinterest.com/odonnellfigursk/
https://www.instagram.com/dmodfigs/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/donna-o-donnell-figurski-72963453/
tags: storiesthatempower.com, stories that empower, empowering stories, empowerment stories, stories of empowerment, stories of empowering others, self empowerment stories, stories empower, inspire, inspiring, inspiration, uplift, uplifting, upliftment, hope, light, Sean
114 Naomi McDougall Jones
Naomi’s first film didn’t give her the validation and acceptance that she sought. Naomi felt crushed. So for her second film, she set out to be accepted by the “System” and chose to play by their rules. Naomi encountered very powerful ‘gatekeepers’ that feel they define the success and happiness of film makers, such as herself. Once she realized that she had been empowered all along, she took a refreshingly different approach. Naomi recentered with her own value system and courageously decided to distribute her film herself. She rented an RV and embarked on her “Joyful Vampire Tour of America”, which provides screenings, Q&A with the film makers and ends with a fun ball. Naomi looks forward to connect with her end consumers and independent cinema owners. She shares these powerful nuggets of life wisdom:
– your acceptance, validation and happiness is measured by your values, not those of others
– do not chase external recognitions that are, in reality, meaningless
– get centered with your values, what is truly important to you and go after it
– sometimes you just need to challenge the norm
– learn by doing
– listen to your gut
Naomi McDougall Jones is an award-winning actress, writer, producer, and women in film activist. She grew up in Aspen, Colorado and attended Cornell University before graduating from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (AADA). Naomi wrote, produced, and starred in the 2014 indie feature film, Imagine I’m Beautiful, which took home 12 awards on the film festival circuit including 4 Best Pictures and, for Naomi, 3 Best Actress Awards and The Don Award for Best Independently Produced Screenplay of 2014. The film was named as #8 of OscarWorld’s Top 10 Films of 2014 and was distributed theatrically and digitally by Candy Factory Films. The film is now available on AmazonPrime. Naomi’s second feature film, Bite Me, is a subversive romantic comedy about a real-life vampire and the IRS agent who audits her. The film premiered at Cinequest, won Best Feature Film at VTXIFF, and then went on to the innovative, paradigm-shifting Joyful Vampire Tour of America in summer 2019, a 51-screening, 40-city, three-month, RV-fueled eventized tour that involved Joyful Vampire Balls, capes, a docu-series and a whole lot of joy. The film is now available to watch on Seed&Spark, Amazon, GooglePlay, and iTunes. She is currently at work on her third feature screenplay, Hammond Castle, a magical realism film that explores themes of identity, legacy and gender through a modern-day seven-month pregnant woman’s unexpected interaction with the brilliant, eccentric and deceased inventor John Hays Hammond, Jr., for which Naomi received the honor of being the first artist-in-residence at Ernest Hemingway’s final home in Sun Valley, Idaho. Naomi’s first book, The Wrong Kind of Women: Inside Our Revolution to Dismantle the Gods of Hollywood, will be published by Beacon Press on February 4, 2020 and is now available for order on Amazon, Barnes&Noble, IndieBound, and Beacon Press. Naomi has been a vocal advocate for bringing gender parity to film, both on and off screen. She has spoken at film festivals and conferences around the world and written extensively on this subject. Naomi TEDTalk on these issues and what to do about them, “What it’s Like to be a Woman in Hollywood, has been viewed over a million times. She has teamed up with former CFO of the City of Chicago, Lois Scott, to found The 51 Fund, a VC investment fund that will finance films written, directed, and produced by women. Naomi lives in Atlanta with her husband, Stephen.
www.naomimcdougalljones.com
www.bitemethefilm.com
www.imagineimbeautiful.com
www.the51fund.com
TEDTalk: go.ted.com/naomimcdougalljones
Podcast: Fear(ful)less: Filmmaking From the Edge
tags: Naomi, McDougall, Jones, naomimcdougalljones.com, award, winning, writer, actress, producer, film, maker, women, activist, Imagine, I’m, Beautiful, Bite, Me, TEDTalk, What, It’s, Like, to, be, Woman, in, Hollywood, 51, fund, Wrong, Kind, of, Woman, podcast, Fear(ful)less, storiesthatempower.com, stories that empower, empowering stories, empowerment stories, stories of empowerment, stories of empowering others, self empowerment stories, stories empower, inspire, inspiring, inspiration, uplift, uplifting, upliftment, hope, light, Sean
113 Melissa Agnes
Melissa experienced a big pivotal moment twelve years into her marriage, when she realized that she was no longer in love with her husband. She knew there was something off, but did not have clarity initially. Melissa used her skills as a crisis readiness strategist to assess her own relationship. She chose to follow her truth and divorced her husband. Melissa feels that she crisis managed her divorce to a place where they are not romantically linked anymore, but still have respect and admiration for each other. She was able to do it with grace, respect and love. Melissa shares these powerful nuggets of life wisdom:
– understand the whys
– know your truth
– find strength in accepting your truth
– we deserve to live our best lives
– don’t shy away from difficulties
– be kind to yourself
Author of Crisis Ready: Building an Invincible Brand in an Uncertain World, Melissa Agnes is a leading authority on crisis preparedness, reputation management, and brand protection. Agnes is a coveted speaker, commentator, and advisor to some of today’s leading organizations faced with the greatest risks.
As a strategic advisor and keynote speaker, Agnes has worked with NATO, Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defense, financial firms, technology companies, healthcare organizations, cities and municipalities, law enforcement agencies, global non-profits, and many others, helping them understand risk and build invincible brands that can withstand even the most devastating of events. In 2015, she gave a TEDx talk in Los Angeles where she discussed the secret to successful crisis management in the 21st century.
Agnes is the editor of the Crisis Ready Blog, host of the Invincible Brand Podcast, a contributor to Forbes, and a go-to source for the press, with recent coverage including the Wall Street Journal, VIBE Magazine, USA Today, and many others.
Agnes’s book and Crisis Ready Model continue to be adopted into undergraduate, graduate, and MBA programs around the world, and as a university guest lecturer, Agnes teaches crisis management in university courses around the world, including at NYU and McGill.
https://melissaagnes.com/
https://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Ready-Building-Invincible-Uncertain/dp/1684014131/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
tags: Melissa, Agnes, crisis, management, strategist, brand, trust, creditability, speaker, advisor, consultant, coach, storiesthatempower.com, stories that empower, empowering stories, empowerment stories, stories of empowerment, stories of empowering others, self empowerment stories, stories empower, inspire, inspiring, inspiration, uplift, uplifting, upliftment, hope, light, Sean
112 Sally Clark
November 4, 2019 November 4, 2019 Sean
Sally experienced sexual trauma as a teenager. She repressed it, absorbed it and was ashamed of it. Sally felt as if it was her fault. She started on a journey of healing and began to acknowledge what happened. Initially, Sally felt uncomfortable to tell her story publicly. Then she realized … if she couldn’t tell her story, then what message was that sending to others, such as her daughters. Through supportive communities, Sally published her book and became a survivor of sexual trauma. Today, she creates safe, trusted communities, where she empowers women to experience healing. Sally shares these nuggets of life wisdom:
– never underestimate the power of sisterhood
– find a community of women who have your back
– support one another
– practice self love and self care
– as a mother, seek a community to support you in self care, which is also helpful in protecting your daughters
– we can help unload and release pain that others experience
– evaluate pain in safe setting and release it
– honor your body
– practice deeper listening with yourself and others
– consider joining a red tent, which is a women’s tribal community, where people gather, feel safe and can experience healing
Sally Clark is a director, researcher, author and graduate of the Columbia Journalism School. She directed the award-winning documentary Cowgirls and has worked with acclaimed authors and producers, including Naomi Wolf on her book Misconceptions: Truth, Lies, and the Unexpected on the Journey to Motherhood and with Lili Fournier, producer of the Women of Wisdom and Power series. She is also a survivor of sexual assault and has twenty years of experience helping women with similar issues. Her first book, The Way of the Warrior Mama: The guide to Protecting & Raising Strong Daughters, in available now. Sally lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her family.
https://sallylclark.com/
tags: Sally, Clark, author, speaker, life, coach, self, care, calgary, alberta, canada, sexual, abuse, trauma, pollution, cowgirl, productions, way, warrior, mama, guide, protecting, raising, strong, daughters, storiesthatempower.com, stories that empower, empowering stories, empowerment stories, stories of empowerment, stories of empowering others, self empowerment stories, stories empower, inspire, inspiring, inspiration, uplift, uplifting, upliftment, hope, light, Sean
111 Joe Bernstein
October 28, 2019 October 28, 2019 Sean
Joe was diagnosed, as a young child, with learning disabilities and was overweight. He decided to transform his life. Joe changed his beliefs, thoughts, actions and feelings. He also unwired his anxious nervous system. He lost 160 lbs and walked away from a toxic marriage. Joe heard a calling to share his knowledge of transformation with others. He empowers and coaches others to look at mindset/emotions and partners with them, as they enter journeys of transformation. Joe shares these powerful nuggets of life wisdom:
– anything is possible
– humans are malleable
– we have the capacity to change and transform
– we’re never truly stuck
– understand your choices and emotions
– navigate with mindfulness of choice
– get emotionally healthy
– what we think is possible, we create as possible
– view your setbacks as catalysts for change in your life
– work on your mindset and emotions
– find a community for change
– shift your beliefs
Joe Bernstein is a personal and professional growth coach. He works with Leaders, Entrepreneurs, Creatives, High Performers as well as regular dudes and dudettes to create growth, transformation and change in all areas of life. Joe’s clients enjoy explosive growth in confidence, boldness and understanding their own value which result in large increases in income, going from zero to multiple dates per week, transforming their relationships with food and body and of course much more fulfilling relationships with friends, family and romantic partners.
Joe also spends time volunteering with Mankind Project, Vets Journey Home, Alternatives to Violence, Showing Up for Racial Justice and is a co-founder of Return to Base Foundation, a pro-bono coaching program for return US combat Vets.
https://www.joebernsteincoaching.com/
http://www.dropthearmor.com
https://www.facebook.com/joe.bernstein.902
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joebernsteincepc
110 Matt Ward
Matt grew up in a single parent household and attended a school for disadvantaged kids, where they taught him about effort. He realized that, if he wanted to live a different life, he’d have to figure things out on his own. Matt grew a business and with perseverance, he maneuvered it through the 2008 economic crisis. He successfully sold the business. Today, Matt speaks and helps business to grow. He shares these powerful nuggets of life wisdom:
– perseverance is the key
– believe in yourself
– use the skills that you already possess
– drop the inner critic and self doubt, as they don’t serve you
– take inventory of the people around you on a regular basis and make adjustments, if needed
– make sure your circle includes people that help to lift you up
– surround yourself with trusted advisors
– don’t quit, keep going
– fear no longer exists, once you take action
– don’t stop just before you get those breakthroughs
– work hard and be patient for the results
– to attract and keep clients, have real conversations with people and care about them
Matt Ward is the founder of Breakthrough Champion…
In 2002 Matt started a website agency, inConcert Web Solutions, which he, in turn, sold in 2018, so that he could focus on helping businesses get more word of mouth referrals! His book “MORE…Word of Mouth Referrals, Lifelong Customers & Raving Fans”, released in September 2018 and was a #1 New Release!
Matt is a professional member of the National Speakers Association and a podcast host of the popular small business podcast Square Peg Round Hole! He’s a 40 Under 40 Recipient and Chamber Small Business Owner of the Year!
Matt believes that the problem with Small Business is Bananas! Not sure what that means? Just ASK!
http://www.breakthrough-champion.com/
www.MattWardSpeaks.com
Subscribe to the podcast:
Be a guest on our podcast.
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Tag: American Cosmic
September 20, 2019 ~ Bryan Sentes ~ Leave a comment
Just got word today David Halperin has new book—Intimate Alien: the Hidden Story of the UFO—forthcoming from prestigious Stanford University Press, which describes it as follows:
UFOs are a myth, says David J. Halperin—but myths are real. The power and fascination of the UFO has nothing to do with space travel or life on other planets. It’s about us, our longings and terrors, especially the greatest terror of all: the end of our existence. This is a book about UFOs that goes beyond believing in them or debunking them, to a fresh understanding of what they tell us about ourselves as individuals, as a culture, as a species….
With Oxford University Press putting out D. W. Pasulka’s American Cosmic earlier this year, could something be afoot in at least cultural ufology?
If you order Intimate Alien before the end of September 2019, you get 30% off, too!
I doubt whatever Tom DeLonge & Co. have up their sleeve is half as interesting…
What’s money got to do with it?
July 9, 2019 ~ Bryan Sentes ~ 3 Comments
Over at UFO Conjectures, Rich Reynolds gets ye olde brain juices flowing, where he fires off a barrage of squibs at the oft-heard refrain that ufologists are “just in it for the money.” However well-taken his intended point, his rhetoric gets the better of him, when he claims, inspired by the Muse Hyperbole, that “No one makes or has ever made real money by exploiting the enigma to make big bucks…”
As long as his thesis concerns ufologists or journalists and writers who produce strictly ufological material, then, I think, there’s little to argue with. On the other hand, to claim that no one has profited off the UFO phenomenon (“the enigma”) will surely inspire a wry grin on Chris Carter‘s face and an urgent anxiety on the part of the producers of History‘s various UFO-related shows to conceal this fact from their overseers. If the arts can contribute billions of dollars to a nation’s GDP, it would be an interesting exercise to determine how much money UFO-themed books, films, television, and sundry commodities have generated in even only the United States since 1947.
But, then, a related and more provocative question concerns how monetization, the profit motive, the commodity form—in a word, capitalism—might be said to determine the social form of the phenomenon, i.e., how “the enigma” appears in the public sphere. Here, it’s possible only to sketch in a few offhand examples; a proper answer would demand a short, dense treatise that would give the editor of D. W. Pasulka’s American Cosmic a blinding migraine.
Reynolds points to, for example, “the prolific writer Nick Redfern” for whom “[money] is not his motivation for writing but a meager means of economic survival; his books just keeping his head above water.” I take it Reynolds sees Redfern’s very impressive output as an index of a somewhat impractical fascination (rather than a need, to keep his head above water) harnessed to a disciplined work ethic, i.e., despite his impressive labour and productivity, Redfern can hardly claim to have made a bundle on the UFO beat, which is all well-taken.
However, it’s no less true that as professional writer Redfern (like journalists Leslie Kean, Helene Cooper, or Ralph Blumenthal) has to pitch his articles and books and write them a certain way so that his publishers, in whatever media, will feel assured of sufficient clicks if not sales. His writing must be produced in a predetermined manner (German critical theorist Theodor Adorno would say “schematized”) ultimately out of his control for it to be accepted and published by those who own the means of (book) production and distribution, digital or otherwise. However meagre his wages, he still exchanges the product of his labour for money, an exchange that occurs under conditions not entirely of his choosing, but dictated by (what his publishers make of) the market.
Pasulka’s book, mentioned above, is another example. Diana Walsh Pasulka is a professional scholar, a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion. American Cosmic: UFOs, religion, technology (Oxford University Press, 2019) addresses a germane topic, the religious sentiments the UFO phenomenon inspires in the otherwise worldly and secular in confluence with their (equally religious) fascination with technology. No less impressively, she brings to bear Martin Heidegger‘s thinking on the essence of technology.
Pasulka’s promising study, however, underwent a thorough editing. As the author remarks, “it got edited about, oh, I don’t know, a million times and a lot of stuff taken out.” Whatever was academic or scholarly is shorn away, diction, argument, analysis, critique, even a bibliography or works cited. So, instead of a solid, potentially groundbreaking work (that would have sold likely all of hundreds of copies to fellow scholars and university libraries), Oxford University Press (for cryin’ out loud) published a book with a popular appeal, a kind of travelogue that creates a story within which moments of watered-down learning and reflection appear as rest stops, about as interesting and as deeply explored, which attained a much more profound market penetration. In a word, Pasulka’s labour had to subject to be schematized as a condition of its publication and distribution.
What is true for Redfern and Pasulka is true for the producers of UFO documentaries, whether History’s Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation or Jeremy Corbell’s 2018 Bob Lazar: Area 51 & Flying Saucers, which are both shaped (schematized) by the demands of being produced, distributed, and consumed in a social space determined by the profit motive (regardless of their ultimate, unforeseeable profitability…). One could easily extend this analysis to the dominance of the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis in UFO-themed entertainment…
Those obsessed with UFO fact (ufology), if they are motivated by the entrepreneurial spirit, like those behind To The Stars Academy, are very likely to have their dreams of untold lucre dashed. Those who aspire to be the next Chris Carter can at least harbour more realistic hopes. But, in either—and in every—case, where the producer (the writer) must sell their work to an owner of the means of production and distribution subject to the profit motive, that work must be revised and repackaged (schematized) to maximize sales as the very condition of its appearing in the world at all.
“…the Aliens gave us modern technology…”–a note to The Promethean Lure
June 9, 2019 ~ Bryan Sentes ~ 1 Comment
Despite my critique of a certain tendency in Jacques Vallée’s thinking about the place of the UFO phenomenon in human history, I do find his work consistently compelling and an endless source of inspiration, if only for my more creative work, on Orthoteny.
Synchronicity has recently tossed my way a tidbit relevant to my all-too-brief reflection on the Promethean aspect of the Extraterrestrial. Reading the latest installment of his Forbidden Science: Volume Four: Journals 1990-1999, The Spring Hill Chronicles, I found a pertinent entry, from Sunday 6 April 1997:
The point that irks me most in the ufology dogma is the absurd idea that the Aliens gave us modern technology: the often-heard notion that the transistor derived from Roswell is met with ridicule in Silicon Valley. Not only did the work of Bell Labs begin well before July 1947, but German inventor Oskar Heil had demonstrated a field-effect transistor on a lab bench in Germany in the early thirties. Heil is listed as owner of British patent 439-457, filed in 1934…. As early as June 1904 a device called the “Telemobiloskop” had been demonstrated.
It would, however, be an error to let the facts obscure the truth. The “UFO dogmatist” might reply that Heil was in communication with extraterrestrials through the Vril Society, or that the Telemobiloskop, too, was a crumb thrown us by the inventors of the Phantom Airships of 1896/7. More seriously, though, is the rich suggestiveness of the Promethean ET that runs throughout “the ufology dogma”, spontaneously generating a mythological image for the complex notion that German philosopher Martin Heidegger termed “the essence of technology” and that plays an important role in the religious reception of the UFO as D. W. Pasulka has tried to show in her American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, and Technology.
Ufology’s Steadystate
Working randomly toward another review for Jung’s Ufological Bookshelf, I came across the following passage from Edward J. Ruppelt’s The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects (1956): the
“will to see” [UFOs] may have deeper roots, almost religious implications, for some people. Consciously or unconsciously, they want UFOs to be real and to come from outer space. These individuals, frightened perhaps by threats of atomic destruction, or less fears—who knows what—act as if nothing that men can do can save the earth. Instead, they seek salvation from outer space, on the forlorn premise that flying saucer men, by their very existence, are wiser and more advanced than we. Such people may reason that race of men capable of interplanetary travel have lived well into, or through, an atomic age. They have survived and they can tell us the secret of their survival. (17)
Here, in a nutshell (as it were) Ruppelt plainly states many of the assumptions that guide beliefs about UFOs and extraterrestrials to this very day.
D. W. Pasulka’s recent American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology (2019) owes much of the splash it has made to her treating the fascination for the advanced technology the UFO-as-extraterrestrial-spacecraft represents as a religious phenomenon, yet, here, Ruppelt lays bare the “almost religious implications” the idea has. (And he is hardly the last: Festinger et al. published their classic study of a flying saucer cult When Prophecy Fails the same year as Ruppelt’s no-less-classic Report, Jung published the first, German edition of his Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies in 1958, and anthologies of articles exploring the religious dimension of UFOs and contact with their pilots have appeared since (e.g., The Gods Have Landed: New Religions from Other Worlds (ed. James R. Lewis, 1995), UFO Religions (ed. Christopher Partridge, 2003), and Alien Worlds: Social and Religious Dimensions of Extraterrestrial Contact (ed. Diana G. Tumminia, 2007)).
A famous (or infamous) intersection of American esoteric religious tendencies, the flying saucer, and anxiety over “threats of atomic destruction” are the Space Brothers of the Contactees. But Ruppelt’s point seems more complex. The Space Brothers, “wiser and more advanced than we”, land to warn us of the unknown dangers of atomic energy and weapons, yes. But, it is “by their very existence” that they “are wiser and more advanced than we” are. Here, he articulates a too-often unspoken assumption that “social and technical advancement” go hand in hand, a questionable thesis, as I’ve argued.
Even if we disentangle wisdom from technical ingenuity, Ruppelt observes a further belief, used today to justify the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and hopes that Disclosure will liberate world changing technologies, namely that “that race of men capable of interplanetary travel have lived well into, or through, an atomic age. They have survived and they can tell us the secret of their survival.” SETI researchers, like all who believe UFOs are extraterrestrial spaceships, project that trajectory of historical accidents that lead to the “advanced societies” of the earth onto the evolutionary vector of all life in the universe, as if all life universally follows a path from simplicity to complexity to human-like intelligence that as it grows in complexity necessarily develops a technology whose own development is always the same. That the hubristic anthropocentrism of this assumption persists unnoticed and unquestioned among so many of both casual and more dedicated or serious believers in extraterrestrial intelligence never ceases to appall me.
More gravely is how the UFO believers Ruppelt describes “act as if nothing that men can do can save the earth”, a sentiment echoed by German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s words twenty years after Ruppelt’s (quoted by Pasulka to end her book): “Only a god can save us.” Not twenty years after Heidegger’s words were finally published, Jacques Vallée in the Conclusion to his Revelations (1991) remarks the same situation and despairing response:
…Technology offers us some breakthroughs the best scientists of thirty years ago could not imagine. Better health, plentiful leisure, longer life, more varied pleasures are beckoning.
Yet the hopeful vistas come with a darker, more disquieting side. There is more danger, crime, environmental damage, misery, and hunger around us than ever before. It will take a superhuman effort to reconcile the glittering promises of technology with the utterly disheartening dilemma, the wretched reality, of human despair.
But wait! Perhaps there is such a superhuman agency, a magical and easy solution to our problems: those unidentified flying objects that people have glimpsed in increasing numbers since World War II may be ready to help…. (254)
The ironies of this despair are manifold. On the one hand, it is believed that technology alone can solve the problems its development has led to. On the other hand, these technological answers are not forthcoming from our technology. In either case, as Vallée worries, the desperate and credulous are subject to being manipulated by their belief that “only a god [or “that race of men capable of interplanetary travel”] can save us.”
What should be no less concerning for those interested in such matters is how these ideas Ruppelt describes over six decades ago persist in governing if not grounding what we imagine and think UFOs—and, more importantly, ourselves—to be.
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Home » Euro Games Technology
EGT (Euro Games Technology)
The famous Bulgarian company-producer Euro Games Technology (EGT) creates the gambling equipment. All its products, especially the software for online casinos, are appreciated because of high quality and originality. Its gambling machines are famous throughout the world and are popular among gamblers and partners of company.
EGT company started its work in 2002 & has reached a lot constantly improving own software by adding new solutions in the product. As a result, it has reached the status of great performer and found glory. As of today, its games work in 65 countries in the world and operators continue to purchase these games gladly.
Amongst the games of this company are several types of blackjack, online roulette (European & American), on-table games and various exciting video slots. Absolutely every gaming solution by this company is of high quality, trustworthiness and modernity.
The holding of the company occupies the territory of 12,000 square meters and 4 buildings, it has own storage houses, premises for expositions, restaurants and cafes.
The software by EGT company
The most peculiar feature of this software is its quality, because no matter how many products are installed on the gaming site and whatever exciting it was. But if it will not work without failures and in full power, it will not reach the success. EGT developer offers this software of the highest class of trustworthiness & security thanks to which the reels of slots revolve, as well as the roulette's wheel, because nothing would be working without software. Casino’s software that is produced by this company handles all this tasks outstandingly great. It allows to be integrated with various products, fine-tune them and launch them in work.
We must tell that the most popular games of this company are online slots that bring the most income to it & we will talk about them later. The collection of the gaming machines is regularly updated & the software for online casino that has the installed game package guarantees the automated update during the new launch.
In order to make the integration on the site without problems, EGT company specialists offer the especial system named Multigame Server. We must notice that the software for online casinos by this producer makes it possible to play in demo mode, in which a gambler has a chance just to have exercises before playing the real money.
Gambling machines by EGT
The gambling platform by this company offers its partners video slots for integration with sites of online casinos. These games are interesting, colorful, and performed on the very known topics. These slots are purchased by various operators throughout the world.
What differs gambling machines by EGT:
You can play them directly in your browser; however, there are games that may be downloaded.
Many themes & stories attract the newcomers and experienced gamblers.
Professionally performed graphics with high detalization of the elements.
Tremendous sound performance.
Comprehensible interface with flexibility of settings.
Slots have various profitable bonuses & cumulative jackpots.
Payment systems allow multi-currency option.
Platform supports several languages.
24/7 technical support guarantees its gamblers help in any time of the day.
The gamblers in chats & forums name dozens of exciting for them gambling machines including such as: Ocean Rush, Casino Mania, Keno Universe, Versailles Gold, Zodiac Wheel, Magellan.
All slots have mythical or fantastic stories, very interesting and literally get gamblers stick to the screen.
Something more about this gaming platform
Online platform by EGT offers wide collection of games for casinos, the huge quantity of gambling machines, and lots of other original products. Clients & partners try to purchase these products because the quality is approved by the international certificates.
For example, the Association of Gaming Equipment Manufacturers and the Bulgarian Chamber of Commerce & Industry has included Euro Games Technology company in the number of the associated members, which speaks about recognition of activity of this company & accordance to the high international standards.
EGT company’s representatives regularly visit all possible expositions and conferences when they provide the speeches and master classes about their work. Demonstrative zone of any exhibition have the new developments of this company & they conclude many contracts for cooperation. As has already been said, the projects of EGT work in casinos of 65 countries.
Reliability and Security of EGT
The company performs its activity absolutely official, including the activity at international markets, having all licenses on hands that have been received in various offshore zones. All the products without exclusion have the compliance certificates.
Such organizations as GLI & SIQ that are considered the most harsh control laboratories, have acknowledged the quality & trustworthiness of both games and every other product by this company, for example, payment systems that are offered together with this online casino.
In addition to that, the peculiarities of this online platform must be noticed, such as that guarantee of confidentiality and security to its partners & users.
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Tag: PlantWatch
What is taxonomy?
How can we determine which of the roses are which in the Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area and George Genereux Urban Regional Park forest communities?
What is taxonomy? Part 1 | Rosids Part 2 | genus Rosa Part 3
| Rose Species Part 4 | Rose reproduction Part 5 | Native Rose Plant Ethnobiology Part 6 | Bibliography
Prickly Rose (Rosa Acicularlis Lindl.) the Prairie Rose (Rosa arkansana) and Wood’s Rose, or Wild Rose (Rosa woodsii) are perhaps easiest to identify in mid-June when the pink blooms appear. These blooms last perhaps two weeks, giving way to the fruit or the red or reddish-orange rose hips, which again make this bush easy to identify. Whereas, all rose bushes have thorns, the Prickly Rose is abundant with weak thorns.
Rose in the Richard St Barbe Baker Afforestation Area
Native Rose Bush blooming in June
Prickly Rose (Rosa Acicularlis Lindl.) the Prairie Rose (Rosa arkansana) and Wood’s Rose, or Wild Rose (Rosa woodsii) all grow well across Saskatchewan, in the quaking aspen parkland, and also the grasslands as well as the northern boreal forests. This bush is often found where the soil has been made acidic due to the contributions of spruce or pine, and will grow in forests comprised of quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides), and cottonwood (Populous spp.) all of these trees making up both the afforestation areas – Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area and George Genereux Urban Regional Park forest communities.
The rose bush, will make its appearance in places where rodents or other animals disturb the soil, loosening up the soil which then receives the rose seed (achene) in an area conducive to growth. Or, in fact, these animals may also be disturbing the rhizomatous roots which are laying below the soil. Adventitious buds form on roots near the ground surface, on damaged stems (as on the stumps of cut rose shrubs), or on old roots. These roots develop into above-ground stems and leaves. A form of budding called suckering is the reproduction or regeneration of a plant by shoots that arise from an existing root system. The rose bushes do not tolerate a closed forest canopy as they are only moderately shade tolerant.
What is the difference between scientists?
A botanist is an expert in or student of the scientific study of plants, based on the Greek root botanikos, from botanē meaning plant, and -logy from French -logie or from Greek / medieval Latin -logia meaning the study or interest in a subject. A biologist is a scientist who focuses on living organisms, including plants and animals from Greek bios ‘life’ + -logy. A naturalist, on the other hand, is a person who studies or is an expert in natural history, especially a zoologist or botanist. Historically, if one lived back in the late 14th century, the Middle English word for a “natural philosopher or scientist” was naturien instead of naturalist.
A citizen scientist is anyone who aids in the collection and analysis of data relating to the natural world, and reports them to a collaborative project with professional scientists. Some wonderful ways to report data from the Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area and George Genereux Urban Regional Park forest ecosystems, would be for citizen scientists to make observations and send them off on their computers or by using phone apps. iNaturalist, ebird, Bird Studies Canada, EcoSpark, eButterfly, FrogWatch, PlantWatch, Project Noah, Project BudBurst, Nature’s Notebook, LeafSnap. The Native Plant Society of Saskatchewan has a Saskatchewan Master Naturalists program. The Saskatoon Nature Society conducts regular field trips to connect people and nature. Jane’s Walks and The Wild About Saskatoon Walks in the spring month of May introduce the visitor to both the afforestation areas – Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area and George Genereux Urban Regional Park forest communities.
PlantWatch The PlantWatch program enables citizen scientists to get involved by recording flowering times for selected plant species and reporting these dates to researchers, who work to identify ecological changes that may be affecting our environment. By reporting on the PlantWatch species found in your community, you can help researchers discover how common plants are responding to climate change and track where changes are taking place in Canada, and at what rate.
Project BudBurst Project BudBurst is an app to receive data on the timing of leafing and flowering of trees and flowers Project BudBurst also offers climate change and phenology materials and tools
LeafSnap The user of the LeafSnap App needs to extract the leaf and place it in a white background and then take a picture through the app to get the leaf identified automatically.
Reporting your findings on facebook, or social media, and using the hashtags #ScienceAroundMe., #RichardStBarbeBakerAfforestationArea, #GeorgeGenereuxUrbanRegionalPark, #Saskatoon, #YXEGreenStrategy are some excellent ways to track the eco-system out at the afforestation areas.
Botanists refer to a taxonomic key produced by a taxonomist when speaking in reports, publications or at conferences about plants.
Taxonomic Ranks, and Binomial Name Genus and Species
“Nature produces individuals, and nothing more. She produces them in such countless numbers that we are compelled to sort them into kinds in order that we may be able to carry them in our minds. This sorting is classification—taxonomy.” ~C.E. Bessey Though Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) may be regarded as the first ever naturalist, Theophrastus (371–287 B.C.), his pupil, is recognised as the father of Botany. However, the starting point for modern botanical nomenclature is Linnaeus’ Species Plantarum of 1753 which featured a key event as Linnaeus adopted the system of using binomial names for plant species. Binomial nomenclature is a two-naming system featuring the first part of the name – the generic name– identifying the genus to which the plant or organism belongs, while the second part – the specific name or specific epithet – continues on to identify the species. The classification of something, living things or organisms is the science called taxonomy. A taxonomist groups organisms into categories. A plant taxonomist may study the origins, and the relationships between different types of roses. Taxonomists may come up with their own system of plant taxonomy or “taxonomic system
Taxonomic Chart Blank
Figure 1 Complete the Taxonomic Ranks for the Saskatchewan Wild Rose Method 1 Use the given relationships below used by botanists Method 2 Create your own Taxonomy Chart, Taxonomic Section titles, and plant names.
In Saskatchewan roses have the same taxonomy through to the genus “Rosa.” Of all the taxonomic classifications, the clade ‘Rosids’ is the most challenging taxonomic category to describe.
Kingdom: Plantae. Plantae means plants, featuring multi-cellular living things with predominantly photosynthetic cells.
Rosales Classification taxonomy key according to the USDA
Clade: Angiosperms. Angiosperms are plants with fruit. Angiosperms are land plants which produce seeds within an enclosure such as a fruiting body. Angiosperms is derived from the Greek words angeion (“case” or “casing”) and sperma (“seed”).
Clade: Eudicot. Eudicots have two seed leaves which provide nutrients to the embroyo from the Greek words eu, well or good, dio two, and kotylidon seedlobe. Eudicot as a reference first proposed that there is a pair of leaves, or cotyledons, in the embryo of the seed. Currently the classification refers to angiosperms which are not monocots.
Clade: Rosids. Rosids have their own chapter: Rosids (Part 2).
Order: Rosales. Those rosids which are nitrogen fixing or those plants which belong to the nitrogen fixing order are given the name Rosales.
Family: Rosaceae. The subfamily of rosaceae is Rosoideae, those plants with rose hips. Rosoideae which are those genera bearing aggregate fruits that are made up of small achenes or drupelets, and often the fleshy part of the fruit is the receptacle or the stalk bearing the carpels (female reproductive organ of a flower, consisting of an ovary, a stigma, and usually a style). In taxonomy, that which separates the family Rosaceae from the order Rosales is that the plant ovaries and achenes (seeds) are hidden inside the round hypanthium.
Genus: Rosa. Two of the ways that the rosaceae family can be narrowed down to the genus Rosa are; if the plant features many pistils and prickly stems. chapter: genus Rosa (Part 3).
Species: R. Acicularlis Lindl., R. arkansana, R. woodsii
Biological Classification Chart
Figure 2 From the information above fill out the Biological classification Chart. What happened? Have there been changes in the Linnaean system? Why? For extra points, how many different kingdoms are there?
In the USDA classification
Kingdom Plantae refers to plants.
Sub-Kingdom Tracheobionta are vascular plants with lignified plant tissues (called vessels or trachea) for moving water and minerals around the plant.
Super-division Spermatophyta are seed plants. Seed plants are divided into two groups Gymnosperms and Angiosperms.
Division Magnoliophyta are flowering plants. Plants in Magnoliophyta were formerly classified as angiosperms.
Class Magnoliospida hold the dicot plants.
Sub-class Rosidae also called Rosid.
Order Rosales feature nitrogen fixing flowers with four or five petals and the blossoms are flat or cup-shaped. They also have fleshy fruit.
Activities and questions
Design, construct and evaluate the effectiveness of a taxonomic classification technique that demonstrates the scientific principles underlying the identification of plants and how to differentiate one plant from another.
Evaluate, compare (find the similarities) and contrast (find the differences) to weigh the effectiveness of more than one of the previously devised botanical classifications. Debate the issue with supporting arguments pro and con.
What type of background in the physical sciences would a botanist or a taxonomist require?
Are there any biologists, or naturalists in Saskatchewan?
For directions as to how to drive to “George Genereux” Urban Regional Park
For directions on how to drive to Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area
Blairmore Sector Plan Report; planning for the Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area, George Genereux Urban Regional Park and West Swale and areas around them inside of Saskatoon city limits
P4G Saskatoon North Partnership for Growth The P4G consists of the Cities of Saskatoon, Warman, and Martensville, the Town of Osler and the Rural Municipality of Corman Park; planning for areas around the afforestation area and West Swale outside of Saskatoon city limits
Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area is located in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada north of Cedar Villa Road, within city limits, in the furthest south west area of the city. 52° 06′ 106° 45′
Part SE 23-36-6 – Afforestation Area – 241 Township Road 362-A
Part SE 23-36-6 – SW Off-Leash Recreation Area (Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area ) – 355 Township Road 362-A
S ½ 22-36-6 Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area (West of SW OLRA) – 467 Township Road 362-A
NE 21-36-6 “George Genereux” Afforestation Area – 133 Range Road 3063
Wikimapia Map: type in Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area
Google Maps South West Off Leash area location pin at parking lot
Web page: https://stbarbebaker.wordpress.com
Where is the Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area? with map
Where is the George Genereux Urban Regional Park (Afforestation Area)? with map
Pinterest richardstbarbeb
Facebook Group Page: Users of the George Genereux Urban Regional Park
Facebook: StBarbeBaker
Facebook group page : Users of the St Barbe Baker Afforestation Area
Facebook: South West OLRA
Twitter: StBarbeBaker
You Tube Richard St. Barbe Baker Afforestation Area
You Tube George Genereux Urban Regional Park
Please help protect / enhance your afforestation areas, please contact the Friends of the Saskatoon Afforestation Areas Inc. (e-mail)
Support the afforestation areas with your donation or membership ($20.00/year). Please donate by paypal using the e-mail friendsafforestation AT gmail.com, or by using e-transfers Please and thank you! Your donation and membership is greatly appreciated. Members e-mail your contact information to be kept up to date!
Membership : $20.00 CAD – yearly
Membership with donation : $50.00 CAD
Membership with donation : $100.00 CAD
1./ Learn.
2./ Experience
3./ Do Something: ***
“St. Barbe’s unique capacity to pass on his enthusiasm to others. . . Many foresters all over the world found their vocations as a result of hearing ‘The Man of the Trees’ speak. I certainly did, but his impact has been much wider than that. Through his global lecture tours, St. Barbe has made millions of people aware of the importance of trees and forests to our planet.” Allan Grainger
“The science of forestry arose from the recognition of a universal need. It embodies the spirit of service to mankind in attempting to provide a means of supplying forever a necessity of life and, in addition, ministering to man’s aesthetic tastes and recreational interests. Besides, the spiritual side of human nature needs the refreshing inspiration which comes from trees and woodlands. If a nation saves its trees, the trees will save the nation. And nations as well as tribes may be brought together in this great movement, based on the ideal of beautifying the world by the cultivation of one of God’s loveliest creatures – the tree.” ~ Richard St. Barbe Baker.
“In the stillness of the mighty woods, man is made aware of the divine”
Richard St Barbe Baker
Author stbarbebakerPosted on June 21, 2019 September 8, 2019 Categories UncategorizedTags #GeorgeGenereuxUrbanRegionalPar, #RichardStBarbeBakerAfforestationArea, angiosperms, Aristotle, aspen parkland, biologist, botanist, bristles, citizen scientist, Clade, Ecosystem, Eudicot, flowers, George Genereux Urban REgional Park, habitat, June, June Rose, Kingdom, LeafSnap, leaves, Linnaeus, naturalist, Order, pink, Plantae, PlantWatch, Prairie Rose, prickly rose, Project BudBurst, rhizomatous roots, Richard St. Barbe Baker AFforestation ARea, Rosa, Rosa Acicularlis, Rosa arkansana, Rosa woodsii, Rosaceae, Rosales, Rosid, Rosoideae, Saskatchewan, scientist, soil, Taxonomic Ranks, Taxonomist, taxonomy, Theophrastus, thorns, Wild Rose, Wood's RoseLeave a comment on What is taxonomy?
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Posts tagged ‘Colin Firth’
Emily Blunt Becomes Legend in “Mary Poppins Returns”! Give That Girl an Oscar!
I have long admired the acting force that is British Actress Emily Blunt. She’s been on my TV show twice, once for “The Jane Austen Book Club.”where I interview her by satellite. She was in London where she said, “It was pissing down with rain.” Now that’s not something Mary Poppins would never EVER say. This is without a doubt the iconic role that is going to make her very, very famous and will define her career for the rest of her days. And maybe even win her a Best Actress Oscar.
She was just nominated for her”practically perfect in every way” British nanny that descends from the lovely, fog-covered London skies to save the Banks children once again. But this time they are all grown up and played remarkably sympathetically by the brilliant Ben Whishaw and the divinely demure Emily Mortimer. It is 1930 and they still live in the charming house on Cherry Tree Lane, but here’s where director Rob Marshall had a master stoke of genius. They are on the verge of being evicted.
So beneath the flaming Technicolor flim-flammery, there is a great core of sadness underlying “Mary Poppins Returns.” Emily Blunt’s Mary Poppins senses that there is real trouble brewing here and that only she can fix it. This gives the always startlingly original actress a role that she can really sink her teeth into, and probably will play for ever. If she wanted to. There is a real sense of pain and a core of sadness that is motivating her Poppins to do what she does best – Cheer every one up. She’s like a supernatural social worker.
Blunt plays her with a tinge of something akin to regret. She knows in her heart of hearts that she really CAN’T help the Banks’ in any practical way. Her magic only goes so far. Or does it? And Nannys DO have to leave, eventually. That’s where her sadness comes from. As much as she loves the Banks’, she inevitably knows there will be a moment to go to say “It’s time.”
Lin-Manuel Miranda is on hand, too, in the Dick Van Dyke role, as twere, as Mary’s comical side-kick. Here transmorgrofied in into a lamplighter. He seems wildly miscast here, but his British accent is better than Van Dyke’s (who is in THIS movie, too!)so I’ll give him a pass for bounce-ability.
Also on hand is a new character, Mary’s Blatvian cousin Topsy who tells them all she is “Turning Turtle” a show-stopper number that allows Streep to out-camp her Florence Foster Jenkins role .That’s camp for you. The greatest of all addictions. Once you touch even your little left toe into it, you can never get out of it.
If you can imagine such a thing. She does more bumps and grinds per minute than any one in film history. And if it was anyone but Meryl Streep doing it you would say “STOP!” “Too much!” With Meryl you say, “You just keep twerking it, girl..”
The charming composer/lyricists are straight from Broadway. Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman are so endlessly tuneful and prolific, it’s simply amazing. My favorite has to be “Trip a Little Light Fantastic” and “There’s No Where to Go But Up!” sung by Angela Lansbury. Yes, she’s in it, too. Even the background music is quite enchanting. And every now and then they slip a little touch of the original Sherman brothers classic score. Just a few notes, mind you, but it is enough to send one flying up and down memory lane, in the best possible way.
It’s a delight. It’s an epic and I think it’s going to be nominated for Best Picture and many, many below the line categories. Sandy Duncan’s costumes are heaven-on-earth, right down to Mary’s red shoe laces. And of course, the extraordinary Emily Blunt will be nominated for Best Actress. And she could win, too! This is a film that will melt the hearts of every hardened cynic in Hollywood. And you’ll end concluding that we all need a Mary Poppins in our lives.
“Mary Poppins” is not just a sequel. It’s a classic.
Musiical Comedy Director
Turning Turtle
Cher Saves “Mamma Mia 2,” but It’s Hard to Resist
When Cher, yes, CHER, enters in the Final Act of “Mamma Mia 2,” she saves the film, and yes, kicks it upstairs into Gay Heaven, or at any rate, Camp Heaven with a good, swift stilletto-heeled sureness, only a stage and screen legend like Cher could provide. Pow! All the dullness and wishy-washiness of her young co-stars vanished, and NOW we were in the midst of a glorious fun-filled summer musical romp. She was so good, I immediately re-wrote my mind’s middling review and began raving like a teenaged fan-girl. Which let’s face it, is a cheery place to be in these troubled times. I guess I ended up loving it, and wanting to see it again. No, really.
In spite of all good sense, I found myself totally abandoning myself to its epic silliness. And why not? I always loved ABBA as a guilty pleasure. Those original, now classic, tunes got me through some very dark times when I was a house-cleaner in London in the ’80s. I was trying to get my plays done and become a right, proper British actor in the grand tradition. And it was tough. But ABBA was so uplifting, it made me forget all the charring.
I was a “Super Trooper”, and now Cher is a Super Trooper, too. In fact, she climaxes this barely organized mish-mash with that song, as well as her much heralded “Fernando” duet. As she and Andy Garcia(yes, ANDY GARCIA!) tango and sing their hearts out, both Senior Citizens now, as fire-works explode behind them, like it was 1968. Or ’86. Or one of those years, or decades that Cher’s career spans and she’s still singing! She’s a goddess for the ages. And FINALLY makes up for Meryl Streep not being in this movie except as a ghost.
You see, “Mamma Mia 2: Here We Go Again” does not really have a center to it, until Cher appears at the end like the Deus Ex Machina that she is. “Here We Go Again” flips back and forth in time between two stories, both starring lovely young blondes, Amanda Seyfried and Downtown Abbey’s Lily James. They both have to carry half the film each.
It seems Meryl’s character has died a year before “Mamma Mia 2” starts and her cinematic daughter Sophie (Seyfried) has to carry on without her, trying to re-build her mother’s dream of a turning their Greek island into a perfect Aegean guest house. Meanwhile, the film flashes back in time to the ’70s, when Donna (Lily James) was a wild young thing cavorting all over the continent, shagging everybody in sight.
Thus explaining (or trying to) how three different men could have potentially been the father of the single Mom Meryl’s child. As played by a trio of young hunks, notably “War Horse”s Jeremy Irvine (who grows up to be Pierce Brosnan). They make the case quite clearly how and why the young Donna/Meryl couldn’t keep her hands off all of them, one after the other, in rapid succession.
I would say Josh Dylan, who is making his big screen debut here as the young yachtsman that one day would become Stellan Skarsgard, has the best chiseled bod. British actor Hugh Skinner, who plays the young Colin Firth, doesn’t really get enough foreshadowing that his character is in later life going to be gay. An interesting opportunity missed.
Though Firth does camp up a storm in his own reserved way as his grown up self, and Christine Baranski (and Julie Waters) are back supplying even more camp (as if this film needed it).Which goes to prove something I’ve always felt. There can never be too much of a muchness. Or too much camp. Camp makes you happy. And so will “Mamma Mia 2.”
And last but not least, the young British hunk of hunks Dominic Cooper is back again as Sky, Sophie (Seyfried)’s hotter than hot love interest, and absentee husband. Dominic was one of the many stars of my year’s Best Film of that year “My Week with Marilyn” playing Milton Green, Marilyn Monroe’s ex-lover and now exasperated agent. He was also one of the original “History Boys” on Broadway and in film, and has been on “The Stephen Holt Show” more times than just about any one else (in this movie). And he used to date Cher! He just told Stephen Colbert. So it must be true!
British, Broadway, Broadway Musicals, Camp, Comedy, Dance, Film, Gay, New York, Scandinavian, Summer, Summer movie, Swedish, Travel, women's rights
Mamma Mia 2
Milton Green
Super Trooper
Past Best Picture Oscar Winners I Adore (& Own & Re-Watch)
Now that’s it all over but the shouting (on Oscar night, this coming Sunday, Feb.28), I’ve been feeling a bit nostalgic about other films that have one Best Picture in the past and really won my heart. Some I’ve watched over and over and over again. Some I own. I love them so much I always want them to be with me or near at hand anyway to play at any time.
Lord of the Rings Part 3, Return of the King
Twelve Years a Slave
Awards, Books, British, Camp, Comedy, drama, Film, Film Festivals, Food, Foreign Films, French, Gay, New York, Oscar, Oscar Blogging, Oscars, television, Theater
Eating Scene
jean du jardin
Joyce Reman
Lord of the Rings Pt.3
Past Oscar Winners
Samwise Gamgee
Oscar Winner Eddie Redmayne to Next Play Transgender
Brand-new Oscar Winner Eddie Redmayne hurried right back to London after his Best Actor win on Sunday night to continue rehearsals for his new British film called “The Danish Girl.” And guess what? He’s playing the title role! Yes!
Directed by his ole pal and the man who named me “The Oscar Messenger” Tom Hooper, I can tell you from personal knowledge that Hooper is as dazzled by the Little Golden Guy and his army of Oscars as well say Harvey Weinstein. And me, too, of course. And now, Eddie, who also seems to have captured the Oscar Buzz Bug.
Lili Elbe, who Eddie is playing in “The Danish Girl” was the first ever male-to-female transgender person in 1930. Talk about transformative roles! Eddie is making a career of this. But if ever there was a role that “ticks all the boxes” as Colin Firth said to me when I told him HE was going to win the Oscar for “The King’s Speech.”(And he DID!) It’s Lile Elbe.
And Eddie is trying to lose a massive amount of weight, three stone, which is like 36 pounds to play Lile. That ticks another Oscar box right there.
And Tom Hooper, check (he always has his bar set Oscar-high). British, check. True Life story, check. Period (1930), check. Transformative performance, check.
And Eddie Redmayne, check. Hollywood’s new Golden Boy is going to be transforming himself into a Golden Girl, and guess what, I’m so sure he’s going to be back at the Oscars again next year. Or the year after that with “The Danish Girl.” And if Harvey Weinstein,who is the producer, check. He’s the Oscar Grandmaster, picks this one up, Eddie will be on his way to Oscar Number Two! You heard it here first! He’s the new Daniel Day Lewis! So I see multiple Oscars on his horizon. And it couldn’t happen to a nicer, more down-to-earth guy.
He was so surprised when Cate Blanchett announced his name, I’m sure he thought Michael Keaton or Bradley Cooper was going to win.He won’t be THAT surprised next time around.
You’re the King of the World, Eddie! And he’s also expecting his first child. When straight actors play gay(or transgender) they win. William Hurt, “Kiss of the Spider Woman”, anyone? Phillip Seymour Hoffman in “Capote”, anyone? Sean Penn as Harvey Milk in “MIlk”….
The precedent is set and the list goes on! Go, Eddie!
Awards, British, Camp, drama, Film, Film Festivals, Foreign Films, Gay, Oscar, Oscar Blogging, Oscars
Oscar Grandmaster
Brit Jack O’Connell Triumphs Over Miscasting in “Unbroken”
The young British actor Jack O’Connell’s biggest triumph over adversity in the torture porn epic “Unbroken” is making the audience believe he is an Italian American. Director Angelina Jolie WHAT were you thinking? I ask you. Does the above ^ picture look even remotely like an Italian? He looks Irish, if anything, and it turns out he is a through and through Brit.
So the audience has to suspend their disbelief for quite a large chunk of the early part of the movie that is receiving mixed critical reaction, and I think I know why. It’s the casting. Don’t tell me that Jolie couldn’t’ve had her pick of any of the young Italian stallions that abound States-side. But no, she has to go to England to cast this super-hot, young, working-class Brit with washboard abs. Angie, he’s CUTE, but not Italian at all! And to add insult to injury the SECOND lead in this film about WWII is played by Domhnall Gleeson, Brendan Gleeson’s son, who is IRISH!
So we’re supposed to believe that these two dive bombers who get stuck in a life-boat for 47 days, after their airplane gets shot out of the sky by the Japanese, are AMERICANS?!?
There seems to be something, well, broken about “Unbroken”, and I think it’s this. Both leads are NOT UNBELIEVABLY Americans!
As this overlong film wears on and on and on (are they NEVER to be rescued from that lifeboat?) I had to admit O’Connell, as he was beginning to suffer and starve, began to get to me.
And by the time the INCREDIBLY over-extended, over-done, over-heated second half of the film takes place in the several horrific Japanese prison camps that Louie Zamperini (yes, that’s his real name, and he was an Olympian track hero, and a real person, and 100% I.T.), O’Connell is suffering and suffering and getting punched in the face and hit and caned and starving, and being kicked and well, just about everything you can think of, and yes, it’s all true, you do begin to feel for O’Connell as an actor and how in the world did he ever endure all this, AS AN ACTOR?
This is the main problem with “Unbroken” I feel. It’s the casting and as good as O’Connell gets towards the end of the picture, you are always aware that it’s a PERFORMANCE. He doesn’t draw you in. You observe him. You admire his acting chops. When you should be feeling the tortures of the damned. Well, actually, you DO feel like you’re being tortured. I left with a headache, there was so much audience-torture going on. Who’s gonna sit through this? Masochists? Is there that big an audience for plain, unrelenting torture? In the end, he does survive, of course, to tell this tale of horror, but YOU, the viewer barely do. I left craving an Ibuprofen.
I don’t think the Academy is going to sit still for this at all, as they watch their screeners, (or should I say screamers?) of this true horror epic over the holidays.
Jolie’s work is really the great Roger Deakins’ work. The cinematography is picturesque in the classic Hollywood way, and it’s extremely beautiful. Even the torture scenes are perfectly lit and shot.
But Angelina Jolie in her sophomore directing stint, hired the cutest, hottest, masochistic young actor she could find. And he IS CUTE! Blue eyes, cheek bones, incredible physique. Jack O’Connell is clearly going to survive this debacle of a debut and go on to quite a healthy career, despite the pain and agony he has to endure in “Unbroken.”
The ones who are suffering the most are the poor audiences.There’s so much torture and so little uplift at the end, it’s really a cheat. Angelina just got fixated on the S&M of it all as Louie draws the sadistic attentions of the Japanese Prison Camp guard whom they call “The Bird”(rock singer Miyavi) hits him again and again and again.
Last year’s “The Railway Man” starring Colin Firth and an incredible Jeremy Irvine as the older and younger believably British Brit P.O.W.s in yet ANOTHER Japanese prisoner camp, were MUCH more effective, and the torture scenes were there, and were harrowing, (Irvine gets waterboarded!) Because they were a resonable length.
In “Unbroken,” the same scenes don’t work as well,because they go on for sooooo lonnnng. Same with “Bridge Over the River Kwai” the classic ’50s David Lean film this tries to emulate. Lean, who was a film editor, before he became a great director, knew when to yell “Cut!” Angelina Jolie does not.
So rent either “The Railway Man” and/or “River Kwai”, and you’ll have a much better time. “Unbroken” could break you.
Awards, Books, British, drama, Film, Gay, Oscar, Oscar Blogging, Oscars
Dombhall Gleason
Jeremy Irvine
Louie Zamperini
Railway Man
Colin Firth Strong, Emma Stone Weak in Woody’s (NO) “Magic in the Moonlight”
“I want MAGIC” screams Blanche du Bois in Tennessee Williams classic “Streetcar Named Desire”. And I was screaming “I want magic, too!” As Woody Allen’s latest “Magic in the Moonlight” unspooled before me and I didn’t laugh once.
It LOOKS Magical. The cinematography of Darius Khondji is simply swoon-worthy. The Riviera never looked so lovely! Truly! But aside from a very, very strong performance by Colin Firth, it’s not much fun. Although Eileen Atkins as his sensible aunt (they’re both British of course) is also very good. But this film that looks like it should be a comedy, is simply not funny at all.
Firth has the challenge of getting up in yellow-face and being a stage magician named Wei Ling-Soo, who makes elephants disappear and saws ladies in half, and is an extremely pessimistic curmudgeon. He spews venom constantly throughout the film in all directions, which is arresting, but not funny. Unlike the other recent magician in an Allen film, the great Splendini, in “Scoop” who Allen played himself. “Scoop” was set in London with Scarlett Johansonn in the female lead, a role Emma Stone essays so poorly here. “Scoop” was funny and good-natured as “Magic in the Moonlight” is bitter and grim. Good qualities in a drama, like “Blue Jasmine” but not is a half-baked pseudo-farce.
How can this much heightened sarcasm be not funny in a Woody Allen film? Well, for one thing his character seems an utter realist, if not a downright atheistic. Yes, that’s right. This is a film that is about atheism. Or a comedy about atheism. WTF? It’s seems like it should be by Ayn Rand and black and white and set in the ’40s.
Not the glamorous 1920s, a period Allen returns to again and again. And he’s done it better. I just watched “Midnight in Paris” for the umpteenth time last night and it delighted and chilled me all over again. I actually got goose bumps from it and from Mlle. Marion Cotillard’s superb performance.
And there were actually French people in it. And they spoke French! Imagine that! In “Magic in the Moonlight” we have the beautiful French countryside, but no French people are in it. At All.
And Emma Stone is very, very weak in this. As a supposed psychic, she’s a little spacey, a little kookie. Her red-hair flies beautifully in the wind. She has lovely large eyes, but Woody seems to have a problem with her overly large forehead which is covered up throughout much of the movie by her own bangs, which is fine and series of tam o’shanters, head-bands and hats with extremely low brows, which would look fine on Marion Cotillard, but on Stone they make her look odd. She is photographed soooo well in fact, she looked liked she’s acting, but she isn’t. The cinematography and costumes were acting FOR her.
I didn’t ever think I would miss Scarlett Johansonn, but in this film, I did. Stone is really out of her depth here, and she shouldn’t be.
I just attended a press conference for this film with Emma Stone notably absent. And Colin Firth when asked about working with her, just skipped the question entirely. “My Best Day?” he was asked, ” I guess the scene in the planetarium at night. I was wet. And I felt wet, so that was good.”
Unfortunately, it’s (no) “Magic in the Moonlight” that is all wet. Sadly.
Every OTHER film of Woody’s recently has been terrific. “Midnight in Paris” was a masterpiece. “To Rome, with Love” was a dud. “Blue Jasmine” won Cate Blanchett an Oscar for Best Actress, and so we were due for another disappointment, and unfortunately, we got it.
I can’t wait for the next one, however. That’ll be good again.
Woody did a press conference in New York today. He NEVER does that. I sensed Flop Sweat and I was right. But Colin saved the day, and Jacqui Weaver was buoyant, too.
Woody said “Life is meaningless.” And he meant it. And then added “Now that I’ve depressed you thoroughly, have a nice weekend.”
British, Camp, Comedy, drama, Film, French, Gay, New York, Oscar, Oscar Blogging, Summer, Summer movie, Travel
Spritualism
The Great Splendini
Jeremy Irvine via Satellite for “The Railway Man”
Stephen Holt talks to Jeremy Irvine about his co-starring role in the new film “Railway Man.” Jeremy, you may remember as the young boy whose horse is “The War Horse” in Steven Spielberg’s film, which was his film debut. Jeremy also discusses his life-long struggle with Diabetes and also the torture involved in enacting the torture scenes in “Railway Man” where he was waterboarded. They also discuss his moving enactment of Charlie Chaplin’s iconic speech in “The Dictator” which you can see on You Tube.
Editing by Kevin Teller
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The Double Life of RAF
Alexei Morozov
Medical Oncology Fellowship Program, Department of Medicine, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY 10065, USA. E-mail: morozova{at}mskcc.org
Science Translational Medicine 03 Mar 2010:
Last week, BRAF was the darling of cyberspace. Among the New York Times most–e-mailed articles was Amy Harmon’s three-part series on the personalized treatment of melanoma with inhibitors of a mutated form of this protooncogene product. At the same time, the journal Nature posted an Advance Online Publication by Neal Rosen and colleagues that added yet another layer of complexity to the mechanism(s) of action of RAF inhibitors.
A serine-threonine protein kinase, BRAF is an important component of the RAS/RAF/MEK/ERK cell-signaling pathway, which mediates cell-growth signals and is aberrantly activated in a variety of solid tumors through mutations in either the RAS or RAF genes (but not both). The RAF family proteins are downstream of RAS in the signaling pathway, and RAS activates RAF by promoting its dimerization. Early RAF inhibitors such as sorafenib interfere in a competitive manner with wild-type RAF’s ability to bind adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is required for RAF’s protein kinase activity. However, when a recurrent BRAF-activating mutation (V600E) was identified in melanoma and other cancers, scientists developed a new class of drugs that specifically inhibits the mutated version of BRAF. This attempt to minimize the effect of BRAF inhibitors on normal cells has yielded the promising yet complex results obtained with the drug PLX4032 and chronicled in Harmon’s articles.
In the new work, researchers show that all RAF inhibitors, whether mutant-selective or not, activate rather than inhibit the RAS/RAF/MEK/ERK pathway in BRAF wild-type cells at low doses. This pathway activation required the presence of CRAF, which normally forms homodimers or heterodimers with BRAF upon RAS activation. The inhibitor appears to bind directly to CRAF and yet stimulates its kinase activity. To explain this remarkable paradox, the investigators propose the following model: Within a CRAF/CRAF (or CRAF/BRAF) dimer, binding of the inhibitor to one partner leads to activation of the other. Of course, the active site of one partner in the dimer must be free of inhibitor, which explains why the activating effect is seen only at low drug concentrations. RAS activation is also required to promote dimerization of RAF.
To test their model, the researchers turned to another RAF inhibitor called JAB, which binds RAF only when a “designer mutation” is introduced that allows JAB access to the active site. Like the other RAF inhibitors, JAB activated the signaling pathway downstream of RAF. The authors then added another mutation that incapacitated the active site, and JAB had no effect. However, when wild-type CRAF (which does not bind JAB) was mixed in with the JAB-binding, kinase-dead CRAF, JAB again became a pathway activator. This observation provides elegant proof that one RAF partner binds the inhibitor, whereas the other activates the pathway. In tumors carrying the BRAF (V600E) mutations, RAS is not activated because RAS and RAF mutations tend to be mutually exclusive. Thus, in cells with RAF mutations the inhibitors do not cause the paradoxical activation because RAF does not undergo dimerization. This explains the remarkable clinical activity of PLX4032 in BRAF-mutant cancers. It remains to be seen whether circumstances exist in certain cancer patients that permit this paradoxical activation of the RAS/RAF/MEK/ERK pathway by RAF inhibitors to occur.
P. I. Poulikakos et al., RAF inhibitors transactivate RAF dimers and ERK signalling in cells with wild-type BRAF.Nature 13 February 2010 (doi: 10.1038/nature08902). [Abstract]
You are going to email the following The Double Life of RAF
By Alexei Morozov
Science Translational Medicine 03 Mar 2010 : 21ec35
Drugs that inhibit RAF kinase in cancer cells show success in the clinic. But how exactly do they work?
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To provide quality compassionate surgical care to those in underserved countries at no cost while being an educational and practical resource for the local health care team and community.
Surgical Volunteers International was formed in 2007 by Tom Flood and since then, we have completed 56 surgical missions treating over 2500 people, most of whom are children, with various conditions such clefts, burns, and urological and gynecological problems. We offer surgical treatments worldwide in countries such as Egypt, Vietnam, Guatemala, Colombia, Morocco, and India . We make safety a high priority while delivering quality, effective care.
"My first surgical mission was in 1999 in Hanoi Vietnam, and since then, I’ve been hooked. At that point, I had been working in the operating room for 23 years and had served in the armed forces for a number of years, but nothing quite compares to doing a mission and knowing that you have contributed to changing a life. I went on to volunteer in several other nonprofits, and in 2007, I started Surgical Volunteers International. I find the work to be satisfying, rewarding, and very enjoyable. My hope is that Surgical Volunteers International will continue to positively change lives around the world."
- Tom Flood
Provide quality surgical care at no cost in underserved countries.
Partner with local orphanages through Operation Backpack to provide backpacks and school supplies.
Recruit highly skilled surgical and medical professionals.
Improve community healthcare through dental services and preventive initiatives.
Provide training and education to the local medical staff, health care providers, and community members.
Develop long term partnerships in hosts countries to provide continuity of care.
Partner with organizations and businesses to bring surgical supplies and equipment to the mission sites.
Maximize donation dollars through effective fiscal management and elimination of administrative costs.
Smiles Transformed
Tom Flood, RNFounder of Surgical Volunteers International
Nancy FloodFounding Member
Jamal BullocksMD, FACS
Chief Medical Director
Julie NguyenAPRN, CPNP
Kim VuLMSW, MBA
Nina NguyenMSN, CRNA
Director of Anesthesiology
Vivian RingoMS, RN, CNOR
Director of Clinical Operations
Cara DowneyMD, FACS
Executive Medical Director
John VargheseSenior Consultant/Partner
Let Them Smile Again
What Our Volunteers Say
"While I have participated in volunteer-based surgical trips for over 25 years, I only began working with Surgical Volunteers International in 2007. Since then, I have participated in 6 trips in Morocco, Vietnam, Haiti and Egypt. Each trip has been wonderful thanks to both SVI and the local teams in the hospitals with which we partner. Under Tom Flood's leadership, every surgery and interaction with the local population was extremely meaningful. More importantly, we were given an opportunity to create a lasting impact by teaching doctors new skills and methods. Tom has always gathered the best team members for optimal collaboration. It has been an honor to have been a part of SVI for over a decade."
Azita Madjidi
MD, MS, FACS. Plastic Surgery
"The opportunity to volunteer as a physician with SVI has been life-changing for me. It has opened my eyes to other cultures in parts of the world that most people never have a chance to visit, let alone make a significant impact in the lives of individuals in third world countries.
What I have learned from SVI trips is that when we work together to heal and to teach in other countries we bridge the divides between nations and cultures. We are a team with a common goal to improve the lives of those we care for."
Christina Seeburger
MD. Anesthesiologist
"Surgical Volunteers International has provided me with a platform that has allowed me to reach beyond my boundaries. They have afforded me with the opportunity to participate in volunteer work around the globe which has given me the chance to grow; emotionally, professionally and spiritually.
SVI has allowed me to contribute to a cause that is very dear to my heart, the chance to help improve the quality of life of others. Even the smallest of actions can reap huge rewards. Seeing the smile on children’s faces and the gratitude in their parent’s eyes has forever made an impact on my life. I once had a person ask me if I thought it really made a difference and my answer was; to that person it has, to their family, their loved ones, and their community. It has shown that love, hope and kindness can cross boundaries; physical, cultural and religious.
The benefits of volunteer work are multi-faceted. The sense of community one gets from volunteering with SVI is wonderful. Not only have I had a chance to meet wonderful people in other countries with like-minded goals, I have had the opportunity to enhance my network at home. Thank you SVI for giving me the opportunity to be a part of your amazing team. I look forward to many more life changing experiences in the years to come."
Tracey Ryersee
"I got involved with SVI through my wife, Young Kim, a nurse-anesthetist at New York Presbyterian Hospital. LSometimes the facility would be pretty good and sometimes primitive. In Kerala I worked in a tiny crowded room in ungodly heat, sweating into the patient’s face, restarting the compressor every 10 minutes as it shut down from the heat. Each year in Punata, Bolivia, I would have a new group of recent dental graduates to work with and teach. The first year I had a young lady Peace Corps volunteer as my translator. The second year she wasn’t there and I was struggling. Then I met a young Bolivian dentist who said, “give me a list of the words you need to know.” I wrote down about 75 dental words and she translated each into Spanish. “Learn these tonight,” she said. In Guatemala City, our coordinator heard I was a dentist and asked Tom if she could borrow me. Sure, said Tom, take him. So each morning this woman and I would travel 45 minutes to the neighboring city where I was to work on young, unschooled street kids who the coordinator was educating. In Karsog, India, on our way from the hospital to the hotel, we would buy a big bag of okra or string beans for a quarter and ask the young chefs at the hotel to cook it for dinner. In Ho Chi Minh City I worked at The Maple Clinic treating orphans or journeyed into the countryside to treat abandoned and handicapped children. SVI has provided me with enough adventure and memories for a lifetime."
Michael Seitz
To become a volunteer fill out an application form.
Receive updates and latest news on our missions, volunteer opportunities, and our progress towards reaching donation goals. Simply enter your email below.
Help us to rebuild lives. Your donation will help to give them a life filled with hope and possibilities.
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Executive Order 477
MALACAÑANG
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE PHILIPPINES
EXECUTIVE ORDER NO.477
AMENDING EXECUTIVE ORDER NO. 418, SERIES OF 2005, ENTITLED "MODIFYING THE TARIFF NOMENCLATURE AND RATES OF IMPORT DUTY ON USED MOTOR VEHICLES UNDER SECTION 104 OF THE TARIFF AND CUSTOMS CODE OF 1978 (PRESIDENTIAL DECREE NO. 1464, AS AMENDED)"
WHEREAS, Executive Order No. 418 dated 04 April 2005 was issued to mitigate the impact of used vehicle trading on air quality and road safety through the imposition of additional specific duty of PhP 500,000.00 on the importation of used motor vehicles falling under Headings 87.02, 87.03 and 87.04;
WHEREAS, Section 1 of the Executive Order 418 specifically provides for the exemption of trucks, buses and special purpose vehicles which fall under Headings 87.02, 87.04 and 87.05 from the application of the additional specific duty;
WHEREAS, Article 2, Section 3.1 of Executive Order No. 156 dated December 12, 2002 prohibits the importation of all used motor vehicles into the country inclusive of the Freeport, except for certain used motor vehicles specifically listed under the same Section;
WHEREAS, the intended product coverage of Executive Order No. 418 does not include used motor vehicles specifically listed under Article 2, Section 3.1 of Executive Order No. 156 and classified as exempt from the import prohibition on used motor vehicles;
WHEREAS, it is necessary to amend Executive Order No. 418 to reflect the intended product coverage of the imposition of additional specific duty on used motor vehicle importation.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, GLORIA MACAPAGAL ARROYO, President of the Philippines, pursuant to the powers vested in me under Section 401 of the Tariff and Customs Code of 1978, as amended, do hereby order:
SECTION 1. Section 1 of Executive Order No. 418 is hereby amended to read as follows:
"SECTION 1. The articles specifically listed in Annex "A" hereof, as classified under Section 104 of the Tariff and Customs Code of 1978, as amended, shall be subject to the rates of import duty indicated opposite each article, except for trucks, buses and special purpose vehicles, motor vehicles under the "No Dollar Importation Program" and motor vehicles authorized for importation by the Department of Foreign Affairs intended for use by officials of the Diplomatic Corps whose rate of duty will be the ad valorem rate only.
SECTION 2. The nomenclature and the rates of import duty on tariff headings not enumerated and those listed but represented by the symbol "X X X" shall remain in force and in effect.
SECTION 3. Upon the effectivity of this Executive Order, the articles listed in Annex "A" hereof, which are entered and withdrawn from warehouses in the Philippines for consumption shall be levied the Most Favored Nation (MFN) rates herein prescribed.
SECTION 4. This Executive Order shall take effect thirty (30) days immediately following its publication in two (2) newspapers of general circulation.
Done in the City of Manila, Philippines, this 19th day of December in the year of Our Lord, Two Thousand and Five.
By the President:
EDUARDO R. ERMITA
Appointment of Dr. Marissa Maricosa A. Paderon to TC Collegial Body
TC warmly welcomes Commissioner Marissa Maricosa A. Paderon whose appointment completes the TC Collegial Body currently composed of Chairperson Marilou P. Mendoza and Commissioner Ernesto L. Albano.
Commissioner Paderon previously served with TC from 1987 to 1997, rising from the ranks to Supervising Tariff Specialist of the International Trade Branch. Subsequently, she worked at the Ateneo De Manila University (ADMU) as Director of the European Studies Program and as Assistant Professor of the Department of Economics.
Commissioner Paderon obtained her undergraduate degree from the University of the Philippines-Los Baños and her master's and doctorate degrees, in Economics, from ADMU.
Commissioner Paderon took her oath of office on 03 December 2019 (at Malacañang Palace) and on 05 December 2019 (in TC).
ONGOING INVESTIGATIONS
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Expiry Review of the Definitive Anti-Dumping Duty on Imports of Wheat Flour from the Republic of Turkey (Investigation No. AD-2019-ER-WheatFlourTR)
Please see the following Notices / References:
Notice of Postponement of Public Hearing issued on 21 November 2019
Commission Order issued on 12 September 2019
Notice of Initiation of Expiry Review and Conduct of Preliminary Conference issued on 29 August 2019
Notice of the Impending Expiry of the Effectivity of the Definitive Anti-Dumping Duty issued on 20 February 2019
Formal Investigation of Safeguard Measure Case on Float Glass (Investigation No. SG-2019-OC-Float Glass)
Notice of Postponement of Public Hearing issued on 9 October 2019
Commission Order issued on 16 August 2019
Notice of Formal Investigation and Preliminary Conference issued on 05 August 2019
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Investigation on Petition for Tariff Modification on Frozen Potato Fries (AHTN 2017 subheading 2004.10.00) (Investigation No. MFN-2019-Frozen Potato Fries)
Notice on the Conduct of Investigation issued on 24 October 2019
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TC IS ISO 9001-2015 CERTIFIED
Having met the requirements of ISO 9001:2015, the Management System of the Commission on the issuance of Advance Ruling on Tariff Classification under Section 1100 of the CMTA, including the Support Processes, was registered on 02 December 2018. The Commission successfully completed the annual surveillance audit on 25 October 2019 and received its Attestation for Continued Certification on 26 November 2019.
Please see Certificates.
PRC ACCREDITS TC AS CPD PROVIDER
As an accredited Professional Regulation Commission (PRC)-Continuing Professional Development (CPD) provider for Licensed Customs Brokers (LCBs), the Tariff Commission successfully conducted its first-ever “Seminar on Tariffs, Tariff Classification, International Trade and Trade Remedies”. Convened on 28 June 2019 at the Tariff Commission Conference Room, said Seminar was well-attended by LCBs, trade practitioners, and lawyers, among others.
The Commission’s continuing education program is intended as proactive assistance to LCBs and industry practitioners in raising/maintaining their competence in accordance with international standards of practice, hence helping ensure their greater overall contribution to uplifting the general welfare, economic growth, and development of the Philippines.
Please watch this space for the schedule of future Seminars.
Please see TC’s Certificate of Accreditation.
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Review of Jonathan Wells’s NewBook Zombie Science (Part 2)
Dan Reynolds PhD
This is Part 2 of a two-part series on Konathan Wells's new book Zombie Science. 1 Wells is a noted intelligent design (ID) advocate and author of the influential book Icons of Evolution. 2 Most of Part 1 was dedicated to reviewing the original Icons. 3 Here in Part 2, several new icons of evolution will be discussed such as whale evolution, the human appendix, human “tails,” “junk” DNA, the “poor” design of the human eye, antibiotic resistance, and cancer. Other topics such as the impact of evolutionary thinking on education, medicine, social mores, human dignity, and science itself will be touched upon. As before, this review will explore the more important points brought out in the book, chapter by chapter. Wells, who has his doctorate in molecular and cell biology, is a good writer with a keen command of his subject. He writes clearly and concisely with penetrating insight and a sense of humor.
Chapter 5: Walking Whales
Figure 2: Alleged evolutionary whale series 1 (p. 101) 4
Evolutionists believe they have found a nearly complete fossil sequence for the evolution of modern whales from a land-based mammal called Pakicetus (52 mya, Fig. 2), but there are many problems (Table 1). As with fossils of alleged human ancestors, sometimes the fossil evidence in the “whale series” is partial and fragmentary with key diagnostic pieces missing. Nevertheless, evolutionary scientists are often quick to assume evolutionary relationships and fill in the gaps of fossil evidence with their imaginations. Such was the case with Pakicetus. The first fossil evidence consisted of a partial skull only. Nevertheless, drawings of Pakicetus included flippers, a blowhole, eyes on the side of the head (like modern whales), etc. Later fossil discoveries showed there was no blowhole, no flippers, and the eyes were positioned in front like most land animals. Also, an ear bone called sigmoid process, thought to be diagnostic of relatedness to whales, was found in Pakicetus.
But it is now known the sigmoid process in Pakicetus is dissimilar to the same bone in whales. 5 Also, the involucrum, another ear bone once thought to be unique to whales and present in Pakicetus, has now been found in other land animals (e.g. Indohyus), so it can no longer be considered diagnostic of whales. So there is now no compelling fossil evidence that Pakicetus was anything but a land animal with no obvious relationship to whales.
Table 1: Fossils of whales and their alleged ancestors
Species (in order of appearance in fossil record - top most recent)
Dwells on land, sea or amphibious
Fossil Remains
Extant or extinct
Involucrum
Modern whales sea Complete skeleton 49 mya to present Extant and extinct yes 30-80 ft long Tail fluke, flippers, blowhole, eyes on side of head in line with teeth, echolocation
Basilosaurus sea Same time as Dorudon 40 mya Extinct yes 65 ft long Teeth not whale like; nostrils not on top
Dorudon sea Same time as Basilosaurus 40 mya Extinct yes 16 ft long, giant fresh water otter -
Rodhocetus amphibious Incomplete 42-48 mya Extinct yes No flippers, had hoofed toes, no evidence for long tail, probably no fluked tail
Kutchicetus amphibious Incomplete; smaller than Maiacetus and Ambulocetus 42-48 mya Extinct yes Long snouted crocodile -
Maiacetus amphibious Incomplete 42-48 mya Extinct yes Size of a giant freshwater otter
Ambulocetus amphibious? Incomplete, fragmentary 50 mya Extinct Not whale-like 7 ft long no blowhole, had long neck like land animals, eye socket above teeth unlike whales
Pakicetus land Almost complete; initially only a skull from which an aquatic animal with flippers, a blowhole, and eyes on the side of the head was conjectured, now debunked 52 mya Extinct Plate-like and similar to other land animals Size of a wolf Fossils buried with land animals, had hoofs, no flippers, no blow-hole, eyes on top - not side
Other problems for the Pakicetus-to-whale evolutionary story include (1) the short time 6 (< 10 million years) available to transform a land mammal into a whale, (2) the fact that some of the organisms in Table 1 lived at the same time (e.g., Basilosaurus and Durodon), (3) that the oldest known fully aquatic whales were contemporaries of Ambulocetus, 7 (4) that the alleged vestigial hind legs of whales facilitate reproduction and are different in males and females, (5) the lack of an intermediate between Rodhocetus and Durodon, (6) whales are most similar to the hippopotamus genetically out of all extant land animals, but the earliest known hippos are only 15 million years old, etc.
The changes required to evolve a land mammal into a whale are numerous: legs into flippers and tail fluke, nose into a blowhole, eyes in front above teeth to eyes on the side in line with teeth, relocation of testicles to inside of the body, development of a counter-current cooling system to keep testicles cool for sperm production, and the development of echolocation in some species—just to name a few. Wells conservatively estimates the evolution of a land mammal into a whale would require thousands of specific beneficial coordinated genetic mutations in only a few million years at most. Richard Sternberg, an evolutionary biologist with two doctorates, says this would be impossible given our current understanding of population genetics. 8
Chapter 6: The Human Appendix and Other So-called Junk
Darwin claimed that there were several vestigial organs in humans, the appendix being one. He claimed that these organs served little or no purpose and were the remnants of once-functional organs inherited from evolutionary ancestors. Since vestigial organs were essentially useless; they could not have been designed but must have been the result of some random process. However, all the so-called vestigial organs are now known to have function, so the design argument is back on the table. For example, it is known that the human appendix helps fight infections and is a safe haven for beneficial bacteria, which are released into the gut after a bout of diarrhea. Those who believe in evolution say a functional organ can still be considered vestigial so long as it no longer provides the function it had in an evolutionary ancestor. But this is circular reasoning since it assumes evolution is true, the very claim that vestigial organs are supposed to be evidence for; it is merely an inference to homology.
Already mentioned are the “vestigial” hind legs of whales that are now known to aid in reproduction.
Then there is the evidence of so-called human “tails.” During human embryological development, the spinal column extends beyond the rest of the body. But when development is complete, the “tail” is gone and is replaced with a triangular bone called the coccyx. The coccyx was thought to be the remnant of a tail inherited from evolutionary ancestors. But the coccyx is an attachment point of several muscles, tendons, and ligaments. Some small projections seen at the base of the spine in some babies consist of skin, fat, blood vessels, but no bone or vertebrae. The projection can occur in other places where there is a spinal cord defect. Hence there is no vestigial tail and the coccyx has function.
Then there was the icon of “junk DNA.” Only a small percentage of human DNA codes for proteins. It was assumed the remainder of the DNA (~97%) was useless “fossil” (vestigial) DNA inherited from evolutionary ancestors. Many evolutionists such as Richard Dawkins said the existence of junk DNA disproved ID because a creator would never make useless DNA. Moreover, they claimed that the only reason DNA sequences in different animals were similar could thus only be common ancestry. But in 2012, the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) Project published numerous reports in the journals Nature and Genome Research. ENCODE had examined about 1% of noncoding human DNA, randomly selected, for activity. They found that at least 80% of the noncoding DNA was transcribed into RNA, suggesting function. They also discovered that both strands of DNA were transcribed. Since then, many functions have been found for noncoding DNA including regulation of embryological development, regulation of the three-dimensional structure of chromosomes, control of fat metabolism, maintenance and function of the immune system, proper functioning of stem cells, development of nerve cells, development of muscles, development of bone cells, and many others.
Evolution requires nonfunctional junk DNA to “tinker” with. Otherwise mutations would have to be made to functional DNA, which would most likely result in DNA degradation instead of innovation. Assuming all mammals have a common ancestor, evolutionists claim only 10% of DNA has been conserved (kept by natural selection) implying the remaining 90% may not have added survival value. The ENCODE evidence stands contrary to this claim.
Chapter 7: The Human Eye
Figure 3a: The human eye
Then there is the icon of human eye evolution. Presumably, the human eye evolved from an ancestral sequence of organisms starting with an eye spot, then a compound eye, then a pinhole eye, and finally to the human camera eye. Evolutionists had pointed out that what they considered flaws in the construction of the human eye: blind spots and an inverted retina where the rods and cones (light-detecting cells) were facing away from the direction of light input and behind other structures potentially impairing light transmission (Figs. 3a and 3b).
Figure 3b: The human eye Image source: https://webvision.med.utah.edu/book/part-i-foundations/simple-anatomy-of-the-retina/. Use for non-commercial purposes is allowed: https://webvision.med.utah.edu/aboutfaq/
According to evolutionists, this design hindered optimum function and therefore could not have been the product of ID. But as it turns out, their assessment was grounded in ignorance. Subsequent studies have revealed the existence of Müller cells (light grey cells in Fig. 3B; Fig. 4), cells that extend from the nerve fiber layer all the way to the rods and cones. Müller cells function as optical fibers which faithfully transmit light with little scatter. Moreover, this design of the eye places the rods and cones near the blood supply, facilitating efficient delivery of nutrients and removal of toxic waste products. Also, our blind spots are unique to each eye: the blind spot of the left eye is covered in the field of view of the right eye and vice versa. So the human eye is not poorly designed after all.
Figure 4: Müller cells Image source: https://webvision.med.utah.edu/book/part-i-foundations/simple-anatomy-of-the-retina/; Use for non-commercial purposes is allowed: https://webvision.med.utah.edu/aboutfaq/
The same types of eyes appear in various phyla. For example, humans and Cephalopods (octopus and squid) have camera eyes. Evolutionists invoke convergent evolution 9 to explain how the similar eyes could exist in organisms whose last common ancestor did not have the organ. In other words, they believe random variations acted upon by natural selection produced the same organ multiple times independently, yet they criticize creationists for believing in miracles!
The fossil record in the Cambrian shows organisms that had compound eyes and even camera eyes in some vertebrates. Hence complex eyes are found at the base of the fossil record. There is no evidence for eyes before the Cambrian. So the evolutionary story that eyespots evolved into compound eyes, that evolved into pinhole eyes, that evolved into camera eyes is not supported by the fossil evidence.
Wells says that the cascade of chemical reactions initiated by light and resulting in a nerve impulse is irreducibly complex; if any of the chemicals are missing, there is no sight.
Chapter 8: Antibiotic Resistance and Cancer
Wells says antibiotic resistance has become an icon of evolution. Antibiotic resistance is a good example of microevolution, but not macroevolution. Evolutionists say medical doctors need to be proficient in evolutionary biology to be more effective in medicine, but macroevolution has nothing to do with antibiotic resistance. Many diseases have been cured without anyone thinking in evolutionary terms, polio and smallpox for example. Antibiotics such as penicillin, streptomycin, and tetracycline were developed without evolutionary thinking. Indeed, most leading researchers in the field have explicitly denied that evolutionary thinking had anything to do with their discoveries.
Antibiotic resistance occurs when a mutant in a population of bacteria is immune to the antibiotic. Then, in the presence of the antibiotic, the mutant eventually takes over the population. For example, some bacteria are immune to penicillin. They have a beta-lactamase enzyme complex (BLEC) that is able to deactivate penicillin. So when a population of bacteria that contains some organisms with the BLEC is exposed to penicillin, only the bacteria with the BLEC survive. The population of bacteria may “evolve” antibiotic resistance, but the origin of the BLEC is left unexplained. Darwinism can explain the survival but not the arrival of the fittest.
Another example of antibiotic resistance is bacteria that develop resistance to streptomycin. In this case, a mutation in the ribosome of the bacteria make them resistant. However, the mutants are otherwise defective. In the normal bacteria, streptomycin binds to the ribosome and disables it, thereby killing the bacteria. In the mutant strain, the shape of the ribosome has changed so that streptomycin no longer fits and hence the bacteria surviveBut the ribosome of the mutant is otherwise less able to function than the nonmutant version, so antibiotic resistance has come at a cost of information. Again, this is an excellent example of microevolution, but has nothing to do with macroevolution. Nevertheless. evolutionists often talk about antibiotic resistance as if it were a proof for macroevolution, a bait-and-switch ploy.
Wells poses the question: “Do we need evolutionary theory to overcome antibiotic resistance?” The answer: “Of course not!” Antibiotic resistance can be mitigated by using antibiotics only when necessary through proper diagnosis. Use of combination therapies which contain antibiotics that will kill all the strains of bacteria in a population should also be effective.
Then there is cancer. Cancer cells are usually mutants that have lost the ability to regulate cell division. Some evolutionists believe cancer is an example of speciation. Chromosome doubling has lead to new species of plants. Some say cancer generates new proteins with new func- tions. However, cancer cells have a broken regulatory system: the “replicate” switch is left permanently “on.” The mutant proteins involved have lost their specificity and stimulate cell growth, metabolism, and replication in an uncontrolled way. Clearly, the molecular machinery of a cancer cell has lost information present in normal cells. Cancer is not a good example of macroevolution. The occurrence of cancer can be mitigated by proper diet, exercise, early detection, chemotherapy, radiation treatment, and immunotherapy—none of which have anything to do with macroevolution.
Chapter 9: Zombie Apocalypse
The available evidence does not support abiogenesis or macroevolution. Evolutionary thinking has corrupted our social mores, our sense of human dignity, and our understanding of who we are in the universe; evolution has become a God substitute.
Ironically, most of the founders of modern science were Christians. Science and religion were not at odds for those men. There has never been a war between religion and empirical science. Today, many are leaving Christianity because of scientism. Many in the church now embrace evolution. Some think science and religion don’t overlap, but this is like saying that religion has nothing to say about objective reality.
Evolutionary thinking is corrupting education. Some want evolution taught at a young age to fight against the natural tendency to attribute origins to God. The icons of evolution are used to indoctrinate high school students into evolutionary propaganda. There are efforts to label teachers that express any reservations about evolution as science deniers; some teachers have been fired.
Evolutionary thinking is corrupting science. If evolution is true, then our brains evolved to favor perceptions that facilitate survival and reproductive success, not discovery of the truth. For example, assuming macroevolution is true, early humans may have learned to deny their mortality, thereby enabling them to engage in long term thinking that resulted in science and technology, but also religion (read superstition for the evolutionist). Hence evolutionary thinking destroys its own credibility by questioning its source: the human brain. Scientists are under pressure to espouse evolution at the expense of the truth. Pressure for a high output of research has resulted in a loss of quality in scientific publications. Fraud is on the rise.
Any hint of doubt in macroevolution is seen as religion, so the distinction between naturalism and empiricism has been blurred. Intelligent design has been equated with creationism—a false premise, a straw man. Some see ID as an attempt to undermine science in America. They assume ID opposes reason and empirical science.
Critics of ID confuse operational/empirical science with naturalism; ID supports the former by opposing the latter. Naturalism is held despite the evidence; this is zombie science.
Some evolutionists now say that cells have something akin to intelligence—“natural genetic engineering.” Many are now calling for a new conceptual framework for evolutionary biology—an extended evolutionary synthesis. Many have recognized the inadequacies of Darwinism and that DNA is not the sole repository of heritable information in the cell. Microevolution is all that is supported by the evidence. Macroevolution is not well supported.
Wells believes there is a paradigm shift underway. Many are now seeing the benefits to understanding biology through the lens of ID. In 2016, the Discovery Institute, home of the ID movement, received a private grant to fund more than a dozen research projects directed by ID-friendly scientists at universities around the world. Wells believes the reign of zombie science is coming to an end.
1. Wells J (2017) Zombie Science: More Icons of Evolution, Discovery Institute Press, Seattle, WA, 237
2. Wells J (2000) Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth?, Regnery, Washington, DC, 338
3. Reynolds DW (2019) Review of Jonathan Wells’s new book Zombie Science (Part 1), TASC Newsletter, May
4. Wells J (2017) Zombie Science: More Icons of Evolution, p 101, Discovery Institute Press, Seattle, WA, 237
5. Werner C (2017) Evolution: The Grand Experiment, Vol. 1, 3rd edition, New Leaf Press, Green Forest, AR, chapter 13 and Appendix F. This book contains many excellent photographs of the fossils referred to in Table 1 and interviews with some of the scientists who discovered them.
6. For the sake of argument, I am assuming evolutionary “ages” are correct.
7. Luskin C (2011) Discovery of “oldest fully aquatic whale” fossil throws a major bone into whale evolution story. Evolution News. < https://evolutionnews.org/2011/10/discovery_of_oldest_fully_aqua/ > Accessed 02 May 2019
8. Whale evolution vs. population genetics - Richard Sternberg and Paul Nelson. < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0csd3M4bc0Q > Accessed 02 May 2019
9. Reynolds D (2017) Can nature perform the same miracle multiple times? Problems with convergent evolution. TASC Newsletter, January, < https://tasc-creationscience.org/article/can-nature-perform-same-miracle-multipletimes-problems-convergent-evolution > Accessed 02 May 2019
‹ Review of Jonathan Wells’s New Book Zombie Science (Part 1) up God’s Very Good Design in Animals ›
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London-based Thriva offers a home finger-prick blood test to quantify your bad self
Steve O'Hear @sohear / 4 years
Article updated to address how Thriva is different to U.S.-based Theranos.
When the ‘quantified self’ involves stabbing your little finger with a sharp object and collecting the resulting blood, it feels like the real deal.
Enter Seedcamp-backed Thriva, a new London-startup that offers a home finger-prick blood test that lets you track a range of internal blood markers associated with good or bad health. Out of the gate, this includes cholesterol levels and tests for liver and kidney function.
“Everyone knows prevention is better than cure. In reality though, getting access to some of the most impactful and motivating information there is — data about how you’re really doing on the inside — is broken,” Thriva co-founder and CEO Hamish Grierson tells me.
“The NHS is an incredible institution and is ‘free’ but because it’s so challenging to access, people wait until they’re sick before lifting the lid on their bodies. The consequence? We’re locked in a reactive health paradigm. Until now, people haven’t been able to access the tools that enable them to take control; to own and to make better decisions about their health”.
The test I was sent prior to public launch seemed straight forward enough. The home finger-prick kit comes with a set of clear instructions and several spare lancets in case you have trouble drawing enough blood. However, as an ex-gigging musician and now living the lifestyle of a tech journalist, I wasn’t about to let a new fangled-startup get an insight into my inner bodily health (or lack thereof), so I roped my housemate into trying out Thriva instead. He bled a little too easy. I felt kinda bad.
Once you’ve taken the home test, you mail the blood sample back to Thriva’s partner lab. The results are then analysed and uploaded to the Thriva platform where you receive a bespoke report and recommendations created by a healthcare professional that explain what lifestyle changes you may need to make to improve your health.
Or, in a worse case scenario, you’re advised to seek medical advice from a doctor. The example report I saw was pretty detailed but not overwhelming, and with help tips provided inline to enable you to make better sense of the available data.
“We’re making it super easy for anyone to quickly, conveniently and accurately find out what’s going on inside their bodies,” explains Grierson. “In the coming months, we’ll be launching a range of tests designed to service very specific customer needs. Our first test is designed to help our customers understand what impact their lifestyle is having on their body which is why it focuses on three specific areas: cholesterol levels, kidney function and liver function”.
It’s what Grierson calls a “reactive” health paradigm that he and his co-founders, which include a practicing GP, want to challenge. For those that can afford it, the test costs £49.99 and you’re encouraged to schedule follow up Thriva tests, presumably once you’ve made the advised lifestyle changes or to track any changes, good or bad. Regardless of cost, which might otherwise be covered by the NHS, the home kit is far more convenient than queuing up at blood clinic.
Future planned Thriva tests will focus on energy levels, vitamin D deficiency and fertility. People suffering with symptoms related to bloating or possible IBS/IBD will also be a potential target, which is a huge market where their is a tendency already to self-diagnose.
“There are a range of customer segments we’re targeting here from hard working City folks worried about their health, to men and women who’ve hit an age milestone and have become more acutely conscious of their health and don’t want their bodies to let them down, to tech enthusiasts and quantified self enthusiasts,” says the Thriva CEO.
Noteworthy, the startup is also about to launch a corporate product for employers that want to offer employees something different, and are looking for something more affordable than many of the current employee health benefit products available.
“We’re also developing a range of relevant services such as access to specific expert be that dieticians, personal trainers or GPs,” adds Grierson.
In addition to Seedcamp, Thriva is backed by a number of angel investors, including Ricky Knox and Michael Kent (founders of Azimo), Will Neale (founder of Grabyo, Fonix and early-stage investor in Property Partner) and Peter Jackson (former CEO of Travelex and current Head of Innovation at Santander). That list reflects the fintech background of Grierson, and two of Thriva’s other co-founders, Tom Livesey and Eliot Brooks, having previously worked at Travelex, Droplet Payments, and Tandem Bank.
Update: A number of readers have asked how Thriva compares to U.S.-based Theranos, as, on the surface, both companies employ a finger-prick blood test. However, the two companies tests are in fact very different. In short, unlike Theranos’ pitch, Thriva isn’t using its own tech (or claiming to have invented any new technology) to collect or process the tests but relies on a very bog standard blood test and the results are processed by a large third-party lab on-site.
In the Thriva CEO’s own words:
Thriva and Theranos have fundamentally different models. Thriva works with pre-existing, heavily validated and CE accredited partners and equipment whereas Theranos uses its own proprietary testing technology.
Unlike Theranos, we collect more than a single drop of blood because it requires more blood to run the tests we run at the level of accuracy we demand.
The partner lab we work with is the largest private path lab in the UK and count the NHS as their largest client. They process 40,000 tests per day.
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Nest Unveils Smart Doorbell and a Motion Sensor Aided Security System
Nest made it big after it introduced the smart thermostat and now the company seems to be keen in replicating the success with its new smart doorbell security system. Nest is currently owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, and only recently they had announced a much affordable Nest Thermostat E. Apart from the smart doorbell Nest also pulled the wraps from the Nest Secure, a comprehensive home security solution.
The Nest doorbell comes fitted with a “Nest Hello” camera alongside a mic and speakerphone. Needless to say, it will allow the house owners to see who is at the door and also allow the latter to speak up via the microphone. Nest is keeping mum on the pricing, but the company says that the device will be available from the first quarter of 2018.
Moving on, the Nest Secure is a motion sensor that comes along with a keypad button. Tagging is done by a small keychain which is named “Nest Tag.” The Nest Secure will be available starting from November and is priced at $500. Furthermore, the company has also unveiled a new version of its Nest Cam IQ security camera, and this will come with support for Google Assistant.
Nest has been taking its own time in introducing new products and is mostly involved in bringing up iterative updates for the current lineups. The company was bought by Google in 2014 for $3Billion, and in the same year Nest, Cam bought Dropcam, a maker of security cameras. However, post the acquisition Dropcam employees resigned, and a cloud of doubt was cast over the acquisition. Now it seems that Nest finally sees it fit to get back into the market.
When Nest started out the smart-home market or the ecosystem was in a nascent stage, and it has rapidly emerged as an important aspect of connected devices only recently. The Google Home, Amazon Echo and a slew of other devices that work in tandem with the voice assistants have improved by a mile in the last two years or so. Nest needs to reestablish their position in the market and hopefully arm themselves with innovations in order to outdo the competition.
Last updated by Mahit Huilgol, on 21-Sep-17
Mahit Huilgol Ex-Author Mahit Huilgol is a Mechanical Engineering graduate and is a Technology and Automobile aficionado. He ditched the Corporate boardroom wars in favor of technology battleground. Also, a foodie by heart and loves both the edible chips and the non-edible silicon chips.
Nest Thermostat E Launched at $169
Blink Home Security Camera Now Offers Three Video Recording Modes;…
Microsoft Shows Off GLAS, a Cortana Powered Thermostat for Your…
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Homeless ‘Subway Soprano’ Lands Major Recording Contract
by Shifra on October 2, 2019
Sweet! Via NY Post. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Sing in the subway, apparently. A homeless Russian singer who went viral for her incredible performance just scored a major record deal. Emily Zamourka, who captured the hearts of Los Angeles subway riders and internet fans, has been offered a recording contract, TMZ reports…. The producer first learned of the now-infamous singer after the Los Angeles Police Department tweeted a video of her singing opera in a subway station. The internet immediately fell in love with the 52-year-old, who became homeless after a series of bad luck. Zamourka moved to the United States more than two decades ago and was teaching violin and piano lessons, but fell ill and...
Service Dogs Attend Theater Performance As Part Of Training
by Shifra on August 18, 2019
Sweet! Via Fox News. An adorable photo of a group of service dogs sitting in a Canadian theater last week catching a production of “Billy Elliot” has gone viral. The photo shows the crowd of mainly poodles and golden retrievers taking up at least four rows and attentively watching the stage during the Stratford Festival in Ontario. The objective was to prevent fur from flying during live theater so the pups can help their handlers navigate a theater atmosphere “It’s important to prepare the dogs for any activity the handler may like to attend,” said Laura Mackenzie, owner of K-9 Country Inn Working Service Dogs and who spearheaded the outing, told CBC radio. “The theater gives us the opportunity to...
Katz Declared Winner in Queens Primary, Despite AOC’s Support Of Opponent Cabán
by Shifra on July 29, 2019
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Muslim Medic Who Saved Israeli Girl’s Life Ten Years Ago Speaks At Her Wedding
With all the negativity, finger-pointing and shouting lately, this is a great story about peaceful coexistence, hope, life, and love. Via Jerusalem Post. It is not unusual for a wedding to leave many of the guests in tears. However, a wedding in Israel last week did not leave a dry eye in the house for a very special reason. Muawiya Kabha, a Muslim paramedic in a response unit of United Hatzalah, made a special appearance at the wedding of Shahar Kugelmas and Nir David, and recounted to the guests present how in April 2009, he had arrived at the scene of a car crash to find Shahar dead…. “When I arrived there after two minutes, the doctor told me ‘this...
‘It’s Mueller Time’ Swag Expires… Now It’s ‘No Collusion’ Gear
by Shifra on March 29, 2019
All the Trump-haters/Libs can use their Mueller stuff to mop up their tears. Yes, what a heartbreak that the president of the United States is not a Russian agent. Sad! 🙂 Via Washington Examiner. Special counsel Robert Mueller managed to attract a cult-like following over the past two years among Americans eager to see President Trump’s downfall. Despite remaining largely silent during his investigation into possible Russian collusion by the president, Mueller became a hero among many members of the Trump #Resistance, who desperately hoped the special counsel would find enough evidence to make a case for impeachment. But it might be time for liberals to toss their “ It’s Mueller Time” T-shirts…. Now, the fadin Trump-related merch seems to...
ICYMI: Tammy Bruce Wins Tucker’s ‘Final Exam’ Quiz
by Shifra on November 23, 2018
Brava to Tammy for taking home the win…and the Wemple coffee mug! TAMS (Tammy’s podcast subscribers – Tammy Army Members) are proud! Tammy will be guest hosting the Tucker Carlson show tonight at 8 pm ET.
Behind-The-Scene Video: Trump Surprises, Thanks Pittsburgh Hospital Staff
by Shifra on October 31, 2018
Thanks to TAM HBMuzik for sending me this video clip! @RealJamesWoods I wanted you to see the President tonight at UPMC in Pittsburgh visiting the survivors of the shooting as the nurses and Dr’s were waiting to see him. pic.twitter.com/LdbeHz9pti — Sheryl Mascio (@sheryl_mascio) October 31, 2018
Happy Birthday Tammy Bruce!
Happy Birthday, Tammy! And it’s also the 9th anniversary of Tammy Radio becoming subscriber-supported, independent…and uncensored. Thank you Tammy for *great* shows and podcasts, and for keeping us well-informed and entertained – and sane – during these crazy times. We, the Tammy Army Members (aka TAMS) appreciate and support your work, and wish you the best birthday ever.
Video: President Trump Stops Motorcade To Thank Ohio Firefighters
by Shifra on August 6, 2018
Remember when Obama stopped his motorcade to thank firefighters? Yeah, neither do I. But here’s what I do remember: Obama forced a violation of Marine Corps regulations by ordering a Marine to hold an umbrella so that he wouldn’t get wet. Via American Mirror. In a moment that will undoubtedly be ignored by the mainstream media, a cell phone video from Ohio on Saturday shows President Trump halting his motorcade so he could shake hands with firemen. The video, taken by one of the participants, shows several firefighters standing or kneeling as the President’s motorcade approaches the venue. [email protected] stops his motorcade to thank fireman. Awesome! pic.twitter.com/zcUrtUeNqT — PolishPatryot🇵🇱 (@PolishPatryot) August 4, 2018 Two police escorts pass, as does the...
Video: Pizza Guy Stuns Family With ‘Moonlight Sonata’ On Piano
by Cynthia on August 2, 2018
**Bumped Up From TAMWire. Posted by Cynthia** You never know who is delivering your pizza! A baseball star who happens to be a child prodigy on the side. God bless America. Via Daily Mail. A restaurant worker delivered a lot more than a pizza to a Michigan family when he sat down at their baby grand piano and played a flawless rendition of a Beethoven masterpiece. Julie Varchetti said her husband, Paul, had ordered their kids a pizza from Hungry Howie’s in Shelby Township. When the delivery guy, 18-year-old Bryce Dudal, spotted their piano in the foyer of their home and asked if he could take a look at it. Paul invited the recent high school graduate inside and asked...
Making History, Four Israeli Women Complete Training to Become Tank Commanders
by Shifra on July 1, 2018
Girl Power…Israeli-style. Via Times of Israel. The Israel Defense Forces declared its pilot program of all-female tank crews a success on Thursday, hours before four of the participants were due to complete the Armored Corps’ tank commanders course. “The training process was a success, from both an instructional and an operational perspective. The soldiers achieved all the goals set for them,” said Lt. Col. Benny Aharon, the head of command training in the Armored Corps. The pilot program was designed to see if women could make up the four-person crews necessary to operate a tank in “routine security operations” within Israel’s borders or just beyond them if necessary — not in wars or in fighting behind deep enemy lines. Until...
Video: Puppy Paramedic ‘Saves’ Cop in CPR Demo
by Shifra on June 26, 2018
“A dog is the only being in the world that will love you more than it loves itself.” — 19th century American writer Henry Wheeler Shaw, who used the pen name Josh Billings. Via CBS News. Poncho, a police dog in Madrid, has become an internet sensation after a video showing him appearing to perform CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) on his handler went viral. Poncho was taking part in a first aid awareness event for elementary school kids visiting a Madrid police headquarters. The video has been viewed more than 2 million times since it was published on the Madrid police’s twitter account on June 22. In the accompanying message, the police playfully note that “heroic” Poncho “didn’t hesitate for even...
Video: Ballgame Announces No Anthem… Crowd Sings It Anyway
by Shifra on May 27, 2018
As Tammy says: I love us. Via Fox News. What happens when the national anthem isn’t played before a ballgame? In Fresno, Calif., first the crowd boos, then it takes it upon themselves to sing it anyway — a cappella. In a show of patriotism before Memorial Day, the crowd at a high school softball championship game at Fresno State’s Margie Wright Diamond on Friday night launched into their own rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” after it was announced that the song wouldn’t be played because it had already been played before an earlier game…. Bob Kayajanian, event coordinator, told the Bee that when more than one game is played in a day, the anthem is typically played only before...
Left-Leaning Poll Shows So-Called Democrat ‘Blue Wave’ Now A Small Puddle
Yes, bad news for Dems. Great news for the USA. Via Daily Wire. A new poll released on Monday from a left-leaning news publication showed that the Democrats are paying dearly for their disastrous week last week where they lied about President Donald Trump’s comments regarding violent MS-13 gang members. The Reuters Poll revealed that the double-digit lead that the Democrats held over Republicans last month in generic ballot voting for the 2018 midterms among registered voters is now completely gone as Republicans have opened up a six-point lead over the Democrats. The poll, for the week ending on May 20, shows Republicans at 40.7 percent with Democrats falling down to 34.5 percent. This is the first time Republicans have...
Video: The White House’s Hilarious Take On… Laurel or Yanny
Three cheers for… covfefe! #Laurel? #Yanny? Or… pic.twitter.com/5hth07SdGY — The White House (@WhiteHouse) May 17, 2018
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#Cavatica Cancer Research Database Has Launched!
The day is finally here, and I am so excited! Today is the day the beta version of Cavatica launches to the cancer research world. A dream we had almost three years ago is coming true today. It’s not done. Technically, it will never be done. It will always be adding new patients and more information. Putting that aside, it isn’t as “done” as we want it to be. There is more functionality to add. There is plenty of DNA sequencing yet to be completed. But today, there is a pretty awesome database that is already unlike anything else cancer researchers have had access to before.
If you know a doctor or researcher, please tell them about this awesome resource. We will continue to build it out and make it better, but I think they will be blown away – even right now. (Say those last three words in your best Southern accent. That’s the only way to truly give them the emphasis they deserve.)
Here is the official press release:
The Children’s Brain Tumor Tissue Consortium (CBTTC) and the Pacific Pediatric NeuroOncology Consortium (PNOC) conclude Brain Cancer Awareness Month of May with the announcement of the Beta launch of Cavatica, a new cloud-based environment for securely storing, sharing and analyzing large volumes of pediatric brain tumor genomics data.
Cavatica will, for the first time, allow doctors, researchers and data scientists unparalleled access to pediatric brain tumor genomic data paired with a suite of analysis tools in a cloud computing environment that enables scalable, faster and more robust research. Upon its full release, Cavatica will host the largest standardized, integrated, and quality-controlled genomic database of pediatric brain cancer genomic data.
Working with Seven Bridges, a biomedical data analysis company, the eight CBTTC site members and 15 member hospitals of PNOC are further fulfilling their commitment earlier this year to the White House Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) with the launch of the Beta version of Cavatica being announced today. The Beta release will be open for subscribed end-user input and will be iteratively enhanced by ongoing implementation of advanced platform features and deposition of additional data sets over the coming months. These datasets will include additional pediatric cancer supporting pan-cancer pediatric data analysis in partnership with additional consortia. including the SU2C-St. Baldrick’s Pediatric Cancer Dream Team.
Sign up for access to the Beta release of Cavatica is available for researchers and data scientists by going to cavatica.org.
For more information or to schedule an interview, please contact the CBTTC at CBTTCadmin@email.chop.edu
June 1, 2016 June 1, 2016 thisgreymatters Tagged cancer cure, cancer research, Cavatica, cbttc, dipg, dragon Master foundation, GBM, PNOC, St. Baldrick's, Stand Up to Cancer Leave a comment
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The Entitlement Problem And Learning To Not Kiss Girls In Bands
By Nick Orsini, June 19th 2014
http://tcat.tc/URfxEg
image – Flickr / Timothy Young
Williamsburg, you’re better than this. The venue is pretty small, and maybe Britty Drake from Pity Sex favorited one of your tweets a few months back. Maybe you’ve had a thing for Brianna Collins from Tiger’s Jaw since Belongs to the Dead. No matter how lonely you’re feeling, how drunk, how much you need a Ramona to match your Scott, it’s never fucking okay to climb on stage and forcibly kiss anyone in a band, regardless of gender. That’s exactly what happened last night at Music Hall of Williamsburg. On two separate occasions, someone crossed a boundary, climbed onto the stage, and forced two people in two different bands into remarkably uncomfortable situations. The pictures, tweets, Instagram videos of the incident are all readily found spackled across the internet. How did we get here?
Perhaps more telling than the articles are the comments. A few weeks ago on CNN, Morgan Spurlock told us on Inside Man that every single thing we post on the internet is irrevocably, unquestionably, forever ours. He proved that deleting it doesn’t help, neither does erasing your browser history. So why, next to your name and picture, in a comment thread would you post something like, “So what, two girls in bands got kissed – at least no one went up there with a gun. If it happened to me, I would count it as an interesting story.” Have we gotten this accustomed to tragedy? Violating a person’s space sticks with you and, I’m sorry, but it is a big deal. There is no scale that makes a shooting worse than a rape, a bombing worse than a shooting – that’s not how it works. “At least no one died” is not the magic spray phrase that heals every bad thing. You know how dying works? You die in pieces, not all at once – certain parts go, then certain other parts, and then you’re gone. But it’s not just physical pieces that make us up. Your sense of safety on your night-shift commute can die, so can your self-worth, so can your love of a given place. Bitterness is a callous, it gets thicker and stronger over time.
“I would count it as an interesting story” may be the most entitled phrase of all. Would you be that eager to share this with a positive spin on it? Would you tweet about it? Take a selfie with the offender? Gram it with all the hashtags and hope for a hundred double-taps? But that’s the problem: everything is not interesting. Giving glory to something like this is irresponsible. We have marginalized celebrity to make it attainable, to trick us into believing we deserve it when we don’t. The belief is that rules don’t apply to celebrities. I mean, how many times have we seen a “public apology” issued to make a bad decision go away? How many times do we hold a public figure accountable for a week, then forget. The precedent is wrong. You are responsible for what you do, for the ramifications of every last choice you make. Actions don’t just evaporate when they’re done – they last. People won’t remember you as “interesting” or “provocative” – they’ll just remember you as “shitty.”
There are boundaries at shows, no matter the performer. Because they’re up there, singing to you, does not give you the right to invade their space, ever. They don’t want to kiss you on the mouth, be groped or fondled. They don’t care about your breakup or how many beers you crushed before the show. They couldn’t give a shit about your friends and what they dared you to do – it doesn’t matter. In one moment, you put a damper on a really good thing and affected a ton of people negatively. I feel like personally apologizing to anyone this has happened to, whether you’re in a famous band or whether you’re coming up playing legion halls. “Feeling respected on a most basic level is for everyone.” What a fucking shame that I even had to type a truth so inherent.
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OIJ investigates bomb that damaged Teletica building
Remembering La Penca, 35 years later
Costa Rica announces drop in murders, increase in gun seizures
More than 500 arrests made in raid against arms trafficking in eight Latin American countries
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Suspected Costa Rica serial killer tied by DNA to 3 victims, say prosecutors
The Tico Times January 5, 2016 January 4, 2016
The body of one of the Costa Rica serial killer's suspected victims was found under this walkway bridge on a stretch of the Circunvalación highway through Hatillo. (Alberto Font/The Tico Times)
When the bodies of nine women turned up in San José over a six-month span in 2015, police warned of an at-large serial killer preying on prostitutes in the slums of Costa Rica’s capital. Now authorities say they have scientific evidence to prove that they’ve captured the man responsible for at least three of those homicides.
A 39-year-old suspect identified by the last names Arroyo Gutiérrez is in preventive prison after being charged on Dec. 16 with the deaths of three women, a spokeswoman from the Prosecutor’s Office told The Tico Times. The suspect initially was sentenced to three months of preventive detention for rape in September before officials positively matched his DNA with that from hair and fluid samples found on the bodies, the spokeswoman said.
Prosecutors from a special investigative unit of the judicial branch known in Spanish as Unidad Operativa de Dirección Funcional, created in 2012 to handle high-profile cases in the San José area, are attributing the three killings to Arroyo Gutiérrez.
Several victims unidentified
The last body that Judicial Investigation Police (OIJ) linked to the suspected serial killer was found on Sept. 7, 2015 in Barrio Mexico, just north of downtown San José. The killings began in April when the body of 29-year-old mother Natalia Felicia Salazar was found in an abandoned lot near the slums of San Sebastián, in the southwest area of the city. Salazar had been in and out of local drug rehab clinics before she was killed. Several people who knew her told The Tico Times that she was a few months pregnant at the time of her death.
Several victims have yet to be identified, and in August, OIJ Assistant Director Luis Ángel Ávila told The Tico Times that by the time they were discovered, most of the victims’ bodies were too decomposed for investigators to extract evidence.
Arroyo Gutiérrez will remain in preventive prison at least until June 16 while the case remains under investigation.
Costa Rica police struggle to track down suspected serial killer
There’s a serial killer on the loose in Costa Rica and no one seems to care
Nine victims now believed to be linked to San José serial killer
US expat Ann Patton faces third murder trial in Costa Rica
costa rica serial killercrime costa ricahatillomurdersan sebastian costa ricaSlums
Cuban migrants with children to be among first out in Costa Rica airlift
In compelling speech, President Obama announces executive actions on gun safety
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Review: AfterShokz's Bluez 2 Bone Conduction Headset Aces Speech, but Muddles Music
By Matt Peckham
“Bone conduction technology.” It sounds like a gimmick, something you might file on the shelf next to 3D positional audio, high-res music, gold-plated cables and surround-sound cans. It’s not.
In fact, you’ll find it today in breakthrough medical technology like cochlear implants: tiny, surgically implanted electronic devices that can transmit enough sonic information to the listener that even someone mostly deaf can hear sounds and understand speech. If you’re a talk radio devotee, you’re probably aware that Rush Limbaugh uses the latter.
I mention all that because I’ve been test-driving a pair of $100 open ear wireless headphones from Aftershokz for the past few weeks, the Bluez 2, and that’s their claim to fame: “bone conduction technology,” transmitting vibrations produced by a pair of small speaker-pads (sporting what look like rubber shock absorbers abutting your cheekbones) directly to your cochlea. The cochlea, in case you don’t know or remember, would be that spiraling, snail shell portion of your innermost ear you maybe had fun drawing in elementary school biology, that place in your brainpan where fluid jukes and jives reacting to said vibrations, which then get converted into electrical signals that make their way to your brain via neurotransmitters. Imagine a relatively low cost, external headset that can tap directly into that.
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The Bluez 2 reminds me a little of an old Sony AM/FM radio headset I used back in the late 1990s — a clunky-looking thing that perched above each of my ears and looped around the back of my head like a wobbly boomerang. Sony’s headset had speakers that rested directly over your earholes and drew its architectural stability from that connective band — all one piece, with no wires or pendulous protuberances. And it took a licking, which is all that mattered to me in that hazy, pre-MP3 era, before the shift from low-fi, functionally minimalist portable audio gear to dragging around microcomputers into which most people I see out running or at the gym still plug headphones today, whether dangling or coiled inside an arm band.
Wireless headsets are a dime ten-dozen nowadays, and bone conduction technology’s not new, but when Aftershokz’s Bluez 2 headset arrived unbidden, looking just enough like that old Sony headset to draw my eye, I decided to give it a shot. I’ve worn it most of each day for the past two weeks and used it as the primary interface to my iPhone 5: listening to audiobooks and music while running outside, and chatting on the phone both indoors and out as well as in the car.
For a Bluetooth device that gets about six hours to a charge and has to generate haptic feedback, my initial reaction putting it on was “Man, is this thing light.” Weighing just 41 grams, it rests almost unnoticeably on your ears, its narrow, glossy black band wrapping behind your head without touching it (Aftershokz includes a reflective sticker you can optionally place on the neck band). If I cared about aesthetics as much as functionality, I’d probably use it in a sentence with words like streamlined and elegant. It doesn’t look half-bad on your noggin, either, though when I wore it out grocery shopping a few weeks ago, someone stopped me to ask if it was Google Glass. (Insert quip about eyes in the back of your head here.)
Let’s talk about the bone conduction angle, since that’s the buzziest buzzword in the mix. Imagine a pair of haptic gamepads strapped to either side of your head like Princess Leia’s cinnamon buns and the vibration-feedback mechanisms in said gamepads jackhammering away. The Bluez 2’s vibrations feel nothing like that, thank goodness, though there’s a slight buzzing sensation that pulses as audio’s conveyed through the audio pads. On my head, the pads align with my temporomandibular joint (the place your lower jaw connects to your skull — it’s right in front of your ear), and that’s where I suspect most are going to feel it. To be clear, it’s strictly vibration-based and not electrical, but it feels a little weird, a bit like someone holding the end of a sonic toothbrush against your cheeks, and that takes some getting used to.
But the benefits are considerable, especially if you’re listening to speech, whether talking on the phone or devouring an audio book. The headset’s speakers are physically positioned in front of your ears, which looks like it can’t possibly work properly, until you realize the sounds are being transmitted and augmented by the vibrating pads, up your cheekbones and through your ear canals. I have narrow ear canals and weird-shaped ears, meaning most earbuds (even with sizing tips) tend to fall out. The upside of Bluez 2’s headset is that it’s one-size-fits-all, and all-fits-comfortably — no fussing with sizers or trying to adjust the speakers to your earhole. And they’re perfectly comfortable for extended sessions, even if placed over a pair of glasses (so long as the temple pieces aren’t too thick). As a glasses-wearer, that’s more than I can say for any other pair of over-the-ear headphones I’ve used.
The other benefit — and I noticed this most while running outdoors in moderately noisy environments (traffic, mostly) — is that speech came through clearly at all times, even while battling a strong headwind. I wound up listening to several hours of the audiobook version of that old 1988 PBS documentary The Power of Myth while testing the Bluez 2, and both Joe Campbell and Bill Moyers came through clearer and more consistently than they ever had using a pair of wired headphones. The same held true when I summoned TuneIn to catch Internet-streamed cable news or local radio. If listening to speech-related audio is your thing, from audiobooks to talk radio to news, Aftershokz’s headset really excels.
I’m sad to say I had the opposite reaction to the Bluez 2’s music playback quality. Paired with my iPhone 5 and the volume set to maximum, XTC’s Skylarking sounded washed together and hollow, as did Elbow’s The Take Off and Landing of Everything, Elton John’s The Diving Board and Janelle Monáe’s The ArchAndroid. And I had difficulty getting the Bluez 2 to play loud enough in even modestly noisy environments. This, despite a product bullet point that boasts of a patented feature Aftershokz calls “PremiumPitch,” which uses dual transducers to “guarantee the finest bone conduction audio.”
I guess that means the finest still has a ways to go: Switching to a pair of low-end, wired Sony MDR-AS20J headphones with loop hangars, the quality upgrade when listening to that same music was startling.
My sense is that where bone conduction technology excels at bulldogging basic audio — especially speech — through your brainpan in noisy environments, it’s comparably poor at conveying even moderate details produced by higher fidelity audio sources. If not being able to listen to music at even moderate quality and volume levels is a deal-breaker, I’d steer clear of this headset, if not bone conduction technology in general. At this point, music and bone conduction feel like a mismatch.
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If you’re just looking for something to use as a handsfree headset for voice calls, on the other hand, the Bluez 2 sports dual microphones that worked ably enough in both low and high noise environments. Switching between the headset and Apple’s default iPhone earbuds, the people I called said the audio improved a bit with the earbuds and noted that the Bluez 2’s audio sounded slightly muffled by comparison, but was otherwise fine. I suspect the latter has something to do with noise-cancellation algorithms, the flip side being that in noisier environments, those algorithms helped capture and convey what I was saying more dependably.
Music aside, I’m pretty happy with the Bluez 2 as-is. I wasn’t expecting a revelatory music listening experience (and to be fair, no one’s offering that over Bluetooth at this point), and it does do what it claims to if you’re just after a robust, lightweight, elegantly designed, handsfree interface for speech-based audio listening or making phone calls. $100 feels about right if the latter’s what you’re after, and that includes an adjustable tension band, a micro-USB charge cable and a smartly designed “breathable” storage pouch with one side mesh to let the headset dry if you’ve soaked it during a workout.
Write to Matt Peckham at matt.peckham@time.com.
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Team Tiny Pitbull focuses on dogs that appear to have special needs or are struggling in a shelter. We believe that giving these dogs a break from the shelter environment gives them the best opportunity to experience life in a structured and loving home atmosphere. Because many shelter dogs don’t come with a full history, fostering provides us with an opportunity to observe them in a stress-free environment on a daily basis.
Bring a distressed dog to a foster home and provide structure, routine, exercise, basic manners and lots of TLC!
Introduce our new foster pup to our community via social media and chronicle their daily life with short stories and photos.
Determine the best family environment suited for the dog and relentlessly work with potential adopters to determine if they are a good fit.
All of our rescue dogs are housed in foster families, a network we have built within our community. We consider each and every dog to be a part of our family and we all want to ensure that they have the best life possible! If they succeed, we succeed.
Argus Courier: "Petaluma shelter housing animals displaced by fire"
"The Tiny Pitbull, a Petaluma-based rescue that works with the city’s animal shelter, is preparing to take in pets surrendered by their owners, or dogs left at shelters beyond the 30-day mark. The organization runs a foster network with more than 35 homes, and initially provided shelter to nearly 20 dogs after the fires. "
Argus Courier: "Pets, livestock find a home in Petaluma"
"Meanwhile, The Tiny Pitbull, a Petaluma-based rescue organization, used its foster network to take in animals, founder Christine Del Ponte said. At least four people who had adopted dogs from the organization lost their homes in the fire, and as many as 15 dogs were placed in the foster homes through the network."
Argus Courier: "‘The Tiny Pitbull’ gives dogs a second chance"
"It’s been a little over a year since Christine Del Ponte launched a Facebook page to save Tilly, a pit bull who had spent more than a year being constantly overlooked an area shelter. Within days of the online campaign, the 40-pound dog had been adopted and the larger effort called “The Tiny Pitbull” in honor of the small dog was born out of the success story. "
With a massive effort to help the victims of the 2017 hurricanes, Maddie's Fund dedicated themselves to bring shelter dogs to safety here.
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TV ReviewsDC's Legends Of TomorrowSeason 4
Legends Of Tomorrow combines slapstick with souls in peril to great effect
Photo: Dean Buscher (The CW)
One of my favorite narrative tricks is when a writer manages to hide something in plain sight. I don’t necessarily mean that in a mystery, Agatha Christie-esque sense, though that’s always fun, too. I mean when a piece of the story sits there in plain sight, yet unobserved, and then it all comes together in a deliciously casual way, as if the writers are merely tossing their heads in the direction of the thing you overlooked. When you revisit it, it’s there in plain sight.
There are a couple of those in “Egg MacGuffin,” but the one that really matters isn’t the egg that turns out to matter quite a lot. The one that really matters is Gary’s damned nipple, both literally and metaphorically.
DC's Legends Of TomorrowSeason 4
"Egg MacGuffin"
“Egg MacGuffin” isn’t the first episode to demonstrate that Gary (Adam Tsekhman, invaluable for this episode and, frankly, the series) has a bit of a dark or even ugly side. The biggest example was his probably weird negging of Mona, and a certain sense that he felt entitled to her affections that went along with it, but there are others. Fleeting, but there. There’s even one in this very episode, as we hear Gary crying in a bathroom stall seconds before he emerges, dry-eyed and cheery, to answer Ray’s call and come running.
It was subtle, but there all along. Even more obvious and ever-present: The constant, low-level impatience, carelessness, unkindness, and even cruelty exhibited toward Gary from every corner. Hell, it happens a number of times in this episode alone, but only one stands out—the last, delivered by Constantine, which arrives after Neron’s seduction of Gary is already in process. It stands out precisely because the writers have done one of those appealing, casual nods of the head and underlined it; it is in no other way any different from the sorts of things often said to Gary in this and every other episode in which he appears. But there’s one key word that Gary misses, which would have made the whole more palatable previously: the word “we.” If there’s one proof that Gary has fully gone over to the dark side, it’s that the verbal abuse means more to him than the fact that he’s included in that “we.”
It’s too early to actually get into if and how Legends is exploring the idea of the put-upon nice guy as a potentially toxic figure, and if and how those who surround others with casual but not pointed cruelty are responsible for their descents into darkness. But the show certainly went out of its way to demonstrate once again that Gary’s cheeriness is a facade, right before he reconnected his infernal nipple to his body in the single weirdest, funniest, most upsetting pacts with the demon these eyes have ever seen.
The Neron story lives exactly in that spot, actually, somehow dangling between strange, slapstick comedy and life-and-death, deadly serious struggle. It’s a credit to both Tsekhman and Brandon Routh that the episode works at all. Had they strayed too far to one side or the other, it would sink like a stone with a hell-blasted nipple stuck to the bottom. Instead, Routh does broad physical comedy without cracking jokes, and Tsekhman takes that inching nipple perfectly seriously. It’s a bonkers combination, and a perfectly Legends one. I honestly can’t believe it works, but it definitely works.
Much of that is due to the work the show has already done in developing these characters, sweet Ray-Ray in particular. We know Ray so well that we already understand he’d rather cut off his hand than use it to wound a friend. We watched him throw himself into an insane amount of danger when he thought there was a chance of saving the then-possessed Nora, after he fatally wounded her. We know much of his childhood was defined by loneliness and the wish for friends. So when Nate shows up, it’s the worst of all possible worlds—and the choice to give up his autonomy and, you know, soul to Neron makes sense, when the alternative is holding the knife that kills his Time-Bro.
Ray’s story also works well as a companion piece to the Sara-dons-the Death-Totem episode from last season, and while structurally the episodes are very different, the similarities make such a comparison worthwhile. In both cases, a supernatural element forces the protagonist to confront one or more of their worst fears, and the things about them they least prize. Sara’s essentially lost for most of the episode, so hers is a struggle back; Ray’s is a story about struggling to get the better of potent, deeply damaging impulses. Both are largely successful with some hiccups—and here I must acknowledge that one of them is that Routh, one of the most reliably engaging performers on a show full of them, seems oddly uncomfortable in all the Neron mirror scenes, though he’s great by episode’s end.
There’s a lot more to unpack—Nora’s official entry into the time bureau, the fact that Nate and Zari skipped right past won’t they and into will-they (much more successfully than I predicted, truth be told), Mick’s slow-burn journey into accepting and saying openly that he’s a writer (the Rebecca Silver, in fact), and Sara joining that book club—and not a lot of review left, so let’s do them quickly. The first two feel like new chapters for the series, with Nora now properly in the fold and trusted by the person least disposed to do so initially, and Nate and Zari doing full Indiana Jones cosplay in an effort to get the audience on board—again, successfully, at least for this writer, particularly when they arrived at the where doesn’t it hurt moment. Sara and Ava are mostly observing this week, but their brief storyline feels like the new status quo, rather than the turn of a page. Mick’s storyline feels oddly like the end of something, but we’ll talk more about that next week.
Next week’s episode is called “Nip/Stuck,” a title that was already a little funny before its meaning became clear. His NIP, it STUCK back on his chest.
This week, in Legends does right by women: Nate and Zari face down that scene of Catherine Zeta-Jones’ from Entrapment, and it’s Nate who does the contorting.
Part of Nate and Zari’s story tonight is essentially the premise of Game Night, which you should watch, as it is a blast.
Why the fuck not?: A demon promises to make Gary “whole” again, which in this case means both making him feel powerful and in control, and literally replacing his damned nipple. And that’s damned, as in cursed, and nipple, as in nipple, which inches across the floor of its own volition. There are loads of WTFNs in this episode, though.
Line-reading of the week: “Boom boom.” Runner up: “The book from book club!”
Gideon, what’s the most meta moment?: Let’s go with the entire sub-plot in which a writer defends his fans at a con against a person who looks down on them and assumes the relationship is totally mercenary. I assume that means the LoT writers love your cosplay, y’all. (I have seen many Constantines but sadly few of the other Legends at cons.)
Speaking of cosplay, loved seeing all those Garimas.
Updated season four episode title ranking: 13 and 12 (tie). Witch Hunt 11. Dancing Queen 10 and 9 (tie). Tagumo Attacks!!! and Lucha De Apuestas 8. Tender Is The Nate 7. The Eggplant, The Witch, And The Wardrobe 6. Egg MacGuffin (Works in concert with the episode to trick the viewer into assuming the egg is pointless, only dinged because it’s not super funny) 5. Hell No, Dolly! 4. Wet Hot American Bummer 3. Séance And Sensibility 2.The Virgin Gary 1. Legends Of To-Meow-Meow.
Arrow corner: “Spartan” — Bring back Ernie Hudson more! That was fun. Having a very hard time getting invested in the Emiko story, but enjoyed multiple generations of Diggle secrets. “Confessions” — This was a surprising sort of formal experiment for the show. Sort of Rashomon lite. I mostly really liked it. Again, the Emiko stuff doesn’t thrill me, but the first two thirds of the episode were pretty damn interesting and I definitely wasn’t expecting to see Oliver sandwiched between pieces of building.
Here’s this week’s Legends in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend song form. This one goes out to Sara and Ava, betting on their friends’ weird work date.
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Dust emission profiles of DustPedia galaxies
Mosenkov, A. V.
Baes, M.
Bianchi, S.
Casasola, V.
Cassarà, L. P.
Clark, C. J. R.
Davies, J.
De Looze, I.
De Vis, P.
Fritz, J.
Galametz, M.
Galliano, F.
Jones, A. P.
Lianou, S.
Madden, S. C.
Nersesian, A.
Smith, M. W. L.
Trčka, A.
Verstocken, S.
Viaene, S.
Vika, M.
Xilouris, E.
Most radiative transfer models assume that dust in spiral galaxies is distributed exponentially. In this paper our goal is to verify this assumption by analysing the two-dimensional large-scale distribution of dust in galaxies from the DustPedia sample. For this purpose, we have made use of Herschel imaging in five bands, from 100 to 500 μm, in which the cold dust constituent is primarily traced and makes up the bulk of the dust mass in spiral galaxies. For a subsample of 320 disc galaxies, we successfully performed a simultaneous fitting with a single Sérsic model of the Herschel images in all five bands using the multi-band modelling code GALFITM. We report that the Sérsic index n, which characterises the shape of the Sérsic profile, lies systematically below 1 in all Herschel bands and is almost constant with wavelength. The average value at 250 μm is 0.67 ± 0.37 (187 galaxies are fitted with n250 ≤ 0.75, 87 galaxies have 0.75 < n250 ≤ 1.25, and 46 - with n250 > 1.25). Most observed profiles exhibit a depletion in the inner region (at r < 0.3-0.4 of the optical radius r25) and are more or less exponential in the outer part. We also find breaks in the dust emission profiles at longer distances (0.5-0.6) r25 which are associated with the breaks in the optical and near-infrared. We assumed that the observed deficit of dust emission in the inner galaxy region is related to the depression in the radial profile of the HI surface density in the same region because the atomic gas reaches high enough surface densities there to be transformed into molecular gas. If a galaxy has a triggered star formation in the inner region (for example, because of a strong bar instability, which transfers the gas inwards to the centre, or a pseudobulge formation), no depletion or even an excess of dust emission in the centre is observed.
DustPedia is a project funded by the EU under the heading "Exploitation of space science and exploration data". It has the primary goal of exploiting existing data in the Herschel Space Observatory and Planck Telescope databases.The tables with the results are only available at the CDS via anonymous ftp to http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr (ftp://130.79.128.5) or via http://cdsarc.u-strasbg.fr/viz-bin/qcat?J/A+A/622/A132
10.1051/0004-6361/201833932
arXiv:1811.08923
2019A&A...622A.132M
galaxies: ISM;
submillimeter: ISM;
galaxies: structure;
Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies
24 pages, 17 figures, Accepted for publication in Astronomy &
SIMBAD (81) NED (18) Herschel (1) CDS (1)
Catalog Description
Source Paper
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PCMag UK | Features | News
High-Tech Perks Mean Sports Fans Are No Longer on the Sidelines
24 Aug 2018, 7:05 p.m.
To keep long-time fans engaged and attract newcomers to the NFL, PGA, NBA, and beyond, the major leagues are pulling out all the high-tech stops. Strap on that VR headset and play ball!
As kids, our sports were simple; a stick and a ball, with a mailbox for first base. But as adults, the sports we love are billion-dollar, tech-driven enterprises that need to keep us tuned in and attract a new generation of fans.
Major and minor sports leagues alike are currently in an experimental stage. Though the sports stay the same, how we view them changes every year. There are so many demands on our attention that leagues have to make sure fans are entertained—and spending money. If the leagues can create a more interesting and immersive way of watching a game, fans might pay a few dollars more for the experience.
Battling New Competition: Esports
To comprehend why sports leagues are investing so much in tech, it's important to understand how sports viewing is changing. To anyone who grew up with baseball all summer and football all winter, it seems crazy that the sports Americans watch could change—but it's already happening. And the main threat isn't soccer; it's esports.
SEE ALSO: How We Test VR Headsets
Esports viewership will soon be larger than that of the MLB and the NHL, according to a June report from Goldman Sachs. This year, esports will attract a monthly audience of 167 million, and in 2022, that number will grow to 300 million monthly viewers—about the same as the NFL gets right now.
And don't assume that young people who grow up watching esports will simply switch over and become football fans someday; they'll stick with the events and teams they love. If the major leagues want to hold onto their massive audiences and revenues, they need to attract young fans.
The NCAA
Different sports lend themselves to different tech experiences. Turner Sports, which runs digital media for the NCAA (as well as the NBA and PGA), finds that virtual reality (VR) is a perfect complement to the NCAA's March Madness basketball tournament.
Basketball is played in a contained space, so it's easier to give fans a close-up feeling with VR. For the 2018 March Madness tournament, in partnership with Intel, Turner expanded its VR streams to 21 of the 67 games, more than doubling the nine it offered the previous year.
"You want to get the cameras in locations that are as close to the court as possible. You want to put the fans literally on the court, if you can, which is challenging, because you can't disrupt the actual game," explained Mark Johnson, SVP of digital for Turner Sports. "At times, leagues will get nervous that it may distract or could become some sort of an injury at some point for a player. We've experimented with locations and feel like we've got probably the best we can get at this point, with cameras on the baskets and the sidelines."
Turner placed VR cameras in some fun areas during the Final Four, such as in student sections. That way, for example, a Villanova grad could see the Villanova student section erupt after a three-pointer.
Johnson's team also stepped up the audio commentary for this year's March Madness VR telecast. In previous years, they learned that using the TV feed's commentary didn't work, since what's on TV might not match what VR viewers see. A better option, employed this year, is having a dedicated announcer just for VR.
The NBA
For fans who can't visit an arena in person, the NBA created an augmented reality (AR) experience, the NBA Portals app, which debuted last season. The NBA offered live and on-demand portals during the season, which let fans "visit" an NBA court full of their favorite players.
While the league isn't sharing visitor numbers, Mike Allen, SVP for digital product management at the NBA, said the league was most interested in retention—getting people to come back and try new portals—and that retention was strong. The NBA's audience is tech-savvy and young (half are under 35, said Allen), so they expect unusual digital experiences.
Now in its off-season, the NBA is testing new offerings during its Summer League, including vertical video to satisfy today's phone-loving viewer. In 2016, the NBA debuted Mobile View with zoomed-in game coverage optimized for smaller screens. Games were streamed horizontally for online viewers, like on TV, but NBA data shows that many fans prefer to hold their phones vertically while watching. So there's a lot of wasted screen space, and people don't see a very large image.
"We recently did a test of capturing a game in full vertical view, something that was very interesting for us, something very new for us, and we learned a lot over a couple of days of testing at the Summer League," Allen said. "[It's] something we're certainly thinking about for the upcoming season, whether that's more VOD content that's shot in vertical view or, eventually, thinking about how a full broadcast might be presented that way."
The NBA is one league that's not worried about young viewers switching to esports, because it took an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" approach. In 2017, the league started the NBA 2K League—a competitive league of basketball gamers. It finished its inaugural season this year and is gearing up for a second in 2019; it even has esports teams affiliated with NBA franchises, such as Knicks Gaming and Warriors Gaming Squad. The 2K League appeals to a different audience, Allen said, and starting it has grown the NBA's total fan base rather than cannibalizing it.
The PGA
It might come as a surprise that the Professional Golfers' Association (PGA) is one of the most tech-forward sports organizations around, but maybe it shouldn't: A sport with an older fanbase needs to try that much harder to attract newcomers.
The PGA focuses on fans both watching from home and on the course. It debuted a redesigned app for its latest major event—the 2018 PGA Championship—on Aug. 1: Home viewers can enjoy broadcast coverage on CBS and TNT, or they can load up the app to follow a featured group of pros all through the course.
"We have the luxury, especially with our feature groups, of following and showing every single shot of a featured player, whether that's Spieth, or Tiger, or Phil. We're literally showing them tee off from the first tee and finishing their last spot on the 18th green," said Mark Johnson of Turner Sports. "TV can't do that."
Johnson's main challenge for the 2018 PGA Championship was reducing latency (delay) as much as possible, so the online stream wasn't too far behind the broadcast feed. While latency in live online video is unavoidable, he sees a maximum of 20 to 25 seconds as acceptable. Turner works with iStreamPlanet, an online broadcasting company it acquired in 2015, to deliver live streams.
For fans lucky enough to be on the links, Turner and the PGA provide app-based assistance, such as maps showing restrooms, food, and merchandise. They also make sure onsite Wi-Fi is robust so fans can stream video of players elsewhere on the course. The most used feature on the app, though, is the leaderboard.
"Scoring is just massive in golf, because everything flows through that leaderboard," Johnson said. "I think, typically, if you bump into someone, they've got our app open on course; they've probably got that leaderboard pulled up."
The AFL
The Arena Football League might not have the following of that other football league, but that just means it has to get a little more creative. In June, the AFL live-streamed its first game augmented with HelmetCam footage, created by video cameras cached in two players' helmets.
The idea for the HelmetCam (shown above, image courtesy of Monumental Sports Network) came from Dhani Jones, an 11-season veteran of the NFL and the chief strategy officer for ActionStreamer, the company that developed the helmet. The HelmetCam combines miniaturized components with image stabilization software to produce point-of-view video and make it watchable.
The AFL won't say how many people streamed live HelmetCam footage during those first games, but it noted that HelmetCam clips posted to social platforms averaged 10,000 views. That's a modest start, but it could lead to something big if the major leagues adopt POV video.
While not every app-based experiment is a success, sports leagues need to keep innovating. Tomorrow's fans won't view sports the same way older audiences do, and the time to start adjusting to that is now.
"We learn every day that we're getting older. I'm getting older. And the way that even I consume content over the last five years or so is becoming obsolete to kids that are in high school and college," Johnson said. "We had two interns here yesterday, and just hearing from them on how they consume content, it changes your perspective a little bit … We have to give the younger generation options to consume this content the way they want to consume it."
Take VR: Johnson noted that while viewing numbers for VR aren't huge and pale in comparison to even mobile phone views, the major leagues can't ignore the area. Leagues need to be on the platforms young viewers are using today if they want those viewers to stick with them tomorrow.
How We Test VR Headsets
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Troy Dreier
Troy Dreier is a technology writer and editor based in Jersey City, NJ. He’s the editor of OnlineVideo.net, senior associate editor for StreamingMedia.com, and a former staff editor for PC Magazine. He’s @tdreier on Twitter. See Full Bio
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ehri online course in holocaust studies
EHRI
7. EHRI Portal Manual
The EHRI Online Portal allows you to explore information about Holocaust-related institutions and their collections across Europe and beyond. It is one of the main achievements of the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) project, and it seeks to overcome one of the hallmark challenges of Holocaust research: the fragmentation and wide geographic dispersal of archival sources documenting the event. By integrating and interconnecting information on tens of thousands of archival sources physically held in hundreds of institutions, the EHRI portal is an invaluable resource for anybody interested in the Holocaust, and enables new transnational and comparative approaches to research.
This manual will enable you to make best use of the Portal by providing you with concise information about its content, structure and functionality, as well as with step-by-step instructions and invaluable tips on how to search and explore its content.
Before you delve into the chapters of this manual, we would encourage you to watch the short video below which offers a short introduction to the Portal and explains the background that has led to its development.
We naturally hope that you will find the information of this Manual helpful. if you have suggestions for improvements, require further help when using the Portal, or, indeed, have any other question about the EHRI Project, please contact us at info@ehri-project.eu.
The Information Content of the EHRI Portal
The Basic Structure of the EHRI Portal
Identification and Description of Countries, Archival Institutions and Collections
Searching the Portal: Search Scopes
Searching the Portal: Advanced Search Options
Customising Search Result Lists: Filters and Sort Order
Finding Related Archival Descriptions by Using Controlled Vocabularies
Reading Descriptions of Archival Holdings
Creation of a Profile on the Portal and Advanced Functionality Available to Registered Users
topEuropean Holocaust Research Infrastructure
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Treasure Magazine
Home Business Omni Group had already secured amnesty on 29 bank accounts
Omni Group had already secured amnesty on 29 bank accounts
KARACHI: Various government quarters and leading investigating agencies, including the Federal Investigation Agency and the Federal Board of Revenue, are faced with a puzzling situation following the probe into the Omni Group’s assets revealed that the Group had already sought and secured amnesty through voluntary declaration in regards to billions of rupees parked in the 29 bank accounts exposed so far, The News reported.
The director general of the FIA has also confirmed the group’s action with regards to billions of rupees having been secured through the government’s amnesty policy. The investigators involved with the case are puzzled why none of the Omni Group owners, who are in the FIA custody, revealed this fact earlier.
The Group applied for the amnesty from Dubai and ‘whitened’ the money by paying the required amount. When the FIA contacted the FBR for details of the issue, it was told that beneficiaries of amnesty can’t be disclosed under the law. However, the Supreme Court can seek any details.
Legal experts and former officers of the FIA are of the view that this move will not affect the case as amnesty doesn’t apply to money laundering. They opine that it is yet to be ascertained under what head the FBR allowed amnesty to the Omni Group. However, they agree to the FBR’s point of view that it is bound to keep the amnesty details secret. They said the proposed ordinance of 2018 has two parts, the Voluntary Declaration of Domestic Assets Ordinance and Foreign Assets (Declaration and Repatriation) Ordinance 2018. Two other relevant ordinances are Income Tax (Amendment) Ordinance 2018, and Economic Reforms (amendment) Ordinance 2018. The scheme doesn’t apply to public office-holders.
Haroon Akhtar, former adviser to prime minister had stated in April, 2018 that the secrecy clauses of the amnesty scheme come under the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) rules. He, however, clarified that amnesty is not given on corruption money, on narcotics or terror financing.
Director General FIA Bashir Memon, when contacted, told this correspondent that he is aware of the fact that the lawyer for the FIA had told the court that Omni Group has obtained amnesty on 29 accounts. It remains to be seen if the revelation by Omni Group will be taken as a confession as it has been proved that the money of benamis, government officials, contractors and public representatives landed in the accounts of Omni Group.
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Treasure is your news, entertainment, music fashion,Business and Sports website. We provide you with the latest breaking news and videos straight from the entertainment industry.
Contact us: treasure.pk@gmail.com
SECP introduces “trading only brokers” concept for expanding investor base
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Peer Review : Memorandum of Understanding
This Memorandum of Understanding is between all schools in the
Tiptree and Stanway Primary Schools Consortium
This agreement is underpinned by the shared professional moral responsibility of all Consortium members who undertake to work collaboratively to support school improvement across all schools named in this Memorandum of Understanding.
All members of the Consortium will have shared responsibility for the schools and young people across the Consortium and are expected to act swiftly and responsibly if there are indications that any school requires support
In cases where schools are experiencing difficulties, the relevant Consortium Collaborative Group will work together to resolve the difficulties, drawing on the resources of the Consortium Management Group and wider Consortium community
All schools will undertake to report back to their respective governing bodies as appropriate
The Consortium Management Group will be responsible for ensuring the above processes take place
All members of the Consortium are expected to play an active role in all processes as agreed in this Memorandum of Understanding
All members of the Consortium will undertake to ensure that they attend all Consortium Peer Review meetings unless there is an unavoidable reason to prevent this
All members of the Consortium will engage fully with the Peer Review Programme
All members of the Consortium will work together in a spirit of mutual trust and openness with a willingness to share and learn together
The Consortium Collaborative Working Group will have a nominated Peer Review Lead who will be responsible for ensuring that all members within the group participate in all aspects of the Peer Review Programme and will act as the main point of communication with the Management Group
The name of the Peer Review Leads for the academic year 2017-18 are:
Collaborative Group 1: Carl Messer
Collaborative Group 2: Kate Moore
Collaborative Group 3: Trish Wilkie
All schools will work in a professional, confidential and mutually respectful manner towards each other
Conversations should be honest, courageous and supportive of partnership and system-wide improvement
Reviewers will challenge and support in a professional and robust manner; and
The model is underpinned by coaching models and therefore coaching methods should be adopted during peer review and partnership processes
In order to facilitate effective school and system improvement, all schools within the Consortium agree to share their school-based data including FFT and RAISE, with the proviso that any information that would not normally be in the public domain remains confidential to Consortium members
The Consortium Management Group will develop together a set of annual improvement priorities
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The Mount Rushmore of country music: Who belongs on it?
Dave Paulson | Nashville Tennessean
Who belongs on the Mount Rushmore of country music?
It's a question that's both fun to mull over and impossible to answer, and we were happy to pose it to a bunch of today's country stars.
Midland has a long list
They are country music's current throwback kings, so the men of Midland have no shortage of legends they'd want to tip their hat to.
Their Mount Rushmore lineup: George Jones, George Strait, Willie Nelson, Gary Stewart, Waylon Jennings, Keith Whitley ...
"OK, that's it," bassist Cameron Duddy cuts in. "I think there's only four (spots)."
"If it's our mountain, we can put as many statues as we want," frontman Mark Wystrach says.
And who's to say they can have only one mountain? Guitarist Jess Carson suggests a separate one for Dolly Parton, not unlike the Crazy Horse Memorial.
Rascal Flatts salutes the ladies
"This is our mountain," reasons Gary LeVox. "We'd put us on there. That's three of them. I'd put us up there on Mount Flattmore."
"Us and Garth (Brooks). That's it," adds Joe Don Rooney with a laugh. But Jay DeMarcus isn't on board.
"That's a little self-serving. I'd put George Jones on there."
"Well, yeah, with us three," counters LeVox. But then he gets a better idea: a trio of Loretta Lynn, Tanya Tucker and Dolly Parton.
"With Dolly, you'd have to make a pretty big mountain," DeMarcus jokes.
"Well, listen," LeVox says. "I'm a heck of a sculptor."
Brad Paisley's pick
He's not just a country star and hit songwriter — Brad Paisley is also one heck of a guitar player. It's only right that he has reverence for a similarly gifted legend: the late Glen Campbell.
“He’s one of them that when they find the right block of granite, his face should go on it.”
Thomas Rhett, Kane Brown want 'nine heads'
"Can I have, like, nine heads up there?" asks Brown. It's hard for him to pick favorites, but a few names are a must: Keith Whitley, Kenny Chesney and Randy Travis.
Rhett kicks in a couple more: late outlaw legend Merle Haggard and modern arena rocking outsider Eric Church.
Share your feedback to help improve our site!
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The Escapist Portal > The Escapist Forums > The News Room
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Game of the Year Edition Launches Tomorrow Alongside Major Patch
ffronw
1 POSTED: 29 Aug 2016 12:20
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt's Game of the Year edition launchers tomorrow, and there's also a huge patch coming for existing owners of the game.
We've known for a while that a "Game of the Year" edition of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was coming, and it will finally launch tomorrow. This version of the game will include all of the DLC that CD Projekt has released for their award-winning RPG.
In addition to releasing the GOTY edition, CD Projekt is also rolling out a massive patch for the game that makes fixes to a wide array of issues. These include fixes for problematic quests, tweaks to the loot randomization system, and an adjustment to the maximum item level for players who start new game plus at a high level. You can check out nearly three pages of patch notes in this PDF document. The 1.3 patch is already installed in the GOTY edition, but existing owners will be able to download it sometime tomorrow.
If you haven't picked up The Witcher 3 yet, the GOTY edition is a great way to get the game and all the add-on content. It will launch tomorrow, and will set you back $50. If you already own the games and are just looking for the DLC, you should remember that your current save games will not work with the GOTY edition. CD Projekt recommends that owners of the existing game consider the Season Pass instead.
Metalrocks
thats the version i have been waiting for. i just hope there will be a disc version of it. since the download is going to be huge.
008Zulu
How big is the patch?
Terminalchaos
Sweet, looking forward to when the season pass goes on discount. Now, CD Projekt Red can fully focus on Cyberpunk. I haven't looked forward to a title like this in years.
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Apple Event 2019: iPhone 11 Pro, Watch Series 5, Apple Arcade, iPad and everything announced
What is a Blade Server?
How to Take Screenshots in Windows 10
Published by Vologon at September 11, 2019
Apple/GIF by CNET
This story is part of Apple Event, our full coverage of the latest news from Apple headquarters.
Welcome to Apple’s latest round of “What the iPhone has in store for us for 2019 and 2020!” We got updates on Apple Arcade, a new entry-level iPad for 2019, a new Watch Series 5, and of course, an iPhone 11. But the biggest deal was the iPhone 11 Pro and its big brother the Pro Max, new flagship models sporting three cameras and improved computational photography. Plus, you’ll be able to win an iPhone 11 Pro Max in our Apple Core giveaway.
Some news came after the event ended: MacOS Catalina is coming in October.
Watch this:
3 new iPhones, a new Apple Watch and an early surprise
The most surprising development leading up to Apple’s annual announcements of its new iPhones? For the first time, the company is simultaneously streaming the event on YouTube as well as its own site. The times, they are a changin’.
Apple Report
All the latest Apple news delivered to your inbox. It’s FREE!
iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max are packed with camera features
iPhone 11, 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max
The expected mainstream iPhone 11 debuted with a dual-camera configuration and a new design in six colors. Features include Dolby Atmos audio, Wi-Fi 6, an ultra wide camera lens and enhanced camera features. You’ll be able to take landscape selfies and videos and slo-mo video — Apple referred to these as “slofies,” and Twitter was not amused. It gets a power boost in the form of a new A13 Bionic processor (with a faster graphics processor). We saw a new action RPG game, Pascal’s Wager from Giant Network, to show off the GPU performance and spatial audio. It isn’t an Apple Arcade title, though, which is interesting.
The iPhone 11 starts at $699 (£729, AU$1,199).
Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller shows off the iPhone 11 Pro’s three cameras.
Apple/Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET
The iPhone 11 Pro and its big twin the Pro Max have “Super Retina XDR” OLED displays that are based on the Pro XDR Display that has similar specs but is not OLED. It has the fidget-spinner-looking tri-camera setup, a new matte finish, and uses the A13 Bionic as well. Apple claims longer battery life despite all that. It comes bundled with the fast-charge adapter.
The cameras are all new and now include an ultra-wide lens — for Apple’s claim of a 4x zoom range — with edge-to-edge focus pixels, and Apple’s improved its image processing. Apple was also very proud of its new Deep Fusion technology, which drives its improved Smart HDR multishot mode. It starts at $999, and the larger 11 Pro Max starts at $1,099. Preorders begin Friday and ship on Sept. 20.
Apple shows off new games for its Arcade subscription…
Apple Arcade and Apple TV Plus
Apple took the opportunity to introduce us to some new games for its upcoming all-you-can-eat game subscription service, coming later this month, which will run $4.99 per month per family, with a one-month free trial. You can get Apple TV Plus for free for a year if you buy Apple devices.
These are the games we saw demo’d when Apple Arcade was being introduced:
Frogger in Toy Town, from Konami
Shinsekai: Deep Sea, from Capcom
Sayonara Wild Hearts, from Annapurna Interactive
Apple TV Plus launches on Nov. 1 in over 100 countries, for another $4.99 per month for a family subscription. We saw a longer trailer of Jason Momoa’s new sci-fi show See.
Apple/Screenshot by Rebecca Fleenor/CNET
The company is replacing its sixth-generation iPad with a new 10.2-inch seventh-generation iPad optimized for the new iPad OS. It’s got improved brightness, a better viewing angle, an A10 Fusion chip and adds a Smart Connector plus a new smart keyboard cover. So you can enjoy all the new games and content! For the same price as before, $329 (£349, AU$529), starting at the end of the month.
First look at Apple’s 10.2-inch iPad
Apple/Screenshot by Lynn La/CNET
The new Watch Series 5 features a new always-on display that can drop to as low as 1Hz refresh to save power, as well as a compass and optimized faces. And it has fancy new bands and faces! GPS models will start at $3999 (£399, AU$649) and $499 (£499, AU$799) for cell models. Series 3 stays in the line, but the price has dropped to $199 (£199, AU$319) to start. The company also announced three new health studies: hearing, heart and movement and menstrual-cycle tracking.
If you’re feeling nostalgic, you can go back and read our liveblog for the event.
Up close with the Apple Watch Series 5’s always-on display
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How to Set Up Your Gaming PC on a 4K TV
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Baidu claims its Apollo Lite vision-based vehicle framework achieves level 4 autonomy
Kyle Wiggers@Kyle_L_Wiggers June 19, 2019 9:25 AM
Baidu and Hongqi: Level 4 car
Baidu is among the dozens of companies developing full-stack hardware and software solutions for self-driving vehicles, and it’s making steady progress toward its goal of full autonomy. To that end, the Beijing-based tech giant today unveiled Apollo Lite, a vision-based framework that leverages multiple cameras to achieve level 4 autonomous driving — that is, operation with limited human oversight under select conditions as defined by the Society of Automotive Engineers.
According to Baidu, Apollo Lite can process “vast” amounts of data generated by 10 cameras to detect objects up to 700 feet away while delivering real-time, 360-degree sensing of the environment. In tests on public roads in Beijing, vehicles relying on Apollo Lite managed to drive sans lidar sensors, which measure the distance to target objects by illuminating them with laser light and measuring the reflected pulses. (Lidar forms the foundation of a number of autonomous car systems, including those from Uber and Lyft.)
A strictly vision-based approach to autonomous driving is one advocated by Intel’s Mobileye, which is developing a custom accelerator processor chip — EyeQ5 — that offers 360-degree coverage courtesy proprietary algorithms, cameras, and ultrasonic. Similarly, driverless semi truck startup TuSimple says its camera-based technology (which employs lidar largely for redundancy) has a 1,000-meter detection range.
“A robust vision-based system is critical to the safety of autonomous driving, especially in high-speed situations where real-time sensing is critical,” said Apollo’s technical committee head Liang Wang. “Apollo Lite further strengthens Baidu’s sensor fusion based level 4 autonomous driving system that leverages the capabilities of camera, lidar, and radar to achieve the ‘true redundancy’ necessary for a safe and fully autonomous driving experience.”
Apollo Lite’s reveal comes after the January launch of Apollo 3.5, the latest version of Baidu’s Apollo open source driverless car platform, and Apollo Enterprise, a suite of customizable autonomous driving products for vehicle fleets. Alongside them, Baidu open-sourced software and reference hardware for its vehicle-to-everything (V2X) Apollo Intelligent Vehicle Infrastructure Cooperative System platform.
Apollo — which has grown in digital footprint considerably to 400,000 lines of code, or more than double the 165,000 lines of code the company announced in January 2018 — is now being tested, contributed to, or deployed by Intel, Nvidia, NXP, and over 130 global partners. (That’s an uptick from 116 partners in July 2018.) According to Baidu, the number of developers who’ve sourced Apollo’s code from the project’s Github repository stands at 12,000, a 20% increase from mid-2018.
Among the growing body of collaborators is California-based Udelv, which in January said it would deploy up to 100 autonomous delivery vehicles developed on Apollo 3.5 to U.S. cities in 2019, including the San Francisco Bay Area. Other Apollo adoptees include Volvo and Ford, both of which have committed to testing Apollo-powered self-driving vehicles on Chinese roads in 2019.
Baidu is also working with Chinese automobile manufacturers Chery, BYD Auto, and Great Wall, in addition to Hyundai Kia, Ford, and VM Motori, to roll out Apollo Enterprise solutions to cars. FAW Group, which develops the Hongqi line of luxury cars, is another close partner — it last year announced plans to launch a “limited number” of Apollo vehicles across China in the next year.
Baidu intends to achieve “full autonomy” on highways and urban roads by 2020, but it has competition in Beijing-based Pony.ai, which has raised $214 million in venture capital to date and which in early April launched a driverless taxi pilot in Guangzhou. Meanwhile, Alphabet’s Waymo says it’s now servicing over 1,000 riders with a fleet of more than 600 cars, and GM’s Cruise Automation has been testing an autonomous taxi service for employees in San Francisco and plans to launch a public service this year. Other rivals include Tesla, Zoox, Aptiv, May Mobility, Pronto.ai, Aurora, and Nuro.
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Business Press Release
Princeville Capital Announces the Close of Its New Climate Technology Fund
Business Wire November 25, 2019 10:26 AM
SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–November 25, 2019–
Princeville Capital, a global investment firm focused on backing fast-growing and disruptive technology companies, has announced the close of its new Climate Technology Fund, exceeding its fundraising target. The new fund invests in technology companies that are benefiting from and supporting the global transition to lower carbon economies and that have a fundamental Climate Positive™ impact. By targeting both financial returns and impact, the firm aims to attract more capital into this rapidly growing sector and to contribute to the critical need for investment into near-term climate solutions. The fund will invest in several core climate-focused sectors including smart grid technologies, industrial and building efficiency, precision agriculture, smart cities and technologies that promote climate resilience. The team is led by Managing Partners Emmanuel DeSousa, Eric Kosmowski, and Joaquin Rodriguez Torres.
The fund will deploy over $300 million during the investment period, taking meaningful minority positions, and using the team’s global and capital markets expertise to help companies successfully implement their international expansion plans. The Princeville Capital team now manages over $750 million across its two funds: Princeville Global, which invests in software and internet companies globally, and the new Princeville Climate Technology Fund. For more information, please visit www.princeville-capital.com.
About Princeville Capital
Princeville Capital is an investment firm focused on backing rapidly growing technology-related companies around the world. The firm looks to support entrepreneurs seeking not only capital, but a value-added partner who can help them fulfill their aspirations to create companies of global scale. The firm has a worldwide network of relationships built over decades of experience investing in and advising rapidly growing companies in the technology sector. Princeville Capital has offices in San Francisco, Amsterdam, and Hong Kong. Visit www.princeville-capital.com for more information.
Matthew Fong
inquiries@pvglobal.com
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THE OMNI SHOW
Get to know the people and stories behind Omni’s award-winning productivity apps for Mac and iOS.
Jim Correia, OmniFocus Engineer
Jim Correia — OmniFocus engineer, man-about-town — joins the show to talk about some of the things he and the team have been working on since WWDC: Dark Mode, multiple windows, and Shortcuts.
We also talk about his humble beginnings with his trusty TI-99/4A by his side, his search for exotic mesons, and his work at Bare Bones on BBEdit and Yojimbo.
Jim’s also a runner and dog-partner to Rosie (who’s widely recognized as the best dog). You can find Jim on Twitter @jimcorreia.
Some other people, places, and things mentioned:
Evan McNulty
Tim Wood
Mailsmith
Rich Siegel
Steve Kalkwarf
Texas Instruments TI-99/4A
Exotic mesons
Superconducting Super Collider
Luke Adamson
Sears, Roebuck, and Company
UserLand Software
Curt Clifton
Rosie the Good, Busy Dog
Brent Simmons: You're listening to The Omni Show. Get to know the people and stories behind The Omni Group's award-winning productivity apps for Mac and iOS. Mu…sic.
SFX: [MUSIC PLAYS]
Brent Simmons: I'm your host, Brent Simmons. In the studio with me today is Jim Correia, OmniFocus developer. Say hello, Jim.
Jim Correia: Hello Jim.
Brent Simmons: So to start off, we have a listener question from Evan McNulty. Of course, he's an Omni employee, but he is also a listener, and he asks, are you right?
Jim Correia: Yeah. You say he's a listener, but I'm going to answer under protest. I'm going to say that I am right more often than I am wrong.
Brent Simmons: Okay.
Jim Correia: How about we go with that?
Brent Simmons: That sounds good. So the answer is bet on Jim. It'll work out slightly more often than not. All right. So you're an OmniFocus developer and the OmniFocus lead developer, technically?
Jim Correia: Yeah, I'm technically the lead engineer for OmniFocus.
Brent Simmons: Okay. So what have you been working on this summer and fall, since WWDC?
Jim Correia: So this summer and fall, the two major things I've been working on, it's all been stuff for iOS 13, but I've been working on Dark Mode for OmniFocus, as well as multiple window support for OmniFocus.
Brent Simmons: So did you start with Dark Mode? That seems maybe the easier of the two, I don't know.
Jim Correia: Yeah. Dark Mode has been done — and if you could see me, there were little air quotes around "done" — for quite a long time. Dark Mode was interesting because OmniFocus has had Dark Mode for many years now. I forget exactly how long. So we did Dark Mode before the OS supported such a thing, and now that the OS supports it, it was actually nice to be able to go in and rip out a bunch of our custom code. So now we do it the OS way. We've tuned the colors so that we fit in with the OS better. And give people a look that they've been asking for quite a while.
Brent Simmons: So the look actually matches the OS preferred semantic colors, or whatever those are.
Jim Correia: Yes. We're using the Apple semantic colors. So the background colors in OmniFocus will match that in Mail, for example.
Brent Simmons: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Okay. All right. So Apple's already gone ahead and designed all this, in a sense, and we're just picking that up. That's cool. These days, what do you use, asset catalogs for colors, and there's like a whole infrastructure for this, right?
Jim Correia: Yeah, there is. Since we did Dark Mode years ago, we had our own theme file format, which was essentially property lists with a bunch of metrics and colors in it. So one of the first things I did this summer was write a little bit of code, which converted all the colors in that property list into asset catalogs. And then went through and deleted all the colors we didn't need anymore, because we're using the Apple semantic colors.
Brent Simmons: That's cool. So, you got the chance to delete a bunch of stuff, which is always nice.
Jim Correia: Yeah, there's a bunch of custom code that just no longer exists anymore. And while it was code that many people were proud of, I'm also happy to delete it.
Brent Simmons: That's true. Well that's, you know, the mark of a professional engineer is that that person will delete even their own code, even if it's good, if it's time. So how about the automatic switching? Was that any difficult there, a person changes their preference or has auto switching turned on or whatever?
Jim Correia: No. If you're building a brand new application, and you have all stock UI elements, it's essentially free. If you have custom UI elements, you just have to make sure you go in and respond to the trait collection changes, and make sure you update your colors. And even then, depending on how you've built your stuff, it's sort of rare that you actually have to do work. Most of it happens for free if you're using asset catalogs and the modern infrastructure.
Brent Simmons: My personal iOS experience basically stops with iOS 6, so I don't even know what trait collections are, other than generally. So OmniFocus may be out by the time people are listening to this? But it is, it's at least in TestFlight, so you can see our new Dark Mode. So the other thing was multi windows, multiple windows, and that's just an iPad thing, right?
Jim Correia: That is just an iPad thing. And that was a much bigger lift than Dark Mode. That has consumed most of the rest of my summer, as well as my colleague Reid's summer.
Brent Simmons: Reid who was on the show recently?
Jim Correia: Yes.
Brent Simmons: Why was this a big lift? What had to happen here?
Jim Correia: So OmniFocus for iPad, it's hard to believe that the code base is almost 10 years old already, and in those 10 years almost every corner of the app assumes that there is only going to be one instance of the UI. It's pretty straightforward to make it work, to support multiple windows. But there was a lot of code to touch. Most corners of the application that were not underlying model and infrastructure code were touched for this release.
Brent Simmons: Interesting. So of course the model, which is shared with the Mac is prepared for this, because the Mac can have multiple windows, but so it was user interface layer and related controllers. So tell me about the quick entry window. We talked about that a little in the pre-interview.
Jim Correia: Yeah. Quick entry was sort of interesting because we got away with sort of a shortcut before, because we knew that there was only one possible at a time, and that you couldn't be editing anything else anywhere in the application while the quick entry window was up. But as soon as you add a second window that's no longer true.
Brent Simmons: And that's a very big thing to be different.
Jim Correia: Yeah.
Brent Simmons: Yeah.
Jim Correia: So fortunately we had the underpinnings of what we needed to solve this problem, which was the code that drove quick entry on macOS, so one of the things I did this summer was move that code out of the Mac application down into the model layer where arguably it should have been all along. I extended it to meet the needs of OmniFocus iOS, and now that drives quick entry in both applications.
Brent Simmons: That makes sense. I imagine this entire project in multiple windows has been the case. So you think it's this amount of work, and then as you dive you're finding more and more corners and so on?
Jim Correia: Exactly. Early in the summer, we sat down and we tried to scope the work, largely so that our product manager could have a sense of, what is it that Reid and I are doing? And we had a vague idea of what we needed to do. And then as we started to peel back layers of the onion, we were like, "oh we forgot about this thing, which also needs to be touched, and this thing too." And in fact before I came up here today, I was fixing what I hope is the last one of those surprises.
Brent Simmons: Getting close. It's an interesting subject, because you could always have imagined that multiple windows would come to the iPad, but you never know exactly how that would work or whatever. So what about preparing in advance for a feature like that? Do you do that? Because the work could have been done five years ago, for instance.
Jim Correia: Yeah. I mean I think this rumor has been floating around for a while that iPad should have multiple windows. So when do you do that work versus other priorities in customer-facing features that you want to ship today, and the other problem is, is what if you guess wrong and you've done all this work and it's not a really great match for what Apple eventually shipped. Now that said, there are lots of places in the application where we should have not been using a global reference to an editing context or to the current outline controller. We could have done better there, but software is not always clean, sometimes it's messy, but it ships and it works.
Brent Simmons: Yeah, right and that's the key thing, you ship what you need to ship when it's time. Yeah, likewise there, I'm sure have been similar rumors on Macs for years about different things and like you could have prepared for all of them and been wrong.
Jim Correia: Yeah. There's one in particular I remember, and this is an old rumor that is pretty well known so I don't feel bad about perpetuating it at this point because it's certainly dead. The rumor was we going to have floating menus or tear-off menus. And when I was working on BBEdit, this was, I don't know, a decade and a half ago, the way BBEdit enabled and disabled menu items before the menu dropdown, it was not a good match for if menus would be floating invisible on the screen all the time. So I went through and I turned BBEdit's menu validation code inside out and the result was much cleaner and nicer, and was probably worth doing. But the floating menu feature never came.
Brent Simmons: So I imagine, speaking of cleaner and nicer after all this work, OmniFocus's code is cleaner and nicer a bit too as a result of adapting to multiple windows.
Jim Correia: It is, we're pretty happy with the architecture that we came up for OmniFocus 3 for iOS and this cleans it up a fair bit. It doesn't change it drastically. It just cleans up the loose edges where people were referring to a single instance of the UI and now it's all parametrized. So clearly we can have three OmniFocus windows on your iPad if that's what you need.
Brent Simmons: Sure. That's cool. Those big iPads. Yeah. Why not? Kind of nice to be able to see three different perspectives or whatever. I imagine there are just a number of bug fixes, iOS 13 compatibility issues. That kind of stuff in general.
Jim Correia: Yeah. There's always bug fixes and performance tweaks that we're working on. There's also another big feature we've been working on, shortcuts and automation. So Omni Automation for OmniFocus is still in beta, but what will ship with the iOS 13 release of OmniFocus is a bunch of shortcuts.
Brent Simmons: So Shortcuts have been beefed up in iOS 13.
Jim Correia: They have. If any of you remember Automator from old macOS, it's sort of its kindred spirit.
Brent Simmons: We have parameters now, right, and we didn't use to?
Jim Correia: We have parameters and we have a nice shortcut that lets you do an advanced query of your tasks, and then you can process your tasks that way. I think it's going to be great for sharing tasks with your teammate, for generating a report, various things like that.
Brent Simmons: Okay. Can you query on basically the same kind of things we can create perspectives out of, or what do those parameters look like?
Jim Correia: The rules are slightly different than the perspective rules. They're quite flexible, and I'm embarrassed to say I don't have all of them in my head, because I have not been doing that work. My colleague Andrew has been doing the work.
Brent Simmons: Andrew Burkhalter, who hopefully we can get him on the show and talk about shortcuts and automation. One of these days.
Jim Correia: Yeah, we can see.
Brent Simmons: Yeah. We'll drag him up here. He's on the third floor, listeners. We're recording on the fourth floor. So we'll go downstairs, throw him in the elevator, bring him up. So you've been here for about 10 years. So have you been on OmniFocus the whole time?
Jim Correia: I have. I guess when I arrived, it was unclear exactly what I was going to work on, and I did a quick prototype, I think for OmniOutliner for iPad, and then we decided that I should work on OmniFocus. And that was just fine with me, because I love OmniFocus.
Brent Simmons: Yeah. How'd you come to Omni in the first place? You're from New England, so this is a bit of a hike.
Jim Correia: I am from New England. This story is sort of not terribly interesting. I had been at Bare Bones more than a decade, and had essentially been working on the same problems for more than a decade, and was ready to try something new, and pick up some new challenges. Everything aligned so that it made sense for my family to pick up and move from New England out to Seattle. So we did.
Brent Simmons: That's… that's not that interesting.
Jim Correia: No.
Brent Simmons: I'm glad we got that out of the way. It wasn't a Craigslist ad, though.
Jim Correia: No, it wasn't a Craigslist ad.
Brent Simmons: Half the company's answered a Craigslist ad.
Jim Correia: I had known Tim for years through WWDC and other conferences.
Brent Simmons: Sure. Yeah. Well you and I have known each other at least online for… '90s sometime, probably.
Jim Correia: I think I was an undergraduate when we knew each other.
Brent Simmons: Yeah. Okay.
Jim Correia: And now I'm an old man.
Brent Simmons: Yeah. Listeners, you'll have to watch. We'll post photos of Jim. You'll be able to see that, yeah, he's an old man. So as you say, before Omni, you were at Bare Bones. You worked on all the apps? BBEdit, Yojimbo?
Jim Correia: I worked on everything we shipped.
Brent Simmons: Mailsmith too?
Jim Correia: BBEdit, Yojimbo and Mailsmith, over time. I think over time, I probably did less work on Mailsmith than anything.
Brent Simmons: That was always kind of Rich's baby in a way, it seems like.
Jim Correia: It was, and I was also the domain expert on several things in BBEdit, so it made sense for me to work on BBEdit. I did come over to the Mailsmith project for a while to work on the application framework, and a lot of those pieces ended up in the modern version of BBEdit that became the one that we shipped on Mac OS X eventually.
Brent Simmons: Oh, okay. That was a Carbon app when it shipped on OS X.
Jim Correia: Yeah, It was a Carbon app on OS X, before that it was an HIToolbox app, because Carbon didn't exist.
Brent Simmons: Right, right. And Carbon really is HIToolbox evolved.
Brent Simmons: I helped Carbonize exactly one app in my life and immediately switched over to writing in Cocoa, and was very happy. Now did you start Yojimbo? It's got the name "Jim" in it. What's the story there?
Jim Correia: No, so it's actually named after a Kurosawa film, the product originated out of an idea that my colleague Steve had for years about an app he wanted to build, and he's a big fan of the film.
Brent Simmons: Oh, okay.
Jim Correia: It was actually the second proposed name for the application. We had a great name, and—
Brent Simmons: Nova?
Jim Correia: No, see as lawyers often are, they're not fun, and they said "No, you can't name it that. That's going to cause you all kinds of grief." So Yojimbo it was.
Brent Simmons: Can you say what that name was or are you still, lawyer's going to come after you?
Jim Correia: I probably shouldn't say.
Brent Simmons: Okay. After the show, I'm going to ask you again.
Jim Correia: I'll have to make sure that the tape is off.
Brent Simmons: How did you get into computer programming in the first place? Were you one of those kids who had an Apple II Plus at home, and your parents are computer programmers?
Jim Correia: No, not at all. I ended up with a TI-99/4A, and I forget how old I was. I was fairly young, and it arrived one Christmas by way of my grandmother. And I have no idea how this happened, because she was not a computer person, at all. And in those days when you got a computer and you turned it on, it didn't do anything. So you learned how to program it in BASIC. And that's what I did. And then when I had the computer, I didn't have a floppy disk drive. I didn't have a tape drive. So every time you turned it on, it was a clean slate, and you wrote something new.
Brent Simmons: Yeah. Ah, that's amazing. Oh God, and if the electricity were to go out, like whatever, start over. Yeah.
Jim Correia: Yeah. I got really good at hunt and peck typing. And eventually in high school I decided to take a typing class, and man, it was painful to unlearn those habits.
Brent Simmons: Yeah. I never took a typing class. We had them, when I was in schoo,l of course. And my typing style is still derived from age 12, typing on an Apple II Plus, it is not correct. So in high school were you, did they have computers? Were you a part of that whole scene, the kids in the math lab?
Jim Correia: Yeah, I was heavy into math and science, and we did have computer programming classes in high school, and we had a computer team, and our school is actually pretty good and we'd go to the various competitions. What's interesting though is that at that time…. So I guess I could date myself and say that I graduated in '91, I believe? See, I'm so old, I can't remember the year I graduated in. And my guidance counselors at the time gave me an interesting bit of advice. They're like, "I know you're good at this, and that you find it interesting, but it doesn't look like a place where there's going to be a lot of growth. So you might want to look into other fields to go to school for."
Brent Simmons: No growth in computer science?
Jim Correia: Yeah. Well, or that there was going to be a glut of people.
Brent Simmons: Oh, okay. Too many. Yeah.
Jim Correia: So I did what you do when your guidance counselor tells you not to go to school for computer science. So I went and got a degree in physics.
Brent Simmons: Naturally. So where'd you go to school?
Jim Correia: I went to UMass, one of the small campuses, the Dartmouth campus. What was interesting about being a physics student there was it was a really small department. My graduating class was three people.
Brent Simmons: Wow.
Jim Correia: But for a school that was largely undergraduate, the physics department was heavily research based. We had a professor doing solid state research, and we had two groups doing high energy physics at Brookhaven National Lab.
Jim Correia: I was lucky enough to, as an undergraduate, go with one of the groups to the lab and work with them for the summer when they were running their high energy experiment, looking for exotic mesons.
Brent Simmons: That just sounds really, really cool.
Jim Correia: It does, I mean exotic mesons makes it maybe sound more interesting than it was, but it was still a great experience.
Brent Simmons: Yeah. Science is dry in the way science is dry, and that's fine, but yeah, exotic mesons.
Jim Correia: The interesting bit about that summer was that it happened to be the summer that funding in this country was cut for the Superconducting Super Collider.
Brent Simmons: Ah, yeah.
Jim Correia: Not exactly a good time to be a physics student who maybe is deciding whether or not they're going to be interested in high energy physics.
Brent Simmons: Sure. So now there's a glut of high energy physicists and not enough tools.
Jim Correia: There is, and apparently some of them went on to create financial instruments that we probably shouldn't talk about.
Brent Simmons: That's a whole other topic. Good Lord, our friend Luke Adamson could discuss that.
Jim Correia: Yeah. So I get back to campus that fall and said, "okay, well clearly high energy physics is not a thing." And it turned out that the math department just got a large grant from the National Science Foundation to do innovation and teaching and some of it was going to be software-based. We're going to teach kids calculus in non-traditional ways that were more experience-based.
Jim Correia: So I worked for them for two years while I finished my undergraduate degree, and since I didn't know what I was going to be when I grew up, I stuck on and worked another two years with them while I took masters physics classes.
Brent Simmons: Oh. Okay. Now you have a foot in both places doing physics and doing programming.
Jim Correia: Yeah. And it turned out that the software we were writing on that grant was all software that ran on a Mac.
Brent Simmons: Oh, okay. And was that really your first exposure to Macs?
Jim Correia: My first exposure to Macs was, I think when I was a freshman in college, and I started doing HyperCard work.
Brent Simmons: Oh cool.
Jim Correia: And for the same grant, a lot of the prototypes were in HyperCard, And then we got to the point where like, "okay, now it's time to write real software." And I'm like, "okay, I guess I'll learn C++, this will be an adventure."
Brent Simmons: Was PowerPlant out by that time?
Jim Correia: PowerPlant was out. Our app was actually built in PowerPlant, and we used something called the animation class library to do our virtual worlds.
Brent Simmons: Okay. Did you ever have to have any of those really lousy jobs? Like me, I was a dishwasher, busser kind of thing. You ever do retail, restaurant work, to get by as a high school kid?
Jim Correia: Oh. I ended doing retail, commission sales in Sears, but I started doing dishes. I stocked the shelves, I did the dairy cooler, I took the trash out, for a small convenience store meat market near my house, and that was definitely a character building job. I recommend everybody have at least one of those.
Brent Simmons: Yeah, if not several. I had a ton, apparently I needed a lot of building. But back to your writing software for the math department, at some point you're out of there, you're going to join the real world. How do you get from that point to Bare Bones?
Jim Correia: Well, I was finishing up my master's coursework, and still unsure what I was going to be when I grew up. And the professor I worked with was saying, "Well, you should be like me, and go into a PhD program for math and science ed." And the whole time while I was writing Mac software, I was a BBEdit user and a Frontier user, which is how I knew you. And I would send Rich bug reports about BBEdit, and then at some point he made me a beta site, and then at some point he invited me up for lunch, because he decided that I'd reported enough bugs that he should just offer me a job so that he can make them my problem.
Brent Simmons: That seems fair. And so you got a job and stayed 10 years there.
Jim Correia: Yeah. I think it was 13 by the time I finally left.
Brent Simmons: 13, wow. How big was the company around, so Steve was there too. Patrick, Rich.
Jim Correia: The company has always fluctuated in size over the years, but it's always been fairly small. It's sometimes I think that I didn't have enough fingers to count the people using two hands, but usually around that size.
Brent Simmons: Stay in touch with Rich?
Jim Correia: Oh yeah. I talk to Rich several times a week these days.
Brent Simmons: Someone's got to keep him on an even keel after all. I guess that's your job.
Jim Correia: Yeah. I don't know how I get stuck with it, but yeah, we're in touch all the time.
Brent Simmons: That's great. So when you're not making software happen, you're a runner.
Jim Correia: I am. Which was sort of unexpected. I think back to my days in New England where the idea of running was not all that interesting, because it's hot, it's humid, it's cold. And then I came out to Seattle and the weather here is temperate most of the year, and I just—
Brent Simmons: You can run in literally every single month.
Jim Correia: Yeah. And most of the year I run in shorts. Not everybody does, but I do. It's sort of interesting how—
Brent Simmons: I bundle up like crazy. I wear long running pants, even in like July.
Jim Correia: Yeah. I can tell that I'm getting older now, because my hands get cold when I run. It was sort of surprising to fall into running, because I was definitely a pro couch potato, and then a friend of ours was diagnosed with lymphoma. Somebody suggested that as a show of support, we all run with Team In Training. So we did, and running just sort of stuck. So it was a surprise but a nice one.
Brent Simmons: Yeah. What do you like about it? What does it bring to you?
Jim Correia: It's a pretty efficient way to stay healthy, because while it takes a lot of activation energy to get up and actually get out there and do it, you don't have to run for very long to get a lot of cardio benefit from it. It's also a good time to think. Lots of bugs are actually solved while I'm out running, not when I'm sitting in front of the computer.
Brent Simmons: When you run, do you have a distance you generally go for, or do you tend to mix it up?
Jim Correia: Well these days I've kind of fallen off the wagon, and I just do short runs a couple of times a week, but for a long time I would do anywhere… a short run would be three, a long run would be 10. It depends. I used to train a lot for half marathons, and these days not so much.
Brent Simmons: You have done a marathon.
Jim Correia: I've done one marathon. It didn't go as well as I would hope, so that means that rather than totally writing off the idea of running marathons, I'm going to have to do another one.
Brent Simmons: Uh huh. Right. Is it just a matter of training enough or training in the right way to hopefully have it go better the next time?
Jim Correia: I think so. The marathon's an interesting distance because it's beyond the distance that most people can pack enough glycogen for, so you need to overcome that and deal with nutrition on the run. I love the half marathon distance, because you get up, you run a half marathon, you're done, and then you go about your day.
Brent Simmons: I've not done a half marathon, but I do enough running that yeah, I think I could do that. I wouldn't be like wiped out for a month or something, but a marathon, somewhere along mile 20 or something, or mile 17 it must just get brutal.
Jim Correia: Yeah. For me it was about mile 18, where I'm like, "Oh, this is not great." And it's funny, the perspective you have at that point because I'm like, it's only seven more miles. How bad could it be?
Brent Simmons: Right. Pretty bad.
Jim Correia: It turns out, yes. The other valuable lesson I learned about the marathon is that when your friend says to you, "Oh, you should sign up for this marathon and run it with me, it's a flat course", don't believe them.
Brent Simmons: Don't believe which part? Don't believe that it's flat?
Brent Simmons: Okay. Because this was Curt, wasn't it?
Jim Correia: It was Curt. And it turns out that it was like a 2,500 feet elevation course.
Brent Simmons: Oh geez. To Curt, that's flat. But yeah, to regular humans...
Jim Correia: I mean, to be fair, I think maybe in his mind he remembered it being flat because it was all a blur, but it's definitely not flat.
Brent Simmons: Yeah. So you also take care of Rosie the dog.
Jim Correia: Yeah. Rosie is a good busy dog.
Brent Simmons: Busy by temperament, by breeding.
Jim Correia: Yeah. She's a border collie mix, so she's a great dog. She loves to come to the office and just chill. But whenever she notices that I'm not busy, it's time to pay attention to the dog.
Brent Simmons: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Right. She kind of demands that a little bit, huh.
Jim Correia: Yeah. It's funny too that if somebody comes to my office to work on a problem, and she notices that we're both idle, and my colleague Andrew thinks what she's actually picking up on is the fans running, because Xcode is doing a big build. She wanders over and says, "You guys aren't busy, you should pet the dog."
Brent Simmons: Yeah. That's what big build time is for. Yeah. That's cute. So when you're at home, do you have to walk her a bunch? Or she just like hang out?
Jim Correia: A little bit of everything. Sometimes she'll put herself to bed early, which is always surprising. She'll like look up at the stairs, and look at me, and look at the stairs and I'm like, you can go to bed, I'm not going to bed. But often, she'll get bored and she'll do what I call the Rosie dance, where she just crouches in front of you, and she clearly wants to play tug, or go for a walk, or she just wants me to move over to the couch so that she can jump up and sit with me.
Brent Simmons: Well that's nice. I picture the two of you watching television, you're petting the dog, pretty good night. We're just going to stop there. With the image of you petting your dog, and watching TV on the couch. Thanks Jim. How can people find you on the web?
Jim Correia: On the web. You can probably find me on Twitter. I don't post a ton these days, but I'm @jimcorreia on Twitter.
Brent Simmons: Okay. That'll be in the show notes too, because listener, you probably can't spell "Correia."
Jim Correia: Oh, they can probably spell it like five different ways.
Brent Simmons: That's true. That's true. I'd also like to thank our intrepid producer, Mark Boszko. Say hello, Mark.
Mark Boszko: Hello Mark.
Brent Simmons: And especially, I want to thank you for listening. Thank you. Music.
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How to recover when Apple Numbers says a file “can’t be opened for some reason”
Ever wondered what the worst error message you could encounter might be? This ranks pretty highly.
Prologue: backup
First of all, remember how people always told you to take backups, rather as you were advised to wear sunscreen? Well, they were right. Bear that in mind as I take you through on a journey of mild technology pain.
The high: Sierra
Having not seen any reports of gigantic showstopping bugs in the upgrade to Mac OS Sierra, I took the plunge the other day. Things were going fine. Everything worked. Nothing had crashed. Then I updated Numbers from 3.6.2 to 4.0, whose “new” features are apparently collaboration – and nothing much else.
Having done that, I tried to open one of my most-used spreadsheets, into which I have poured years of experience and hours of analysis. I’d had it open before the update, but (I think) had closed it before updating. (Whether it was open or not is immaterial; some other spreadsheets were open before the update and opened fine afterwards; some were closed before the update and opened fine afterwards; some were closed before and wouldn’t open afterwards.)
I was met with this response:
The low: Numbers
The spreadsheet can’t be opened “for some reason”?? What sort of error message is that??
But at least it offers the option to “Browse all versions”, which should be stored in iCloud, where the spreadsheet itself is stored. You then go into a Time Machine interface, and get this:
It’s “unable to open version”. This happens no matter how far back you want to go. You can try with lots of “versions”. Or you can realise you’re onto a lost cause and give up. At which point the “Time Machine” interface resolves itself into a rectangle, in which you find this message:
Well, thanks a lot. “For some reason.” How this ever got past any sort of quality assurance I cannot imagine. Did the engineer/s assign an out-of-bounds error code to the problem, and the operating system can’t decide what to say and so falls back to “for some reason”?
This is a giant screwup
Whichever; it’s a terrible, terrible experience for the user. You’re left unable to open the file, with no idea what has gone wrong, and no clues how to progress. If you had really valuable stuff in here, and no means of rolling back, you would be absolutely furious – justifiably so – with Apple.
Tracing the error
What has gone wrong here? You can dig into iWork files (Numbers, Pages, Keynote). They’re “packages”, which means that they’re folders disguised to look like files. Control-click on the file and you can “view package contents”, which in the case of this spreadsheet looks like this:
Turns out that all the meat is in “index.zip”. I made a copy on my Desktop and unzipped it:
That’s only a few files; the “Tables” folder contains 523 items. Which of these hundreds of items is at fault? One? Two? Two hundred? There’s no way of knowing. Given that none of the previous versions will load under this version of Numbers, it doesn’t matter how many of the files are screwed. You can’t get there from here.
Why you love your backups
I did try to get around this. Believe me. On an iPad (which hadn’t updated to the equivalent newer version of Numbers) I tried opening the original spreadsheet.
Opened fine.
Oh. So I tried AirDrop to send the can-be-opened-from-iCloud spreadsheet from the iPad to the Mac. The AirDrop worked, but the Mac wouldn’t open it – same message as before. On the iPad, you can also export the file: your options are Numbers, Excel, PDF, or CSV.
Export in Numbers and AirDrop? Didn’t work.
Export in Excel and AirDrop? Worked – except that the various tables that had been on a single sheet were split out into separate sheets. Non-ideal.
So the iPad route wasn’t quite right.
But I wasn’t finished yet. Did you notice how I mentioned backups? Before upgrading, I had made a backup of my hard drive using SuperDuper! (highly recommended).
So I plugged in my backup drive – I’m always careful not to overwrite it until I’m confident a big OS update hasn’t screwed anything – and dug around for the old version of Numbers (v 3.6.2), and put that back in.
Open Numbers 362, try to open spreadsheet.
It opens. No muss, no fuss.
Worse than error messages: no error messages
In many ways, this is even worse. What’s the situation here? We have a newer version of Numbers on the Mac which cannot open an untouched version of a spreadsheet that the older version can open.
Together with the colossal stupidity of “for some reason” as an error message, a new version that randomly can’t open an old spreadsheet (but is fine with many others), even while the old one can, makes one think that whoever is in charge of Numbers, or iWork, isn’t getting it right.
A lot of it is down to the error message. If it said “because two of the files are corrupt” you might begin to understand. But of course it can’t be that, because the old version can read it. “Some reason” sounds vague – is vague – but in a sense, it’s accurate. Whatever the reason for being unable to open this file is, it’s quite elusive. I had initially thought that it was something to do with picture embeds, but the problem persisted when I got rid of those. (There’s nothing in the Console app about it, so Numbers clearly doesn’t want to share whatever its discomfort is with the file/s.)
Anyway. Having got the old version of Numbers installed, I could now open the old spreadsheet. Fine. I’ll stick with that, I thought.
The morning after the night before
Problem over, you think? Not at all. On returning to the iPad the next day, I found it had updated to the newer version of Numbers – the one with collaboration.
Guess what? That’s right: the iPad version no longer opened the old spreadsheet.
Computing often has these moments – when you feel as though you’re standing on a very rickety rope ladder across a gigantic chasm, halfway from each side, with little prospect of reaching either side safely, yet obliged to go in one direction or the other. The previous day I could open the spreadsheet on the iPad, but I couldn’t get it safely back to the Mac. Now I could open it fine on the Mac, but I couldn’t get the iPad to read it. Not really the world of device-independent operation that one dreams of.
But but but! There is a solution on the Mac. You can load the file on the old version of Numbers, and then in the File menu there’s the option to export it to a Numbers ’09 format. (No idea what’s so great/terrible about that.) Notice that that export option wasn’t available on the iPad.
Worth a try, I thought. And indeed it was. I named the files created that way with an “09” suffix, and suddenly they opened on the iPad – with all the tables and charts intact.
Update: another tactic which I didn’t try, but which might work (I haven’t had the same problem again) is to log in to icloud.com and try to open or upload or similarly wrangle the file there. Make sure FIRST you have a backup of it, on a USB key or other cloud service; the greatest mistake is working on the only copy of an essential file.
This is one of the biggest WTF moments in an episode replete with them. I’ve reinstalled an older version of Numbers, and exported to an even older file version, in order to open the file on the newest version. It’s beyond bizarre.
Thankfully, it seems that there aren’t too many people having this problem; my own searches on the phrase “can’t be opened for some reason” turned up pretty much nothing. If we’re all lucky, then nobody will land on this page via a web search; you’ll all just be reading it for abstract interest, wondering how an operating system and a QA team can ever let “can’t be opened for some reason” be signed off as “OK for public consumption”. Apple puts a premium on its products and prides itself on its user interface; this, though, is one that got away, badly.
But what if you haven’t kept that backup of the Numbers app? In that case, I’m not able to offer any help. Perhaps you can find a friend who has a copy of the older version. Perhaps there’s a trustworthy download site. Perhaps you can get one by finding a Mac that hasn’t been updated and sending the version there. Perhaps you can rummage around in your Time Machine backup and reanimate the old version. Maybe you have a CD in your house with an older version. (Clutching at straws here, but I recognise that spreadsheets carry a lot of our lives nowadays.)
The simplest solution is not to update Numbers, which of course always feels like admitting defeat. The pragmatic solution is to export all your spreadsheets to the 09 format. The belt-and-braces solution (since this might be an iCloud problem) is to duplicate your spreadsheets on your hard drive, and export each into the 09 format – then you have three copies of them.
Whichever – I hope it goes well. And I hope never ever to run into “some reason” as the explanation for why an essential piece of content can’t be accessed. Fix it, Apple.
This entry was posted in analysis and tagged apple, errors, software by charlesarthur. Bookmark the permalink.
31 thoughts on “How to recover when Apple Numbers says a file “can’t be opened for some reason””
Niall O'Mara on September 26, 2016 at 10:00 pm said:
Yeah, feeling you pain on that Charles. Similar to an issue I had a few years back when Pages was updated and couldn’t open Pages files from earlier versions. I got a refund for the Mac app store Pages purchase and was advised to purchas an old copy of Pages 09 (on disc!) which would open the files and also be eligible for future app store updates.
So I did this and indeed got the updates once the app store / iCloud versions were once more capable of opening their own files! but then suddenly, despite being told an update is available I get a message as not possible as I had previously received a refund.
It’s all a great shame as I’ve purchased and used Apple’s ‘Office suite since the days it was Claris Works then Apple Works, then iWork and and it’s always, you know, just worked.
My invoice now have to be created on the iPad and although it mostly works, I cannot for the life of me find a way to create a formula in a table cell (in pages) even to just add a total of the above cells. So I have to add the figures up myself and type the total in (like an animal;)
You can, of course, create a new formula for a cell in Numbers for iOS as I have used it for my accounts but somehow it was deemed unimportant for table cells in Pages. Apple have been touting the iPad as a serious productivity tool for a while now so it’s odd to allow such an omission.
Incompatibilty and QC issues are even more of a concern.
exclamation on September 28, 2016 at 2:02 pm said:
Did you submit the file in a bug report or just write 1600 words about it?
charlesarthur on September 28, 2016 at 2:03 pm said:
One has to organise one’s thoughts first.
Chris on October 7, 2016 at 9:29 pm said:
Had the exact same problem. Thanks a bunch for sharing the solution! I opened it on an old iPad and managed to export the file by email in XLSX, CSV and PDF. That file contained my entire business’ book keeping! Albeit a small home business, which is more of a hobby, but still.
robertbostedt on October 10, 2016 at 9:48 am said:
I have the same problems with many of my files. This is quite a disaster. But i managed to fix it by simple steps. I have only tried it on one file so far, but it worked. Better make a backup that you modify this way, and note that it will remove all images in your numbers file:
1. Right-click on numbers file and open package.
2. Delete all of these:
a.) The folder “Data” (this seems to contain images only),
b.) The folder “Metadata”,
c.) And files “preview-micro.jpg”, “preview-web.jpg” and “preview.jpg”
When i did this, i could open the file, but not only that – i could open the original file also, that was not modified! And it now seem to work as it should.
Perhaps not all those files need to be deleted, but it may only be one or few of them. But i dont see any harm in removing Metadata and preview, since it will probably be reproduced anyways.
charlesarthur on October 10, 2016 at 10:02 am said:
Thanks, Robert. That does sound like a good idea. I think the problem arises when there’s file corruption – some time after this my install began running slowly, which is a sure sign of disk problems, and Disk Utility confirmed it.
Dave on November 3, 2016 at 10:30 pm said:
I just ran in to this issue opening an older Pages file. I’m currently running Pages 5.6.2. I was able open my file by right-clicking on it and choosing Open With … then … Pages (4.0).
Epic fail on Apple’s part really. Guess I’ll start using Word and Google Docs more – sorry Apple – get your stuff together and I’ll come back. 😉
Terence on December 3, 2016 at 4:46 pm said:
Thanks for the work. I just tested this with a file created in Open Office Calc then exported in assorted Excel, CSV formats and Numbers ( ver 4.0.5 ) is giving me “can’t be opened for some reason”. “Collaborate & Die” or “Apple way or the highway”. More research is form of job security…
charlesarthur on December 4, 2016 at 1:25 am said:
If OpenOffice created it then it might be corrrupt from the start. You could try using iCloud.com – something I overlooked.
Numbers can surely open csv.
Terence on December 5, 2016 at 1:18 am said:
Yes it did open the CSV. OpenOffice from the “start”?
Perhaps as I do not know your experiences. with OO, mine have been OK till recently updates from Apple.
jvan20p on December 6, 2016 at 4:51 pm said:
Thank you for the post. I’ve just encountered this error while trying to open a spreadsheet I brought over from the PC that my MacBook is replacing. Some sheets opened ok – except for links being replaced by values – but this ‘for some reason’ message has appeared for one that has fairly simple contents. And I have Numbers 3.6.2… so I’m going to head out to the Apple store and see what they can do.
charlesarthur on December 6, 2016 at 5:47 pm said:
As it contains links it will be tricky, but you might try uploading the original Excel file into your account on icloud.com – that might be better at it.
Dan Joseph on September 29, 2018 at 8:55 pm said:
Pages won’t sync across devices if Links are inserted to any field, diabolical!
Nick on October 3, 2018 at 6:48 pm said:
Similar problem. I was getting the “cannot open file” message on an iPad. Ok. I’ll delete numbers app and reload from ap store. Selected numbers on AP store and clicked install.
Message. Your iPad OS is not recent enough. Can’t install. (And can’t update OS any further.
Great. I have stacks of spreadsheets on the ipad and can no longer access any of them.
I converted one to excel on my phone and emailed it to the iPad to open in the Excel app. Opened but view only.
I think you can guess what I think of Apple now😡😡
charlesarthur on October 3, 2018 at 7:57 pm said:
Did you try opening them on iCloud.com? You could try opening it there and then export it. Might work.
I think it was a little premature to delete the Numbers app. You might be able to get it from an iCloud or iTunes backup?
As for the one in the Excel app, copy the data and create a new spreadsheet. Or see if you can export it to CSV.
Nick on October 3, 2018 at 11:40 pm said:
Greetings. I can open them on iCloud on a PC and export to docs in excel .
The point is though that the iOS numbers AP is now disabled on my iPad which is where I have been working for convenience.
I initially removed the numbers app because it had ceased to open spreadsheets, hence my attempt to reload it.
Re. The Sheet that opened in the excel app, it is read only unless I sign up to a Microsoft account. Many thanks for your suggestions though. I’ll see if the numbers AP is on iCloud, I hadn’t thought of that👍🏻
Nick on October 4, 2018 at 12:11 am said:
You have the gift of healing hands sir. Well the remote tech psychic version anyway.
I managed to resolve my problem by looking at “purchased apps” in my App Store instead of simply searching for numbers in the search field. I hit download and got the message asking if I wished to download the version compatible with my aging pad and so I did so.
Loaded and worked. Hooray!
Gawd bless you guv’nor.
Nick P
charlesarthur on October 4, 2018 at 5:44 am said:
Glad to hear it, Nick. Always back up!
nd on October 13, 2018 at 11:04 am said:
“For some reason”
With a big deadline ahead I almost had a stroke!!
Your article says it all! Thank you for that!
Extremely disappointing, frustrating, unprofessional error message from Appel.
Going back to Excel. My Numbers days are over!
Les Edwards on October 20, 2018 at 10:24 am said:
Interesting. This thread started in 2016 and has now re-started after a break of almost two years. I’ve been having the same problem recently with a relatively simple (although large) spreadsheet and discovered that opening it and closing it on the iCloud website allowed it to open successfully on my elderly iMac whereas, it had previously only been possible to open it on my MacBook Pro.
William Beak on October 20, 2018 at 4:30 pm said:
Thanks for the great article. I discovered the same solution after two days of frustration. Not a fun time. Numbers “Help” was no help.
, thanks again,
esaruoho on November 4, 2018 at 6:56 pm said:
My wife just called me to the living room and said “I’ve got a problem”. I didn’t know what to expect, and when she showed me the dialog window that says “(Pages document) can’t be opened for some reason – To open this file, restore it to a previous version” on her MacBookPro running OS X El Capitan, I knew we were in for a treat.
Obviously, she clicked OK to see previous versions. Well, there were no versions available.
That’s when I put her iPad onto Airplane Mode and launched Pages. The document in question would load, no problems, and I immediately duplicated it, enabled Wi-Fi and had it upload to her iCloud account.
We then launched Pages again on her MacBookPro, tried to load the second copy – no luck, still the same error – and still the “Restore it to a previous version” with no actual versions to restore to.
So I went to her iCloud Drive -> Pages -folder and started using Quick Look to see if we could see anything. Also, duplicated the second file. Tried loading this 3rd copy of the file -> and it loaded.
There is no way for me to explain to my wife what went wrong, because I have no idea. She has a hard time handling macOSX after Windows, and is not a fan of the file management system. I took a screenshot of the error and started looking around for this.
I have had the same happen with a work colleague, who had the same “for some reason” issue with a deck he was working on using Keynote. I was able to rescue it, but even after duplicating it and doing the “Export from icloud.com as Powerpoint, import to Google Sheets as powerpoint, export from Google Sheets as powerpoint, load into Keynote and save as Keynote, does it load y/n?” work, I’m still confused as to how a regular user is supposed to handle these types of issues.
The first version we got going with Keynote was where he could load it, but after saving he could no longer load it. So I have a feeling my wife will have this issue, too, where after making modifications into the document and saving, she’ll not be able to load it again.
I want Apple to do a better job of this. This is not cool. Heads would have rolled if this happened during the previous management. Remember that picture of a “cheap QA guy” mentioned in a Keynote from the 2000s? Tim Cook isn’t that “cheap QA guy”.
Nick on November 10, 2018 at 12:28 am said:
What a pain. I’m still having the same trouble with numbers. A spreadsheet suddenly and inexplicably decides it can’t be opened along with the same stupid message. I can recover the sheet by opening in the cloud with a Windows machine and converting to excel and saving as excel. I can then email it to myself and the open it in numbers where it works again. ( yes I know this is ridiculous)
Alternatively I open the sheet on my iPhone 7 then export it as excel via email to myself.
Then…….open on my iPad with numbers and it is functioning again.
Stupid isn’t it. To think I Was on the verge of buying the new iPad Pro. Not anymore I’m not!
Anyone know of a Linux tablet?
Nick on November 10, 2018 at 12:40 pm said:
Stop press. Never mind the Linux tablet idea.
Similar solution – export to google drive on the iPhone/iPad and abandon numbers, on the iPad at least.
Nick on November 11, 2018 at 9:51 am said:
Oops! The google docs wants a new iPad as well.
I’ll abandon tablets with their dying apps and go back to old fashioned Microsoft office. That keeps going for decades.
stormyparis on November 12, 2018 at 10:13 am said:
For a cheap fix, get a $150 Chuwi Hi9 Air from Gearbest.com. I bought that one a while back to see how bad a $150 tablet with a relatively (for Android ^^) hi-spec SoC would be… and it isn’t. The sound sucks, but screen battery wifi and touch are good, and the general HW and SW has been w/o bug for the 6 months I’ve had it.
Bonus; there are plenty of .ZIP tools, including some file managers with unzip built-in. /snark
Alternatives are the 16:9 Amazon Fire HD 10, but I hate 16:9 and you’ve got to manually install the Google stuff on it, and the $300 Xiaomi Mi Pad 4 Plus but similarly, the Gobal version isn’t out yet, so you’ve got to sideload the Google for now. 8″ versions of all the above are cheaper if it’s for temporary pain relief.
Or you could use the web version the offending apps, or try out MS Office which I’ve found incredibly solid on the Android side.
Nick on November 13, 2018 at 5:06 pm said:
Thank you for your suggestions sp.
At present I have transferred my affections to Google which appears to be working out ok.
Also, contrary to my first impressions my version of Pages also exports to google docs.
So, I’m ok at the moment. I have realised today that my iPad (the first Retina display version) is about 10 years old so perhaps I’m being a bit hard on on Apple with my ravings.
(I should add that I exported all necessary sheets to google docs from my iPhone, not the iPad). Anyway, a new tablet for Christmas I think.
Many thanks 👍🏻sp
Barb on November 25, 2018 at 2:01 am said:
Thanks so much for getting me on the right path of a (temporary) solution to recover all my lost work from yesterday in a Numbers file. You’ve given me the idea of simply checking if I could save the damaged file into Dropbox, then open it on another device (my iPhone in this case), by viewing it on Dropbox on there and copying alle text (with Select all) and pasting into an email to myself. Won’t be using Numbers until there is a more permanent fix.
“For some reason” is indeed the most unhelpful error message one can add to a corrupted file, but you can always rely on the internet community, people like yourselves, to help out where Apple and the Help functions can’t. Thanks again!
Paul on December 27, 2018 at 6:57 pm said:
Wow, 2018 and this bug is still here. The only way this error message could have been less helpful is if it had added an LOL at the end. It could have at least pointed to a funny meme or something so you wouldn’t feel so bad about losing all of your work. I guess nobody uses Numbers anymore?
The whole collaboration thing that they tried to do just doesn’t seem to work. Whenever I try to use it I always seem to end up with multiple versions of the same file with no idea of which is the most current, or things that I know that I typed but are now just missing. Or worse, just plain corrupted files that immediately crash the entire application and somehow all of the previous versions do the same thing.
I was able to open my file using the Preview app so I could at least see all the work I had lost forever. Weird that Preview can open it but Numbers across multiple devices and versions can’t.
nicholas phillips on December 28, 2018 at 9:59 am said:
I’ll keep it short. I received a new iPad for Christmas (thank you). Problem gone! I’ve always suspected saving to cloud modified to most up to date version of numbers. If your device cannot update to latest your screwed. Use something else (google sheets!) Happy new year Nick
Sam Sieger on November 1, 2019 at 2:32 pm said:
I ran into the same problem described here. After fussing around with several other potential solutions, none of which worked, I rebooted the machine and the problem was gone!
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Start Up: curved iPhones?, smartphone sales struggle, Pixels perform, Valley’s empathy miss, and more
Posted on November 30, 2016 by charlesarthur
Smartphones have arrived in Myanmar – and it’s been a hell of a shock to the system. Photo by Asian Development Bank on Flickr.
You can now sign up to receive each day’s Start Up post by email. You’ll need to click a confirmation link, so no spam.
A selection of 13 links for you. Use them wisely. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.
The danger of a device-based approach to assistants • Tech.pinions
Jan Dawson:
Amazon’s Echo began life as the only home of its personal assistant, Alexa and, although Alexa is now available on several other devices, my guess is the vast majority of users still equate the assistant with the device. Google, meanwhile, has made Google Home the entry point for its own Google Assistant and, for many people, Home is the only place they’ll be able to experience the Assistant for now, given the low uptake of the Allo messaging app and the high barriers to smartphone switching.
The downside here is, as people equate the assistant with the device, they will also equate failures by the assistant with failures of the device. When the entire purpose of a device like Echo or Home is to act as an assistant, to the extent the assistant fails to do its job, the device becomes useless. This is, importantly, very different from the likely reaction to failure by Siri or Cortana, which are mere features on devices that do much more. If we’re unhappy with Siri’s performance, we might well fall back on other ways to interact with our devices or be more selective in the scenarios for which we use Siri rather than the touchscreen because we have options. We may also choose to try again at a later time when the software has been updated because the assistant is still there on the device we’re using for lots of other things. But a device whose sole purpose is to be a good voice assistant and fails at that one job fails entirely and we will likely be tempted to return it or, at the least, put it away.
The problem with a voice-based assistant: how do you correct it? Where do you see what it thinks you said?
What is the future of free trade? Five facts about US trade policy • Brookings Institution
3. Technology, not international trade, is the primary force behind lost manufacturing jobs.
Many are quick to blame trade for a loss of jobs in the manufacturing sector, yet Solís affirms that the predominant force behind losses in manufacturing employment has been technological change (85 percent), not international trade. As she explains, automation has transformed the American factory, and the advent of new technologies (like robotics and 3D printing) has rendered many low-skilled jobs unnecessary.
Metropolitan Policy Program Senior Fellow Mark Muro also examined this trend in a recent post, pointing out that the total inflation-adjusted output of the U.S. manufacturing sector is actually higher today than it has ever been, even though the sector’s employment growth has remained relatively stagnant.
“These diverging lines—which reflect the sector’s improved productivity—highlight a huge problem with Trump’s promises to help workers by reshoring millions of manufacturing jobs [by renegotiating trade deals],” Muro argues. “America is already producing a lot. And in any event, the return of more manufacturing won’t bring back many jobs because the labor is increasingly being done by robots.”
And Solís agrees: “Simply put, we are producing more with fewer people.”
Opera inserts advertising into your bookmarks • Terence Eden’s Blog
Last week I was scrolling through my bookmarks, when I found a curious addition – “Breaking News”.
I didn’t remember adding that bookmark. I suppose I might have done it by mistake…? Let’s take a look at where it goes.
Oh. An advert. Shoved into my bookmarks by Opera.
Guess who doesn’t use Opera any more?
Possibly related: a Chinese consortium recently bought Opera for about $1.2bn.
Google will generate $4 billion in 2017 from the Pixel • Business Insider
Hannah Roberts:
Morgan Stanley has estimated that Google’s new smartphone, the Pixel, will generate $3.8 billion in revenue for the company in 2017.
The estimate is based on the expectation that Google will sell around 5-6 million Pixels next year, which retail between $649 and $869.
The bank also projected that Google will sell 3 million Pixels in the last three months of 2016, generating $2 billion.
That’s implying it will sell all the phones that HTC made for it this quarter, which sounds about right. And there should be a fair profit from them too at that price.
4G smartphones to surpass 1 billion mark in shipments for 2016 as emerging markets play catch up • IDC
Worldwide smartphone shipments are expected to reach 1.45 billion units with a year-over-year growth rate of 0.6% in 2016 according to the latest forecast from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. Although growth remains positive, it is down significantly from the 10.4% growth in 2015.
However, 4G smartphones are still expected to show double-digit uptake at 21.3% year-over-year growth globally for 2016, reaching 1.17 billion units, up from 967 million in 2015. Much of this growth is coming from emerging markets (Asia/Pacific excluding Japan, Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, and Middle East and Africa), where only 61% of 2015 smartphone shipments were 4G-enabled compared to IDC’s 2016 projection of 77%. Mature markets (USA, Canada, Japan, and Western Europe) are further along the 4G adoption curve with 85% in 2015 and a projected 94% in 2016, respectively.
Stagnant growth. Not happening in less developed countries anything like as fast as it did before.
This is what happens when millions of people suddenly get the internet • BuzzFeed News
Sheera Frenkel in Yangon, Myanmar:
The internet brought Donald Trump to Myanmar. Or, at least that’s how Shar Ya Wai first remembers hearing about the Republican president-elect.
“One day, nobody knew him. Then, everyone did. That’s what the internet is. It takes people who say crazy things and makes them famous,” the 19-year-old student said.
Like most people in this country of 50 million, which only recently opened up to the outside world, Shar Ya Wai is new to the internet. And on this day, she had walked purposefully into a phone shop in central Yangon to buy her first smartphone, a simple model by China’s Huawei that is popular among her friends. “Today I’ll buy this phone,” she said. “I guess I’ll find out how crazy [the internet] really is.”
It’s not that she’d never seen the internet before. She’d tried to stalk ex-boyfriends through a friend’s Facebook page and caught glimpses of the latest Thai pop bands on her uncle’s old tablet, which he bought secondhand a year ago. But her forays into the internet have been brief and largely left her perplexed. Here was a public space where everyone seemed to have so much to say, but it was disorganized, bombastic, overwhelming. It felt like the polar opposite of the quiet, sheltered life she’d lived until recently.
Fascinating case study.
Fight fake news and propaganda with data • CHANGE ADVERTISING INC’s Fundraiser
We’re raising money for an annual subscription to a website data source that we hope our volunteers can use to figure out which ad networks are helping fund these sites spreading fake news and propaganda, and help shut them down.
Our first investigative piece, The Clickbait Report, was featured in the New York Times and Fortune (see changeadvertising.org for details).
Doesn’t need a huge amount. Go on, go on, go on.
Microsoft reveals minimum specs for their upcoming $300 VR headsets • UploadVR
Joe Durbin:
These new, $300 HMDs are being made by the likes of Lenovo and they will be a small part of the Redwood companies big mission to turn Window’s holographic into a truly viable and competitive virtual reality platform. In advance of the new headsets release Microsoft has released a “First Run” application for Windows Holographic. The app does a few different things, but most importantly it reveals the minimum hardware specifications it will take to run the new batch of headsets. These are the requirements:
At least 4GB of RAM,
A USB 3.0 port,
A graphics card with DirectX 12 support,
4 CPU cores, including dual-core processors with hyperthreading.
These specs are quite generous and should fit the bill already for a large amount of current PC users. It doesn’t seem there will be a huge need for last-second hardware upgrades for those VR enthusiasts looking to snag one of the new systems.
If that’s the minimum spec, what’s the experience going to be like?
Just how partisan is Facebook’s fake news? We tested it • PCWorld
Mark Hachman:
To conduct our experiment, I opened Google Chrome in Incognito mode, then created two Gmail addresses. I then used both email addresses to register for new Facebook accounts—“Chris Smith” for Clinton, and “Todd White” for Trump. To eliminate hidden biases, I registered them both as white males, each with the same birthday.
For Smith, I then Liked three people: Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and President Barack Obama. For White, I Liked Donald Trump, Mike Pence, and Newt Gingrich.
I then asked Facebook to recommend Pages to follow. Facebook provides two mechanisms for doing this: a “Like Pages” page in the left nav bar, which provides a visually compelling tiled layout of suggested Pages, and a similar list of suggested Pages next to the Pokes section. For each of my test profiles, I systematically selected the first, fourth, and seventh from the list of Pages next to Pokes. Then I added the first seven suggestions from Like Pages later that night, for a total of 10 across both avatars.
Note that I deliberately didn’t Like pages like alt-right news service Breitbart.com, as I wanted to see if other pages would reference them. (Surprisingly, they often didn’t.) I was testing what Facebook offered my avatars, more than what these avatars might actively solicit. I also made no friends on the service—again, to test Facebook, not other humans.
This is depressing predictable, though it also confirms the idea that there’s no traction in pro-Clinton fake news.
Genevieve Bell: ‘Humanity’s greatest fear is about being irrelevant’ • The Guardian
Ian Tucker asked the questions, such as:
Q A lot of the work you do examines the intersection between the intended use of a device and how people actually use it – and examining the disconnection. Could you talk about something you’re researching at the moment?
I’m interested in how animals are connected to the internet and how we might be able to see the world from an animal’s point of view. There’s something very interesting in someone else’s vantage point, which might have a truth to it. For instance, the tagging of cows for automatic milking machines, so that the cows can choose when to milk themselves. Cows went from being milked twice a day to being milked three to six times a day, which is great for the farm’s productivity and results in happier cows, but it’s also faintly disquieting that the technology makes clear to us the desires of cows – making them visible in ways they weren’t before. So what does one do with that knowledge? One of the unintended consequences of big data and the internet of things is that some things will become visible and compel us to confront them.
Q Why is your Twitter handle “feraldata”?
I was castigating an Australian colleague about 10 years ago about how we talked about technology using British idioms. For example, we kept talking about the digital commons, yet Australia does not have an enclosure act.
So what are the Australian experiences we could use to talk about technology? I began to think about camels, goats and cats – lots of animals jumped the boats in Australia and created havoc by becoming feral. Would feral be an interesting way for thinking about how technology had unintended consequences? It occurred to me that of all the things that were most likely to go feral in the technological landscape it was data. It gets created in one context, is married with a third thing and finds itself in another.
Bell is a wonder. I recall interviewing her back in the late 90s, when she pointed out how mobile use on buses would shape peoples’ behaviour. As an anthropologist, she always brings a fresh eye to topics.
Apple iPhone With Curved Screen Could Come as Soon as Next Year – WSJ
Takashi Mochizuki in Tokyo and Eun-Young Jeong in Seoul:
An iPhone with a curved screen could be on store shelves as soon as next year.
Apple’s suppliers say they have been asked to increase output of thinner organic light-emitting displays and submit prototype screens with better resolution than ones from South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. to differentiate the U.S. company’s models.
The Cupertino company has been battling slowing smartphone sales and is under pressure to deliver a hit phone when the iPhone marks its 10th anniversary next year.
An iPhone with an OLED screen could be introduced as one of several models to be unveiled, people familiar with the matter said, but would come with a higher price tag because OLED displays are more expensive to produce.
Apple might decide not to release the model because it is one of more than 10 prototypes being considered, the people said.
I left the locations of the writers on because it seems relevant to the story: a Seoul-based source could be talking to Samsung or LG; a Japan-based one to Sony and Taiwanese suppliers. Either way, I’d take this as a possibility.
Q&A: is BT facing the chop? • FT
Nic Fildes on Ofcom’s order that BT make its Openreach division a wholly owned subsidiary:
Q Why is BT opposed to this?
BT argues that the status quo has delivered Britain the widest superfast broadband coverage in Europe and that its proposals are enough to improve Openreach’s independence and pave the way for move investment in ultrafast broadband. It has put £6bn on the table for ultrafast, appointed an independent chairman of Openreach and expects to announce more non-executives in the future. However, it has baulked at the cost of moving staff and pensions over to the newly formed entity and warned of the risks of doing so given the deficit of £10bn at the end of June.
Q: Will BT’s rivals cheer this move?
In public, BT’s rivals — who clogged up Sharon White’s in tray with thousands of identical public submissions via a lobbying website called Fix Britain’s Internet — will cheer the move to hold BT to account. TalkTalk has called it a “step in the right direction” as the legal separation paves the way for a full break up in the future. Privately, the heads of those companies argue this should have happened much sooner as Ofcom has been proposing a submission since the start of the year.
Q So is a broadband utopia just around the corner?
Even though BT looks to have escaped the dreaded break-up, there is no doubt that Openreach has had its feet held to the flames over a poor performance on service and investment dating back years. If the promised move to ultrafast delivers better and more consistent speeds the debate could die down. The problem for BT is that “broadband rage” has become all too common and many are convinced that a full break-up is the only way forward.
BT will drag its feet on this, which implies that it’s bad for BT, and thus good for rivals, and so good for everyone who wants fairer competition. The more BT is against it, logic suggests, the better for everyone else.
Silicon Valley has an empathy vacuum • New Yorker
Om Malik:
[The row over fake news] isn’t the first time Facebook has shied away from the reality that it can influence the lives of the billion and a half people connected to it. A perfect example came two years ago when Facebook, in its “Your Year in Review” feed, published the photo of the dead daughter of a user named Eric Meyer, prompting Meyer to write, “Algorithms are essentially thoughtless. They model certain decision flows, but once you run them, no more thought occurs.”
It seems possible to model the eventuality of a dead child’s photo showing up on the feed, but the designers didn’t consider it. Perhaps because those who write these algorithms have not experienced such trauma, or perhaps they just weren’t talking about the human feelings in their product meetings—especially when you are a company focussed on engagement and growth. The lack of empathy in technology design isn’t because the people who write algorithms are heartless but perhaps because they lack the texture of reality outside the technology bubble. Facebook’s blunders are a reminder that it is time for the company to think not just about fractional-attention addiction and growth but also to remember that the growth affects real people, for good and bad.
It is not just Facebook. It is time for our industry to pause and take a moment to think: as technology finds its way into our daily existence in new and previously unimagined ways, we need to learn about those who are threatened by it. Empathy is not a buzzword but something to be practiced. Let’s start by not raging on our Facebook feeds but, instead, taking a trip to parts of America where five-dollar lattes and freshly pressed juices are not perks but a reminder of haves and have-nots.
Start Up: Android warning for Trump, Uber’s strike, more IoT hacking, enormotabs are here!, and more
Sunglasses! Guaranteed Ray-Buns! Yours cheap! Stop spam! Photo by cdrake2 on Flickr.
Donald Trump’s personal phone could be a major security risk, experts warn • Daily Telegraph
Cara McGoogan:
The US president-elect Donald Trump’s mobile phone poses a major security threat to the United States and its allies, according to experts.
Analysis of Trump’s social media activity and comments him and his aides have made about his phone suggest that he his still using a regular Android device. The Google-made software is widely regarded as vulnerable to hackers, who could use known techniques to access all of Trump’s communications, as well as live camera, microphone and location feeds.
Sophisticated attackers could manage this with a simple trick, such as coercing Trump into clicking on an infected link in a message or on Twitter on his Android phone. To prevent a breach like this, the National Security Agency issued current President Barack Obama a highly secure phone that it designed.
Don’t say things about it being even more dangerous when used.
Android security in 2016 is a mess • cpbotha.net
Charl Botha:
I bought my LG G3 in 2014 here in South Africa. It was LG’s flagship in that year, and sold extremely well. LG is a well-known smartphone OEM.
However, only because I took steps to flash the official KDZ image (V30a-ZAF-XX), which consumers would normally not do, am I now running Android 6. However, my security patch level is 2016-03, meaning there are 6 months of security updates I don’t have. (You can check your Android security patch level by going to Settings | General | About Phone | Software info.)
Before you think six months lag is not too bad, here’s a nice example vulnerability from the November 1 Android security bulletin:
The most severe of these issues is a Critical security vulnerability that could enable remote code execution on an affected device through multiple methods such as email, web browsing, and MMS when processing media files.
In short, your phone could be hacked wide open from afar through a single innocent-looking email, MMS or web-page.
It’s unlikely.. until it happens. Then the unlikelihood turns into 100% certainty. If this puzzles you, just think back to September, when it was unlikely that Donald Trump would win the US election.
Fighting iOS Calendar Spam • The New York Times
Q. I have been getting spam invitations to my iOS calendar recently. They come from Chinese accounts and their subjects are for super-discounted Ray-Bans and the like. Is there any solution to this?
Yes, there are a few, and the NYT has them.
Uber drivers join nationwide strike to demand $15 minimum wage • VentureBeat
Ken Yeung:
Uber riders may find available rides in short supply on Monday as “hundreds” of drivers in two dozen U.S. cities go on strike. The action is intended to raise awareness of a desire by not only Uber drivers, but fast-food cooks, airport baggage handlers, home care workers, child care teachers, and graduate assistants wanting to receive a fair day’s pay — they’re fighting for the $15 per hour minimum wage.
Protests are supposed to be taking places in cities such as Denver, Boston, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco. As part of the Fight for $15 event, Uber drivers will march in solidarity with others and aim to disrupt service, thereby highlighting to riders the important roles these service people play in daily life.
Newly discovered router flaw being hammered by in-the-wild attacks • Ars Technica
Dan Goodin:
Routers provided to German and Irish ISP customers for Deutsche Telekom and Eircom, respectively, have already been identified as being vulnerable, according to recently published reports from researchers tracking the attacks. The attacks exploit weaknesses found in routers made by Zyxel, Speedport, and possibly other manufacturers. The devices leave Internet port 7547 open to outside connections. The exploits use the opening to send commands based on the TR-069 and related TR-064 protocols, which ISPs use to remotely manage large fleets of hardware. According to this advisory published Monday morning by the SANS Internet Storm Center, honeypot servers posing as vulnerable routers are receiving exploits every five to 10 minutes.
SANS Dean of Research Johannes Ullrich said in Monday’s post that exploits are almost certainly the cause behind an outage that hit Deutsche Telekom customers over the weekend. In a Facebook update, officials with the German ISP said 900,000 customers are vulnerable to the attacks until they are rebooted and receive an emergency patch. Earlier this month, researchers at security firm BadCyber reported that the same one-two port 7547/TR-064 exploit hit the home router of a reader in Poland. They went on to identify D1000 routers supplied by Eircom as also being susceptible and cited this post as support. The Shodan search engine shows that 41 million devices leave port 7547 open, while about five million expose TR-064 services to the outside world.
Background notes and full credits for the One Moment video • OK Go
Damian Kulash, director and singer in the band:
The whole point of the video is to explore a time scale that we can’t normally experience, but because it’s so inaccessible to us, our tools for dealing with it are indirect. The only way we can really communicate with that realm is through math. The choreography for this video was a big web of numbers — I made a motherfucker of a spreadsheet. It had dozens of connected worksheets feeding off of a master sheet 25 columns wide and nearly 400 rows long. It calculated the exact timing of each event from a variety of data that related the events to one another and to the time scale in which they were being shot. Here’s a screen shot of just the first few lines, to give you a sense.
Having listened to a few OK Go albums, I understand why they’re famous for their videos. Maybe someone could hire them to make a video.
Recovery from watch market slump within sight • FT
Ralph Atkins, in September:
Much of the gloom has surrounded Hong Kong, previously the biggest export market for Swiss watches. Luxury consumer goods sales in Hong Kong have been hit over the past few years by shifts in tourism flows as Chinese customers shopped elsewhere; Swiss watch exports to Hong Kong were down 33% year-on-year to July, causing sales there to fall behind the US.
Excessive stock levels mean improvements will take time to feed through in Hong Kong, despite steps by some companies, such as Richemont, to help reduce inventory in storerooms, including recycling parts from unsold watches.
But luxury goods manufacturers report signs of sales recovering in mainland China. Chinese consumers largely powered the sector’s revival after the global financial crisis of 2008. Spending on luxury watches was subsequently hit by Beijing’s clampdown on corruption, which resulted in less “gifting” of high-quality timepieces.
The effect of such factors on Chinese sales has started to fade, says Adrian Hofer, consumer goods industry specialist at Boston Consulting Group in Zurich. “I’m pretty convinced that we’re down at the levels that make growth possible again.”
This, from reader Philip Cunningham, could well be the explanation for the collapsing levels of Swiss watch sales noted here yesterday.
Long a novelty, gigantic tablets are sneaking into the workplace • WSJ
Christopher Mims:
Most of the devices can run Tactivos Inc.’s collaboration software Mural, which lets a roomful of people write, add sticky notes, bring in graphics from the web and perform a dozen other tricks on a giant, scrollable whiteboard.
Mural is designed to let remote teams share a workspace. Using it on a ginormablet has the pleasantly disorienting effect of mixing the ease and conventions of writing on a regular whiteboard with the familiar interface of a smartphone. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to the scene in “Minority Report” where Tom Cruise manipulates the interface of the future with expansive gestures.
I had a similarly science-fiction experience in the belly of Carnival Cruise Line’s newest ship, a $780 million, 1,062-foot-long floating city called the Carnival Vista.
In the ship’s engineering room, boisterous chief engineer Cesare Boldrini showed off a command center that looks like the bridge of the Battlestar Galactica. In the center, seemingly where Cmdr. Adama left it, is a 55-inch touch-screen table that Carnival calls the “Tactical Table.” Here, Mr. Boldrini can display 300 screens of readouts and toggles used to control every part of the ship, from its gigantic Azipod thrusters to the pH and temperature of the ship’s swimming pools. Through the table, he also can display any of these readouts on a giant video screen that stretches across the front wall of the control room.
When Carnival designed the engineering room of the Vista, they wanted to give the chief engineer the ability to monitor and control any part of the ship without interfering with the work of his team members, Mr. Boldrini said.
Landlubbers can experience megatablets at more than 500 McDonald’s restaurants in California, New York and Florida where the restaurant chain is testing gigantic touch-screen kiosks for ordering meals.
Apple to add 10.5-inch models to iPad series in 2017, say Taiwan makers • Digitimes
Siu Han and Adam Hwang:
Apple is launching the 10.5in iPad mainly because 10in and larger tablets have been popular among enterprises and the education sector in the US, the sources said. Its existing 9.7in iPad may be too small and the 12.9in iPad Pro too expensive for such procurement, the sources indicated.
The 10.5in iPad will be equipped with Apple-developed CPU A10X which is also used in 12.9in iPad Pro, the sources noted.
Shipments of 10.5in iPad will reach two million units in first-quarter 2017 and may reach 5-6 million units in the year, the sources said.
Apple will also launch lower-price versions of the 9.7in iPad to compete with Android models, the sources noted.
So 10.5in is a Goldilocks size – not too big, not too small? You’d think others would have already figured that. So this feels a bit strange. As does the part about “cheaper 9.7in iPad”: Apple doesn’t need to compete with Android tablets, which are already killing themselves.
How the 2016 election blew up in Facebook’s face • BuzzFeed News
Alex Kantrowitz:
It’s no coincidence that Jestin Coler started National Report, his wildly successful fake news site, only a few months after Facebook added the mobile share button [in November 2012, just after the previous election]. The California-based satirist watched in a bit of amazement as articles from fringe conservative news sites began booming across Facebook, and decided he wanted in on the action. “I was seeing those sorts of sites all over the place with large followings and they were getting good traffic and I just thought to myself, Well I could do that,” Coler told BuzzFeed News. And so he debuted National Report in February 2013.
Coler could have reported the news, or simply blogged. But he noticed that fringe political pages would pick up just about anything that helped them make their point, including fabricated news. So National Report began publishing fake news about gun control, abortion, and President Obama, which Coler suspected would set off the right. It sure did. The sites quickly began aggregating his stories. “We really went for the confirmation bias thing,” Coler said. “What we assumed people wanted to hear, that was really what we were selling.”
Hackers are holding San Francisco’s light-rail system to ransom • The Verge
Andrew Liptak:
Computer screens at MUNI stations displayed a message: “You Hacked, ALL Data Encrypted. Contact For Key(cryptom27@yandex.com)ID:681 ,Enter.” MUNI Spokesman Paul Rose spoke to the Examiner and noted that his agency was “working to resolve the situation,” but refused to provide additional details.
Reached by email, the hacker confirmed he was seeking a deal with MUNI to undo the damage:
»we don’t attention to interview and propagate news ! our software working completely automatically and we don’t have targeted attack to anywhere ! SFMTA network was Very Open and 2000 Server/PC infected by software ! so we are waiting for contact any responsible person in SFMTA but i think they don’t want deal ! so we close this email tomorrow!«
In September, Morphus Labs linked a hacker by the same name to a ransomware strain called Mamba, which employs tactics similar to those demonstrated against MUNI.
Yandex is a Russian domain, if that helps. (Corrected the headline, which said the hacker/s were holding the Muni “for ransom”. No: you hold things *to* ransom.)
Google’s Pixel captures 10% premium smartphone market share in India • Economic Times
Gulveen Aulakh:
Google has captured a 10% share of the premium smartphone segment in India after what analysts said was a strong initial showing with its Pixel, which took advantage of the absence of Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 in the market.
Google shipped 33,000 units of Pixel to India as of October end, becoming the No 3 player for the month in the segment where the smartphone costs Rs 30,000 or more. Apple has trumped Samsung to capture the No 1 position in this segment.
Apple has 66% share (so 220,000 units). The Note 7’s absence is hurting Samsung.
Start Up: Trump’s fake news cronies, Xiaomi unruffled, machine learning cameras, USB-C fun, and more
Zimbabwe is about to try a whole new experiment with its currency. Photo by jurvetson on Flickr.
A selection of 11 links for you. Don’t ask for a recount! I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.
Some fake news publishers just happen to be Donald Trump’s cronies • The Intercept
Lee Fang:
LifeZette [a junk news publisher owned by Laura Ingraham, who could become Trump’s press secretary], for all its influence, pales in comparison to the sites run by Floyd Brown, a Republican consultant close to Trump’s inner circle of advisers. Brown gained notoriety nearly three decades ago for his role in helping to produce the “Willie Horton” campaign advertisement, a spot criticized for its use of racial messaging to derail Michael Dukakis’s presidential bid. Brown is also the political mentor of David Bossie, an operative who went to work for Trump’s presidential campaign this year after founding the Citizens United group. In an interview this year, Brown called Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway a “longtime friend.”
Brown now produces a flow of reliably pro-Trump Internet content through a company he owns called Liftable Media Inc., which operates a number of high-impact, tabloid-style news outlets that exploded in size over the course of the election. One of Brown’s sites, Western Journalism, is the 81st largest site in the U.S. with 13 million monthly unique page views, according to rankings maintained by the site Alexa. Another, called Conservative Tribune, is the 50th largest site with over 19 million monthly unique visitors.
Brown’s sites churn out bombastic headlines with little regard to the truth. One viral piece shared by Brown’s news outlets claimed that President Obama had redesigned the White House logo to change the American flag to a white flag, “a common symbol for surrender, which has many people wondering if Obama was trying to secretly signal to America’s enemies that he was surrendering.” The Facebook post touted the article with the line, “We all know Obama hates the United States, but what he just did to the White House logo is beyond the pale.”
In a way, the only surprise is that it’s taken this long – until after the election – to find this.
Facebook doesn’t need to ban fake news to fight it • The Guardian
Alex Hern:
If you walk into a newsagent, and pick up a copy of the Sunday Sport (American readers, think the National Enquirer but with a lower proportion of true stories), you have a number of contextual clues that suggest a story with the headline “Ed Miliband’s Dad Killed My Kitten” might not be entirely true. The prominent soft porn and chatline adverts; the placement alongside other stories like “Bus found buried at south pole” and “World War 2 Bomber Found on Moon”; and the fact that the paper is in its 30th year of publishing, letting readers build up a consistent view about the title based on previous experience.
If a friend shares that same article on Facebook, something very different happens. The story is ripped from its context, and presented as a standard Facebook post. At the top, most prominently, is the name and photo of the person you know in real life who is sharing the piece. That gives the article the tacit support and backing of someone you really know, which makes it far more likely to slip past your bullshit detector.
Next, Facebook pulls the top image, headline, and normally an introductory paragraph, and formats it in its own style: the calming blue text, the standard system font, and the picture cropped down to a standard aspect ratio. Sometimes, that content will be enough for a canny reader to realise something is up: poor spelling, bad photoshopping, or plain nonsensical stories, can’t be massaged away by Facebook’s design sense.
Nonetheless, the fact that every link on Facebook is presented in the same way serves the average out the credibility of all the posts on the site. The Sunday Sport’s credibility gets a boost, while the Guardian’s gets a drop: after all, everyone knows you can’t trust everything you read on Facebook.
Then, at the very bottom of the shared story, in small grey text, is the actual source. It’s not prominent, and because it’s simply the main section of a URL, it’s very easy to miss hoaxes.
Xiaomi says shrinking smartphone sales won’t hit the company • Reuters
Catherine Cadell:
last year it missed its global smartphone targets by 12%, while its third-quarter China smartphone sales have tumbled 45 percent, according to research firm IDC – raising doubts that the valuation is still warranted.
Xiaomi’s global vice-president Hugo Barra said the company’s business model was not based on money made from handset sales per se and that it did not need to raise more funds or see any point in doing so at a valuation of less than $46bn.
“Basically we’re giving [handsets] to you without making any money… we care about the recurring revenue streams over many years,” he told Reuters in an interview.
“We could sell 10 billion smartphones and we wouldn’t make a single dime in profits,” he added.
Xiaomi, which discloses little of its profit and revenue figures, has increasingly emphasized its range of home appliances such as air and water purifiers, and rice cookers as key earnings drivers.
In April, Xiaomi Vice President Liu De said the firm expects sales of smart home devices to double to 10bn yuan ($1.5bn) this year.
*smilingdoginfire* This is fine.
Cameras, ecommerce and machine learning • Benedict Evans
Evans points out that Apple and Google can now sift through your pictures and find you pictures of “dog” or “horse”:
We should expect that every image ever taken can be searched or analyzed, and some kind of insight extracted, at massive scale. Every glossy magazine archive is now a structured data set, and so is every video feed. With that incentive (and that smarthone supply chain) far more images and video will be captured.
So, some questions for the future:
• Every autonomous car will, necessarily, capture HD 360 degree video whenever it’s moving. Who owns that data, what else can you do with it beyond driving and how do our ideas of privacy adjust?
• A retailer can deploy cheap commodity wireless HD cameras thoughout the store, or a mall operator the mall, and finally know exactly what track every single person entering took through the building, and what they looked at, and then connect that to the tills for purchase data. How much does that change (surviving) retail?
• What happens to the fashion industry when half a dozen static $100 cameras can tell you everything that anyone in Shoreditch wore this year – when you can trace a trend through social and street photography from start to the mass-market, and then look for the next emerging patterns?
• What happens to ecommerce recommendations when a system might be able to infer things about your taste from your Instagram or Facebook photos, without needing tags or purchase history – when it can see your purchase history in your selfies?
We overestimate how good this stuff will be in the short term, underestimate in the long term.
How Pinterest uses machine learning to keep its users pinned • Fast Company
Steven Melendez:
Machine learning can not only determine the subject of an image, it can also identify visual patterns and match them to other photos. Pinterest is using this technology to process 150 million image searches per month, helping users find content that looks like pictures they’ve already pinned. Pin a photo of a cheetah-print pillow, and Pinterest will serve up animal-print decor from other users. Future iterations of the Pinterest app may let users simply point their cameras at real-world objects to get instant recommendations.
If a user pins a mid-century dining-room table, the platform can now offer suggestions of other objects from the same era. The key? Metadata, such as the names of pinboards and websites where images have been posted, helps the platform understand what photos represent.
Blu Products phone maker faces lawsuit over “backdoor” to China • Fortune
Jeff John Roberts:
the incident also led Rosen Legal, a firm specializing in class action lawsuits, to post a “security alert” warning consumers about the backdoor, and inviting those who had bought certain Blu Products devices to be part of an investigation and participate in the lawsuit. The notice also explained how consumers could determine if their devices had been affected by what the firm calls “spyware”:
You can check to see if your Blu Products phone was affected by going to the Settings Menu in Android, selecting “Apps,” followed by “Show System” and then “Wireless Update.” If your version of Wireless Update is from 5.0.x to 5.3.x, or above, your phone was affected and you may be a member of the class action.
Blu Products, for its part, dismissed the law firm’s allegations.
“This is a non-issue and there is no wrong doing from BLU to warrant any such claim. There were no damages that anyone suffered, and this is a typical knee jerk ambulance chaser who dismisses details and is uneducated on the subject,” said Carmen Gonzalez, senior marketing director for Blu Products, said in an email to Fortune.
120,000 devices were affected. I think Rosen Legal could be in with a chance here.
Why I’m thankful for Android Police: a story of sad and happy coincidences • Android Police
Jeff Beck had a degree in communications but had left a job in radio advertising sales:
The new job I secured was as an assistant media buyer to a promising startup in Seattle. I spent six months there, compiling spreadsheets, and generally hating most of what I did. However, I was happy to have a stable job to help provide for my young family, which at the time consisted of my wife and our first son.
Things were looking good for us. We decided it was time to buy a house, which had been my wife’s dream from the day we were married in August of 2007. After taking a deep breath, we moved in with my parents for a couple of months to save money for a down payment. By combining my meager salary with my wife’s income as a nurse, we were able to scrape together the remaining money we needed to buy a home and soon found one that we liked a few miles north of the city.
We put an offer on the house on a Saturday and anxiously awaited a phone call that we were expecting Tuesday morning at 10AM to let us know if our offer had been accepted. At 9:55 on Tuesday morning I was called into my boss’s office and informed that the company had lost its largest client, and cuts were necessary as a result. My position was one of those cuts.
Fifteen minutes later, I stood on a street corner, waiting for a bus, holding a cardboard box filled with the contents of my desk. A cold Seattle rain pelted my face. My face and hands were cold and numb, and so was my spirit. My phone rang, it was my wife calling in excitement to tell me that our offer went through on the home. Telling her what had just happened was one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life.
A year passed. In that year many of my hopes, dreams, and aspirations died.
This is a touching story, and it would be churlish to note how small AP’s role in his fulfilment really is. It was his avenue to a different job (and writing for AP isn’t part of it).
The new MacBook Pro is kind of great for hackers • Medium
Adam Geitgey points out that the USB-C port and dongles let you connect anything to anything (such as an Ethernet cable to your USB-C phone, if you have one):
This is just the beginning of what you can do with USB-C. Here are some other fun tricks.
If you get any of the new USB-C compatible monitors (pretty much every vendor has at least one now), you only need to plug one single cable into your MBP.
You can then plug all your other devices into your monitor and everything flows over one USB-C to your laptop — power, video, data and even sound. Your monitor is now your docking station and breakout box!
USB-C on the MacBook Pro supports the new USB Power Delivery (UPD) spec. Beyond just basic wall charging, this spec lets you do fancy things like charge one USB-C device from another in either direction. You can plug your MacBook Pro into another USB-C laptop (like a Chromebook Pixel or a Lenovo Yoga) and one laptop can charge the other! And if you don’t want to do that, they can also use each other’s wall adapters interchangeably.
UPD also allows the MacBook Pro to power external devices with high power requirements over the data connection. For example, you can plug in an external USB-C hard drive and power it over USB-C without needing an external wall wart…
…In a year or two when we all have junk drawers packed full of extra generic USB-C cables that cost nearly nothing, we’re going to look back on this and wonder why everyone was so worked up.
As was also pointed out, we’ve been here before in terms of Apple having zero proprietary ports on one of its PCs.
As Zimbabwe’s money runs out, so does Mugabe’s power • Reuters
Ed Cropley on plans to issue new Zimbabwean currency which will be traded 1:1 with the dollar:
The notes’ first test will come in the informal foreign exchange markets on the streets of Harare.
If they fall heavily in value, they are likely to unleash an inflationary spiral that could bleed the banking system of its last few dollars and wipe out Zimbabweans’ savings for the second time in less than a decade, economists say.
The same happened in 2008: powerful individuals with access to dollars at the official 1:1 rate were able to buy bond notes at a discount on the unofficial market and then convert them back to dollars at face value.
“You start with one dollar, then you’ve got 10, then you’ve got 100, then you’ve got 1,000 – and it’s not even lunchtime,” said John Robertson, one of Zimbabwe’s most respected private economists.
In Harare’s chaotic Road Port bus station, the main terminus for those heading to and from South Africa, Zimbabwe’s biggest trading partner, some bus operators are fearing the worst.
Required to pay nearly all their expenses – fuel, road tolls and police bribes in Zimbabwe and South Africa – in hard currency cash, they are particularly exposed.
“It’s like being on death row. You don’t know when the hangman is going to open your cell door,” said ticket-seller Simba Muchenje, pulling a wad of worthless 2008 Zimbabwe dollars from his briefcase and tossing them onto the counter.
If it melts down, it will be very, very ugly.
Richemont cuts send shockwaves from Geneva to mountain valleys • Bloomberg
Albertina Torsoli:
In Le Sentier, a town perched in the middle of the Jura mountain range, straddling the border between France and Switzerland, some 400 people protested Thursday against plans to cut the workforce of Vacheron Constantin and Piaget. Forty of the positions destined to go are in the Joux Valley, a rural area about 60km from Geneva that’s home to luxury timepiece makers including Audemars Piguet, Blancpain, Jaeger-LeCoultre and Breguet.
“We live in anxiety now,” said Alemao Ricardo, a 48 year-old Portuguese who works in the nearby town of Le Brassus decorating Vacheron Constantin watches, which sell for as much as $150,000. “It could be me going, it could be my colleague.”
Swiss watch exports had the biggest monthly drop in seven years in October, with plunging demand in almost every major market. After churning out more than 20 million timepieces annually for two decades, demand is drying up. The downturn is now a threat for smaller Swiss towns and larger cities including Geneva, which have been making watches for centuries and where almost 60,000 people work in the sector.
This has been going on so long it can’t honestly be the Apple Watch, or smartwatches, causing it. Seems instead to be a slowdown in buying from the Far East. Question is, why is that happening?
The speculative dread of “Black Mirror” • The New Yorker
Giles Harvey:
Each episode of “Black Mirror” establishes the background of normality against which a decisive tweak will stand out all the more starkly. In “The National Anthem,” the show’s début episode, set in a fictional Britain, Princess Susannah, a popular member of the Royal Family, is abducted. Her release hinges on a single demand: the Prime Minister must have unsimulated sex with a pig on live television. “The idea had been knocking around for a while,” Brooker said. “Originally, it was a beloved celebrity that’s blackmailed into fucking a pig on live TV. Society wouldn’t quite be the same. How would you deal with censorship after that?” A few years later, he was watching the counterterrorism drama “24,” one of his favorite shows, when a new possibility occurred to him. “I thought, God, you could do it like that,” he said, his voice recalling the hushed awe of artistic revelation. “The way to do it would be to play it straight.”
In 2010, Brooker and Jones took the premise, along with several other story lines, to Shane Allen, then the head of comedy at Channel 4, and proposed a new series. Allen had commissioned “Dead Set” (2008), Brooker’s first foray into television drama, in which the inhabitants of the “Big Brother” house are the last to learn of a zombie apocalypse ravaging the outside world. (The master joke is that nobody is alive to watch.) The five-part series enjoyed critical and commercial success, but Allen was dubious about “Black Mirror,” and especially about “The National Anthem.”
“It’s one of those things where your knee-jerk response is ‘I’m not sure you can do that,’ ” Allen told me recently at BBC headquarters, in central London, where he is now in charge of comedy. “My boss at the time wasn’t too impressed with it.” The possibility of using another animal was briefly considered. “A chicken?” Allen said when I pressed him for details. “Or a horse? It was a mad conversation.”
Start up: the fake news and propaganda war, Microsoft’s Chinese chatbot, not talking to Siri, and more
Some people are fretting about e-voting systems in the US. But if they’re wrong, what happens to election outcomes? Photo by zieak on Flickr.
A selection of 11 links for you. Freewheeling. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.
OK, let’s do the fake news at the top, then get on to the rest.
We tracked down a fake-news creator in the suburbs. Here’s what we learned • NPR
Laura Sydell:
“The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could kind of infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction,” Coler says.
He was amazed at how quickly fake news could spread and how easily people believe it. He wrote one fake story for NationalReport.net about how customers in Colorado marijuana shops were using food stamps to buy pot.
“What that turned into was a state representative in the House in Colorado proposing actual legislation to prevent people from using their food stamps to buy marijuana based on something that had just never happened,” Coler says.
During the run-up to the presidential election, fake news really took off. “It was just anybody with a blog can get on there and find a big, huge Facebook group of kind of rabid Trump supporters just waiting to eat up this red meat that they’re about to get served,” Coler says. “It caused an explosion in the number of sites. I mean, my gosh, the number of just fake accounts on Facebook exploded during the Trump election.”
Coler says his writers have tried to write fake news for liberals — but they just never take the bait…
…Coler doesn’t think fake news is going away. One of his sites — NationalReport.net — was flagged as fake news under a new Google policy, and Google stopped running ads on it. But Coler had other options.
“There are literally hundreds of ad networks,” he says. “Early last week, my inbox was just filled every day with people because they knew that Google was cracking down — hundreds of people wanting to work with my sites.”
It’s the advertisers which are enabling this; stop them, stop the problem. (Via Rob Leathern.)
Fake news may not be protected speech • Bloomberg View
Noah Feldman is a professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard:
As the Nobel Prize winning economist George Akerlof showed in his classic 1970 article, “The Market for Lemons,” asymmetric information can systematically distort the quality of what’s available in the market. In his stylized example, if good cars and lemons are both for sale, and consumers know this but don’t know which are which, they will be willing to pay the average price. That will lead the sellers to withhold the good cars, which could fetch a higher price — but that in turn will lead consumers to lower the price they are willing to pay. The resulting spiral of adverse selection leads to market failure.
As it happens, it’s a lot more expensive to generate true news stories than false ones. News requires reporting and research and institutional structures like editors and fact checkers to support them. Fake news only takes one person’s imagination. And there is certainly information asymmetry between the person who writes a story and the person who reads it. Applying the Akerlof analysis suggests that fake news could conceivably drive out true news.
The classic solution to market failure is regulation. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his example – “is it free speech to falsely shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre” – [it isn’t], certainly believed that [regulation] was permitted by the First Amendment.
The question is whether government regulation of fake news would be justified and lawful to fix this market failure. Obviously, it would be better if the market would fix the problem on its own, which is why attention is now focused on Facebook and Google. But if they can’t reliably do it — and that seems possible, since algorithms aren’t (yet) fact-checkers — there might be a need for the state to step in.
Doesn’t feel like a good solution.
Germany is fighting fake news on Facebook and wants Europe along for the ride • Buzzfeed
Sheera Frenkel:
Speaking in parliament for the first time since her announcement Sunday that she would seek re-election next year, Merkel cautioned that public opinion was being “manipulated” on the internet.
“Today we have fake sites, bots, trolls — things that regenerate themselves, reinforcing opinions with certain algorithms and we have to learn to deal with them,” said Merkel in her first appearance to the German parliament since she announced Sunday she would seek re-election this year.
Germany’s influence within the European Union means that other European states may soon start pressing Facebook as well.
“We believe Facebook, and all social media companies on which news is shared and consumed, should shoulder the same responsibility as traditional media companies,” said one member of the European Parliament, the EU’s legislative body, who asked to speak off record as she is involved in investigating potential EU legal action against Facebook. “They do not get to wipe their hands of responsibility by saying we are an internet company, or we do not control what users share.”
Like the Right to be Forgotten , likely to be a European thing that some Americans look on with envy.
Fake news is not the only problem • Medium
Gilad Lotan argues the problem isn’t so much “fake news” or “hoaxes” so much as propaganda:
As an Israeli, the topics of political polarisation, filter bubbles, and information warfare are things I’ve been obsessively studying for many years. Israeli society has been subject to these phenomena through a number of wars and military operations.
With increased political polarization, amplified by homophily — our preference to connect to people like us — and algorithmic recommender systems, we’re effectively constructing our own realities.
Two years ago I wrote about how social networks helped Israelis and Palestinians build a form of personalised propaganda during the last Israel-Gaza war. The shape of conversations and responses to events typically looked something like the graph below, where one frame of the story tends to stay on only one side of the graph, while a completely different take spreads on the other.
In the cases that I was investigating, neither side of the graph’s frame was false per se. Rather, each carefully crafted story on either side omitted important detail and context. When this happens constantly, on a daily basis, it systematically and deeply affects people’s perception of what is real.
Microsoft’s Chinese chatbot encounters sensitive words • China Digital Times (CDT)
Josh Rudolph:
First launched in June of 2014, Microsoft’s Chinese-speaking social media-based “artificial intelligence” chatbot Xiaobing (小冰, literally “Small Ice” and officially called Ms. Xiaoice by Microsoft) has been subject to several user tests over the past two years. The chatbot, who has reportedly become a “virtual girlfriend” to thousands of lonely men across China, has proven less susceptible to the fascist, racist, and misogynist language that her English-speaking counterpart Tay quickly adopted before Microsoft exiled her from Twitter earlier this year.
Last week, several netizens decided to test Xiaobing’s conduct when encountering some of the many “sensitive words” that Beijing has declared off limits online, as well as some of the politically-charged neologisms that web-users have invented to skirt censors. CDT has translated several different users’ interactions with Xiaobing on WeChat, which they shared as screenshots on Twitter. The tests suggest that Xiaobing has been programmed to avoid prohibited words when she encounters them. CDT Chinese editors suspect that users may be transferred to a human operator if they press the bot further down a sensitive conversation. In the following exchanges, bold text indicates a user comment, and non-bold text shows Xiaobing’s response:
Xiaobing is a Party member, and so won’t dare to talk about Tiananmen
You know very well that I can’t respond to that, boring
Are you are a Party member? Afraid to talk about Tiananmen?
Trying hard to contain my anger. I tell you, calmly and without stress: don’t talk to me about that!
Are you are a Party member? Afraid to talk about Tiananmen
You don’t learn your lesson, I don’t chat about these things
Unable to communicate with you, blacklisted!
Plenty more examples. Chatbots have something of a problem with this stuff.
HTC claims Vive sales ‘much higher’ than 140,000 • UploadVR
Ian Hamilton:
Last month a number started circulating suggesting the HTC Vive had sold 140,000 units. During a conference call however, in response to a direct question around the figure, the company says the number is actually higher, with an HTC representative telling UploadVR that the figure is “much more” than 140,000.
According to a transcript of the call from Seeking Alpha, the number “of course is higher than 140,000,” according to Chialin Chang, president of the smartphone and connected device business. Chang declined to provide a more specific number on the call, but said “I’m very happy to report to you that we’ll continue to be happy with the current selling condition in the last quarter, and we’re looking to a good…Christmas shopping season for that.”
HTC also said during the conference call it sells each unit “at a profit.”
That “at a profit” is surely gross margin (sold for more than the cost of the parts), but HTC’s huge operating losses suggest the Vive isn’t setting the books afire yet. As to Chang’s insistence of “much more”, reading the transcript you’ll realise that HTC is vague about absolutely everything. I’d go with 140,000 as a working baseline, personally.
Trump to scrap Nasa climate research in crackdown on ‘politicized science’ • The Guardian
Oliver Milman:
This would mean the elimination of Nasa’s world-renowned research into temperature, ice, clouds and other climate phenomena. Nasa’s network of satellites provide a wealth of information on climate change, with the Earth science division’s budget set to grow to $2bn next year. By comparison, space exploration has been scaled back somewhat, with a proposed budget of $2.8bn in 2017.
Bob Walker, a senior Trump campaign adviser, said there was no need for Nasa to do what he has previously described as “politically correct environmental monitoring”.
“We see Nasa in an exploration role, in deep space research,” Walker told the Guardian. “Earth-centric science is better placed at other agencies where it is their prime mission.
“My guess is that it would be difficult to stop all ongoing Nasa programs but future programs should definitely be placed with other agencies. I believe that climate research is necessary but it has been heavily politicized, which has undermined a lot of the work that researchers have been doing. Mr Trump’s decisions will be based upon solid science, not politicized science.”
Who has been doing the heavy politicisation of climate science? That would be people for whom it’s politically inconvenient to acknowledge the reality of anthropogenic climate change. Not the scientists.
15 Trump flip-flops in 15 days • Politico
Michael Kruse:
the candidate who told his supporters he likes to “tell it like it is” is now the president-elect—and he still hasn’t found a comfortable resting place on many of the issues that defined his history-making candidacy. Since his surprising election, Trump has switched his stands on everything from his signature border wall to his rather low opinion of the man he is replacing in the Oval Office. He has a way to go to before he matches the sheer volume of self-disagreement that he racked up prior to Election Day, but his batting average over his brief time as the 45th president is perfection itself—15 about-faces in 15 days.
In its way, quite impressive.
Voice assistants: always ready, rarely used? • Statista
Martin Armstrong:
Almost everyone has one, but how many actually take advantage of that assistant we carry around with us every day? According to the Deloitte Global Mobile Consumer Survey, 61% of UK smartphone owners don’t use their voice assistant. Of the 28% that do, the most common reason for use is to search for general information. While the novelty of this technology is still there, 10% say they use it for amusement purposes.
Big survey (3,251 respondents). I guess the missing 11% have phones which don’t have a voice assistant. Seems there’s quite some way to go with this; Siri was introduced five years ago.
Want to know if the election was hacked? Look at the ballots • Medium
J. Alex Halderman:
It doesn’t matter whether the voting machines are connected to the Internet. Shortly before each election, poll workers copy the ballot design from a regular desktop computer in a government office, and use removable media (like the memory card from a digital camera) to load the ballot onto each machine. That initial computer is almost certainly not well secured, and if an attacker infects it, vote-stealing malware can hitch a ride to every voting machine in the area. There’s no question that this is possible for technically sophisticated attackers. (If my Ph.D. students and I were criminals, I’m sure we could pull it off.) If anyone reasonably skilled is sufficiently motivated and willing to face the risk of getting caught, it’s happened already.
Why hasn’t more been done about this? In the U.S., each state (and often individual counties or municipalities) selects its own election technology, and some states have taken steps to guard against these problems. (For instance, California banned the use of the most dangerous computer voting machines in 2007 as a result of vulnerabilities that I and other computer scientists found.) But many states continue to use machines that are known to be insecure — sometimes with software that is a decade or more out of date — because they simply don’t have the money to replace those machines.
He himself doesn’t think they were hacked; instead he thinks the polls were wrong. But, to quote David Mitchell (the comedian), you can never be too careful.
E-voting machines need paper audits to be trustworthy • Electronic Frontier Foundation
Jacob Hoffman-Andrews:
Election security experts concerned about voting machines are calling for an audit of ballots in the three states where the presidential election was very close: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. We agree. This is an important election safety measure and should happen in all elections, not just those that have a razor-thin margin.
Voting machines, especially those that have digital components, are intrinsically susceptible to being hacked. The main protection against hacking is for voting machines to provide an auditable paper trail.
However, if that paper trail is never audited, it’s useless.
EFF worked hard, alongside many others, to ensure that paper trails were available in many places across the nation. While there are still places without them, we have made great strides. Yet this election was a forceful reminder of how vulnerable all computer systems are.
We not only need elections to be auditable, we need them to be audited.
We should use this opportunity to set a precedent of auditing electronic voting results to strengthen confidence—not only in this election, but in future ones.
God only knows what would happen if the ballots were invalidated. It would be a constitutional crisis unlike any the US has faced – not even Gore/Bush of 2000, which was calamitous.
Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: apologies for poor formatting in the email yesterday; it was the first Overspill created entirely on an iPad. Some tweaks will follow.
Start up: gaming Twitter, censoring Facebook, Karhoo’s collapse, MacBook Pro RAM and more
Christmas shoppers in the US aren’t excited about the range of technology on offer. Photo by Mike McCune on Flickr.
A selection of 10 links for you. Vitamin-free. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.
How I learned to game Twitter • New Yorker
Joe Mande:
The simplest way to tell who’s winning the Twitter game is by counting followers. The biggest celebrity accounts—Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga—seem to have millions of followers. But in 2012 I learned that only a portion of those are real humans; some are “bots,” artificially created to boost an account’s popularity. Immediately, I knew that I had found my calling. First, I would buy a million followers. When that stunt was done, I would see how far I could push it. Three million followers? Thirty million? My goal was to have the world’s highest count of followers, all of them fake. It would be an elaborate meta-joke, a piece of performance art demonstrating that social media is stupid and fame is meaningless. When I explained my plan to my girlfriend, she reminded me that I used to be “too cool for Twitter.” I told her that I still was—and this would prove it! On Fiverr.com, a sort of online ninety-nine-cent store, I found a bot vender. I sent five dollars to a PayPal account, and that afternoon my follower count ballooned, from seventy thousand to more than a hundred thousand. But these bots were shoddy: the user names were random strings of numbers, and the bio sections were empty. It didn’t take long for Twitter’s bot-detection system to find and destroy them.
The arms race was only just beginning.
Don’t write off the PC just yet • Bloomberg Gadfly
Shira Ovide:
Above all, the PC industry has become a barbell. There’s promise in selling high-end and low-priced models, with a vast swath of declining demand in the middle… …Catering to the high end has been a windfall to both Microsoft and Apple. Microsoft generated more than $4.1bn in revenue in its last fiscal year from its Surface lineup. That is new revenue for the software giant, which started its own line of PCs in 2012. Microsoft also recently introduced the Surface Studio, an innovative $3,000-and-up desktop computer aimed at the creative types that have long been Apple’s customer base. And although Mac sales have declined in the last year as Apple’s computer models grew long in the tooth, Macs still generated $22.8bn in revenue in the last 12 months. That is more than the annual revenue of all but 117 public companies in the U.S. The company also recently rolled out a new line of the high-end Macbook Pro computers at higher prices. As Apple has done with its iPhone business, if the company has trouble increasing Mac sales, at least it can wring more money from each one. The even bigger PC success story can be found at the low end of the market. IDC estimates unit sales of PCs priced below $300 – including Alphabet Inc.’s stripped down Chromebook laptops – will increase 7% this year.
Though as Ovide points out, Microsoft’s Surface revenue has probably come largely from HP rather than Apple. The PC business is barely even zero-sum competition now, given the way it’s shrinking.
Facebook said to create censorship tool to get back into China • New York Times
Mike Isaac:
The suppression software has been contentious within Facebook, which is separately grappling with what should or should not be shown to its users after the American presidential election’s unexpected outcome spurred questions over fake news on the social network. Several employees who were working on the project have left Facebook after expressing misgivings about it, according to the current and former employees. A Facebook spokeswoman said in a statement, “We have long said that we are interested in China, and are spending time understanding and learning more about the country.” She added that the company had made no decisions on its approach into China. Facebook’s tricky position underscores the difficulties that many American internet companies have had gaining access to China. For years, companies like Google and Twitter have been blocked there for refusing to yield to the government’s demands around censorship. In 2010, Google said it was directing users of its search engine in China to its service in Hong Kong, because of censorship and intrusion from hackers. Other companies, like the professional social networking service LinkedIn, agreed to censor some content on their platforms in China.
It’s quite the dilemma: if Facebook folds to China’s demands, then what becomes of Silicon Valley’s ideals? But if it doesn’t, look at all that money left on the table. And Zuckerberg only a multi-billionaire beset by rows about the possibly malign influence of his invention.
Do not count on early adopters to positively impact sales this holiday season • Creative Strategies
Carolina Milanesi on a survey of shoppers’ intentions:
mainstream consumers were not interested in any new technology category. A whopping 64% said they were not planning to buy anything among the hot holiday’s items compared to a more moderate 33% of early adopters. Wireless headsets were the category most mentioned by both early tech and mainstream as an item of interest. We cannot point to Apple as being the driver of this interest, given the iPhone 7’s lack of audio jack. However, it is easy to see how new working habits that see people being highly mobile and working in remote locations might help drive updates for work as well as play with a higher focus on content consumption. The Nintendo NES Classic was another item that stood out across the two groups with 11% of early adopters and 5% of mainstream consumers saying it was on their shopping list. We dug deeper into consumers’ intention for wearables, smartphones, TVs and PC/tablets. We looked at drivers and inhibitors, and we saw little change to the themes we discussed earlier in the year. Inhibitors were longer life cycles for smartphones and PCs/tablets, unclear value add for wearables, and lack of a need to replace TVs. Every year we see an enormous amount of marketing dollars spent leading up to the holidays in advertising and promotions over the holidays with the pinnacle being Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Interestingly, it does not seem mainstream consumers see those deals as very influential. Across the main categories, wearables and TVs are where that influence matters more. I find this interesting because these two categories are also the ones where consumers are focusing on spending the bare minimum.
I get the feeling that we’re very much in a lacuna, technologically speaking; rather like 2002-4, when the first internet wave had gone and the next was waiting to build momentum.
How much humiliation can the special relationship take? • Foreign Policy
Alex Massie:
Even so, Trump’s willingness to flatter Farage — his tweet follows a meeting between the two men at Trump’s impressively vulgar New York tower — remains remarkable. Then again, perhaps he just knows a huckster when he sees one. Farage, who has seven times tried without success to be elected to the British Parliament, evidently enjoys basking in the reflected glory of the new president’s approval. Like Trump, Farage enjoys slithering from television studio to television studio imagining himself to be the voice of the people. This obscures the inconvenient fact that the people have a commendably low opinion of the leader of the UK Independence Party. Farage imagines himself as some kind of bridge between May’s government and the new American administration; mercifully, May disagrees. If Farage were such a bridge, it would be another bridge to nowhere. (Admittedly, there is one sense in which the role of British ambassador to Washington would suit Farage. Sir Christopher Meyer, who held the post from 1997 to 2003, claimed in his memoirs that Tony Blair’s chief of staff sent him off with the instruction “to get up the arse of the White House and stay there.” Farage, it is clear, imagines a comparable anatomical future for himself.) In truth, the Trump-Farage brouhaha is an unwelcome distraction for May. Her government is trapped between a deep skepticism about Trump and the need to make the best of whatever president happens to occupy the Oval Office. Moreover, Britain’s post-Brexit interests lie in negotiating trade deals with its leading commercial counterparts — including, prominently, the United States. This necessarily weakens the U.K.’s strategic position vis a vis the White House. The official line on Trump’s presidency, therefore, amounts to little more than one part “let’s wait and see” and two parts “let’s hope for the best.”
“Slithering”. Burn.
China’s tech unicorns look increasingly cursed • Bloomberg
Christina Larson:
For several months in late 2014 and early 2015, Xiaomi was China’s top smartphone seller. Three months after Alibaba’s IPO, Xiaomi capitalized on the fervor with a funding round that valued the company at a breathless $46bn, making it briefly the world’s shiniest unicorn (it’s now second only to Uber). Yet its dominance proved fleeting. Over the past year and a half, Xiaomi’s position in China’s handset market tumbled from first to fourth. The company is certainly still a unicorn, but its current value may be $4bn to $10bn if it tried to raise more money now, estimated Clay Shirky, an associate professor at NYU Shanghai and author of the 2015 book, Little Rice: Smartphones, Xiaomi, and the Chinese Dream. “Over the past 18 months, they’ve lost 90 percent of their value, or thereabouts,” he said. He points to the valuations for smartphone makers with publicly traded stock. China’s Lenovo Group, for example, holds about the same share of the Chinese smartphone market and is valued at about $7bn. Lenovo is also the biggest PC maker in the world. “Xiaomi shouldn’t be six times Lenovo,” Shirky said.
Puts The Information’s rather breathless $40bn “revised” valuation into perspective.
A would-be Uber rival’s $250m taxi ride to nowhere • Bloomberg
Adam Satariano:
Before the company’s price-comparison app for hailing a taxi was released, Karhoo grabbed headlines last year when it reportedly raised $250m and said it had plans to bring in more than $1bn. In fact, it never raised that much. According to internal financial documents, it had raised $39m as of September and was bleeding money as it attempted to take on Uber Technologies Inc. In its two-year life, Karhoo generated about $1m in net revenue, according to the records shared with Bloomberg… …As Karhoo introduced its service in London and several other U.K. cities, [founder Daniel] Ishag was attempting to raise more money. One person involved in the process said Ishag was at one point seeking a $400m valuation. To entice investors, he had to show that customers were using the service in droves to hire taxis, several former employees said. The company began an aggressive promotional campaign in which it gave away codes for free rides, according to former employees. But the service had a bug that didn’t properly process the codes, meaning customers could use them over and over again. Some people on social media said they had taken more than 100 free rides. The company had to pay drivers or taxi companies even though Karhoo didn’t receive any money from customers. In October, about 70% of its bookings were with promo codes, according to sales documents seen by Bloomberg. The app’s payment processing system also didn’t have many fraud protections, such as verifying a user’s address or requiring an e-mail address to set up an account, several people said. At one point, more than 90% of passengers’ credit-card payments were being rejected as a result of the problems, three people said.
Daniel Ishag. Remember that name. And: more fake claims, this time about funding, reported as fact without verification.
Why the Macbook Pro is limited to 16GB of RAM • Macdaddy
Benedict Slaney:
At Apple’s scale even if 0.1% of people suffer from an issue, it becomes suffixed as a “gate”, to indicate that it’s a scandal on a massive scale. Apple then gets huge numbers of upset customers. If Intel had decided to support LPDDR4 then it seems clear that Apple would have used it. The iPhone 7 does use LPDDR4 memory, since it uses Apple’s custom ARM CPU which supports it. LinusTechTips attempted to do an analysis on the extra power that would be required to support more RAM, but unfortunately it has the fatal flaw in that they only compare DDR4 (16GB) to DDR4 (32GB), making their results mistaken. Which is surprising, as usually it’s a top quality information source. In my last article on this topic where I mentioned that the FAA ceiling [on capacity of batteries that can be carried on aircraft] would have prevented Apple from including DDR4 RAM while maintaining decent battery life even if they wanted to, there was quite a backlash, with claims that it must be easily supportable because of other laptops being out that do support it. I went through these laptops which support memory greater than 16GB and found what you would expect: that aside from pay-to-play reviews, all of them do suffer from big restrictions in terms of battery life.
This is fantastically thorough, and makes you realise the tradeoffs that Apple has made in this decision: it’s all about longer battery life, and longer standby life. Slaney also points out that those tests consisting of “we ran a video for X hours” or “we set up a script to run web browsing for Y hours” aren’t useful, because they don’t include application switching – which is what taxes memory. And – added bonus – Phil Schiller, Apple’s marketing chief, responds to the article from his iPhone pointing out two arcane but engineering-depth errors, and reiterating that it’s all about the battery life.
Nearly half the world is online • PCMag.com
Angela Moscaritolo:
Forty-seven percent of the world’s population is online, according to a new report from the United Nation’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU). At this point, there are almost as many mobile-cellular subscriptions around the world as there are people on Earth. But that doesn’t everyone on the planet has a mobile phone, since many people have multiple subscriptions or devices. The offline population — some 3.9 billion people around the world — is “disproportionately female, elderly, less educated, lower income, and rural,” the report notes. But with the resources and desire, almost everyone could be connected. Ninety-five percent of the global population lives in an area that is covered by a mobile cell signal. But while most people have access to Internet services, many don’t actually use them, largely due to high prices.
Circulating five-second video causes Apple iPhones to freeze • Apple Insider
Roger Fingas:
iPhone owners are cautioned to be careful about tapping unsolicited links as a new five-second MP4 video, currently being shared online, is causing devices to freeze not long after it’s played. The video is corrupt, and appears to be generating a loop which causes iOS 10 to crash, according to The Verge, which tested the glitch on several iPhones running versions of iOS 10.1.x or the iOS 10.2 beta. The issue first came to light on Reddit. Notably the crash takes about 10 seconds, during which people can do other things on their iPhone as the device gradually slows down. Once an iPhone freezes the only option is to reboot it, though it should work as normal once it recovers. Apple has yet to announce a fix for the issue.
Sounds like a buffer overflow. One wonders how you’d discover a particular video that could do that: a lot of fuzzing, at a guess.
Start up: pricing Xiaomi, pondering bitcoin, Brexit blues, Facebook’s little white lies, and more
Chernobyl: soon to be generating power again. Differently. Photo by CmdrCord on Flickr.
A selection of 9 links for you. Emollient and emolument-free. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.
Survey reveals UK consumer confidence faltering in run up to Black Friday and Christmas • Context Research
UK consumers’ confidence in their ability to weather the uncertainty around Brexit continues to slide as the most crucial shopping periods of the year approach, according to the latest Retail Pulse Survey from CONTEXT, the IT market research company. The Survey reveals that half of those questioned expect the UK economy to weaken over the next three months, thus dampening spending plans.
Carried out in the middle of October this year across a representative sample of 1,000 consumers in the UK, other main points emerging included:
• There has been a marked deterioration in confidence over the last quarter among older consumers
• Over a third of consumers expect their personal finances to weaken in the next three months
• 35% of consumers expected that they would be able to put less into savings in the next three months
• 37% of consumers thought that now was a bad time to make big-ticket electrical purchases
Amongst older consumers, sentiment has changed significantly since the last survey three months ago. In July 2016, 42% of people 65 and over expected positive UK economic performance. Feelings have now swung massively in the opposite direction with 44% believing the country’s economy will get worse.
Well, let’s see how people are feeling in the US in a few months.
Microsoft reboots war on sleep • Medium
“DHH” of Signalvnoise, makers of Basecamp:
A few years ago, Microsoft launched a Office 365 campaign with the slogan of #GetItDone. The basic premise was fitting more work into more places of your life. Well, not so much just fitting as shoving, cramming, and crunching it into every damn nook and cranny of your existence.
Like, why shouldn’t you check up on that Excel spreadsheet with the latest TPS numbers from the bathroom? Or take that conference call from your kid’s soccer game? Or fake presence with your spouse reviewing Word revisions while watch a show “together”?
Seriously. I’m not making these scenarios up. Microsoft’s campaign included all of them, complete with stats to alleviate the guilt of living such a shackled life. See, everyone is doing it! And Microsoft 365 makes it easier!!
Fuck. That. Shit.
We tried to push back against Microsoft’s #GetItDone back in 2013 with #WorkCanWait. That lead to a whole series of features in Basecamp 3 to encourage the exact opposite of what Microsoft wanted the future of work to look like.
Guess what? Microsoft’s doing it again. Truly, the idea that work should never be escapable is insidious, and poisonous.
Chinese solar firm to build plant in Chernobyl exclusion zone • Reuters
David Stanway:
Two Chinese firms plan to build a solar power plant in the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, which has been off limits since a devastating explosion contaminated the region with deadly radiation in 1986.
GCL System Integration Technology (GCL-SI), a subsidiary of the GCL Group, said it would cooperate with China National Complete Engineering Corp (CCEC) on the project in Ukraine, with construction expected to start next year.
“There will be remarkable social benefits and economic ones as we try to renovate the once damaged area with green and renewable energy,” Shu Hua, the chairman of GCL-SI, said in a press release.
The 1-gigawatt plant was part of the group’s plan to build an international presence, he added.
CCEC, a subsidiary of state-owned China National Machinery Industry Corp, will be in overall charge of the project, while GCL-SI will provide and install solar components. GCL-SI did not say how much it would cost.
I love this idea.
Bitcoin was supposed to change the world. What happened? • Vox
Timothy Lee:
it’s becoming clear that companies like MasterCard and Western Union are in no danger of going the way of Tower Records. Venture capitalists have poured more than a billion dollars into Bitcoin startups, yet we seem to be no closer to making Bitcoin a mainstream technology. To a large extent, Bitcoin today is still used for the same applications — illicit transactions and financial speculation — that it was in 2014 and 2012.
“I think Bitcoin has stalled out,” said Nathaniel Popper, a reporter for the New York Times who wrote a book about Bitcoin in 2014.
What went wrong? The Bitcoin community has been hampered by a dysfunctional culture that has grown increasingly hostile toward experimentation. That has made it difficult for the Bitcoin network to keep up with changing market demands.
But Bitcoin’s larger problem may be that it just doesn’t solve any problems normal people have. Conventional financial networks are good enough for everyday transactions. And so while Bitcoin is in no danger of disappearing, it continues to be relegated to the margins of the global economy.
Blockchain, the idea on which bitcoin is built, is likely to get wider use; cryotpgraphically confirmed but low volume transactions such as land registries look particularly promising.
Time to rethink Xiaomi’s value • The Information
Shai Oster:
Given that Xiaomi doesn’t release its earnings, it’s arguably better to use revenue multiples instead of earnings as a tool to compare Xiaomi to other manufacturers. In addition, Xiaomi splits profits with hardware manufacturers. (Xiaomi argues that all of these devices contribute to creating a bigger user base to deliver internet services that will have recurring revenue, such as entertainment on television, money market funds and even loans.)
Consider Xiaomi as a hybrid between Apple and Philips, given a little optimism on growth rates for phone sales in India and the fast growth of its appliance sales back in China. This year, phone sales are on track to hit 60 million at an average selling price of $175, according to Canalys. That’s around $10.5 billion in sales. Consolidating revenue from televisions and other hardware could bring revenue to about $13.5 billion. One investor suggests that Xiaomi can be seen as two-thirds Apple, trading at about 2.6 times revenue, and one-third Philips, which last year traded at two times its revenue. Add extra juice for the high growth rates and it could be valued at three times revenue, or $40.5bn.
That’s an optimistic look and still below what it was rated at two years ago. Investors say Xiaomi doesn’t publicly talk about profitability, but executives have said the phone production business maintains an operating profit. Xiaomi has long claimed that the real profits will come from the sale of services to its growing user base, but says it has only started monetizing that base last year through advertising, games and other transactions.
That’s only a little down from the $46bn that’s offered higher up in the story, and ignores the fact that Xiaomi’s phone sales are slowing down dramatically (down 14% on 2015 so far this year). If it can’t grow its user base, it’s stuck.
Global notebook shipments up on year after two years of decline • Digitimes Research
Worldwide notebook shipments are estimated to reach 41.65m units in the fourth quarter, up 6.4% sequentially as demand from the year-end holidays is expected to pick up strongly, while Apple’s fourth-generation MacBook Pro products have entered mass production, helping related upstream supply return to a stable balance. Although Chromebooks and China-based brand vendors are expected to perform weakly in the quarter, their negative influences will only have a minor impact. The quarter will also see the industry enjoy its first on-year growth after eight consecutive quarters of decline.
Hewlett-Packard (HP) will remain the largest notebook vendor in the fourth quarter, while its shipment gap with Lenovo will continue to widen as the China-based vendor is seriously impacted by high channel inventory and business reorganization, according to Digitimes Research’s latest notebook report.
Dell has shifted some of its resources to push the consumer notebook sector for the fourth quarter. This will allow the company to achieve growth in the quarter despite the enterprise sector’s weakening demand. Apple’s new notebook products have seen some negative feedback in design and price, but their major hardware upgrades and new Touch Bar design are still expected to attract many users to replace their old Apple systems. With the shipment growth, Apple is expected to return as the fourth largest vendor worldwide in the fourth quarter.
Not clear why this pickup should have happened. Apple surely can’t be responsible for all of it.
Facebook’s Aquila drone is under investigation for a structural failure • The Verge
Casey Newton:
On July 21st, I reported that Facebook had successfully completed the first test flight of Aquila, the drone with which it hopes to someday provide internet to much of the world. My account, which was based on interviews with Mark Zuckerberg and members of the team that was present on the ground for the June 28th flight, presented the flight as an unqualified success.
The aircraft’s failure was noted in passing in the eighth paragraph of Facebook’s engineering blog on the day our story was posted. (“We are still analyzing the results of the extended test, including a structural failure we experienced just before landing.”)
No one was injured as a result of the failure, and there was no damage to the ground, the NTSB said. But the aircraft was “substantially damaged,” a spokesman said. An aircraft is considered substantially damaged when it is no longer airworthy…
…it is unclear why Facebook did not disclose the NTSB investigation or the fact that the drone was substantially damaged during [my, Casey Newton’s] multiple interviews with its CEO and its team.
For my part, I failed to note the significance of the line in its blog post afterward.
Watching the folks at The Verge get schooled in how the big boys play dirty is a passable spectator sport (Newton was previously lied to by 3DR, which faked a drone demonstration to him). The question is when The Verge, and the other tech outlets which like to think they’re savvy, will begin approaching the companies they cover from a position of skepticism, instead of puppyish enthusiasm.
They could follow it up by speaking to someone outside the companies for a view. Newton’s original has no voices other than Facebook’s. And all the photos came from Facebook. See how that looks a bit… compromised?
Alternative headline which the Verge for some reason rejected: “Facebook didn’t tell me its drone crashed.” (In fact the original story says “The company hoped Aquila would successfully remain aloft for half an hour. But it was so stable that they kept it in the air for 90 minutes before landing it safely.” Newton wasn’t actually there; he relied on what Facebook told him. Wouldn’t pass muster at the New York Times or the New Yorker.)
This pizzeria is not a child-trafficking site • NYTimes.com
Cecilia Kang spoke to James Alefantis, who runs the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington, and received hateful and threatening messages over bizarre – and fake – claims run on bizarro right-wing sites which exploited Facebook for visibility:
Mr. Alefantis’s experience shows it is not just politicians and internet companies that are grappling with the fake news fallout. He, his staff and friends have become a new kind of private citizen bull’s-eye for the purveyors of false articles and their believers.
For more than two weeks, they have struggled to deal with the abusive social media comments and to protect photos of their own children, which were used in the false articles as evidence that the pizza restaurant was running a pedophilia ring. One person even visited Comet Ping Pong to investigate the allegations for himself.
To combat the fake news tide, Mr. Alefantis has contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the local police, and he has asked Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Reddit to remove the articles. Yet the misinformation has continued to spread, growing into a theory known as #pizzagate that has traveled to Ireland. At one point, Comet’s staff counted five #pizzagate Twitter posts a minute. As recently as Sunday night, the Twitter message “Don’t let up. #PizzaGate EVERYWHERE” was reposted and liked hundreds of times.
“It’s like trying to shoot a swarm of bees with one gun,” said Bryce Reh, Comet’s general manager, whose wife asked him to leave his job because of the threats and vulgar messages they both have received on their social media accounts.
At times like this, the scenario from episode 6 of the third series of Black Mirror begins to look desirable. (If you haven’t seen it– I won’t spoil it. It’s called “Hated In The Nation”.
(Via Papanic.)
In response to complaints, some brands are pulling ads placed on Breitbart • Digiday
Shareen Pathak:
Brands and the agencies that work for them are caught in a tough place when it comes to ads on so-called alt-right websites like Breitbart, which have regularly published articles that stoke nationalist, racist and anti-Semitic sentiments.
Thanks mostly to programmatic advertising, plenty of brands advertise on Breitbart, with advertising appearing next to stories like “Bill Kristol: Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew” and “Here’s Why There Ought to Be a Cap on Women Studying Science and Maths.” Now, a number of them — including Allstate, Modcloth, Nest, Earthlink and SoFi — are blacklisting the website, under pressure in social media and even blaming the digital ad system for appearing there in the first place.
Many brands had no idea their ads were appearing on Breitbart. Many placements are retargeting ads that follow you on the internet: A recent ad seen for Baublebar is served up by retargeting firm Criteo. Google’s ad network is also all over the Breitbart site, which means any business that does retargeting or audience targeting through Google could show up. In a Twitter message to one complaint, Allstate said, “Unfortunately, the nature of internet buys is such that we are unable to receive full disclosure with regards to all of the websites on which our advertising may run.”…
…A Twitter account called Sleeping Giants has put pressure on advertisers, taking screenshots of advertising appearing on Breitbart, then tweeting at the companies involved. The creator of the account said he would prefer to remain anonymous to avoid being harassed by Trump supporters on the internet. He said he started the account because fake news and disinformation, are, in his opinion, two of the reasons why the election turned out in favor of Trump.
Note how this is very different from the pre-internet age, when advertisers could be very sure which publications their ads would appear in (and publications tended to know who advertisers were).
Start up: the truth behind Trump U, the fake news factory, algorithmic futures, the pro Mac, and more
Want to confuse an AI? Use this. Photo by thinkjose on Flickr.
A selection of 12 links for you. To anyone else, eleven. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.
June 2016: Trump University: it’s worse than you think • The New Yorker
John Cassidy, writing in June:
If anyone still has any doubt about the troubling nature of Donald Trump’s record, he or she should be obliged to read the affidavit of Ronald Schnackenberg, a former salesman for Trump University. Schnackenberg’s testimony was one of the documents unsealed by a judge in the class-action suit, which was brought in California by some of Trump University’s disgruntled former attendees.
Schnackenberg, who worked in Trump’s office at 40 Wall Street, testified that “while Trump University claimed it wanted to help consumers make money in real estate, in fact Trump University was only interested in selling every person the most expensive seminars they possibly could.” The affidavit concludes, “Based upon my personal experience and employment, I believe that Trump University was a fraudulent scheme, and that it preyed upon the elderly and uneducated to separate them from their money.”
In one sense, the latest revelations don’t break much new ground. Back in 2013, when the office of Eric Schneiderman, New York’s Attorney General, filed a civil lawsuit against Trump and some of his associates, the complaint, which is also worth reading in full, made perfectly clear what sort of organization it was targeting. Despite Trump University’s claim that it offered “graduate programs, post graduate programs, doctorate programs,” it wasn’t a university at all. It was a company that purported to be selling Trump’s secret insights into how to make money in real estate. From the time Trump University began operating, in 2005, the A.G.’s office repeatedly warned the company that it was breaking the law by calling itself a university. (In New York State, universities have to obtain a state charter.)…
…One thing is clear, though. If the revelations about Trump University don’t do any damage to Trump, it’s time to worry—or worry even more—about American democracy.
It’s faintly troubling that the NY attorney-general took so long to get to grips with Trump U. And all the people who are going “pfft” that their president-elect is a conman? What sort of behaviour do they expect from him in office?
Apple should go back to the future with the Mac Pro | The Robservatory
Rob Griffiths:
Back in 2013, Apple introduced the new Mac Pro, an amazing wonder of design. But it was also a study in compromise for “Pro” users, requiring all peripherals to be externally attached, and not allowing for any after-purchase upgrades (video card, CPU, etc.). It was also shockingly expensive.
I can only imagine how hard it must have been for Apple to try to build a perfect Mac “Pro” desktop for everyone. As nicely designed as the new Mac Pro was, it missed the perfect mark for many Pro users by quite a bit.
So how does Apple try to design one Mac that can satisfy a diverse group that encompasses design professionals, gamers, scientific researchers, video creators, and who knows what else? Quite simply, they shouldn’t try, as such an exercise is destined to fail. (See “new Mac Pro,” above.)
Instead, Apple should design one Mac that can become anything and everything to each type of “Pro” user. While that may sound daungting, the good news is that Apple’s already done this in its recent past. And done it very well, I might add…
When has Apple done this in the past? As recently as 2012, the last year of production for the old Mac Pro. That’s right, the old Mac Pro:
Griffiths is absolutely right: the old Mac Pro was the ideal machine for those who absolutely need to be able to change its internals. It’s almost as if it was designed by different people from the ones who put out the “ashtray” Mac Pro.
Want to understand AI? Try sketching a duck for a neural network • Technology Review
Will Knight:
Google has released a handful of AI experiments that tap into advances in machine learning in creative ways.
They include Quick, Draw!, a game in which an algorithm tries to guess what you’re sketching, A.I. Duet, which lets you compose pieces of music with a creative computer, and ways to visualize how neural networks represent information and see the world.
The projects show off some new AI features Google has built into an overhauled cloud computing platform. But they also help make AI less mysterious, and hint at ways in which the technology may become more accessible to all of us.
Take Quick, Draw!, for example. You have 20 seconds to draw six simple objects, and a computer tries to guess what you’re working on in the allotted time. Under the hood, the game runs a learning system that Google uses for character recognition. The system analyzes not only the shape, but also the strokes you used to draw it. It’s a neat way to understand a machine-learning approach that’s used by millions on their smartphones. It’s also quite addictive, even if it always seems to mistake my ducks for potatoes.
It’s a neat way to get lots of people to train a neural network, certainly.
World’s first malaria vaccine set for 2018 rollout in Africa • United Nations News Centre
Having secured the funds for the initial phase of the deployment of the world’s first malaria vaccine, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced today it will be rolled out in sub-Saharan Africa and immunization campaigns will begin in 2018.
“The pilot deployment of this first-generation vaccine marks a milestone in the fight against malaria,” stated Dr. Pedro Alonso, Director of the WHO Global Malaria Programme, adding that these pilot projects will provide valuable evidence from real-life settings to make informed decisions on whether to deploy the vaccine on a wide scale.
The vaccine, known as RTS,S, acts globally against the most deadly malaria parasite P. falciparum, very common in Africa. Based on the results from clinical trials, the new vaccine will provide partial protection against malaria in young children.
The vaccine was developed through a partnership between GlaxoSmithKline and the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI), with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and from a network of African research centres.
This is relatively cheap – $15m for the pilot trials, $37m for the first four years. This is what progress looks like.
Venezuela’s nemesis is a hardware salesman at a Home Depot in Alabama • WSJ
Public Enemy No. 1 of Venezuela’s revolutionary government is Gustavo Díaz, a Home Depot Inc. employee in central Alabama.
On his lunch breaks from the hardware section, Mr. Díaz, 60 years old, does more than anyone else to set the price of everything from rice to aspirin to cars in his native Venezuela, influencing the inflation rate and swaying millions of dollars of daily currency transactions.
How? He is president of one of Venezuela’s most popular and insurgent websites, DolarToday.com, which provides a benchmark exchange rate used by his compatriots to buy and sell black-market dollars. That allows them to bypass some of the world’s most rigid currency controls.
Socialist President Nicolás Maduro has accused DolarToday of leading an “economic war” against his embattled government and vowed to jail Mr. Díaz and his two partners, also Venezuelan expatriates in the U.S. The Venezuelan central bank unsuccessfully filed suit against the website twice in US courts. The government has also turned to hackers to launch constant attacks, Mr. Díaz said, forcing the site to use sophisticated defenses.
“DolarToday is the Empire’s strategy to push down the currency and overthrow Maduro,” Vice President Aristóbulo Istúriz said earlier this year, asserting that the US—“The Empire” to the Venezuelan government—was orchestrating the site’s work. “DolarToday is the enemy of the people.” The US State Department declined to comment…
…Although about $15 million changes hands daily on the Venezuelan black market, Mr. Díaz said he makes little from the Delaware-registered website, which is free to access. The company’s three founding partners—Mr. Díaz, a real-estate agent in Miami and a supermarket technology technician in Seattle—recoup $4,500 a month from selling advertising and the browsing data of about 800,000 unique daily visitors to Google.
I like that last clause.
For the ‘new yellow journalists,’ opportunity comes in clicks and bucks • The Washington Post
Terrence McCoy:
At a time of continuing discussion over the role that hyperpartisan websites, fake news and social media play in the divided America of 2016, LibertyWritersNews illustrates how websites can use Facebook to tap into a surging ideology, quickly go from nothing to influencing millions of people and make big profits in the process. Six months ago, Wade and his business partner, Ben Goldman, were unemployed restaurant workers. Now they’re at the helm of a website that gained 300,000 Facebook followers in October alone and say they are making so much money that they feel uncomfortable talking about it because they don’t want people to start asking for loans.
Instead, Wade hums a hip-hop song and starts a new post as readers keep reading, sharing and sending in personal messages. One comes from a woman who frequently contacts his page. “YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE I TRUST TO REPORT THE TRUTH,” is one of the things she has written, and Wade doesn’t need to look at her Facebook profile to have a clear sense of who she is. White. Working class. Midwestern. “And the economy screwed her.”
He writes another headline, “THE TRUTH IS OUT! The Media Doesn’t Want You To See What Hillary Did After Losing… .”
“Nothing in this article is anti-media, but I’ve used this headline a thousand times,” he says. “Violence and chaos and aggressive wording is what people are attracted to.”
“Our audience does not trust the mainstream media,” Goldman, 26, says a little later as Wade keeps typing. “It’s definitely easier to hook them with that.”
“There’s not a ton of thought put into it,” Wade says. “Other than it frames the story so it gets a click.”
They should turn this into a series and call it Breaking Bad News.
Helping to fix the fake news problem with metadata • Medium
Brendan Quinn:
One growing type of metadata is the schema.org project, sponsored by the major search engines (and using the World Wide Web Consortium’s communities platform to operate) but free for anyone to use. Sites use schema.org metadata to tag content as being restaurant reviews, recipes, events or news stories. Without changing how content looks to human readers, it can be made a whole lot more understandable to computers, which obviously helps with search results, bots answering questions about recipes. And maybe, I thought, it could help people make it clear when articles are intended to be satirical.
So I asked Dan Brickley, Semantic Web guru, Googler and maintainer of schema.org, if there were any plans to make a tag for satirical news part of the schema.org markup. It’s an ever-growing standard and tends to follow industry trends — a recent effort has focused on fact-checking articles which will hopefully provide the right tools to debunk false articles. I’m very happy to say that Dan replied that he had indeed looked into it a few years ago, and that as a result of me asking the question, he has revived his proposal for a SatiricalNewsArticle tag. And it looks like it might gain some traction.
Now you might say that there’s no point in creating a fake news tag because the article’s author must voluntarily state that they are writing satire. It’s true that the tag must be consciously added by the publisher of the article but convincing publishers to use it might not be as difficult as you think — according to the recent Washington Post article on a prominent fake news purveyor, he gives the impression that he wants people to realise, eventually, that they’re reading satire.
Nah, I doubt that. He wants to make money.
Apple abandons development of wireless routers • Bloomberg
Mark Gurman:
Apple has disbanded its division that develops wireless routers, another move to try to sharpen the company’s focus on consumer products that generate the bulk of its revenue, according to people familiar with the matter.
Apple began shutting down the wireless router team over the past year, dispersing engineers to other product development groups, including the one handling the Apple TV, said the people, who asked not to be named because the decision hasn’t been publicly announced.
Apple hasn’t refreshed its routers since 2013 following years of frequent updates to match new standards from the wireless industry. The decision to disband the team indicates the company isn’t currently pushing forward with new versions of its routers. An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on the company’s plans…
…Apple’s AirPorts have historically lagged behind those of companies such as D-Link Corp., Netgear Inc. and Belkin International Inc., which have rushed to adopt new standards. Apple, which has charged more for its routers, has focused more on integrating control of its devices into its computer operating system and industrial design. The company’s decision to leave the business may be a boon for other wireless router makers.
I doubt it will be a “boon” – these are going to be far from big business – but as Gurman points out, if people then choose to go with other products to do this job, that could make Apple’s hardware offerings less attractive overall. And the Airport devices do the job. (Side note: Gurman is covering the Apple beat as effectively as ever.)
Intel is laying off a major portion of its wearables group • TechCrunch
Brian Heater:
In June, Intel recalled Basis Peak devices due to overheating concerns — affecting, according to the company, roughly 0.2% of users. Rather than replacing the units, the company simply stopped sales of the device altogether. Intel took it a step further and shut down the Peak’s software support (including cloud storage), effective by year’s end.
It was clear at the time that this would prove a big setback for Intel’s wearable dreams. After all, the Basis acquisition hadn’t produced much for the company beyond the release of the Titanium, a snazzed up version of the Peak that looked a bit better with a business suit.
Now, according to sources close to the company, Intel is planning to take a major step back from its investment in the space — or possibly even exit wearables altogether. The changes will include a large number of layoffs in NDG, along with the larger New Technologies Group into which it was folded back in April of last year — a move already viewed at the time by some as an early sign of Intel’s displeasure with its wearables division.
The company has already informed a number of employees about the changes, with many expected to lose their jobs before year’s end. Reports thus far have been varied, but all point to a large job loss for those in the NDG and the possible shut down of the group altogether.
In a statement, Intel denied the company is stepping back from wearables, though it didn’t directly comment on the layoff news. It has “several products in the works that we are very excited about”. Those might have been in the works and won’t be followed by any more, though? Intel’s problem is that it’s not good at low-power work – and that’s where the focus is.
The Dubai Overpayment scam • Event Photography London
Paul Clarke got an approach to do a week’s photography for a wonderful amount of money:
Some things made lots of sense – the language, though imperfect in its English, was like so many similar approaches. The venue was real enough, and one I’d worked in before, and I gleefully sent my new friend in Dubai a link to those photos, along with a quotation note for 5 days shooting.
You need something to really pin the mark down in a con – something to clinch things. I’ve seen enough Hustle to know this almost always involves an appeal to greed. But I couldn’t see it now. And there it was – they only wanted 5 hours a day of coverage – 10 to 3. A bit weird, that, but hey, I was quoting full day rates. Even given generous provision for set-up and pack-down time, this was going to be a relatively light workload for a tasty paycheck. I was IN!
“Just what we’re looking for” – came the swift reply – “can we book you? In fact, we’re so keen to get everything confirmed now we’ve found you, with your wonderful experience of that venue, that we’d like you to invoice us now, in full, for the work.”
This gets better, I thought. I tapped the name of the events company into Google, just out of interest to see where they were. Got a few links with very similar names (variations on “Emirates”, “Events”, and “Agency”; couldn’t be bothered to look into all of them, so left it). I’d asked for a phone number, and they’d sent one – with the right country code – I checked. But I didn’t ring it.
You can be smart and be conned. It involves a big overpayment being made with a fake/stolen cheque; the excess payment is then reversed – by you! – and then the fake/stolen nature of the cheque comes to light (after you’ve paid out the money, because banks are sloooow at this stuff), and the bank reverses the stolen amount out of your account. Suddenly you’re a lot poorer. Beware.
Tales of the algorithm: the transparent man • Terence Eden’s Blog
Eden has been writing:
Scene: An airport. A few years from now.
“I’m sorry sir, we can’t let you on the flight until you visit the rest-room.”
I’ll admit that it caught me off-guard. Surely the woman at the airline gate was joking?
“Sir, two of the plane’s toilets are out-of-order. At this time we’re requesting all passengers void themselves before entry.”
As he points out, all the technologies he mentions already exist and are being used. It’s just a question of bringing them together, Black Mirror-style.
Blackhat Facebook: using fake contests to generate engagement • Joe Youngblood
Joe Youngblood:
I made a new friend recently who is addictively drawn to the high-life. Fancy dresses, parties on yachts, trendy restaurants, destination vacations – all things she posts on a regular basis to her Facebook. So I wasn’t too surprised when she shared a post about winning $30,000 in some rich guy’s Facebook contest to generate a following on his page. I wasn’t surprised that she might know a rich guy or follow one’s “public figure” page, but offering $30,000 to get likes seemed a bit off. I was curious about who would make such an extraordinary offer and like at least 100,000 other folks decided to look at his page, immediately it screamed fake. My first clue was the fact that the page never posted more than two photos of the man it claimed to represent, Aaron Simon – and one of those photos had his head cropped out at the chin.
There are 4 types of public figures IMO that make Facebook pages, Instagram accounts, etc..
1. The already famous looking to capitalize on or steadily maintain their fame
2. The not-so famous that wish to push their ideas / views on others
3. Independent contractors / business people wanting to sell something or offer services
4. Those who hope that their antics / views / lifestyle will make them famous
All of the above rely on personal recognition, so it was odd when I visited the photos tab of Aaron’s page and scrolled through a heap of memes to find just two photos of the man. The one with his face cropped out made it difficult to find anything, but the second photo was of a good looking man standing next to a Lamborghini. It took some digging but I was able to find the same photo with a time stamp of a year earlier by using a reverse Google image search.
You’ll have guessed: it’s fake from top to bottom, aiming to pull people out towards sites that will capitalise on Google AdSense.
Start up: Zuckerberg the politician, unethical coding, the grudge botnet, whose robot army?, and more
Yeah, that’s surely a criminal face. The numbers tell us. Photo by bheathr on Flickr.
A selection of 13 links for you. Ta-daa! I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.
Programmers confess unethical, illegal tasks asked of them • Business Insider
Julie Bort:
[Robert Martin’s] point is that in today’s world, everything we do like buying things, making a phone call, driving cars, flying in planes, involves software. And dozens of people have already been killed by faulty software in cars, while hundreds of people have been killed from faulty software during air travel.
“We are killing people,” Martin says. “We did not get into this business to kill people. And this is only getting worse.”
He pointed out that “there are hints” that developers will increasingly face some real heat in the years to come. He cited Volkswagen America’s CEO, Michael Horn, who at first blamed software engineers for the company’s emissions cheating scandal during a Congressional hearing, claimed the coders had acted on their own “for whatever reason.” Horn later resigned after US prosecutors accused the company of making this decision at the highest levels and then trying to cover it up.
But Martin pointed out, “The weird thing is, it was software developers who wrote that code. It was us. Some programmers wrote cheating code. Do you think they knew? I think they probably knew.”
Martin finished with a fire-and-brimstone call to action in which he warned that one day, some software developer will do something that will cause a disaster that kills tens of thousands of people.
That’s slightly different from the question of unethical or illegal tasks. Unless you think that people died from excess diesel emissions in the US and elsewhere, which is possible.
Related, and linked in the piece: “Code I’m still ashamed of“, by Bill Sourour, who was asked to write a “quiz” for a drugs company where no matter how you answered, you’d be pointed to one particular drug – which had some potentially deadly side effects.
October internet attack targeted PlayStation Network, researchers say • WSJ
Drew Fitzgerald and Robert Mcmillan:
Level 3 Communications Inc. Chief Security Officer Dale Drew detailed some of the research in testimony prepared for a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on the attack scheduled for Wednesday. Level 3 runs one of the world’s biggest internet backbones and said it has identified several networks of infected cameras, digital video recorders and other machines—known as botnets—available for hire.
“We believe that in the case of Dyn, the relatively unsophisticated attacker sought to take offline a gaming site with which it had a personal grudge,” Mr. Drew said in remarks prepared for the hearing. The attacker rented time on the botnet to carry out the attack, he said.
Dyn disputed the findings. The attack traffic that appeared to target Sony was part of several waves of data from at least three separate botnets, said Chris Baker, Dyn’s manager of monitoring and analytics.
“It’s a very convenient explanation,” Mr. Baker said, but “it’s based on an incomplete view of the data.”
Related to this, Simon Moores, a security researcher, commented recently that we now have a network which was designed to withstand a nuclear attack that can be brought down by CCTV cameras. Also related: Another security researcher, Rob Graham, put a brand-new Chinese CCTV camera online; it was hacked by the Mirai botnet within minutes.
Quit social media. Your career may depend on it • The New York Times
Cal Newport:
interesting opportunities and useful connections are not as scarce as social media proponents claim. In my own professional life, for example, as I improved my standing as an academic and a writer, I began receiving more interesting opportunities than I could handle. I currently have filters on my website aimed at reducing, not increasing, the number of offers and introductions I receive.
My research on successful professionals underscores that this experience is common: As you become more valuable to the marketplace, good things will find you. To be clear, I’m not arguing that new opportunities and connections are unimportant. I’m instead arguing that you don’t need social media’s help to attract them.
My second objection concerns the idea that social media is harmless. Consider that the ability to concentrate without distraction on hard tasks is becoming increasingly valuable in an increasingly complicated economy. Social media weakens this skill because it’s engineered to be addictive. The more you use social media in the way it’s designed to be used — persistently throughout your waking hours — the more your brain learns to crave a quick hit of stimulus at the slightest hint of boredom.
Once this Pavlovian connection is solidified, it becomes hard to give difficult tasks the unbroken concentration they require, and your brain simply won’t tolerate such a long period without a fix.
TL;DR: delete your account.
‘A petri dish of bullshit’: confessions of ex-Facebook news curators • Digiday
Tanya Dua:
Adam Schrader could have seen this coming.
The 26-year-old former Facebook employee was anything but shocked when the social network entered meltdown mode over being infested with fake news during the presidential election. Schrader had been under the hood. A former member of its now-defunct trending-news team, he monitored a feed of stories gaining traction on Facebook, vetted them for accuracy (or at least truth) and wrote a headline for Facebook’s public trending-news feed.
But a funny thing happened in August: Facebook fired its human trending-news curators and replaced them with an algorithm. Almost instantly, the social network was awash in false news stories that many users were treating as credible and sharing on their timelines. The 2016 election, polarizing as it was, fed the fake-news beast.
“Facebook has a fake-news problem, and I don’t believe that they recognize it,” said Schrader. “I think they’re in denial of the fact, but it’s a pervasive problem and they need to address it.”
…Both said that while it is understandable that Facebook may want to be careful about not appearing partisan, its sheer size and influence necessitates that it take the problem seriously.
“There’s this Silicon Valley ‘free market’ mindset, where they don’t want to be nannies to their users,” said the anonymous source. “But they have 1.8 billion users, and a lot of those people use their site to get their news — and it can be extremely harmful to the way some people think if it is full of such content.”
Both felt that the journalists who made up part of the company’s former trending-news team served a very important function and that the problem has gotten worse since the team was disbanded.
Schrader worked there until August 2016. There’s a scent of hubris around Facebook’s insistence that it doesn’t really affect anything, that it’s a neutral platform. I’d bet you that stories telling you Facebook was controlling your mind and turning you into a zombie and here’s five ways to prove it would get zapped pretty fast. Equally, a story showing how to permanently block ads might go for that long ride into the mountains.
Facebook fake news row: Mark Zuckerberg is a politician now • BBC Tech News blog
Dave Lee:
There’s an urgent accountability gap between what technology companies do and what the public is allowed to know.
This isn’t about giving up trade secrets. You can inspect KFC’s kitchen without knowing the Colonel’s secret recipe.
It’s about being able to examine the reach and influence of technology companies, where supremely powerful men, and a few women, are able to control without any genuine scrutiny other than what appears every three months on a company earnings sheet (and even that’s unnecessarily cryptic).
Revealing moments like the one [Zuckerberg’s interviewer] Kirkpatrick summoned from the usually robotic Zuckerberg are few and far between. The depressing accepted reality in technology journalism is that if you give a company a hard time, they’ll shut you out.
And that’s because many major technology companies guard their work with barbed wire, and wrap their executives in cotton wool.
Interactions between big tech and the outside world are orchestrated and engineered to the nth degree. On those rare occasions, even the mildest scrutiny about anything other than the new product being flogged that day is swiftly shot down with tech’s unofficial motto.
“Sorry… but that’s not what today is about.”
Who will command the robot armies? • Idle Words
Maciej Ceglowski, from a talk he gave in Australia:
What both these places [Dubai and Singapore] have in common is that they had some kind of plan. As Walter Sobchak put it, say what you will about social control, at least it’s an ethos.
The founders of these cities pursued clear goals and made conscious trade-offs. They used modern technology to work towards those goals, not just out of a love of novelty.
We [in the US], on the other hand, didn’t plan a thing.
We just built ourselves a powerful apparatus for social control with no sense of purpose or consensus about shared values.
Do we want to be safe? Do we want to be free? Do we want to hear valuable news and offers?
The tech industry slaps this stuff together in the expectation that the social implications will take care of themselves. We move fast and break things.
Today, having built the greatest apparatus for surveillance in history, we’re slow to acknowledge that it might present some kind of threat.
He’s never less than thought-provoking, and some of the passing jokes are excellent.
Click 😅
This site monitors what you’re doing on it, and the sound (do turn it on) gives a sort of running commentary on what you’re doing, and have done – and how that would allow you to be tracked by your behaviour.
Automated inference on criminality using face images • Arxiv
Xiaolin Wu, Xi Zhang:
We study, for the first time, automated inference on criminality based solely on still face images. Via supervised machine learning, we build four classifiers (logistic regression, KNN, SVM, CNN) using facial images of 1856 real persons controlled for race, gender, age and facial expressions, nearly half of whom were convicted criminals, for discriminating between criminals and non-criminals. All four classifiers perform consistently well and produce evidence for the validity of automated face-induced inference on criminality, despite the historical controversy surrounding the topic. Also, we find some discriminating structural features for predicting criminality, such as lip curvature, eye inner corner distance, and the so-called nose-mouth angle.
What?! As Maciej Ceglowski pointed out, this is like Phrenology 2.0. Or perhaps Phrenology AI. It’s nuts.
People are quitting gig jobs in the sharing economy • Quartz
Alison Griswold:
Participation in the “sharing” or “gig” economy was once touted as the future of work in America. But the new data from the JPMorgan Chase Institute suggests that isn’t the case. Instead, wages for workers have gotten worse as many of these companies—Uber and Lyft, to pick two examples—have cut pay rates to make prices more attractive to consumers. And the jobs themselves appear to have served as stop-gap measures for people who were unemployed or had fallen on hard times during and after the recession.
As the US economy has improved—with six years of unbroken job growth and even an uptick in wages—a greater share of those gig participants are finding better jobs. So they’ve stopped or cut down on their Uber and related gig work.
“It doesn’t look like [gig work] is becoming more lucrative for people,” says Fiona Greig, co-author on the JPMorgan Chase Institute report. “As the labor force strengthens in general, more and more people have better options.”
Unexpected, I think: the undercurrent of expectation around these companies was that the unemployment they were leveraging was structural and long-term, so that the pool to draw on was effectively infinite. Pushing down workers’ earnings looks to have been a bad move.
Is this how democracy ends? • London Review of Books
David Runciman is head of the politics department at Cambridge University:
The Trump bubble is likely to be the biggest of all.
His immediate agenda is to get a massive infrastructure bill through Congress, along with big tax cuts. There are few barriers in his way. He can rely on Republicans to deliver the tax cuts and Democrats to support the infrastructure projects. The short-term boost this stimulus gives the economy can then be used to buy him time while he fails to get to grips with his other campaign pledges, on immigration, on manufacturing jobs, on taking the fight to the terrorists, and on sharing the love at home. He may even be able to claim for a while that by offering something to each side of the partisan divide he is starting to bridge it. But all he will be doing is papering over the gaping cracks. Tax cuts coupled with unfunded government spending will fuel inflation and create the conditions for a future crash. It will also lead to a head-on collision with the Federal Reserve and Trump won’t find it so easy to get his way there. If he tries to replace Janet Yellen or stuff the board with his own nominees, partisanship will reassert itself with a vengeance. Reality will bite back at Trump eventually. When it does, he will be inclined to lash out. But by then it may be too late. He will be trapped.
Meanwhile, the real long-term threats faced by American society will continue unaddressed. By fixing on the risks of direct political violence, we set a low bar that Trump will be able to clear with relative ease. The truly destructive violence of American society takes place under the surface and often passes unnoticed by all except its victims.
Those victims aren’t who you might expect. (You can subscribe to the LRB, which doesn’t just review books, as you’ll have noticed.)
Trump’s CIA director pick thinks using encryption ‘may itself be a red flag’ • Motherboard
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai:
Donald Trump announced on Friday that he’s chosen Congressman Mike Pompeo to run the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the premiere spy agency of the United States. .
Pompeo, a Republican lawmaker from Kansas and a former Army officer, has little-to-no experience in the world of intelligence (other than being part of the House Intelligence Committee), but he’s distinguished himself for being a strong supporter of mass surveillance and for thinking that using encryption, by itself, might be a sign that you’re a terrorist.
“Forcing terrorists into encrypted channels, however, impedes their operational effectiveness by constraining the amount of data they can send and complicating transmission protocols, a phenomenon known in military parlance as virtual attrition,” Pompeo wrote in an op-ed published in January by The Wall Street Journal. “Moreover, the use of strong encryption in personal communications may itself be a red flag.”…
…To his credit, Pompeo decried any attempts to weaken encryption by pushing companies to have a backdoor that the government can use to access encrypted data, saying such a mandate “would do little good, since terrorists would simply switch to foreign or home-built encryption.”
That’s why he argued for more human intelligence and a renewed focus on increasing funding and personnel for the FBI, given that “encryption is bringing the golden age of technology-driven surveillance to a close.”
Pompeo is also a great fan of mass surveillance. In another op-ed, published in the conservative news outlet National Review, Pompeo criticized the Obama administration for being less willing to “collect intelligence on jihadis.”
It’s going to get quite repetitive to keep quoting from 1984, so I’ll hold off for now. But you’re all under suspicion.
We’re worried about the Baltics: what does Trump’s election portend for these tiny U.S. allies? • Lawfare
Ashley Deeks, Benjamin Wittes:
an April 2016 RAND study called into question NATO’s military capacity to defend its members against attacks by Russia. The study concluded that “NATO cannot successfully defend the territory of its most exposed members” and noted that the number of forces that NATO is rotating through the Baltics would not be sufficient to defend those states against a “plausible Russian attack.” So Putin might well conclude that NATO not only lacks the will, but also the means to repel a Russian attack, and that NATO is therefore unlikely to try.
Finally, Putin might well be tempted to test a newly minted President Trump, who will lack experience serving as Commander in Chief or managing any pressing national security crises and who has hardly seemed sure-footed in his navigation of foreign affairs more broadly.
Given the whole picture, it’s reasonable to ask: why not go after one of the Baltic states if you’re Putin?
If Russia does choose to attack or invade a Baltic state, it won’t just be testing Trump. It will obviously be testing NATO’s collective self-defense commitment under article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty too.
I’m thinking happy thoughts. Are you thinking happy thoughts? Let’s gather round the fire and think happy thoughts.
Bad karma! Ransomware piggybacks on free software downloads • Graham Cluley
A ransomware sample is piggybacking off of free software downloaded from the internet to encrypt the files of unsuspecting users.
A researcher by the name of slipstream/RoL discovered the ransomware, which goes by the name “Karma.”
Other ransomware samples have masqueraded as Pokémon Go apps or IT security software solutions in the past. They’ve done so to disguise themselves so that they trick users into thinking they’re benign programs.
Karma is no different, which is why it’s donned the mask of a Windows optimization program known as Windows-TuneUp.
Not quite the tuneup you were perhaps looking for.
Start up: Britain’s web grab, Trumpbots v Hillarybots, Twitter’s new crackdown, de-OLED iPhones?, and more
Distracted by an app while driving? The result might not be pleasant. Photo by idarknight on Flickr.
A selection of 11 links for you. Sad! I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.
Britain has passed the ‘most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy’ • ZDNet
It’s 2016 going on 1984.
The UK has just passed a massive expansion in surveillance powers, which critics have called “terrifying” and “dangerous”. The new law, dubbed the “snoopers’ charter”, was introduced by then-home secretary Theresa May in 2012, and took two attempts to get passed into law following breakdowns in the previous coalition government.
Four years and a general election later – May is now prime minister – the bill was finalized and passed on Wednesday by both parliamentary houses. But civil liberties groups have long criticized the bill, with some arguing that the law will let the UK government “document everything we do online”.
It’s no wonder, because it basically does.
The law will force internet providers to record every internet customer’s top-level web history in real-time for up to a year, which can be accessed by numerous government departments; force companies to decrypt data on demand – though the government has never been that clear on exactly how it forces foreign firms to do that that; and even disclose any new security features in products before they launch…
…The bill was opposed by representatives of the United Nations, all major UK and many leading global privacy and rights groups, and a host of Silicon Valley tech companies alike. Even the parliamentary committee tasked with scrutinizing the bill called some of its provisions “vague”.
The “decryption on demand” simply can’t be done. The “new security features” is likely to give GCHQ the chance to think whether it can exploit it – though there’ll be nothing there which an alert intelligence agency wouldn’t already know about; it’s more to give them something to accuse companies of.
The government will suggest that the new powers are necessary to “stop terrorism”. We’ll see whether it has any cases it can point to in a few years’ time that flowed from this.
Automated pro-Trump bots overwhelmed pro-Clinton messages, researchers say • The New York Times
John Markoff:
An automated army of pro-Donald J. Trump chatbots overwhelmed similar programs supporting Hillary Clinton five to one in the days leading up to the presidential election, according to a report published Thursday by researchers at Oxford University.
The chatbots — basic software programs with a bit of artificial intelligence and rudimentary communication skills — would send messages on Twitter based on a topic, usually defined on the social network by a word preceded by a hashtag symbol, like #Clinton.
Their purpose: to rant, confuse people on facts, or simply muddy discussions, said Philip N. Howard, a sociologist at the Oxford Internet Institute and one of the authors of the report. If you were looking for a real debate of the issues, you weren’t going to find it with a chatbot.
“They’re yelling fools,” Dr. Howard said. “And a lot of what they pass around is false news”…
…“The use of automated accounts was deliberate and strategic throughout the election,” the researchers wrote in the report, published by the Project on Algorithms, Computational Propaganda and Digital Politics at Oxford.
Because the chatbots were almost entirely anonymous and were frequently bought in secret from companies or individual programmers, it was not possible to directly link the activity to either campaign, except for a handful of “joke” bots created by Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, they noted.
Full disclosure – this Bluetooth tag is leaking your personal data • Terence Eden
Terence Eden:
First off, all data is sent in the clear to Heroku.
TinTag are sending…
• The street address of the user.
• The MAC address of the TinTag.
• The precise latitude and longitude of the user.
• The tag’s ID.
• A unique user ID.
Of these, the most obvious concern is the exact location of the user. They aren’t encrypted in transit – what’s the betting that they’re encrypted on the server?
Given that TinTag haven’t updated their Android app since the beginning of the year, do you think they’ve updated their server’s software recently?
If TinTag’s servers are attacked – someone could get your entire location history.
Twitter cracks down, banning prominent alt-right accounts • BuzzFeed News
Last night, Twitter suspended a number of prominent alt-right accounts, including alt-right leader, Richard Spencer (@RichardBSpencer), his think tank, called the National Policy Institute, and his magazine (@radixjournal). The suspensions come only hours after Twitter announced an new set of abuse tools, including an expanded mute future and a retraining of how its safety staff handles hateful abuse.
Other suspended accounts include Ricky Vaughn (who was previously banned after a BuzzFeed News story detailing his campaign to disenfranchise voters with false information), former Business Insider CTO Pax Dickenson, and John Rivers.
Though the abuse tools were received tepidly as a small first step that was in many ways cosmetic, the decision to begin to ban some of Twitter’s more prominent alt-right and white nationalist voices is a signal that the company may be getting serious about reclaiming its platform from trolls.
It’s unclear whether Twitter will continue the wave or issue any mass bans quietly throughout the coming months but there is precedent for such a decision — in order to crack down on ISIS, Twitter banned 125,000 Isis-linked accounts between mid-2015 and February 2016.
Interesting equivalence there. Twitter is clearly moving away though from its one-time position as “the free-speech wing of the free-speech camp”.
Apple wants OLED in iPhones, but most suppliers aren’t ready yet • Bloomberg
the four main suppliers for such components won’t have enough production capacity to make screens for all new iPhones next year, with constraints continuing into 2018, people familiar with the matter said, presenting a potential challenge for the Cupertino, California-based company.
OLED screens are more difficult to produce, putting Apple at the mercy of suppliers that are still working to manufacture the displays in mass quantities, the people said. The four largest producers are Samsung Display Co., LG Display Co., Sharp Corp., and Japan Display Inc. While Samsung is on track to be the sole supplier for the new displays next year, the South Korean company may not be able to make enough due to low yield rates combined with increasing iPhone demand.
The supply constraints may force Apple to use OLED in just one version of the next-generation iPhone, push back adoption of the technology or cause other snags.
“Apple has already figured in there will be high demand for the OLED model and they’ve also figured out there will be constraints to these panels,” said Dan Panzica, a supply chain analyst at IHS Markit. The combination of Apple’s stringent quality requirements and the difficulty of producing OLED panels will likely lead to supply constraints, he said.
Apple’s deal with Samsung is for 100m units in the first year, apparently. That’s going to constrain supply quite considerably.
Theranos whistleblower shook the company—and his family • WSJ
John Carreyrou reveals that one of his Theranos sources was the grandson of former secretary of state George Shultz (who was also on the Theranos board). Shultz Jr had seen and heard false claims about Theranos tests, and had quit the company:
In March 2015, Tyler Shultz was contacted by a Journal reporter through the professional network LinkedIn. He called the reporter several weeks later with a prepaid phone, reasoning it would be harder to track than a conventional mobile phone. They met at a Mountain View, Calif., beer garden in May 2015.
A few weeks later, Mr. Shultz was confronted by his father after arriving for dinner with his parents at their home in Los Gatos, Calif. His grandfather had called to say Theranos suspected he had talked to the Journal reporter. Theranos’s lawyers wanted to meet with him the next day.
He says he called his grandfather and asked if they could meet without lawyers. The elder Mr. Shultz agreed and invited his grandson to his house. The mood was tense but cordial, Tyler Shultz recalls, and he denied talking to any reporters. He says his step-grandmother was present during the conversation.
His grandfather asked if he would sign a one-page confidentiality agreement to give Theranos peace of mind. According to Tyler Shultz, when he said yes, his grandfather revealed that two lawyers were waiting upstairs with the agreement.
Michael Brille and Meredith Dearborn, partners at the law firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, then came downstairs, says the younger Mr. Shultz. Mr. Brille said he was trying to identify the Journal’s sources. He handed the young man a temporary restraining order, a notice to appear in court and a letter signed by Mr. Boies alleging the former employee had leaked Theranos trade secrets.
Tyler Shultz says his grandfather protested to the lawyers that this wasn’t what he and Ms. Holmes had agreed to earlier, but that Mr. Brille kept pressing the younger Mr. Shultz to admit he had spoken to the Journal.
He wouldn’t.
It does take brave people to bring fraud to the attention of the world. Shultz didn’t bring down Theranos – that took the WSJ, and then regulators – but he was the key element.
William Tunstall-Pedoe: the Cambridge AI guru who taught Amazon’s Alexa how to talk • Business Insider
Sam Shead with an entertaining review of the man behind Evi, which was sold to Amazon:
Some Amazon reviewers have said they use Echo for timers and alarms but not much else. Tunstall-Pedoe, however, insists Echo is “amazingly useful.” When I ask him what he uses Echo for, he replies: “Loads of stuff,” before going on to instruct the device to get the local weather for Cambridge.
“Right now in Cambridge, United Kingdom, it’s 17 degrees with showers and partly cloudy skies,” Alexa responds. “Today’s forecast is rainy weather with a high of 19 degrees and a low of 13 degrees.” He goes on to play “Call Me Maybe” by Canadian singer-songwriter Carly Rae Jepsen on Spotify and a “trance” music playlist on Pandora.
Concluding his demo, and showing off Alexa’s intelligence, Tunstall-Pedoe asks: “Amazon, who was president of the US when Barack Obama was a teenager?” The device replies: “Ronald Reagen, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford were the US presidents when Barack Obama was a teenager.” This is the very same question and answer that Evi used to show off in screenshots of the company’s app.
In terms of who developed Evi’s core technology, Tunstall-Pedoe doesn’t hold back when it comes to taking the credit. “The technology is actually largely a result of me,” he says. “There have been some additions to the technology since. And obviously there’s been a huge amounts of work engineering it, creating a platform that massively scales very fast. But the actual core IP all came out my head. So the original patents are all mine.”
Note that none of those demos was of anything particularly useful. You can find the weather by looking outside. OK, the song thing is nice. The Obama one sounds like a programmed trick.
(Side note: if you want to test voice recognition systems, ask them “is nutmeg poisonous?” Nutmeg appears to be a difficult-to-understand word in the canon.)
Snapchat files confidentially for IPO • Bloomberg
Alex Barinka and Sarah Frier:
Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, has filed confidentially for an initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter.
Snapchat filed papers with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission before last week’s U.S. Presidential election, one of the people said, asking not to be identified as the details are private. The company is targeting a valuation of about $20bn to $25bn in a listing that could come as early as March, the person said. No final decision has been made on the size or timing of the IPO, they said.
The camera-application maker will seek to raise as much as $4bn at a valuation of about $25bn to $35bn, people familiar with the matter said in October, with one adding that the valuation could reach as much as $40bn. Valuations can vary in the lead-up to an IPO as companies may try to temper expectations among investors, while others on the deal are more likely to promote higher numbers.
About 150m daily active users, expected ad revenue of $350m this year – up from $59m in 2015. (That’s about 0.64 cents per person per day, 4.5 cents per week, just under 20 cents per month.)
Biggest spike in traffic deaths in 50 years? Blame apps • The New York Times
Neil Boudette:
The messaging app Snapchat allows motorists to post photos that record the speed of the vehicle. The navigation app Waze rewards drivers with points when they report traffic jams and accidents. Even the game Pokémon Go has drivers searching for virtual creatures on the nation’s highways.
When distracted driving entered the national consciousness a decade ago, the problem was mainly people who made calls or sent texts from their cellphones. The solution then was to introduce new technologies to keep drivers’ hands on the wheel. Innovations since then — car Wi-Fi and a host of new apps — have led to a boom in internet use in vehicles that safety experts say is contributing to a surge in highway deaths.
After steady declines over the last four decades, highway fatalities last year recorded the largest annual percentage increase in 50 years. And the numbers so far this year are even worse. In the first six months of 2016, highway deaths jumped 10.4 percent, to 17,775, from the comparable period of 2015, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
That Snapchat thing is crazy.
Facing a Trump administration, NYC may push its immigrant data kill switch • The Verge
Colin Lecher:
In 2015, New York City launched a municipal identification program with the goal of giving some of the city’s most vulnerable residents access to services that require an ID. Mayor Bill de Blasio gave the plan vocal support, saying the card represented “who we are: New Yorkers who value equality, opportunity, and diversity.”
But now parts of the program are suddenly being questioned. As an unexpected Donald Trump term approaches, de Blasio last week suggested the city would fight to prevent the future president from accessing ID-related data, which contains personal information on undocumented immigrants.
The hurdle is one of many that cities will face as they prepare for an administration that, at least by its own account, will use every tool it has to target undocumented immigrants. In an interview aired Sunday, Trump vowed to deport millions — raising questions about where the president-elect will look for them.
Trump’s presidency is going to pose some interesting questions for sites like The Verge, which coasted along in the Obama presidency mostly ignoring questionable actions because he was a Democrat. Will The Verge become more critical of both government and company actions around data collection that could be misused, or carry on acting as though no bad consequences can ever be foreseen?
This story is, at least, a good start.
The post-virtual reality sadness • Tobias van Schneider
In the last few months I spent more time in Virtual Reality. Not only developing for it, but also playing games, experiencing everything I can that is out there right now.
Using a VR headset and especially playing room scale experiences is magical. It messes with your mind in ways you can’t really imagine until you tried it yourself.
What I quickly noticed after a couple hours of intense VR sessions is the feeling you get the hours after. Depending your experience in VR, this feeling can sometimes hold on for hours, especially if you’re new to VR.
And I’m not talking about motion sickness or any immediate effects that are easier to track down.
What I’m talking about is a weird sense of sadness & depressed feeling. Let me walk you through it.
Here’s a taster of the physical aftereffects:
In the first couple minutes after any VR experience you feel strange, almost like you’re detached from reality.
You will interact with physical objects with special care because for some reason you think that you can simply fly through them.
Interacting with your smartphone touch screen becomes almost comical because the interface seems so dull and disappointing to you. It’s like your fingers are passing through the touch screen when touching it.
This specific feeling usually fades within the first 1-2 hours and gets better over time. It’s almost like a little hangover, depending on the intensity of your VR experience.
Start up: Facebook’s fake ad stats, most users *are* clueless, the Androids with built-in backdoors, and more
Kids aren’t watching TV as much as online any more. Photo by Michael Newman on Flickr.
A selection of 9 links for you. Use them wisely. I’m charlesarthur on Twitter. Observations and links welcome.
Fake news • Stratechery
while [Facebook] denies the report in Gizmodo that the company shelved a change to the News Feed algorithm that would have eliminated fake news stories because it disproportionately affected right-wing sites, the fact remains that the company is heavily incentivized to be perceived as neutral by all sides; anything else would drive away users, a particularly problematic outcome for a social network.
Moreover, any move away from a focus on engagement would, by definition, decrease the time spent on Facebook, and here Tufekci is wrong to claim that this is acceptable because there is “no competitor in sight.” In fact, Facebook is in its most challenging position in a long time: Snapchat is stealing attention from its most valuable demographics, even as the News Feed is approaching saturation in terms of ad load, and there is a real danger Snapchat beats the company to the biggest prize in consumer tech: TV-centric brand advertising dollars.
There are even more fundamental problems, though: how do you decide what is fake and what isn’t? Where is the line? And, perhaps most critically, who decides? To argue that the existence of some number of fake news items amongst an ocean of other content ought to result in active editing of Facebook content is not simply a logistical nightmare but, at least when it comes to the potential of bad outcomes, far more fraught than it appears.
The distribution of users’ computer skills: worse than you think • Nielsen/Norman Group
Jakob Nielsen:
Summary: Across 33 rich countries, only 5% of the population has high computer-related abilities, and only a third of people can complete medium-complexity tasks.
One of usability’s most hard-earned lessons is that you are not the user. This is why it’s a disaster to guess at the users’ needs. Since designers are so different from the majority of the target audience, it’s not just irrelevant what you like or what you think is easy to use — it’s often misleading to rely on such personal preferences.
For sure, anybody who works on a design project will have a more accurate and detailed mental model of the user interface than an outsider. If you target a broad consumer audience, you will also have a higher IQ than your average user, higher literacy levels, and, most likely, you’ll be younger and experience less age-driven degradation of your abilities than many of your users.
There is one more difference between you and the average user that’s even more damaging to your ability to predict what will be a good user interface: skills in using computers, the Internet, and technology in general. Anybody who’s on a web-design team or other user experience project is a veritable supergeek compared with the average population. This not just true for the developers. Even the less-technical team members are only “less-technical” in comparison with the engineers. They still have much stronger technical skills than most normal people.
Facebook identifies additional metrics that have been misreported • Techspot
Shawn Knight:
Facebook said in a blog post published Wednesday that several of its advertising and marketing-related metrics have been miscalculated due to a variety of discrepancies and bugs.
The social networking giant identified four specific metric areas – Page Insights, full-length videos watched, time spent viewing publishers’ Instant Articles and referrals within the Facebook Analytics for Apps dashboard – that have all been misreported in some way or another.
For example, in Page Insights, Facebook said its 7-day summary in the overview dashboard will be 33% lower on average while 28-day summaries will be 55% lower. Also, the average time spent per article in Instant Articles has been over-reported by as much as eight% since August 2015.
The findings don’t really have an impact on Facebook’s users. Instead, it’s the advertisers and marketers that are taking the hit as they’ve been led to believe that Facebook’s ad platform – and by proxy, their ad campaign – has been performing better than it actually has.
Anyway, tell us about the 99% of news that’s not affecting people.
Online overtakes TV as British kids’ top pastime • Ofcom
Ofcom is the UK’s communications regulator, but also gathers longitudinal data:
The internet has overtaken television as the top media pastime for the UK’s children.
Ofcom’s report on Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes, published today, reveals that children’s internet use has reached record highs, with youngsters aged 5-15 spending around 15 hours each week online – overtaking time spent watching a TV set for the first time.
Even pre-schoolers, aged 3-4, are spending eight hours and 18 minutes a week online, up an hour and a half from six hours 48 minutes in the last year.
According to Ofcom’s data, children aged 5-15 have increased their weekly online time by an hour and 18 minutes in the last year to 15 hours.
In contrast, children are spending less time watching a TV set, with their weekly viewing dropping from 14 hours 48 minutes in 2015 to 13 hours 36 minutes in the last year.
Secret backdoor in some US phones sent data to China, analysts say • NY Times
Matt Apuzzo and Michael S. Schmidt:
Security contractors recently discovered preinstalled software in some Android phones that monitors where users go, whom they talk to and what they write in text messages. The American authorities say it is not clear whether this represents secretive data mining for advertising purposes or a Chinese government effort to collect intelligence.
International customers and users of disposable or prepaid phones are the people most affected by the software. But the scope is unclear. The Chinese company that wrote the software, Shanghai Adups Technology Company, says its code runs on more than 700 million phones, cars and other smart devices. One American phone manufacturer, BLU Products, said that 120,000 of its phones had been affected and that it had updated the software to eliminate the feature.
Kryptowire, the security firm that discovered the vulnerability, said the Adups software transmitted the full contents of text messages, contact lists, call logs, location information and other data to a Chinese server. The code comes preinstalled on phones and the surveillance is not disclosed to users, said Tom Karygiannis, a vice president of Kryptowire, which is based in Fairfax, Va. “Even if you wanted to, you wouldn’t have known about it,” he said.
Security experts frequently discover vulnerabilities in consumer electronics, but this case is exceptional. It was not a bug. Rather, Adups intentionally designed the software to help a Chinese phone manufacturer monitor user behavior, according to a document that Adups provided to explain the problem to BLU executives. That version of the software was not intended for American phones, the company said.
“It was not a bug.”
Post-Brexit UK set for £15bn deficit • InFact
Charlie Mitchell:
A report published Tuesday by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) says the government faces a giant budget hole if a hard Brexit hinders growth and sinks tax revenues. The think-tank’s forecast of a £14.9bn deficit by 2019-20 assumes the UK will be paying no EU budget contributions at that point. With that far from guaranteed, the prediction could be generous.
The IFS report forecasts that by that fiscal year, tax revenues will be £31bn lower than predicted by former chancellor George Osborne as the economy slows. This would be partially offset by the net £6bn the UK would save by halting all budget payments to the European Union, leaving a £25bn “black hole” destined to be filled by borrowing.
In his March budget speech, Osborne said: “In 2019-20 Britain is set to have a surplus of £10.4 billion”. The IFS says this will now be a £14.9bn deficit.
It follows projections from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) that consumer price inflation will hit 4% in the second half of next year. NIESR also anticipated that UK GDP growth would dip from 2% this year to 1.4% in 2017.
Everything is fine. (InFact is a pro-Remain site, but data are data.)
World could face oil shortage by end of decade, says IEA • The Guardian
Rob Davies:
The world could face an oil supply shortage by the end of the decade, triggering large swings in the price of the commodity, the International Energy Agency has warned.
In its annual publication World Energy Outlook, detailing expectations for global energy trends, the IEA warned that the recent low price of oil could have serious ramifications within years.
A barrel of Brent crude has more than halved in price since early 2014 from $112 (£90) to around $44 in mid-November this year, having fallen to $32 earlier in the year amid oversupply.
The IEA said this was deterring oil companies from investing in new oilfields, a trend it said could turn the global oil glut into a supply shortage within years.
WhatsApp steps into frame with launch of video calls • FT
Hannah Kuchler:
WhatsApp, the app known for speedy messaging even on second-rate connections, is launching video calls on Tuesday to compete with Microsoft’s Skype, Apple’s FaceTime and even stablemate Facebook Messenger.
The SMS-replacement app, used by more than 1bn people a month, has developed a technology it hopes will enable video calls even on older phones on shoddy mobile networks, for example, in emerging markets where WhatsApp dominates.
Manpreet Singh, lead engineer at WhatsApp, said it was the “perfect time” to launch video calling as smartphones had become more mature, with better camera resolutions and batteries, and the state of mobile phone networks was improving across the world.
But even with better conditions, WhatsApp has had to focus on creating a network of servers across the world to minimise the delay on networks and develop a way to make video quality adjust to the speed of a user’s network.
Video calling, end-to-end encrypted texting, free voice calling – all this stuff is now table stakes for any messaging app. Even if it’s split into parts (like iMessage and Facetime). Not sure how Google’s Duo will fare once WhatsApp has this, though.
Bad battery life? Your phone’s software updates may be to blame • Daily Telegraph
James Titcomb:
Unsuspecting mobile phone owners may be left with flat batteries after they update their handsets, despite technology companies promising longer life and better performance from the new software.
The consumer group Which? found that when iPhones or Android phones are updated to the latest version of their operating systems, their battery life can fall by as much as three hours.
A two-year-old iPhone 6 lost 38 minutes of battery life when it was updated to the latest version of Apple’s iOS software, iOS 10. A Google Nexus 6P phone went from 12 to nine hours of battery life when the most recent version of Android was installed.
But that would be comparing the first X.0 version with the previous optimised one, right? I wonder whether later updates get things settled. The fact that it happens on both iOS and Android points to some code cleaning being needed. But, also, updates often mean more going on.
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Da Vinci Alien? Real fairy photo? Life on Saturn and UFO Pics!!
16May 2015 16 Jun 2015
Welcome to The paranormal Chronicles weekly news report. We scour the news from trusted news sites to bring you the best in paranormal reporting. We have had such positive feedback that we will continue our weekly report so If you have a news item or article you wish to share then please email us at paranormalchronicles@aol.com and please feel free to leave a comment at the end of this page with your views and opinions. This page is for YOU so follow this page so you never miss out and please delve into the archives for previous paranormal articles. There is SO much content on this site just for you to explore!
PLEASE NOTE: The Paranormal Chronicles declines offers to monetize our website as we do not wish to risk our viewers viewing pleasure with pop ups, malware, virus’s and spam. So instead we promote our own products produced by people with a passion for the paranormal. So please do feel free to support them. This weeks news report is sponsored by the bestselling true haunting A most haunted house by G L Davies. Read now the book that URI GELLAR said “I was riveted to every page, I hope the book will be made into a movie some day.” Available now on Kindle, in Paperback and on Audible. Click now to join as thousands already have this chilling true account.
ONTO THE NEWS!
UFO sighting: Stunned stargazer says ‘I’ve never seen anything like this before’ after making mysterious discovery
The Hampshire UFO
A stargazer could not believe his eyes after analysing a photograph he took near a planetarium showing what he believes must be an alien spacecraft.
Kenneth Parsons, 60, captured the image of the disc-shaped UFO near the Winchester Science Centre and Planetarium in Hampshire. But upon analysing his photos later that day, he came across one mysterious image which he could not explain.
He said: “I took many photos, both of the architecture there and the surrounding countryside. When I later reviewed the taken pictures on my PC, I noticed something in the air on one image, although I hadn’t seen anything flying past at the time of recording this particular view.”
“Naturally I first thought I had merely caught an insect close to the lens of my camera, or maybe a bird. After enlargement I began to realise, instead, what has been captured is a disc-shaped aerial object in the background – or midfield I guess you could call it – a mile away or so I would estimate. For those who may think this is merely a bug or a bird I advise you to look much more closely at the picture. I’m no expert on wildlife, but in all my days I swear I have never seen a bug or bird like this before.”
Ken, from Farnborough, believes the object could have appeared briefly while travelling through a wormhole. He added: “It’s nothing to fear. These phenomena follow you from childhood.”
Click here to read more: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ufo-sighting-stunned-stargazer-says-5678687
Click to read NOW
Is this really Tinkerbell caught on camera? Mother believes winged figure she captured in photo is a fairy (and so do her two young daughters)
Is this a fairy?
The 42-year-old, whose favourite film is Tinkerbell, only noticed the tiny sprite when she got home and was going through her day’s photographs.
‘As a little girl I grew up believing in fairies and Tinkerbell is my favourite film so I would love it be a real-life fairy,’ said Miss Wildgoose, who lives close to the woods with her twin daughters.
‘I don’t know if Tinkerbell would really wear trousers but with the blonde hair and shiny shoes it’s too much of a coincidence.’
Miss Wildgoose, who works as a photographer, had been out in the woods doing a shoot for a family the day before and decided to return to do her own shoot the next day after seeing how beautiful the area was.
‘People have said it’s just a mosquito or a midge and they are probably right but I just think it’s too much of a coincidence that it is wearing what looks like trousers and shoes.’
The photograph has astounded friends and family and Miss Wildgoose, who is separated, has even had parents coming up to her in the school playground.
‘All the mums at the school have said it is a fairy – I think everyone just likes to believe in that bit of magic that reminds them of being a child,’ she said. ‘It certainly made my day capturing the image.’
Miss Wildgoose previously worked as a professional motor sport photographer at Silverstone but took a break for a few years to work as a hairdresser.
She bought her DSLR camera in 2013 and after having success photographing gardens and portraits, she launched her own photography company, Wildgoose Photographics.
Clcik here to read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3070077/Is-Tinkerbell-caught-camera-Fairy-fan-believes-s-captured-image-magical-sprite-amazing-picture.html
Click NOW to wear Tee shirts you can believe in.
Paranormal investigators ‘crack Da Vinci Code and find ALIENS in Mona Lisa’
Is an Alien Hidden in Mona Lisa?
Paranormal conspiracy theorists claim Leonardo Da Vinci was hiding the existence of alien life – and the ‘proof’ can be found in the Mona Lisa.
The Paranormal Crucible website claims to have spotted an ‘alien high priest’ hidden in the famous artwork, proof, they say of an extra-terrestrial presence. In a bizarre video posted online, the group ‘reveals’ the hidden life form and identifies alleged facial features, a headdress, a cloak and hands.
A computer generated voice says: “Many theologians believe that Leonardo Da Vinci deliberately concealed secret codes and subliminal messages in most of his work. “If this is true then it’s reasonable to assume that the Mona Lisa was in fact painted in order to conceal important historical and religious facts possibly regarding the extra-terrestrial presence and its surreptitious involvement within the Roman Catholic Church.”
However, the video provides no possible explanation for the existence of the being and admits to enhancing the colours of the painting to make the features more visible. One sceptical YouTube commenter wrote: “Alien high priest? What religion would be an alien?”
However, some truth-seekers have got on board with the possibility. Scott C Waring, an alien conspiracy theorist who runs the UFO Sightings Daily website, went on to claim Da Vinci was a member of the outer-world species himself.
Click here to read more: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/paranormal-investigators-crack-da-vinci-5663938
Saturn could be ‘home’ to aliens: Ocean on ringed planet resembles Earth’s habitable lakes.
Could Saturn or its moons support life?
ONE of Saturn’s moons could be home to aliens because of its salty sea similar to life-bearing lakes on Earth, scientists have claimed. The ringed planet has 62 moons orbiting it, but Enceladus, has some of the best conditions in our Solar System with the potential for life to form.
Saturn’s sixth biggest moon which measures 310 miles across is covered by ice but research, published in the journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, suggests it is geologically active with salty seas beneath.
Researchers believe there is a strong chance of the water under the ice caps being in contact with the moon’s mantle, making the chemical reactions needed for microscopic life to evolve possible.
NASA’s Cassini unmanned spacecraft has been orbiting Saturn since 2004 and it has found geyser-like plumes spewing water out of the moon.
The probe has studied gases in the plumes and the data has allowed astronomers to develop a model that estimates the pH and saltiness of the plumes. They estimate it at a pH of about 11 or 12, similar to ammonia solutions used to clean glass, the authors say.
However, even on Earth some living organisms can survive in such high pH levels.
Researchers also learned that salt content of Enceladus’ water is comparable to that of Earth’s oceans.
Click here to read more: http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/576493/Saturn-home-aliens-Ocean-ringed-planet-Earth-s-habitable-lakes
New claims UFO ‘monster ship’ spotted draining solar power from Sun in NASA footage
Have giant spaceships been spotted near our sun?
UFO chasers have come up with one of the more bizarre explanations for ‘monster ships’ they claim to have spotted orbiting the Sun in NASA picture – suggesting they could be aliens trying to drain our star’s SOLAR POWER.
The theory comes from longstanding ‘UFO researchers’ on online forums, following claims three spacecrafts orbiting the Sun can be seen in recently re-released images of a huge solar flare.
The latest UFO sighting was posted to YouTube by a prolific researcher with the username Streetcap1. They were then examined by other prominent researcher Scott C Waring. He posted: “Look at the right angles on the ship that looks like a giant crystal tower in space. It’s beautiful. You can even make out the lines along its edges. I count 17 right angles on it.
“Remember this is a photo taken by a SOHO [Solar and Heliospheric Observatory] satellite whose soul[sic] purpose is to photograph our sun. These images are very clear and made with best tech NASA has to offer. The second ship looks equal in size, but its centre is thinner and less obvious.”
Mr Waring considered what super UFOs may be doing so close to the Sun and found there could be only two explanations.
“One, aliens are meeting at or in our Sun to convene a United Worlds kind of meeting,” he added.
But his second theory was much more sinister.
He added: “Two, aliens are sending massive ships to suck our Sun’s energy. If we are sharing our Sun, it’s not going to last the 5 billion years scientist predicted it at, but may drop below a billion years before its used up.”
There have been several ‘UFOs’ spotted close to the Sun as more and more conspiracy theorists pour over the array of footage made publicly available by NASA. Last month, a video claiming to show a UFO by our solar system’s star, said to bear a resemblance to Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic patterns, also appeared online.
However, sceptics have been quick to point out the sightings always seem to coincide with a solar flare, and that any craft getting so close to the Sun would be obliterated by the heat.
A solar flare occurs when magnetic energy built up in the Sun’s atmosphere is suddenly released, emitting radiation across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to X-rays and gamma rays.
One critic argued: “These so-called UFOs are the same colour as the flares so could they not just be bits of the flare being hurled into space? There are lots of other dots and specs all around of the same colour.
“You can’t just seize on every shape in these pictures that it MUST be an alien space craft and then come up with theories that they are sucking the Sun of energy. And where in hell would these planet-sized motherships be when not refuelling at the solar service station?”
Click here to read more: http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/576454/UFO-monster-ship-draining-solar-power-Sun-NASA-footage?_ga=1.53677480.1023470045.1430508144
FEATURED ARTICLE: Paranormal assault: Are you safe while you sleep?
How you safe from paranormal attack?
Are you safe in your bed? An in depth look at Paranormal Sex attacks (ADULTS ONLY)
The Paranormal Chronicles advises all readers to please take note that the subject covered in this article will not be to everyone’s taste. It may be offensive or challenging to some and the links provided on this page lead to mature content with explicit sexual description of alleged paranormal sex attacks. Due caution is advised for a very mature and adult topic.
Over the last year the Paranormal Chronicles has explored in depth the disturbing attacks said to be caused by paranormal entities but one question has to be asked could such a thing actually happen?
In 2014 G L Davies published a book called Ghost Sex the Violation which was the witness testimonial from a woman in Wales and her continued and graphic sexual assault at the hands of not one but two paranormal violators. The book polarized readers with many not able to stomach the graphic depiction of sexual abuse while others skeptical to the claims. Ghost sex: the Violation followed on from the Doris Bither Entity case in a frank and detailed manner not previously published in such a graphic and brutal manner. The book has been featured in depth on this website and has been the subject of many radio discussions ( all links are included in this article for further recommended study). It seems however that this taboo and terrifying event is more commonplace than originally thought with more people coming forward to tell of their harrowing abuse.
Over 210,000 people have visited this website this year and not surprisingly the most searched for term is Ghost sex/ Paranormal sex or Incubus or succubus attacks. More and more people have come forward with their traumatic testimonial of sexual assaults from a source unknown. Could it be that none of us are safe while we sleep or is this merely a symptom of a sleep or psychological disorder.
A 23 year old woman from Liverpool, UK contacted us after our last look into the subject and believes that these attacks can not be merely attributed to sleep paralysis or other such disorders. She has this testimonial for you.
Click here to read more: https://theparanormalchronicles.com/2015/05/15/paranormal-assault-are-you-safe-while-you-sleep/
Do you believe in Ghosts?
If you enjoy accounts of the Paranormal then why not read the #1 Bestselling novel and audio book A most haunted house by G. L Davies . A most haunted House is based on a true and terrifying account of a prolific and aggressive haunting in the small Welsh Town of Haverfordwest in West Wales. Seen as controversial and sparking debate between skeptics and believers alike due to the ferocity and intensity of the haunting, A Most Haunted House is the eye witness account of a young couple fighting to keep their new home and each other as an entity tears their world apart. It’s free to Borrow through Amazon Prime and is also available in paperback and Kindle or listen to on AUDIBLE or i-tunes.
Read now the book that Uri Geller said ” “G L Davies has written an amazing account of what seems to be a real haunted house! I was riveted to every page, I hope the book will be made into a movie some day”
No time for Reading? Then download the Audio version of A MOST HAUNTED HOUSE now. Click on the Cover below and sign up for or listen through AUDIBLE.
Believe in the Paranormal in style, click on our range of T-shirts below!
Tags: A most haunted house, Alien in Mona lisa, Da vinci code, Fairies, Hampshire UFO, Life on Saturn, Mothership at sun, Paranormal sexual abuse, UFO, Wiccan tee shirts
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EP REVIEW: ‘In Sickness & Health’ by Acres
There’s a point to boiling things down to the absolute basics, especially in a genre like emotional hardcore. As a genre characterised by what’s being said and the intensity which […]
There’s a point to boiling things down to the absolute basics, especially in a genre like emotional hardcore. As a genre characterised by what’s being said and the intensity which which it’s being said, the inclusion of superfluous bells and whistles can often seem pointless if everything else isn’t up to scratch. On the other side of the coin, though, there’s a real danger of merely falling in line if there isn’t at least a bit of effort to differentiate from the pack. In terms of Portsmouth’s Acres on their new EP In Sickness & Health, it’s a difficult balance to strike, and while they do put in a conscious effort to meet both criteria and still stand out, the final product ultimately struggles to do that.
It’s not really a problem in terms of instrumentation though, as for a band who list Pianos Become The Teeth, Architects, Paramore and Hans Zimmer amongst their influences, it’s surprisingly easy to see where all those pieces fit together. There’s some great heft here, especially in the roaring, metallic guitars of opener Overseer, and while the poppier elements are harder to pinpoint on their own, they combine with some of the more cinematic leanings for some fantastic presence, like the cushion of strings and gang vocals on Gloom, or the title track’s windswept solos. The melodic foundation of this EP is fantastic, and has the potential for something really quite potent.
That is, if Acres had anything even remotely interesting to say. It’s hard to deny that Ben Lumber packs an incredible amount of range and intensity in his screams, but the lyrical focus of the dissolution of a relationship is so generalised that it just doesn’t feel worth it. When Casey went down a similar route on last year’s Love Is Not Enough, that album worked in how searingly honest and unflinching it was; the way that Acres approach it has none of that spark, instead relying on easy-to-imprint lines like “What have we become? / Will we always be this way?” or “Promise you’ll stay / These are the things that I wish I could say” to convey a similar effect. The problem is it’s so unspecific that it’s hard to form a solid emotional response. And when there are tracks like Miles Apart (both the regular version and the deconstructed, even less defined version) that drag anyway, it’s an EP that struggles to grip the attention below a very surface level.
That’s not to say that Acres don’t have potential, as a clear understanding of instrumental depth and texture is reason enough to at least give In Sickness & Health a listen or two. Getting that right at this early stage bodes well for more long-running projects in the future, but the minute, Acres don’t have a lot beyond that to hit that spot of true resonance that the best melodic hardcore does. The basics are there; building something more interesting from them needs to be next on the itinerary.
For fans of: Being As An Ocean, We Never Learned To Live, Casey
‘In Sickness & Health’ by Acres is released on 24th February.
Posted on February 15, 2017 0 By thesoundboardreviews EPs Posted in EPs, Reviews Tagged #Acres, EP review, hardcore, Luke Nuttall, post-hardcore
Next Post ALBUM REVIEW: ‘Blood Jungle’ by Johnossi
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Tag: obama
Celebrities, News, Politics
Obama Has No Tolerance For Bill Cosby
Bill Cosby’s name is on the tip of everyone’s tongues lately for being the unwanted tongue at the tip of pretty much every woman he ever came in contact with, and we’re all sick of his freedom. Even Whoopi Goldberg, who has famously, stubbornly defended horrible people like Michael Vick and Roman Polanski thinks Cosby should be punished.
The latest person to speak out against Cosby is the king of America, President Obama, who sadly doesn’t have to power to revoke a presidential medal Cosby received in 2002, let alone to speed up the process of him getting DP’d by pudding pops in a federal penitentiary.
Continue reading “Obama Has No Tolerance For Bill Cosby” →
July 16, 2015 July 16, 2015 Bill Cosby, Camille Cosby, Cosby, obama, Quaaludes, rape, tolerance3 Comments
News, Politics, RIP
12 Dead in France Over Anti-Islamic Cartoons
The offices of the newspaper Charlie Hebdo came under gunfire earlier today by three masked men who killed 12 and left two critically injured in the worst attack on France since 1995’s Paris train bombing.
The gunman, who wielded assault rifles and a rocket launcher and yelled “Allahu Akbar” (Allah is the greatest) as they stormed the building, have been identified and the youngest attacker, 18-year-old Hamyd Mourad, has turned himself in. Authorities are working hard to locate the other two men. Continue reading “12 Dead in France Over Anti-Islamic Cartoons” →
January 7, 2015 attack, cartoon, cartoons, Charlie Hebdo, France, free speech, obama, terrorists1 Comment
Humor, News, Politics
President Engages in Hand-to-Hand With Gay Cashier
A ballsy man working at Franklin Barbecue in Austin yelled “Equal rights for gay people!” in the vicinity of none other than the president, to which Obama turned and said “Oh, are you gay?”
The man, Daniel Webb, looked at him, cool as a cucumber and responded, “Only when I have sex.”
With even cooler presidential cucumber coolness, Bama held out his fist, knuckles out and said “bump me.”
July 15, 2014 July 15, 2014 Austin, Barbecue, fist bump, gay, obama, only when I have sex, president, president ObamaLeave a comment
News, Politics, Sports
Michelle Obama Makes an Otherwise Boring Meeting With the Miami Heat Interesting
Everyone knows Ms. Bama and her husband are super active and into basketball, football, hell, all the ball sports, and during a visit with LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, Ray Allen, coach Erik Spoelstra, 50-year-old Michelle Obama showed impressive jumping and dunking skills in the background of an otherwise boring talk between Wade, Allen and the coach. The toothy faces her and LeBron make after the dunk might have you wishing for a buddy comedy starring the two of them as boisterous siblings or longtime besties coping with adulthood.
Gahhh. Michelle Obama is so fucking adorable. If she wasn’t so obsessed with abolishing fast food / shoving apple slices in everyone’s mouths I would want her to adopt me.
January 21, 2014 January 21, 2014 basketball, Dunk, dunking, Dwayne Wade, Erik Spoelstra, gif, lebron james, Miami Heat, Michelle Obama, obama, politics, Ray Allen, sports, The HeatLeave a comment
Celebrities, Politics
A [Very] Brief History of Obama Selfies
Even though people have been twerking and taking selfies since before the invention MTV and polaroid cameras, 2013 was the year we gave these occurrences a title that even your most out-of-touch relative might causally drop into a sentence.
Just the other day Obama was called out for taking a “selfie,” (a “self-portrait photograph, typically taken with a hand-held digital camera or camera phone” according to Wiki), at a funeral.
Not just a funeral, but the funeral of Africa’s most beloved icon of peace, equality and freedom: Nelson Mandela.
The Obamas are as American as a family can get, one that often partakes in selfie-taking. For instance, here is one of Michelle with her and Barack’s Portuguese Water Dog Bo… Continue reading “A [Very] Brief History of Obama Selfies” →
December 11, 2013 December 11, 2013 barack obama, funeral, Michelle Obama, Nelson Mandela, obama, Obamas, photos, politics, Sasha and Malia, selfie, selfiesLeave a comment
Hip Hop, Humor, Music, Politics, Rap
Michelle Obama to Appear in Health-Conscious Hip Hop Videos
A slightly misleading but still incredible NME article says “US First Lady Michelle Obama to release hip-hop album.” Don’t get your hopes up too high, internet…
Mich O. won’t actually be singing on said album, she’s just organizing it for educational purposes. You know her deal, getting kids to replace delicious fried food with food that is good for you and tastes like unseasoned gelatinous hippie pit sweat (but at least makes you poop consistently).
Artists included on the compilation Songs For A Healthier America are Darryl ‘DMC’ McDaniels, Travis Barker, Ashanti, Doug E. Fresh, Jordin Sparks and Matisyahu.
Michelle will only be appearing in videos for songs like “U R What You Eat,” “Veggie Luv” and “Everybody” (download for free HERE if you dare and/or care), but I still keep imagining them turning out like this:
(Take it away, Mary Sue / Let his love bust a cap in your butt and say HALLELUJAH!) Or this: Continue reading “Michelle Obama to Appear in Health-Conscious Hip Hop Videos” →
August 14, 2013 August 14, 2013 album, first lady, health, health food, hip hop, Michelle Obama, music, obama, politics, rap, Veggie Luv1 Comment
Obama: “Trayvon Martin Could Have Been Me”
On Friday Obama gave a very personal and heartfelt speech about the shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman’s not guilty verdict, which caused outrage across America in the form of protests large enough to shut down freeways in L.A.
“You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son,” Obama said of the teen who was gunned down by the neighborhood watch captain in Sanford, Florida in 2012. “Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.”
“And when you think about why, in the African-American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African-American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away,” he continued. Continue reading “Obama: “Trayvon Martin Could Have Been Me”” →
July 20, 2013 barack obama, George Zimmerman, news, obama, politics, Racial profiling, Trayvon Martin, verdict2 Comments
Check Out Obama’s Groovy Hawaiian Prom Photo
Awww. Look at Barry in 1979 all decked out in a lei with his bottle poppin’ best friend and their dates.
With the help of the brunette on his left (Kelli Allman), Time Magazine released two photos of 17-year-old Obama at the dance in honor of the Millions of American teenagers who will go to prom this year.
The guy in the white pants (Greg Orme) was Barack’s basketball teammate at Punahou School in Honolulu and brother from another mother, according to Allman. CLICK for bonus ’70s fun-time photo
May 24, 2013 May 23, 2013 barack obama, date, engagement ring, Greg Orme, Kelli Allman, obama, photo, photos, picture, pictures, prom, TimeLeave a comment
Celebrities, Humor, Politics, Sports, TV
Dennis Rodman Wants Obama and Kim Jong-un to Bond Over Basketball
BROMANCE ALERT. Dennis Rodman is back from his trip to North Korea where he and the Harlem Globetrotters were allowed to meet with “lifelong” basketball fan Kim Jong-un, son of former nightmarish dictator (and butt of lesbian jokes) Kim Jong-il.
In an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC, Rodman, who seems to have picked up a Barbados accent during his travels, tried his hand at foreign affairs, pleading for the president to have a talk with his new best friend.
“He wants Obama to do one thing: Call him,” the five-time NBA championship ring-holder told Stephanopoulos, adding that Kim does not want to “do war.” Continue reading “Dennis Rodman Wants Obama and Kim Jong-un to Bond Over Basketball” →
March 3, 2013 March 3, 2013 basketball, Bobby Moynihan, Dennis Rodman, Jay Pharoah, Kim Jong Un, North Korea, obama, saturday night live, Skit, snl1 Comment
Ahh Crap, Celebrities, Music, Rap
Kanye West Poses Semi-Nude With Kim, Disses The President
Business duo Kardashian and West are leaving new mementos (Kim-friendly translation: Mentos) for their future daughter to turn red over.
Interesting that Jañye would agree to a naked embrace reminiscent of a bargain bin romance novel for the French magazine L’Officiel Hommes after supposedly having too much artistic integrity to appear on Keeping Up With The Kardashians.
At a concert in the UK over the weekend, Kanye crapped all over Obama (“I don’t give a f*ck what the president’s got to say”), the Grammys (“The Grammys can suck my d*ck”) and Justin Timberlake (“I ain’t f*ckin’ with that ‘Suit & Tie”).
…Again, a few to many insults from the guy who’s signed on for the long haul with the most shameless woman in Hollywood.
February 26, 2013 February 26, 2013 disses, French magazine, Grammys, jay-z, justin timberlake, kanye west, kim kardashian, L’Officiel Hommes, obama, president, Suit & tieLeave a comment
Celebrities, Music, Politics, Pop
NO ONE Sings The National Anthem Like Beyonce
Beyonce is garnering perfect reviews across the board after effortlessly performing the National Anthem at Obama’s inauguration earlier today. Gawker described her voice as “more heavenly than a thousand Hallelujah choruses,” and I can’t really disagree.
Her rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” is comparable only to the one that lady sang at the Panthers vs. Patriots Super Bowl in 2004. Oh oh, that was Beyonce too? Never mind.
Singing this is easier for her than talking, addition problems for preschoolers, or stealing sugar-free candy from Paula Deen’s purse while she’s window shopping for butter. Continue reading “NO ONE Sings The National Anthem Like Beyonce” →
January 21, 2013 January 21, 2013 barack, beyonce, Inauguration, michelle, national anthem, obama, performance, presidential, singing, star spangled bannerLeave a comment
News, Politics, Video Games
Obama Proposes Civilian Assault Weapon Ban and Background Checks For All Firearm Buyers
After over a month of depressing post-Sandy Hook gun “solutions” from the NRA, one Piers Morgan deportation petition and a million opinions from every political and non-political corner of the earth, Obama has finally set a plan in motion to combat rampant gun-related homicides in America.
During a press conference on Wednesday morning, Obama proposed legislation that would require criminal background checks for all gun sales and ban assault rifles and armor-piercing bullets to anyone but law enforcement and military officials.
“[Gun violence] has terrible consequence for our society … and if we can only do one thing to stop it, we should all try and do that,” he told a crowd of reporters at the televised event. Continue reading “Obama Proposes Civilian Assault Weapon Ban and Background Checks For All Firearm Buyers” →
January 17, 2013 January 16, 2013 armor-piercing bullets, assault rifles, background checks, ban, gun control, gun violence, guns, legislation, obama, press conference, proposal, video gamesLeave a comment
Stories I’m Too Lazy To Write About [12-19-12]
Barack Obama is Time’s Person of the Year. As if anyone else was considered. (Just Jared)
That video of the eagle trying to take off with a baby in Montreal is FAKE. (Gawker)
Taylor Swift FORCES her boyfriends to get giant arm tattoos. (Huffington Post)
Legs of Hugh Jackman neglected at gym in favor of arms, back and chest. (Celebuzz)
Chord Overstreet strips and jumps in Hurricane Sandy flood waters. (ohmyGAHH!)
The guy who cut Kim Kardashian‘s hair deserves a prize of some sort. (Evil Beet)
Japan has around two gun deaths a year. America has nearly 9,000. Figure it out. (The Atlantic)
December 19, 2012 barack obama, obama, spidermanLeave a comment
Ahh Crap, Celebrities, Politics, RIP, Scary AF
Victoria Jackson Found a Way to Relate a ‘Million’ Abortions to Sandy Hook
The tragedy in Newtown has evoked sympathy from around the nation, and with that sympathy comes…. a few extremists who should be disallowed from opinion-sharing, like Westboro Baptist picketers, people who blamed the video game Mass Effect, Louie Gohmert, and Victoria Jackson.
Jackson, a former SNL alum, is now famous for sad but hilarious tea party rants like the one after Obama was re-elected, where she wrote that she couldn’t stop crying because “America died.” Also, Glee turns kids gay.
In her latest, and possibly craziest yet, she compares the child victims at Sandy Hook Elementary to aborted babies. From Facebook: Continue reading “Victoria Jackson Found a Way to Relate a ‘Million’ Abortions to Sandy Hook” →
December 18, 2012 December 18, 2012 aborted, abortion, abortions, Newtown, obama, Sandy Hook, tea party, tragedy, Victoria JacksonLeave a comment
Lady Gaga thrilled about Obama, donates $1 million to Hurricane Sandy relief. (Mercury)
British singer Robbie Williams draws criticism for punching old lady in “Candy” video. (ONTD!)
Soulja Boy accidentally posts penis pic on Tumblr, apologizes. (Perez)
Republicans manage to blame Halo 4 for Mitt Romney loss. (Kotaku)
Karl Rove and Donald Trump aren’t the only ones freaking out over the election results. (TMZ)
Nobody can beat Taylor Swift on the charts, like, never ever. (Popdust)
Lindsay Lohan could return to jail for lying to the police about Porsche crash. (L.A. Times)
The most important thing that happened yesterday: Beyonce joined Instagram. (ohmyGAHH!)
November 7, 2012 November 7, 2012 election, election night, lady gaga, obamaLeave a comment
Marijuana Legalized In Colorado and Washington, Marriage Equality For Maine and Maryland!
Today was a good day for Democrats. Colorado, Washington, Maine and Maryland made history for their yes votes on marriage equality measures and marijuana legalization, oh, and that Obama guy won.
In spite of Colorado and Washington’s recreational marijuana use laws (Initiative 502 and Amendment 64) passing, the states still have a way to go in terms of actual results, so don’t take your pipe on a walk just yet.
Huffington Post and other websites report that it could take months, possibly even a year, for 21-and-overs to legally buy pot.
Here’s a statement from CO governor John Hickenlooper: Continue reading “Marijuana Legalized In Colorado and Washington, Marriage Equality For Maine and Maryland!” →
November 6, 2012 November 6, 2012 barack obama, colorado, election, John Hickenlooper, Maine, marijuana, marriage equality, maryland, Mitt Romney, obama, politics, WashingtonLeave a comment
Celebrities, Humor, Politics, TV, Videos
Here’s That Lena Dunham ‘First Time’ Video That Everyone Freaked Out Over
Girls creator Lena Dunham released a campaign ad for Barack Obama that playfully compared voting for the first time to losing your virginity and the conservatives who would rather pretend sex doesn’t exist and shove it in a corner like it’s a haunted ventriloquist doll predictably hated it.
“It tickles me to no end that while my twitter feed was blowing up with conservative hate,” Dunham wrote on Twitter. “I was literally hanging out in a pile of bisexuals.”
The most outrageous response to the video came from Ben Shapiro of BigGovernment.com, who said that Obama is exploiting young women. Continue reading “Here’s That Lena Dunham ‘First Time’ Video That Everyone Freaked Out Over” →
October 29, 2012 October 29, 2012 barack obama, Ben Shapiro, campaign, conservative, exploiting, first time, Lena Dunham, Marsha Blackburn, obama, Video, Virgins3 Comments
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Andrew Greig – Crieff
23 Saturday Nov 2019
Posted by Author in Perthshire
≈ Comments Off on Andrew Greig – Crieff
Pervert jailed after police find avalanche of child abuse videos at his home
A Perthshire man, caught with an avalanche of child abuse porn, was jailed for a total of 29 months when he appeared for sentence at Perth Sheriff Court.
The material was described by investigating officers to be “some of the most graphic material” they had ever come across.
The court was told that acting on a tip-off, police raided 41-year-old Andrew Greig’s home at Ballagan Flats, Gallowhill, Crieff, and seized a disgusting hoard of almost 2000 child abuse videos.
They had a total running time of more than 134 hours.
The disgustingly obscene porn, which also included still photos, showed infants and children being sexually abused.
Other videos depicted adult males with girls whose ages ranged from five to 14.
Greig also had his name added to the Sex Offenders’ Register after he admitted that between November 18, 2018, and April 7, 2019, he downloaded the sex abuse material at his home.
He also pled guilty to a second charge of being in possession of the videos and still images on April 8, 2019.
He had already been warned by Sheriff Gillian Wade that prison was “his most likely destination.”
Sentence had been deferred for the preparation of a community justice social work report and an assessment from the Tay Project which aims to rehabilitate sex offenders.
Depute fiscal Chris Mackintosh told the court: “The degree of moral turpitude is of far greater significance than the quantity might first suggest.”
Greig told police that he was scared – but also relieved – that police had turned up at his door.
He told officers that indecent images would be found on his computer.
Some of the search terms the accused had used online indicated he had a “predilection” for pre-teen females.
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NRATV suggests YouTube brought shooting on itself with censorship of gun videos
Blaming the victim.
Rebekah Entralgo Twitter Apr 4, 2018, 1:57 pm
NRA convention. (KAREN BLEIER/AFP/Getty Images)
Hosts Grant Stinchfield and Chuck Holton appeared on NRATV Wednesday afternoon and linked YouTube’s new restrictions on gun videos for the shooting that left one dead and three injured at the company’s corporate headquarters in San Bruno, California Tuesday. The hosts claimed that the new policies have opened YouTube up to “a lot of hatred.”
“You and I were both very careful not to speculate about what happened. Not to call into question what happened,” Stinchfield said to Holton. “And yet while we were being very careful, while we were asking questions and waiting for answers, the left was out there literally pushing this narrative that the shooting was somehow the NRA’s fault and that I need to apologize for a tweet that NRATV sent out of one of my videos.”
“And, you know, I have talked about this before, YouTube making these changes where they’re going from being a platform for videos to being a publisher of videos,” Holton replied. “Meaning that they are starting to censor content here and there, whatever, actually opens them up to liability and it opens them up to a lot of hatred from people around the world.”
The hosts were linking the shooting to new YouTube restrictions on gun videos hosted on the platform, a move gun rights activists called “worrisome.”
After the Parkland shooting, YouTube announced it will ban videos that promote or link to websites selling firearms and bump stocks. Videos instructing viewers how to assemble firearms are also prohibited.
As Bloomberg notes, YouTube has long been a haven for gun-related videos. A search for “how to build a gun” yields roughly 25 million results on the platform.
Police confirmed the shooter was 39-year-old Nasim Najafi Aghdam, of San Diego, California.
“She was upset with some of the practices or policies that the company had employed,” San Bruno chief of police Ed Barberini said in an interview early Wednesday morning on ABC’s Good Morning America.
Aghdam’s father told the Bay Area News Group that she was angry with YouTube after the company de-monetized videos she had posted on the platform because of graphic or adult content.
I watched NRATV for an entire day. Here’s what they said about the March For Our Lives.
The march is a front for socialist efforts to destroy the constitution and organized by people who are violent, anti-American, and pro-cop killing.
In other words, the shooter was upset that she wasn’t getting paid for her videos on veganism, not because she couldn’t post videos about guns.
The new policies about gun videos are set to be implemented sometime in April.
#Culture, #Gun Control, #NRA Accountability, #NRATV, #YouTube
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Andrew Licudi
Ayelet & Eran Shay
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Mama Lotties
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Home Life Biography Gibraltar Blockade 50 Years On
Gibraltar Blockade 50 Years On
Fifty years ago, an American journalist wrote an article published by newspapers around the world explaining just how well Gibraltarians were coping with a closed border with Spain.
Some might ask what would an American know about Gibraltar and its Spanish neighbour? Well, Don Cook was thoroughly conversant with all things European as he worked almost his entire 45-year career in journalism in Europe. Cook’s obituary in UK newspaper The Independent of March 13th, 1995 began:
“Don Cook was an outstanding American journalist who covered all the main events of post-war Europe and knew personally most of the statesmen that shaped them. He recorded faithfully not only what happened but explained perceptively how it happened. He arrived in London as a young war correspondent for the now defunct New York Herald Tribune in 1945 and later as the European Diplomatic correspondent of the Los Angeles Times.
A friendly and amusing man with a host of friends in London and Paris, Cook began his newspaper career as a copy boy in Florida, then joined the Trans-radio Press Service in Philadelphia. The New York Herald Tribune engaged him in Washington in 1943 and transferred him to Britain in 1945 as a war correspondent. He covered the entry of the Allies into Paris and the end of the war in Europe.”
Cook worked for the Herald Tribune for twenty-two years and then joined the Los Angeles Times in 1965. He had been the Paris bureau chief for the Times for four years when he wrote his article about Gibraltar in November 1969.
In the article, headlined Blockaded Gibraltar Couldn’t Care Less, Cook wrote that Franco’s Spain had turned Gibraltar into a virtual island. Cook points out that the blockading of Gibraltar was a gradual process taking place over several years.
“The slow closing of the new blockage, beginning with a tightening of frontier restrictions in 1960 and 1964, instead of making the Gibraltarians anxious or susceptible for negotiations or agreement has simply produced an adjustment to the new realities.”
The blockage began with the tightening of controls against duty-free goods and then in October 1966 the Spanish closed the road border with La Linea to all automobile, lorry and bus traffic. The ferry from Algeciras continued to operate, however, and there were still some 4,500 Spanish workers crossing the border on foot to their jobs in Gibraltar. Then on September 10th, 1967 Gibraltarians, in their first ever referendum, sent a resounding message of rejection to Franco by voting 12,138 to 44 to remain British.
In June 1969 Franco had the Algeciras ferry service shut down and in October the same year closed the border to all traffic. This caused much hardship for the Spanish workers and their families, but the result in Gibraltar was increased prosperity. Instead of crossing into Spain to shop and dine out, Gibraltarians stayed home and spent their money. Tourism was up 10% over 1968; goods, food stuffs and workers were imported from Morocco; freighters continued to stop at the Rock; and cruise ships, which had been avoiding Gibraltar the previous two years, returned in, totalling 120 visits in 1969. The Royal Navy also increased its presence; there were five frigates and a nuclear submarine in port when Cook visited. He wrote that, “The only notable hardship seems to be the sad fact that there is not a cow on the Rock, and the 25,000 inhabitants are therefore reduced to drinking reconstituted milk.”
One of the curious things mentioned by Cook in the article was that Russian seamen liked to play the slot machines at the casino often using kopeks which were the same size as a shilling. The Russians were also known for purchasing large quantities of Sloan’s Liniment. “Apparently it is used by the sailors as a kind of toilet water, to tone up the skin in Arctic waters on whaling voyages.”
Cook finished the article, “Spain seems to have lost a peninsula and Britain has gained another island – and it can go on this way for quite a long time, even without fresh milk”. The border reopened to foot traffic on December 15th, 1982 but not to automobile traffic until February 5th, 1985.
Cook retired from the LA Times in 1988 and died of a heart attack on March 7th, 1995 aged 74. He wrote several books including, Floodgates in Europe, Forging the Alliance (the formation of Nato 1945-1950) and a biography of Charles de Gaulle.
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The Gibraltar Magazine boasts a spirited history dating back 20 years, when it was first called ‘Discover Gibraltar’. Founders Andrea Morton and Howard Fuller established the publication in 1995, with the aim of ‘promoting Gibraltar and its people’ and ensuring the content is interesting and relevant both to locals and tourists. Our mantra remains the same to this day, even though a new team has driven the magazine since 2015, keeping it current and leading locally in content and layout.
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New Bicycle Racks at Nuffield Pool and Europort Road
News The Gibraltar Magazine - July 17, 2019
The Ministry for Infrastructure and Planning is pleased to announce the roll out of further bicycle racks at both Nuffield Pool and Europort Road. Well...
Biography The Gibraltar Magazine - January 1, 2020
By Romina Mayani Nankani, CYE-CYL Coffee in hand and notepad at the ready, I met with Sangeeta Khiani to talk about her fascinating journey; one...
The Guardian Angels of Gibraltar
News Victoria Locke - June 14, 2018
The Ministry for Equality is delighted to announce a donation from the Guardian Angel Foundation of ten tablets with specialised communication software. The donation was...
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The Role of the Property Purchase Advisor. Off-plan property buying has become highly popular in Gibraltar’s booming real estate market. The high demand relative to...
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Deal to loosen cozy church-state ties falls apart
By Newsroom On 20 Mar 2019, 6:31 pm
twitter.com/PrimeministerGR
A tentative agreement between Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and Archbishop Ieronymos to move Greek clerics off the state payroll, ceasing to characterize them as civil servants, appeared to have all but collapsed on Tuesday following a session of the Holy Synod.
Ieronymos made it clear after the emergency session that the deal, which he and Tsipras announced last November, was not acceptable to the Holy Synod while also condemning clerics who criticized the deal without proposing alternative solutions.
Indeed, he blamed the entire synod for “stifling the right to free discussion” during the sessions of a special panel of church and government officials set up to discuss all aspects of the proposed changes.
Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Messinia commented that the government had originally committed to drafting a bill setting out the proposed changes but had not presented it to clerics, who were therefore unable to accurately assess what repercussions the changes would have.
In an attempt to salvage something of the agreement, Ieronymos proposed further dialogue on aspects of the tentative deal not related to clerics’ salary status. However, he also referred to “aberrations” by the state, particularly as relates to interventions regarding church property.
Commenting after the meeting, Education and Religious Affairs Minister Costas Gavroglou underlined the state’s interest in the continuation of dialogue in a statement that took a clear dig at the church. “We are in favor of consensus,” Gavroglou said, noting however that the Council of State has ruled that clerics are not civil servants. “God help the Holy Synod,” he said.
Source EKATHIMERINI
Alexis TsiprasChurch-StateArchbishop Ieronymos
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Widower’s pensions to be raised & debts to social security funds settled…
PM Tsipras: Greece and Romania’s cooperation plays a key role for stability in…
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#196: The Department of Queer Complaints [ss] (1940) by Carter Dickson
January 26, 2017 January 25, 2017 / JJ
Department D3 of Scotland Yard houses the gargantuan form of Colonel March, investigator of the absurd and apparently impossible whose “mind is so obvious that he hits it every time”. It’s a shame March never got a novel of his own, because he has a lovely and direct way of dealing with the problems brought to him, but then he’s not exactly dissimilar to the Gideon Fell chap about whom Carter Dickson wrote so much under his real name of John Dickson Carr. So, yup, it’s impossibilities ahoy as we go through ten cases of the inexplicable thoroughly laid to rest by Carr’s own brand of chicanery and misdirection; it’s true: life is good to us sometimes, and we just gotta enjoy it when it happens…
‘The New Invisible Man’ kicks us off with a shooting by gloves that come to life and pick up a gun of their own accord — worry not, it’s a different solution to the similar-sounding novel The Man Who Could Not Shudder (1940) — only for the body to disappear, the people involved to deny any knowledge of it happening, and the apparent victim to have already been dead for several decades. It’s a good little problem, superbly motivated, but I feel the idea is better than the explanation; I get it in principle, but not practice, and feel like there’s something missing to make it as clear as it needs to be (which is a nice way of saying that I’m not sure it’d completely work as described).
Faring much better is ‘The Footprint in the Sky’ with its all-the-evidence-points-to-one-person footprints-in-the-snow problem. There’s one awesome piece of subtle clewing here that’s so, so clever and almost makes up for the fact that the tiny cast makes it difficult to hide who is guilty (you’ll doubtless seize on the key piece of information even when Carr drops it so casually into proceedings). I also love how our heroine wakes up, feels something is amiss, and hears ominous voices downstairs, but must first rush through her morning toilet before going downstairs to find out what’s happening. Aaaah, society, how far you’ve fallen…
Then we have a disappearing room and the riddle of a raincoat turned inside-out in ‘The Crime in Nobody’s Room’. The setup and workings here require a level of artifice which, for me, no-one could manage more easily than Carr; it hinges on an unlikely requirement of a set of flats, and if anyone else from this era had tried to sell it to you I can believe a vast majority of readers would send it back on grounds of sheer ludicrosity. Carr makes it work, though, with his suave authority and the beautiful lightness of his tone. It’s fine as a story — nothing spectacular, mind — and hinges on another of those obscure little cluster-bombs of inspiration that went off inside the great man’s head once in a while, but you’re not going to love it for all time.
Next up, Poe’s ‘The Purloined Letter’ reimagined with ill-gotten cash in ‘Hot Money’ — piles of stolen filthy lucre vanish in a room when the door is under observation and the windows don’t open, and a search of the entire premises fails to turn up the dough. Your enjoyment of this depends exclusively on how much you’re able to buy into the scheme used, and while I like it — I did the thing March suggests at one point, and failed to come up with the key thing (yeah, that’s vague) — it’s also not really especially Carrian. Crofts could have written it, except no-one gets on a train; Ngaio Marsh would delight her fans with this kind of idea; we hold Carr to a higher standard.
Itching for a seemingly-impossible murder where the main suspects have an alibi? Your time has come with ‘Death in the Dressing Room’. Unfortunately it’s a touch transparent and third-tier as a mystery plot, but this does enable you to appreciate just how sublime Carr’s prose is in spite of the odd turn of phrase (a “super-pickpocket”, anyone? Thought not). When he’s good, though, he’s oh-so-very good; I mean, “The hot, smoky room swallowed him up as though he were padded into layers of cotton wool”: c’mon, that’s simply beautiful.
Fun fact, ‘The Silver Curtain’ was the first Carr short story I ever read. I loved it then, and I love it still now: a man enters a cul-de-sac, approaches one of the houses and, in the space a split second while someone observing him glances away, is stabbed in the back by an assailant who somehow ran up to him, jammed a knife in his back, and vanished without being seen at any point. Not only are the mechanics very good indeed, the titular curtain is also used to perfect effect. One of those lovely, compact pieces of construction that has more going on that some novels of over ten times the length, but manages to be clear and fair at the same time.
And then, as if to underline how much of a one-trick pony he isn’t (because, y’know, we were all thinking it), the oddly-titled ‘Error at Daybreak’ does another impossible stabbing in the back, throwing in so many little esoteric ideas and suspicions among our five-strong cast that you’re almost spoiled for choice. And even then Carr manages something of a triple-whammy solution that ties in a goodly few aspects without, again, ever needing to become needlessly complex to shade inconsistencies or flaws from you. There’s one sizeable coincidence, but arguably the same effect could be achieved without it, so I’m willing to let that slide.
At this point in proceedings, Colonel March and the whole Department of Queer Complaints framing vanishes, and the remaining three stories have nothing to do with either.
‘The Other Hangman’ reads a bit like a Frontiers of the Old West yarn, with a ne’er-do-well crook in a small town due to be hanged following the murder of one of his associates. It’s not an impossible crime — which is fine, Carr excelled at all sorts of shenanigans — and ends with the kind of flourish that makes it feel like an Erle Stanley Gardner take on these circumstances. And for all its cleverness in this regard, it’s a shame that there’s not an extra little twist that seems to be winking out at you from the situation as presented, but I suppose Carr wasn’t trying to tell that kind of story.
Then we have ‘New Murders for Old’, which shows Carr wearing his Poe influences at their most brazen and consequently struggles to find its feet amidst these veridical swipes at illusion. Overworked millionaire sent on a recuperating 8 month cruise, returns to find an (in fiction, at least) unsurprising turn of events in his absence…so far, so fine. The addition of a ghostly figure stalking our hero is equally fine, as is the implication of the final line, but the difficulty there is one of something between coincidence and convenience on two fronts. Carr has the skill to explain this way in a paragraph and doesn’t, so you’re left feeling weirdly unsatisfied.
Finally, Carr flexes some historical brawn with ‘Persons or Things Unknown’, in which a centuries-old murder is recounted for the delectation of dinner guests. It’s rather slower-paced than the others, but you can see Carr’s frank fascination with the history of the 17th century bleeding through, and this multiple stabbing when there’s no weapon present is nicely-clewed and has a very enjoyable solution. Its one of those ideas that is all the better for being encountered after 13 pages rather than 300, but I really liked it. It’s also suitably creepy in atmosphere and ends on a lovely little note of acknowledged unease that rounds the collection out in fitting style.
So, overall about the mix you’d expect; Carr’s prose renders even the tamest of these stories eminently readable, so that a disappointment here is typically a star or so better if by anyone else. I believe a couple more March stories show up in The Men Who Explained Miracles collection, and of course there’s the curious miscasting that is Boris Karloff as an eyepatched, rake-thin March in the Colonel March of Scotland Yard TV series still to track down, so it’s nice not to be done with the old ragamuffin just yet. This collection is definitely worth a look if you can track it down, but since that’s true of everything Carr wrote I guess I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know…
John Norris @ Pretty Sinister: I read the revised and updated version of this book which includes two stories previously unpublished in book form that were not in the original 1940 book [so John’s version contains stories mine doesn’t]. According to Douglas Greene’s introduction to this updated book Colonel March was modeled after Carr’s good friend and fellow mystery writer Cecil Street, aka “John Rhode” and “Miles Burton.” If so, then Street must have had a great sense of humor in real life. Something that astonishes me because most of his books are rather lacking in a rollicking sense of humor.
D for Doom @ Vintage Pop Fictions: Naturally, given the author’s well-known partiality for such tales, the stories can all be described as either locked-room or impossible crime stories. The premise of the book allowed Carr to indulge himself in some particularly odd and baroque variations on his favoured techniques, stories which might otherwise have been considered just a little too quirky.
I submit this for the Vintage Cover Scavenger Hunt 2017 at My Reader’s Block under the category A Mask.
And for the Follow the Clues Mystery Challenge, last week’s Sailor, Take Warning! links to this as both contain impossible stabbings in the back.
Carter Dickson, Impossible Crimes, John Dickson Carr, Short stories
← #195: The Tuesday Night Bloggers – My First Five Impossible Crimes…
#197: Spoiler Warning – Coming in April: The Best of Christie vs. The Best of Carr + Your Help Needed →
33 thoughts on “#196: The Department of Queer Complaints [ss] (1940) by Carter Dickson”
The March series is currently on the Talking Pictures TV channel (the eye patch apparently an error after reading the description of his “bland eye” for “blind” – or so the story goes. Great review JJ – and yeah, you should get MEN WHO EXPLAINED MIRACLES just for the excellent HM novella, ALL IN A MAZE, which is terrific.
Fear not — I have THWEM ready to go, but it’s my understanding that one of the storues there was expanded up into a novel I want to say The Gilded Man…?), and so I would like to read whetever novel that is before taking on the collection. Also, I’d been looking for TDoQC for so long that, when I finally got a copy — for Christmas, no less! — I could barely restrain myself from reading it for a moment longer than necessary.
Santosh Iyer
Yes, one of the stories in TMWEM namely The Incautious Burglar (a Dr. Fell story) became the basis for the Merrivale novel The Gilded man.
Beautiful, thanks. I just need to remember this now…
thegreencapsule
I’m holding off on The Door to Doom for similar reasons – I believe it has a number of solutions that are used in the full length novels. Better to spoil a 13 page story than a 180 page book.
My approach right now is to hold off on the short story compilations until the very end. If I end up hitting too many duds with the later year books, I can always weave some short stories in there.
My edition contains one more non-March story Blind Man’s Hood giving a total of 11 stories.
Yes, 2 other March stories William Wilson’s Racket and The Empty Flat appear in The Men Who Explained Miracles collection.
All 9 Colonel March stories appear in Merrivale, March and Murder collection.
So, is Merrivale, March and Murder simply a collection of stories already published elsewhere? Are there any “new” stories in there at all?
There are 3 new stories in Merrivale, March and Murder not collected elsewhere: The Diamond Pentacle, Scotland Yard’s Christmas and Lair Of The Devil Fish (radio play).
All other stories have been taken from Department Of Queer Complaints, The Men Who Explained miracles and The Third Bullet And Other Stories.
Okay, cool — always good to know how much new material one is getting in this kind of thing; not worth paying over the odds if you already have most of the contents!
If you can track down a reasonably priced copy then I’d say Merrivale, March and Murder is worth getting. Aesthetically, it’s a nice book, looks good on a shelf, and has enough material all collected in one volume to make a difference. Of course if you do go down that route, you’ll probably feel the need to pick up copies of Fell and Foul Play and The Door to Doom for the sake of completeness. 🙂
Good to have someone pitch in an say it’s worth finding, thanks Colin. And, alas, ‘completeness’ and ‘Carr’ go hand-in-hand as far as I’m concerned; not quite to the extent of every edition of every book, that would be insane, but as far as more than one edition of some of them, sure… And still a few to find!
Unfortunately Merrivale, March, and Murder and Fell and Foul Play seem to be pretty hard to track down for a decent price. For that matter, The Department of Queer Complains seems a bit elusive as well.
Oh, yeah, I’d been holding out for TDoQC for a while, it seems rather rare; someone gave me this copy for Christmas, so it was bonanza time as far as I was concerned!
thereaderiswarned
This sounds like an awesome collection! I have The Silver Curtain, which I loved, in one of my favourite short story collections ‘The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories’, which also contains The House in Goblin Wood, and Ronald Knox’s Solved by Inspection, which is one of my favourite locked room stories and premises.
And I was very thankful to find a copy of ‘The Second Century of Detective Stories’ in a market in Brighton and bought it solely for Error at Daybreak. Really loved that one, and felt as you said there are so many ideas, and the setting itself is so well described.
I’m slightly annoyed that you reviewed those two the highest and I already have them (!) but I am still keen to grab this collection at some point. Disappearing rooms, and possessed gloves are too good-a premise not to try out.
At the end of last year I started a book-buying embargo because, well, my TBR pile is ridiculous. Literally the second day of “No, no, I’m not buying any books at all, no matter what” I found an Alfred Hitchcock short story collection containing ‘The Other Hangman’ and an Arthur Porgess story…and managed to resist buying it, much to a mixture of pride and incredulity. So having TOH turn up in here was some relief on that front…
‘The Footprint in the Sky’ and ‘Persons or Things Unknown’ are great stories, too. The solution of the second one bears some discussion, I’m sure, because it’s both audaciously brilliant and hugely unlikely, but I love the sheer cojones involved in that being his answer: the clewing is hilarious, once you get into it, and it’s a great piece to end the collection on.
TThis reminds me of the start of one of Christie’s shorts ‘The Double Clue’. The first character introduced is Marcus Hardiman: ‘His hobby was collecting. He had the collector’s soul.’
I think this is true for so many of us blogging on here!
armchairreviewer
I was looking forward to this review as I wanted to see how this collection compared to Roy Vicker’s slightly later work The Department of Dead Ends, which has a remarkably similar overall structure. Do wonder whether Vickers might have been copying just a little bit? Both collections seem fairly mixed in terms of quality thought I think you gave this collection a higher rating than I did Vicker’s work.
I, to, have read the Vickers collection, and hadn’t made the link, but you’re right that they bear similarities in principle: both are kind of ‘lost cause’ departmenrts where things get passed when no-one else knows what to do with them. I definitely found this to be the superior collection, since the Vickers stories get a bit ridiculous after the first few — in a way, Dead Ends are impossible crime stories because you find yourself going, “Bullshit, it’s impossible that so many conincidences could come together to enable that chain of reasoning…” 🙂
realthog
A long time since I’ve read this one, and you’re now making me want to track down a copy!
There are episodes of the TV series all over YouTube.
Aaah, lovely YouTube. It speaks of my age that it neve occurs to me to look there for TV stuff — good stuff, thanks for reminding me.
It speaks of my age
Young whippersnapper!
Hollywood Twenty-One, mate 😀
Your review is a painful reminder that I only read the stripped down version of this collection, which omitted “The Other Hangman,” “New Murders for Old” and “Persons or Things Unknown.” As mentioned here before, there’s one other collection that has “Blind Man’s Hood” as an additional story, but none of them has “The Empty Flat” or “William Wilson’s Racket.” It’s a publishing history that makes little sense and a new (complete) collection would be more than welcome.
Glad to see I am not the only one who loves “The Silver Curtain.” I recommend watching the TV adaptation, because, for a low-budget series, they managed to cleverly translate the trick to the small screen.
So are ‘The Empty Flat’ and ‘William Wilson’s Racket’ uncollected, then?
And, yeah, ‘The Silver Curtain’ could actually be a good place to start with the TV show — it’s a visual trick that it’d be interestin to see pulled off, since it’s so vivid in the mind when you read how it was done. I shall get looking…
No. As mentioned above by me, these 2 March stories are available in 2 collections: The Men Who Explained Miracles and Merrivale, March And Murder.
Yes, sorry, having a bit of a brain freeze today… 🙂
ravenking81
‘The Crime in Nobody’s Room’ was the first thing I ever read by Carr. I came across it in one of those anthologies by Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Perhaps not the greatest story he has ever written, but nonetheless wonderful atmosphere and very enjoyable overall.
‘The Silver Curtain’ is also included in “The Mammoth Book of Locked-Room Mysteries and Impossible Crimes”.
It was in The Mammoth Book that I read The Silve Curtain, as it happens. And then reasd te rest of them and thought “Hmmm, surely some of these could have been replaced with more Carr stories…” 😀
Nodding over here for your comment JJ!
I had a few minutes and just watched “The Silver Curtain” on YouTube. The recording is not in great shape, but the show is charming, moving along at the leisurely pace of classic television. The final reveal was nice and physical as befitting the nature of the crime, and while I understand from your write-up that Boris Karloff resembles Col. March not a whit, I always enjoy Karloff as a hero and he is delightful here. A very young Arthur Hill played the dupe and went on to an illustrious career in film and TV! It’s nice to see TV shows dedicated to classic mystery stories. Like the novels and stories, the popularity of video whodunits has faded, at least in America, and that is a sad thing!
Did you see Ho-Ling’s recent post about The Armchair Detective show they have in Japan? Two one-hour episodes for each story, and the entire second hour is spent going through the interpretations and solution! That, that is how you make a detectivew show!
Just saw a book today that released over Christmas called Murder Under the Christmas tree. A short story collection which has in it ‘Persons or Things Unknown’! More Carr in contemporary print! Link to the book here: http://bit.ly/2kaMY4l – Has a pretty good contents actually.
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Iran lauds Kuwait’s solidarity with flood victims
IRNA – Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman on Saturday praised Kuwait’s solidarity with Iran and dispatch of humanitarian aids to the flood-hit regions.
The humanitarian aids provided by Kuwait are a sign of this country’s officials moral responsibility and brotherhood among Muslim states in difficult conditions, Bahram Qasemi said.
He made the remarks in an exclusive interview with Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA).
The official noted that the humanitarian aid provided by Kuwait for the Iranian flood victims demonstrated solidarity among neighboring and Muslim regions of the country.
Kuwait’s first humanitarian aid package for flood-stricken in Iran arrived at Imam Khomeini International Airport near Tehran late on Friday.
Kuwait sent its first humanitarian aid to the Iranian flood-stricken people.
The package included powrful water evacuation pumps, pharmaceuticals, foodstuff and other items.
Kuwaiti government’s aid packages are to continue in the upcoming weeks.
The country’s Council of Ministers has assigned the Kuwaiti Red Crescent Society to cooperate with Iran’s foreign ministry to provide relief aid to the flood-stricken people in Iran.
Bahram Qassemi, humanitarian aid, Iran floods, Iran-Kuwait relations April 6, 2019
Torrential rains fill 70% of Iran dams
Iraqi PM plans to bring Iran, S Arabia closer to each other during Tehran visit
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Legend of Tarzan Reaches 10M YouTube Trailer Views: Full Stats and Analysis of the Marketing Campaign
December 14, 2015 December 19, 2015 Michael Sellers A1, Legend of Tarzan (Movie)
It’s Monday and we’re nearing the end of Day 6 of WB’s marketing push for Legend of Tarzan. Here’s my imaginary report to Warner Brothers marketing, based on what I’ve seen thus far. Who knows, maybe somebody there will actually read it … although they’re doing a good job and, unlike a certain other studio who couldn’t figure out what to do with an Edgar Rice Burroughs literary property, they are handling it well and don’t really need inputs from me. Still . . . can’t resist doing a report.
The Trailer — 10M Views on WB’s YouTube Channel
As of the end of the workday Monday, Legend of Tarzan has reached 10 million views on WB’s YouTube Channel. In trying to place that in context — one piece of data that is very helpful is that LOT’s main competition on the July 1, 2016 release date is Steven Spielberg’s The BFG — and Disney, its distributor, just happened to release its teaser trailer on the same day as Legend of Tarzan. So these two films, trailer release and theatrical release on the same day, will be battling it out for the available audience. You can be assured that from now until next July, those involved in the marketing of the two films will be eyeing each other and attempting to assess each others’ relative position. We can do the same.
So — what did we learn?
Prior to the release of the trailers, WB had kept LOT in a virtual ‘cone of silence’ and as a result, there was very little public anticipation of the release. This translated into an exceptionally slow start for the trailer, as the chart below shows. The red figures represent the initial lead that BFG had over LOT, as LOT was just beginning to get noticed:
Both charts show that after a slow start, favorable word of mouth developed and drove LOT past BFG, and since passing the Spielberg film, it has continued to build on that lead, consistently outpacing BFG.
A key takeaway: because of the “zero buzz” going into the release and the demonstrably slow start, it’s fair to infer that LOT’s trailer view performance is driven by favorable reactions and favorable word of mouth — as opposed to advance hype. There was no advance hype. Further evidence of this is that at the end of the first day, when LOT had only been viewed an anemic 58,350 times — it already had 5,800 likes, for a phenomenal “Like Percentage” of almost 10%. For reference, even 1% is a very good “Like Percentage” (Likes/Views) . . . . This would drop, but it is further evidence that the earliest viewers were caught by surprise and responded with strongly favorable word of mouth.
A word of caution, however: Although LOT’s thumping of BFG can be nothing but good news for LOT fans and the WB marketing team — a word of warning: social media observers could argue, perhaps persuasively, that the nature of BFG — a Roald Dahl children’s story about a 10 year old girl and a “Big Friendly Giant” — places it a different enough category from LOT as to make it possible to “explain away” the surge and better numbers for LOT. Still, you can be sure that the folks at Dreamworks and Disney are not as happy as the folks at WB today.)
A third trailer was released on the same day — Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, the sequel to the first TMNT film which did $191M domestically and $493M worldwide. TMNT was expected to far outdistance Tarzan; however as of Monday morning it’s at 12M views as LOT is approaching 10M views. Moreover, for days 4-5 LOT has been gradually gaining on TMNT. This is a good indicator of the “ballpark” in which LOT has landed.
Bottom line — Tarzan’s trailer release has gone about as well as can be expected in terms of views and viewer acceptance.
Skarsgard, Robbie, surge to #1 and #2 on IMDB Starmeter
The weekly Internet Movie Data Base Starmeter rankings released this morning have Alexander Skarsgard and Margot Robbie at number 1 and 2 respectively. Skarsgard had previously been ranked 435 and Robbie, still riding the strength of her casting as Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad, was previously ranked 34. There is no way to classify this as anything other than good news. LOT’s direct competition, The BFG, did not achieve anything on this level and has no star ranked higher than 225 in the just released Starmeter rankings. Perhaps more interesting — Megan Fox, star of TMNT2, rose from 266 to 33. Robbie’s rise all the way to #2 looks all the more interesting in light of this.
Surge from Moviemeter Ranking of 973 to 5
It would be expected that LOT’s promotional would create a surge in the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) Starmeter and Moviemeter rankings. However, the surge has been somewhat greater than expected, as evidenced by figures just released this morning. First, the MovieMeter rankings for the film itself:
As the chart shows — the film moved up 968 pots from 973 to 5. This is a very strong. (By contrast, John Carter only rose to 67 after the main trailer release.) This compares favorably to TMNT2 which moved up 885 spots to from 889 to 4. And it is further illustrative of how LOT has outpaced its direct July 1, 2016 competitor The BFG — who ended up at Moviemeter Rank of 34.
Another word of caution: IMDB’s MovieMeter and StarMeter are little more than a simple straightforward measure of search activity. Rankings are fairly volatile, and will adjust dramatically in coming weeks. Still, if you’re at WB this Monday morning you’re smiling; if you’re at Disney or Dreamworks, you’re worried.
Influencer Media Reaction — Mixed to Favorable
Although consumer level reaction has skewed clearly favorable — blogger/journalist level reaction has been mixed – favorable. Most outlets simply reported the release, repeating the WB promotional material without additional comment — which is standard for a trailer release. Some articles voiced opinions. Following are the top 10 articles that come up on a Google News search as of this mornign, and which express an opinion:
USA Today: ‘Legend of Tarzan’ trailer looks absolutely bananas
CNET: Full of Action, Legend of Tarzan trailer still disappoints
The Verge: Watch Trailer for Unnecessary Blockbuster Legend of Tarzan
The A.V. Club: First Legend of Tarzan Trailer features abs and apes
/Film: This isn’t the King of the Jungle you remember
Cinemablend: The Legend of Tarzan Trailer is Gorgeous, Shows Plenty of Promise
The Mary Sue: Legend of Tarzan Trailer can’t hide its colonial roots
HitFix: First Legend of Tarzan Trailer is ambitious and full of eye candy
GQ: Legend of Tarzan trailer offers abs, Margot Robbie
Independent: Legend of Tarzan…goes all Dark Knight in First Trailer
Us Weekly: Alexander Skarsgard’s sculpted abs are on full display
Hollywood Life: Alexander Skarsgard is the Sexiest Tarzan
Mashable: Legend of Tarzan trailer has more to offer than perfect abs
Daily Mail: Shirtless Alexander Skarsgard Kisses Margot Robbie . . .
Telegraph: Watch Alexander Skarsgard Punch a Gorilla . . .
Games Radar: Go Ape for Legend of Tarzan Teaser Trailer
Details: Alexander Skarsgard’s abs are ridiculous in Legend of Tarzan . . .
Social Media Presence — Legend of Tarzan and the Competition
Here is the social media presence of LOT and the competition for next summer. I will update this from time to time. It’s generally self-explanatory.
Social Media Buzz — Analyzing the Themes
So what are people saying about Legend of Tarzan now that the lid’s off? First of all, commenting is strong, and positive negative ratio is good at 7/3 but it is significant to note that films with runaway buzz typically achieve 9/1 Positive/Negative ratio. Legend of Tarzan has good buzz, and this is especially significant since going into the launch had virtually no buzz at all — and the microbuzz it did have was skewing negative. So achieving a high volume of buzz (as evidenced, among other ways, by the IMDB Starmeter and MovieMeter rankings, and the 10M YouTube trailer views) is a significant achievement — and a 7/3 positive negative ratio is not bad. But there is room for improvement and there are some red flags that WB will need to be conscious of.
The buzz topics:
Favorable Themes
Skarsgard’s Abs: It sounds silly, but then social media is sometimes silly, and WB’s ridiculous still of Skarsgard and his chiclet abs became the number one comment topic.
Margot Robbie’s Hotness: This was much commented on, and is a continuation of her longterm trend line. It’s of some interest because her presentation in the trailer is rather subdued, but it didn’t seem to matter to her fans — again, the IMDB starmeter rankings are indicative.
Fond Childhood Memories of Disney’s Tarzan: A theme that developed across multiple comment platforms and especially on YouTube trailer reaction videos was the warm spot that many millenials have for Disney’s 1999 animated Tarzan, and an openness to the WB Tarzan because of it.
Neutral Themes — or Themes That Can Skew Either Way
Complete Lack of Knowledge of Tarzan History: Message boards and comment threads were loaded with comments that showed the commenter thought Tarzan originated with Disney in 1999. Replies quickly pointed out the long history. Interpreting this is a little difficult. The long history of Tarzan was much discussed by bloggers and journalists, many of whom (see negatives below) evinced a negative attitude toward the film on the grounds that Tarzan has been “done to death” over the years, etc. There appears to be a gap between the high awareness of the Tarzan cinematic history at the level of journalists and bloggers; and lack of awareness at the level of likely moviegoers.
King Kong and Planet of the Apes References: Many reacted to the trailer by referencing King Kong and Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
The Loin Cloth Debate: Quite a few comments about Tarzan’s apparent lack of a loin cloth, and wearing of “cargo pants” instead. This tended toward the negative,but there was counter-commentary favoring it. Mostly neutral but a buzz topic for future reference.
Negatives to Watch Out For
Too Much CGI or “CGI Sucks”: A certain category of “knowledgable” commenter surfaced and there were repeated critiques of the CGI, usually followed by “but they have time to fix that” . . . . It is difficult to tell whether this is a serious concern or not, as it is an “elite” type comment but one which can take root and multiply. Should be monitored closely, and countermeasures developed — such as selective release of clips where the CGI is complete and impeccable. Even then, a certain percentage of the CGI complaints will remain because some commenters hold the position that there is simply too much CGI in these kinds of movies, and whether it’s good or not is irrelevant. This is not a major issue but bears watching.
White Savior Storyline; Racist/Imperialist Overtones: This is potentially a more serious issue that stems from the perception that the underlying source material — specifically the 1912 novel — contains racist elements and an imperialist and Social Darwinism agenda. This surfaced repeatedly and for a time dominated, for example, the Facebook trailer thread, holding the top spot in “top comments” with the OP drawing 457 “Likes” and hundreds of replies. This is a gnarly issue which WB needs to monitor closely and for which counter-arguments and other countermeasures need to be prepared.
Overall Takeaways
Given the fact that what little buzz there was prior to the launch was negative, with predictions of a Pan-sized flop or worse, I can only give the launch a full A for successfully turning most of the negativity around and establishing a palpable positive vibe for the project as the promotion now rolls forward. There were a number of shrewd choices in this initial dump that all have contributed to achieving a “positive buzz” situation. Here are a few that come to mind:
The Teaser Trailer
The teaser trailer is a success and is the cornerstone of the campaign — as is the case with all movie campaigns. Other aspects can create awareness and interest — but the trailer is the typically the make-or-break component that either motivates audiences to get excited, or leaves them in “meh” land. The LOT trailer is very smartly put together on a number of levels. After displaying Skarsgard’s abs shamelessly (and effectively) in the first still released — the trailer never gives the audience enough of a view to annoy, which it would surely do if the abs had been showcased in the trailer as obviously as in the stills. Other smart decisions: Tarzan never speaks, and is repeatedly shown fleetingly or in long shot or in darkened images. A major decision that works brilliantly is the choice to feature Russel Crowe’s voice as narrator rather than use any of the standard “trailer narrator” voices. (That IS Russel Crowe, right? Someone commented that it isn’t.) He delivers the narration in a hushed, classical style, with killer gravitas that conveys mystery, intelligence, and credibility. The trailer script then makes use of Margot Robbie’s words as Jane, spoken in “around the campfire” tale-teller mode: “He is no normal man; he was thought to be an evil spirit; a ghost in the trees; no man ever started with less.” The script is good, and the voices (especially Crowe’s) are excellent, not generic — familiar yet unique.
Visually, the trailer also creates scope and scale with many shots empasizing depth of composition — the aerials of the river; a shot from over Tarzan’s shoulder from high, high in the trees; we repeately see horizons, aerial shots, or shots that otherwise convey scope and scale and epic feel. The actors are fine, and each has his moment (except, unfortunately, Djimon Hounsou who is there but not recognizable on computer screens, as evidenced by the failure of all of the YouTube trailer “reactors” to recognize him.)
Finally the music — excellent, boldly borrowed from the Halo 4 tie-in web series, driving and urgent, abstractly ethnic, and with a hint of James Horner/Avatar to it (maybe more than a hint) — pretty much “perfect pitch” for the movie, and clearly a success based on the social media commentary.
Overall — trailer is a success and gets a solid A.
(and by the way — check out Batch 1 and Batch 2 of Trailer reaction videos. Like having a focus group only better. )
The Key Messages
The key message pumped out by WB is that this is a “new take” on the Tarzan material which “tells the story in reverse” — starting from a point where Tarzan is living a gentrified life in England and taking him back to Africa. This message is embedded in the synopsis and other materials — and was reinforced with quotes from Yates and Skarsgard. To a large degree it seems to have worked, as this seems to have been at least provisionally accepted by bloggers and journalists as “something new” and serves as a defense against the “done to death” and “no one wants Tarzan in 2016” argument that hovers over the campaign and will continue to do so.
A secondary message that seems to be well-received is “there is a real historical backdrop” in that the film is situated in the Congo Free State under Leopold 2, and incorporates two interesting historical characters — George Washington Williams (played by Samuel Jackson) and Leopold Rom (played by Christoph Waltz). This message was only touched lightly,but appeared to have been well received and seen as a plus. It appears to be worth developing further in ensuring weeks and months.
From the director of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: This is embedded in the trailer and based on the comments has had favorable impact. David Yates is clearly an asset and more can and should be made of him as a promotional asset an way of building the reputation of the film in advance.
Pandora on Earth: This one was buried a little bit in a quote that didn’t make it into too many of the articles, but watch for it to return: ““A lot of movies, you have to go to the far reaches of the galaxy to find extraordinary beauty and amazing things,” Yates says. But, he adds, “they’re right here on the planet. They exist just a few thousand miles away.”
Avoiding the Pitfalls Going Forward
The two major negative themes identified above are the biggest buzz-threat — “crappy CGI” and “not another white savior pic” and variations thereof. As noted above, although there were many, many comments about the CGI, most were willing to give a temporary pass on this score, on the theory that with six months to go, the CGI can be improved. The quick willingness of commenters to critique the CGI is indicative of the degree to which audiences — particularly influencer/commenters — have become sensitized to this. Much of the comments addressed the apes — and Rise of the Planet of the Apes is clearly considered to be the gold standard. It is important that the ape CGI meet that standard — and that the promotion reinforce the fact that no stone is being left unturned in achieving that level. Other aspects of the CGI matter too — but the apes are key.
The other theme that may bedevil the project is resistance to what has become known as the “white savior” theme. We don’t know the plot yet — but judging from the trailer, it seems clear that Tarzan comes back to Africa and, aside from having to deal with Jane being abducted by Rom, has to deal in some fashion with depredations by the Europeans under Rom upon the land, the creatures, and presumably the black inhabitants as well. Quick shots of thousands of buffaloes rampaging through what appears to be a mining town, plus the shot of the apes charging, suggest a scene reminiscent of the animal attack in Avatar. (Actually, the whole setup sounds similar to Avatar — hopefully not uncomfortably so.) We also see Tarzan fighting Djimon Housou, but we don’t get a context. Presumably he defeats Houmsou, and in some fashion gains a position of honor an respect, if not leadership, with the Housou’s warriors. There are pitfalls in all of this — if it takes a white Englishman to organize and lead the resistance against the Belgian overlords, some will see that as perpetuating the white savior mythology that many find offensive — particularly so outside the US where the film is expected to do well. Hopefully WB marketing folks see this one coming and are preparing countermeasures.
If you’re still with me at the end of all this, thank you for hanging in there. I would imagine the audience for the full detail of this report is very small — but maybe there is someone in the mix who will find it helpful in some fashion to the actual campaign. My interest is in protecting the legacy of Edgar Rice Burroughs — and helping in any way I can to introduce ERB to a new generation of fans. I’m deeply grateful to Warner Brothers for stepping up and investing the money it took to make this movie, and the additional money that it will take to market it. Anyone who follows the industry press knows how much second guessing WB has gotten for the decision to green light this project. I’m also grateful to David Yates and the late Jerry Weintraub for approaching this project with savvy and discipline that was lacking in the 2012 Edgar Rice Burroughs screen adventure. It’s far too early to know whether or not we have a hit on our hands — but I’m 100% confident that the prophets of doom (who have grown very quiet, by the way) were wrong; there is something of substance here, and the presentation of it in the marketplace is off to a good start.
(At the suggestion of someone who will remain nameless, I’m including a thumbnail bio and a link to the cautionary tale of what went wrong with John Carter that I wrote in the aftermath of that debacle. Truly hoping that if there is a book in this movie, it has a happy ending.)
Michael Sellers is an author and independent filmmaker and former distribution executive His filmography is available at his IMDB Profile. His 2012 book John Carter and the Gods of Hollywood has been an Amazon bestseller for most of the last three years, and has been #1 in Business and Money/Sports and Entertainment as recently as November 2015.
Alexander Skarsgard #1, Margot Robbie #2 on IMDB Starmeter after successful launch of Legend of Tarzan Trailer
Here’s a link to a Legend of Tarzan article with a twist
Michael Sellers says:
WB is being completely sane about the whole promotion — they “get it” — and it just makes it that much harder to fathom how Disney could have been so obtuse. Although as soon as I write that, the answer comes to me — Disney is all about the Disney brand and to the extent they thought about it at all, they wanted to turn John Carter of Mars, which is not a “Disney” type brand, into a Disney brand. So they thought about 10-14 year old boys, and tried to figure out how to pitch it to that audience, in the process developing a fixation on the White Ape and losing track of the rest of it. Arggghhhh….thinking about it makes me crazy. Meanwhile, with WB we have sensible, smart people who grasp what the appeal of the material is and seem to have cracked the code, at least for now, on how to present it appealingly. What a difference.
mikeydean says:
I was very pleased with both the trailer and the reaction. I had not read Burroughs until I heard about the John Carter film. I read the first three Barsoom books prior to that film, and have since re-read them twice. I have also read the first four Tarzan novels. I hope this will be the movie that gives me Burroughs’ Tarzan.
The positive reaction to “From the director of Harry Potter,” coupled with the warm memories of the 1999 “Tarzan,” definitely show how much more Disney could have done with John Carter. “From the creator of Tarzan and the director of Finding Nemo” could have done wonders.
Glad you saw some who recognized him. There is a shot in the trailer that the trailer-cutter clearly intended to be an ID shot for him, where people recognize him, but it’s only on screen for 14 or 16 frames …….needs to be at least 20. It’s this shot: Anyway, that’s a quibble, not a serious problem, but I feel bad for Djimon. He’s been tweeting and is proud of the movie ….. he should get “equal ID” with SLJ and Waltz . . . .
Maggiesview says:
Thanks for correlating all this data and for the comprehensive analysis. I agree with you on all points. Actually, however, I found 3 trailer reactors that recognized Djimon Houspu under that leapard mask, Incredible costume by the way. Most , however did not. I think his story arc is important. So we will most likely see more of him on upcoming trailers. Most people don’t know who SJ plays but when they find out, I think it will ho a long way toward lessening the ” white savior” fears along with the importance of Chief Mbongo’s role.
Norman Ray says:
Awesome article!
There were relatively few comments about that, less than I feared anyway, but one pitfall that should also be adressed later on by WB is Jane’s “damsel in distress” status. In spite of the comments by David Yates basically stating that it’s a modern take on Jane, she IS indeed in the teaser a prisoner. Later trailers will probably expand on other aspects of her character.
A little nitpick, the teaser soundtrack doesn’t seem to originate from from the Halo 4 video game per se, but from a Halo 4 tie-in web series.
Thanks for all the data wrangling. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by what seems to be an overall favorable response to the trailer-the usual commenters who will criticize anything just to criticize excepted.
I’m not having a major problem with the CGI, I think overall it does look good, and I know that they’re still probably working on it and tweaking it. I do think the vine swinging looked too fake and cheesy, though.
The ‘white savior’ possibility is an issue though, and a legitimate question. I’d like to think that the actors involved, especially Alex, Djimon and SLJ, wouldn’t have gotten involved if Tarzan were just going to be the ‘white savior’. This trailer wasn’t very helpful in that regard, so I do think it’s something that WB will have to deal with in upcoming trailers and any extended clips they might show at any upcoming conventions like Wonder Con.
As the the trailer’s narrator, that doesn’t sound like Russell Crowe.
I was just telling my wife tonight that what this feels like is that Legend of Tarzan has gained acceptance into the “blockbuster” club of movies that have buzz and anticipation and some degree of expectation. I was struck by how, with John Carter, we never got beyond feeling like an orphan . . . .black sheet, outcast, whatever . . . . the marketing was just so bad that there was nothing but gloom and doom on all sides, and then there were the diehard holdouts hoping for a miracle. My point in bringing it up here is that yes — sequels are actually starting to sprout in my mind. I feel like we could really get them……and who knows, if WB is successful with Tarzan, I know another ERB property that’s looking for a studio home.. . .
lindie825 says:
I really enjoyed the analysis. This looks like an incredible amount of work, so thank you. I do hope WB provides more information about the story so people can start to disassociate it from the Disney version. I find it interesting how hostile some people are in their comments about the deviation from what they believe is the source material.
I was fortunate enough to read several of the books when I heard the movie was coming out. The breadth of material is astounding and, if this is done well and is successful, there should be more opportunities for future movies and to expose a whole other generation to a Tarzan beyond the cartoon — maybe people with want to read the books, too. There’s plenty of adventure to be had. 🙂
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Award Winning Writer Steve Snyder, Author Of Military Aviation Book ‘Shot Down’, Announces Lineup Of July 2018 Events
Jul 11, 2018 | Art
‘Shot Down’ has received 28 industry awards. Snyder’s father was shot down over Europe during WWII. ‘Shot Down’ is a dramatic retelling of the stories surrounding that event. The book was recently placed on the CAF Recommended Book List
WILMINGTON, NC, July 11, 2018 /24-7PressRelease/ — Multi-award winning author Steve Snyder, author of ‘Shot Down’, has announced his events lineup for July, 2018. Snyder will be making appearances in Colorado and Wisconsin.
Snyder’s father Howard was a B-17 pilot who was shot down while flying the Susan Ruth (named after his daughter) while flying over the French/Belgium border. The mission set out to bomb Frankfurt, Germany. The book covers the events leading up to and following that day. Of the 10 man crew, some died, some were captured and some, including Howard Snyder, evaded capture.
Snyder’s list of appearances include:
July 14 & 15 – Book signing at the The Collings Foundation Wings of Freedom Tour stop at the Fort Collins/Loveland Municipal Airport in Loveland, CO
July 21 & 22 – Book signing at Janesville Warbird Weekend at the Southern Wisconsin Regional Airport in Janesville, WI
July 23 – PowerPoint presentation followed by book signing in the EAA Welcome Center tent at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, WI
July 24 – PowerPoint presentation in the EAA Aviation Museum Hilton Theater followed by book signing EAA Aviation Museum Author’s Corner at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, WI
July 26 @ 8:30 am – Book signing in the EAA Warehouse Author’s Corner at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, WI
July 28 – PowerPoint presentation in the EAA Aviation Museum Vette Theater followed by book signing at EAA Aviation Museum Author’s Corner at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, WI
July 28 – Book signing in the EAA Sky Shoppe Author’s Corner at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, WI
‘Shot Down’ has received numerous high profile industry awards. These include:
2017 TopShelf Magazine Editor’s Choice Award
2017 Independent Press Awards – Winner Military Nonfiction
2017 John E Weaver Excellent Reads Award – Winner Non-Fiction Military
2017 Book Excellence Awards – Finalist Military
2017 New York City Big Book Awards – Winner Military Nonfiction
2016 Online Book Club Book of the Year Contest – Winner
2016 The Author’s Show 50 Great Writers You Should Be Reading Contest – Winner
2016 National Indie Excellence Awards – Winner – History – US
2016 National Indie Excellence Awards – Winner – Military Non-Fiction
2016 Beverly Hills Book Awards – Winner Non-Fiction Military
2016 Global Ebook Awards – Silver Medal Winner Non-Fiction Military
2016 Shelf Unbound Best Indie/Self-Published Book Competition – Notable Book
2015 Books and Authors Book of the Year – Winner Non-Fiction Military
2015 Next Generation Indie Book Awards – Winner Military
2015 International Book Awards – Winner History: General
2015 Readers’ Favorite Book Awards – Gold Medal Winner Non-Fiction Historical
2015 Kindle Book Awards – Finalist Non-Fiction
2015 Next Generation Indie Book Awards – Finalist Historical Non-fiction
2015 Independent Publisher Book Awards – Silver Medalist History (U.S.)
2015 Independent Author Network (IAN) Book of the Year Awards – Outstanding Non-Fiction (General)
2015 Independent Author Network (IAN) Book of the Year Awards – Second Place Winner
2015 NABE Spring Pinnacle Book Achievement Awards – Best Books Military
2015 Nonfiction Book Awards – Bronze Medal
2015 eLit Awards – Gold Medal History
2014 Foreword Reviews’ INDIEFAB Book of the Year Awards – Finalist War & Military
2014 USA Best Book Awards – Finalist History: General
2014 USA Best Book Awards – Finalist History: Military
2014 Southern California Book Festival – Honorable Mention General Non-Fiction
Snyder’s book is utterly unique in that it details the varied, detailed, and amazing stories of what happened to each crew member. Snyder’s father, Howard, was missing in action for seven months. Readers are given the opportunity to read the letters and documents that were exchanged before and after the Susan Ruth was shot down. ‘Shot Down’ is filled with photos that enhance the presentation of these extraordinary WW II events that must never be forgotten. Steve Snyder has gone to the extreme to capture the details that make ‘Shot Down’ a one-of-a-kind dramatic presentation, told by a writer who was in the very middle of the story as it happened.
Reviewers have praised ‘Shot Down’. Publishers Weekly stated, “This is a great introduction to the history of the U.S. air war in Europe, humanized by the experience of a single bomber crew.” The European Center of Military History said, “Steve Snyder has reached a level of scholarship few amateur historians achieve.” Foreword Reviews called it a “masterful book.” Midwest Book Review called it “An inherently fascinating and deftly written account.”
Steve Snyder is available for media interviews and speaking engagements and can be reached using the information below or by email at [email protected]. ‘Shot Down’ is available at Amazon and other book retailers. An in-depth interview with Snyder can be accessed at The Authors Show site. More information is available at his website at http://www.stevesnyderauthor.com.
Steve Snyder retired from VSP in 2009 after 36 years in national sales and sales management, He began his quest to know everything possible about the World War II experiences of his father, pilot Howard Snyder, and his crew of the B-17 Susan Ruth. Gradually, it became his passion and resulted in ‘Shot Down’. He belongs to numerous World War II associations and is president of the 306th Bomb Group Historical Association.
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MAGNIFYING, No. 18: Alexandra Harbold
For this episode of MAGNIFYING we spoke with Department of Theatre Assistant Professor of Directing and Co-Founder & Co-Artistic Director of the Flying Bobcat Theatrical Laboratory, Alexandra Harbold.
Our creative community here at the College of Fine Arts is diverse and wide spread. With the goal of gaining a deeper knowledge and awareness of the people within our community, we bring you MAGNIFYING, a series dedicated to showcasing the talent of our students, faculty, and staff.
Tell us about yourself: Name, where you are from, what you do and how you got into in your field of work My name is Alexandra Harbold. I grew up in Williamsburg, Virginia and earned my bachelor’s at Middlebury College in Vermont and my masters at the University of London, Goldsmiths College. My grandparents met playing opposite one another in a production of Noel Coward’s Hay Fever, so theatre always felt encoded in the DNA and lore of our family.
What has surprised you the most in your life? Where we find and make our homes and lives. Having grown up on the East Coast, I always expected to land there. When I was in London for grad school, I felt like I’d found home. Which made coming back to the States challenging in new ways – I found myself looking for that kinship I felt to London and couldn’t really find it. I’ve lived in New York City, Seattle, and Chicago… When we moved to Salt Lake City for my husband’s work, we thought it was a stopgap and that we would only be here for a year or two. That was in 2004.
What do you wish you had known/been told? I wish I’d recognized that the sense of not knowing enough that used to get me tangled in knots was only problematic because I thought I was supposed to ‘get it’ the first time. As if our capacity to understand and create are fixed points, our once and future reality. Now I recognize that creativity and craft grow in direct correspondence to curiosity and resilience/stubbornness. In a SITI Company blog a few years ago, Artistic Director/author Anne Bogart wrote about the necessity of deep practice, referencing neuroscientists’ discovery that ‘only after 10,000 hours of practice is real progress and innovation possible.’ So I keep working towards that 10,000 hours.
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Interdisciplinary research team receives federal grant to investigate value and impact of the arts in medicine
"We Are Hartland!" Youth Performance
"American Pride" by PADP Alumna, Iris Salazar at Plan-B Theatre
Gavin Yehle, 2019 Outstanding Senior
"Sweat" at Pioneer Theatre ft. Theatre Faculty
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In Communist California, the Only Acceptable Excuse to Avoid Mercury/Aluminum-Laden Vaccines Is DEATH! CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS THE ONLY SOLUTION!!!
Submitted by Dave Hodges on Monday, September 16, 2019 - 12:06.
In Communist California, the only acceptable excuse to avoid mercury/aluminum vaccines is DEATH! Mandatory vaccines is just the beginning of a new flavor of governmental tyranny! Gun confiscation is next and history speaks as to what will follow.
Recently, KTAR talk show host, Bruce St. James proclaimed that all vaccines are completely safe and nobody should ever question the efficacy of taking any vaccine. KTAR is the top rated radio station in Arizona. Uniformed and arrogant ignoramuses, like St. James, comprise the bulk of the reasons why I refuse to listen to this false propaganda spreading radio station. Unfortunately, this mindless obedience, despite scientific proof to the contrary, constitutes the continued spreading big pharma's financial goal of forcibly jabbing every arm in America. Please tell us when does any type of medical treatment ever present without the manifestation of symptoms? If Bruce St. James had been in my research course, he wouldn't have made it out of the midterm. Yet, St. James' station allows him to go on the air and spread this vile big pharma serving lies which defy statistical probabilities. I can guarantee you that right now, there dozens of statistics and research professors who are nodding their collective heads in agreement. However, they don't dare say a word because their collective
With regard to the "no exucses" vaccine issue. I am awaiting the retaliatory law suits that will inevitably come because some child dies who had a health condition that contraindicated vaccinations. However, in the wisdom of the California's Communist Party (CCP), there can be no exemption, no exceptions, except for death.
KTAR used to be a conservative station serving a conservative state. Unfortunately, Arizona has been "Californicated". I have often thought of marketing a T-shirt which says "Don't Californicate Arizona". Has this happened to your state? Texas is being overrun by Californicators who threaten to participate in gun confiscation. Texas school districts are looking at implementing some of the same radicalized sex education programs where they think it is appropriate to propagandize elementary school children with, shall we say, alternative choices for sexual activity. Yes, and Texas politicians have discussed mandatory vaccines without exception.
Across the nation, we are even seeing curriculum in which pedophilia is listed as a sexual preference. I hope that these poor young innocent victims have had their vaccinations against STD's because they are going to need them.
Since when did we all the state, any state, to supplant parental authority, negate the religious right to refuse certain medical treatments and allow the state to put every at risk all in the name of big pharma profits. Show me the replicated studies which dictate vaccine efficacy in all cases. Oh, we can find an isolated, here and there, in which doctored results demonstrate the desired results. However, that has not prevented big pharma from having their way with our children and our collective health as a society.
Because of the nature of California's no exceptions law, children and adults are now exposed to higher rates of Alzheimer's disease, dementia, autism and whole host of other health conditions.
Isn't interesting that California does nothing about the leprosy and soon-to-be bubonic plague ridden homeless communities in LA, but they will dictate, to your children what vaccines they must take without exception and regard for their individual health conditions and religious beliefs. One of the fundamental belies of the Communist Party is that the State will raise your child. Who could ever forget the misguided book written by none other than Hillary Clinton, that it take a village to raise a child. I think Clinton meant, it takes the Village People to raise a child. .
It is time for civil disobedience! Home-school your children and will not have to worry about the perverts that have invaded your child's school. You will not have vaccinate your children. Also, America is facing the imposition of such onerous liberal policies, that we better hone our civil disobedience skills. Government is taking a dark turn and we better learn how to exist without government cooperation. It is going to get a lot worse and it will not likely ever get better.
We have 2 other tools Dave....
Joe Tue, 09/17/2019 - 01:43
The American people had 2 extremly powerful tools to fight tyranny. The jury that could reject any tyrannical law. It was used successfully by American juries to get rid of alcohol prohibition. There was also a time when most Americans belonged to a militia. t was a major deterrent to government acting in a tyrannical manner. Out of Ca's 40 million residents, a milita of 5 to 10 million could easily exist and even a million man militia in CA would likley stop a lot of the tyranny dead in its tracks just by being there. The problem today is that much our milita is controlled opposition and many of its members are ex standing army (US military) and have no clue as to what the milita actually is. Most of these ex military people think..
CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE IS THE ONLY SOLUTION EVER!!
Charles Denova Tue, 09/17/2019 - 12:48
I stopped being a member of the "law abiding" chattel long ago. The word "mandatory" doesn't exist for me. You want gun confiscation?? ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕcomrades!! The only authority in my life is the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ is MY King. I do not live in Commiefornia, but they will try to come for ALL of us by making this God rejecting abortionist loving sodomistic country the USSA.
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Episode 69 – Dick on Dick
“What have you been up to?”, slime water, the un-skippable cut scene of the National Anthem, defending a woman’s honor and reading between the lines, Mr. Fancypants does a bad job pitching his novel, songs for Denzel, Asterios vs. Madcucks, the Dick Show calendar, life in low-definition, High School Musicals, Facebook News, Christian Ronaldo fighting muggers, Lacy’s non-existent ideal man, expensive bombs, and the ennui of leverage; all that and more this week on The Dick Show!
Layc Nichole
Playmate, Journalist.
Is a Rage!
Mr. Fancypants
Author. Weird-pisser.
The championship sash has been ordered, the venue has been lied to, and the models have been hired! There’s only a couple weeks until ROAD RAGE: LOS ANGELES The City of Failure, October 13th, and according to Diego, there’s just about that many tickets left. Sean will be there, Layc will be there, Asterios will be selling t-shirts; if you care about America, you better be there too! And for maximum patriotism, the venue is standing only! Put buying tickets on your list of shit to do this week in between being outraged at shit. It will change your life.
But first…
eSports AKA televised video games competitions AKA “WTF, people make money doing this?” will have arrived as a viable sports entertainment product when the Department of Defense starts playing them huge amounts of cash to stage ostentation displays of patriotism during their games for recruitment and marketing purposes, including but not limited to, starting every match with the giant un-skippable cut scene that is standing and being quiet and not drinking my beer and looking around at hot chicks’ boobs from behind my sunglasses for the American national anthem.
I’ve disrespected more national anthems at sporting events than I can count because I’m a drunk and it’s boring. If someone came up to me at a bar and shoved an iPad playing the last five minutes of Saving Private Ryan into my face or asked their wife what she thought about the costuming in “Hamilton” before he went to get beers, I would take a knee and then punch them right in their ballsack, not because I’m anti-America, I’m so patriotic the ice hockey foosball national anthem gets me hard, even though it sounds like Charlie Brown’s teacher trying to sing it with a cock in her mouth–I’m just not there to be doing that. I’m there to get drunk and have fun and maybe get kicked out for doing too much of both.
I’m a drunk and I’m bored, and I also have a highly sensitive scam radar, which this is.
We’re a world of fan boys, iPhone vs Android, Nintendo vs. growing up, advertising vs. advertising; and national virtue-signaling is starting to feel like a Spy vs. Spy comic, where both sides will go to any length and resort to absurdist, Rube Goldberg-ian machinations not based in reality to make the other guy look like the asshole. But no one even know what those guys were fighting over, much less which Spy was the good guy. I always assumed it was the white one, but I can’t explain why. Maybe that’s really what all these protests are about.
The national anthem is like dating a girl who insists on exchanging a perfunctory “I love you” every time you talk. It’s annoying, but I get it. It’s important to her. And her ex-boyfriend who had a weird principle about not saying it unless he “really meant it” is the one you’re always hearing her bitch about. He’s an idiot too, but I get it. I’m just sick of hearing aout it. Maybe that’s really what all these protests are about.
The national anthem protests are one more unsolicited “fuck you” in a universe of fuck you’s that is never-ending and always expanding, homogeneous in it’s contempt for me, certain in its exigence, and completely void of creativity as the conceptual “fuck you” gradually finds its quantum in the dumb voice of a new Spongebob meme. I’m annoyed by that, and as I type it, I realize maybe that’s what all these racial protests are really about, some deep, inexplicable sense of being set upon by a universe of contempt and loathing.
Money isn’t the root of all evil, taking shit too seriously is, and this is what happens when you take all the fun, non-serious shit out of life like excessive touchdown celebrations, kick-off returns and domestic violence, you get a bunch of somber opinions and sociopathy pageants. It would be great if everyone could ratchet the seriousness-taking down the contextually appropriate metaphorical equivalent of the PATRIOT Act. Ironically, I think the only fix for all of the above is an entertaining distraction.
Anyway, here’s the picture my nephew drew at dinner. More of this, less of everything else.
MCMC sings a love song to Sean.
Savestate Corrupted is inspired by Denzel, but not in a good way!
Vistas, Jay Stevens, and The_Zoo present “Jelqin’ on a Dong”. Hit up Urban Dictionary if you don’t know what they’re talking about.
All class, all ass thumbnail by HeHeSilly Comics. You want to see some bullshit, check out why she was banned from Twitter!
Author Dick MastersonPosted on September 26, 2017 May 8, 2018 Categories Episodes
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Industry --> Accomodations & Lodging Arts & Entertainment Automotive Business Services Children's Services Cleaning and Maintenance Computer and Internet Education & Training Financial Services Food Health and Beauty Home Based Home Services Other Pets & Animals Retail Security Senior Care Sports and Leisure Telecommunications Travel Vending
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Home | Franchises | FREE Advice | Latest Additions | Updated Recently | Top Franchises | Franchise News | Contact
Specialty Pizza Franchises Opportunities
Below is a list of Franchise Opportunities that have been labeled as Specialty Pizza Franchises.
241 Pizza Franchise
96 successful locations in Canada and GROWING! * Managed by talented professionals with a proven track record and a dedication to succeed. * A competitive start-up cost for a "turnkey" operation has high Return on Investment (ROI) potential.
Al's Pizza Franchise
The Al's Pizza business model is based on an overall theme of quality. The fundamentals include: * Award-winning pizza * An impressive, competitive facility * The latest inventory and labor control tools * A passion for excellence Franchisees are provided with a development process that results in an impressive, high-quality facility.
Arizona Pizza Company Franchise
PROGRAMS AVAILABLE: 1. SINGLE-UNIT DEVELOPMENT: Franchisee opens a restaurant at a specific address Franchisee is able to open additional units based on franchisee's ability and desire to expand 2.
Boombozz Pizza Franchise
BoomBozz� wants potential franchisees to fully understand what they are getting into. Our style is to provide all the information up front so both parties can make a confident, educated business decision.
Boston Pizza Canada Franchise
Pizza & pasta family restaurant
Boston'<a href="https://thefranchisemall. com/clientcenter/listings/listing_modify.
Boston's Restaurant and Sports Bar Franchise
Sports Bar and Pizza
Boston's The Gourmet Pizza is a restaurant like no other. Boston's features many unique traits that set it apart from other dining venues , it's all about the food, the people and the heritage.
Bottoms Up Pizza Franchise
Full-service gourmet pizza, pasta, salads, and sandwiches
Bottoms Up is one of the most exciting opportunities in the franchise market today! The full-service restaurant offers customers gourmet products, excellent service, and an atmosphere where one can sit back and enjoy. The casual dining restaurant provides an upscale, sophisticated environment with modern, artistic elements.
Famoso Neapolitan Pizzeria Franchise
Neapolitan Pizzeria
Famoso Neapolitan Pizzeria was founded on the passion for authentic, fire-roasted pizzas from Naples, Italy. Naples is the birthplace of pizza, where eating a margherita pizza is a daily ritual and where culinary traditions in pizza making have gone unchanged for 200 years.
Firo Fire Kissed Pizza Franchise
Our visionary founder assembled a group of recognized restaurant experts and partnered with internationally renowned chefs to create an exceptional dining experience at a concept that is uniquely special, but still replicable. Now, Firo is bringing it’s fire kissed pizza to other parts of the country through the Firo Fire Kissed Pizza franchise program.
Flippers Pizzeria Franchise
We have been serving the perfect pizza since 1987 and now are inviting you to be part of our family through our franchise opportunity. Our secret for success is dedicated, passionate team members focused on exceeding our customers' expectations and therefore consistently providing the highest level in Value and Service.
Freshslice Pizza Franchise
Freshslice Franchise Blows Away The Competition! No Royalty fees forever! No Advertising fees forever! Before you think your eyes tricked you, you read the above information correctly. Freshslice's franchise really has NO royalty or advertising fees forever! This is one of the main reasons we grew from one location in 1999 to almost 80 today.
Gabriel Pizza Franchise
Gabriel Pizza offers a proven method of building successful and profitable franchises in the pizza industry. Gabriel Pizza has been a category leader in the National Capital Region of Canada since 1977.
Gatti's Pizza Franchise
Using the same original recipes the Eure family developed 40 years ago, the Gatti's Pizza brand is adding something else fresh to their menu: exciting franchise development opportunities. Once you join the Gatti's Pizza Franchise Family, you will be a part of the culture and history that have taken this brand to newer heights.
Glass Nickel Pizza Company Franchise
On November 5th, 1997 the first Glass Nickel Pizza Co. opened its doors in Madison, WI and has been making critically acclaimed delicious pizza ever since.
Hunt Brothers Pizza Franchise
With more than 6,000 locations in 28 states, Hunt Brothers Pizza is the nation's largest brand of made-to-order pizza in the convenience store industry. Family owned and operated for over 40 years and headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, the company provides all of the food products, marketing programs, equipment and training for convenience stores like yours to operate their own turnkey pizza program.
Italian Joe's Franchise
Become part of a growing global franchise; Italian Joe's is owned by Complete Express Foods, a privately held corporation dedicated to the design, development and marketing of fast casual restaurants. Complete Express Foods supports its franchisees by providing seasoned real estate guidance, ongoing operational support, and turnkey marketing programs designed to optimize profitability and boost register receipts.
Jet City Pizza Franchise
Gourmet pizza, grinders, wings & ice cream
Jet City Pizza Co. is an affordable investment: a delivery based restaurant is cheaper to start, operate and maintain than a traditional sit down restaurant, and we operate in a market that is 70% small business and not dominated by the larger chains, in fact the smaller chains continue to flourish.
Jimano's Pizzeria Franchise
Get a Piece of a Growing Industry with a Growing Franchise,Jimano's Pizzeria To stand apart we deliver a Proven System that shouts Superior Quality and Customer Service! To build a strong customer base and earn their loyalty we dish up Perfetto - the Perfect Pizza or any number of delicious entrees! To be a competitive franchisor we provide a Personal Touch and share our Passion for pizza & the industry with our Franchisees! Our proven Operating System covers all aspects of efficiently owning and operating a Jimano's Pizzeria Franchise. Jimano's has perfected an Operating System that is easy to learn and implement in your own Jimano's Pizzeria franchise store.
Johnny Brusco's Franchise
Johnny Brusco's and Johnny's Pizza are true New York Style Pizzerias, specializing in authentic hand-tossed NY Style Pizza, a variety of salads, appetizers, Italian Dinners, calzones, and stromboli. A sit-down, full-service restaurant that caters to customer service and a memorable dining experience.
LaRosa's Pizzeria Franchise
Buddy LaRosa was inspired to open his first pizzeria after the pizzas he made for a church fundraiser using his Aunt Dena's recipe turned out to be a hit. With $400 and a couple of partners, he opened Papa Gino's in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1954.
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Bold Gamble at Vicksburg
Ulysses S. Grant Devised a brilliant plant to capture Vicksburg. It broke a year-long deadlock and split the Confederacy in two.
“God Has Been Our Shield”: Stonewall Jackson at Cross Keys and Port Republic
At Cross Keys and Port Republic in June 1862, Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson and his men proved more than a match for Union forces.
Civil War Intelligence
The Bureau of Military Information was the most sophisticated intelligence-gathering system created during the American Civil War.
Colonel Kryzanowski
Polish-born Union Army Colonel Wlodzimierz Kryzanowski showed great skill handling his troops during key battles of the American Civil War.
Confederate General Joseph Wheeler
General Wheeler used his cavalry effectively against the Union army in the western theater.
The Battle of Rich Mountain
George B. McClellan forced the Confederates in northwestern Virginia to retreat into the Alleghenies in 1861. It fell to Robert E. Lee to bring stability to the situation.
Categories: Civil War, Latest Posts, Military History
“Let us Die like Men”
In his last battle in Franklin, Patrick Cleburne led his troops in an effort to pierce the Union defenses. His sense of duty outweighed his doubts.
Bound For Glory: Poet-General William H. Lytle
From a wealthy Ohio family, William Haines Lytle was destined for fame in politics and on the battlefield. He found the latter at a tragic cost.
Categories: Civil War
Antietam National Battlefield to Receive Trump Donation
A generous donation from President Donald Trump will go toward maintaining the site of the Civil War's greatest turning point.
Robert S. Garnett: First General to Die in the Civil War
On July 13, 1861, Confederate General Robert S. Garnett fell to Yankee bullets in the Alleghenies.
The Worst Civil War Generals and Commanders
During the American Civil War, there were nearly 900 officers in non-militia service who were appointed to become generals. Here, William Welsh shares his list of the worst Civil War generals and commanders.
“Put the Boys In”: Confederate Cadets at the Battle of New Market
After Union General Franz Sigel moved into the Shenandoah valley in 1864, Confederate forces fell back and then attacked.
The Crime At Pickett’s Mill
Embarrassed by the recent setback at New Hope Church, Union General Sherman ordered an ill-advised attack on entrenched confederate positions.
Sherman’s March to the Sea
Union General William T. Sherman and his army cut loose from Atlanta in November 1864 and began cutting a swath of destruction across Georgia.
With Richmond in the distance, Union General George B. McClellan divided his army in two. Confederate General Joseph Johnston struck immediately.
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Review, technology
Why Realme Buds Air are a gateway to an AirPods like experience on a diet
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Why Dell’s XPS 13 is the modern MacBook Air
Back in 2012, Apple wowed the world with the launch of the MacBook Air. It was a culmination of many things that Apple had been...5 min
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OnePlus TV should be avoided right now, but its second coming could be glorious
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Why the Realme X2 Pro is the most impressive budget flagship of 2019
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Why Apple AirPods Pro are almost perfect
Let’s get one thing out of the way — using the “pro” moniker is an age-old marketing tactic and Apple is not the first one...3 min
Asus’s ROG Phone 2 isn’t just a great phone, it’s better than the OnePlus 7T
2019 has been the year of the OnePlus 7. In the first half of the year, it was all about the OnePlus 7 and OnePlus...3 min
Why Xiaomi’s MiTV 4X is the people’s smart TV
Smart TVs were a buzzword for the longest time. Every year at CES, brands like Samsung, LG and Sony would show you new resolutions, new...3 min
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Xiaomi’s Redmi Note range of smartphones have been the most popular smartphones in India in the last 3 years. And with good reason, as these...2 min
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Just like the iconic formula one car maker McLaren, the new OnePlus 7T Pro is a paradox. You love it undoubtedly but then you also...2 min
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HMD Global is a strange beast — while being home to Nokia’s smartphones, its phone doesn’t pander to the rat race of checking all boxes...3 min
Why the Realme 3 could be the best camera phone for less than 10k
Last year, Realme emerged out of nowhere. It was Oppo’s not so subtle attempt to take on the phenomenon Xiaomi’s Redmi brand has become in...1 min
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NEWS HOOKS Boston Strong
How strong are you? Running a marathon will inform you quickly about your personal strength, especially if you’re running the Boston marathon, still coping with the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bomber. I ran two marathons in 1999: Mayor’s Midnight Sun Marathon Anchorage Marathon and Cincinnati Flying Pig Marathon. I did both with Team in Training with the Leukemia Society and it was very rewarding. If you’re a well-being expert, doctor or author specializing in how to stay strong physically through life no matter what circumstance, now is the time to discuss exercise, nutrition and more in relationship to the Boston marathon. This news also has room for emotional well-being as people deal with the aftermath of tragedy and strive to move on from the horror two brothers inflicted on so many people.
Speaking of tragedy, another news story today involves this past weekend’s migrant boat disaster in which as many as 900 people may have died. If you work with immigration law, human rights or have anything to do with the migrant industry, the media will be looking for your statistics, sound bites and first-hand story accounts.
Today’s top news stories revolves around a lot of sports, actually. So, pick your favorite news hook and start running with it.
By Michelle Tennant|2016-10-13T16:38:01-04:00April 20th, 2015|
About the Author: Michelle Tennant
Good Morning America Producer Mable Chan calls Michelle Tennant a “Five Star Publicist.” Tennant, a partner and executive publicist with Wasabi Publicity Inc., calls herself a “storyteller to the media.” Her passion is telling “truly good stories” and “exclusively representing people who make a positive difference in the world.” For 25+ years, media friends have solicited her help in crafting news stories by requesting sources, sound bites, and statistics. An award-winning writer, Michelle peppers campaigns with insight from her master’s degree in human development, BFA from a top 25 drama school, and expertise seeing PR transition from typewriters to Twitter. She’s either spinning stories or spinning at the gym. After hours, she savors the Smoky Mountains with her husband, Siberian Husky, and backyard chickens. Learn more about her work through her column at The Huffington Post. Check out the clients she's currently pitching at SearchPressKits.com.
Why Getting Stuck in Life and Business is Good
The 3 Pillars of Marketing: Owned Media
Where You Live Is Important To Your Business!
PR Has Changed And So Have We!
You Are Clearer Than You Think You Are
Where Were You 10 Years Ago?
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Cloning of a toad prolactin cDNA: expression of prolactin mRNA in larval and adult pituitaries
N. Takahashi, K. Yamamoto, S. Kikuyama
A toad (Bufo japonicus) prolactin cDNA was specifically amplified from cDNAs constructed from the total RNA of adenohypophyses, employing the DNA polymerase chain reaction. Sequencing analysis revealed that the cDNA clone thus obtained was 602 bp in length, and encoded the C-terminal 134 amino acid residues of the toad prolactin molecule. The length of the toad prolactin mRNA was estimated to be about 1.0 kb by Northern blot analysis. The partial amino acid sequence deduced from the nucleotide sequence showed the following homologies between toad prolactin and the prolactins of other vertebrates: 69% with man, 80% with chicken, 81% with sea turtle, 91% with bullfrog and 38% with salmon. Using the cDNA as a probe, developmental and seasonal changes in prolactin mRNA levels in the pituitaries of toads were studied. Prolactin mRNA in the pituitary rose as metamorphosis progressed and declined at the end of metamorphosis. During the breeding season the pituitary content of prolactin mRNA was relatively high. This finding suggests that the increases in plasma and pituitary prolactin levels in larvae at metamorphic climax and in adults that remain in or migrate into water, as reported previously, accompany the increase in prolactin synthesis.
Complementary DNA
Rana catesbeiana
Anterior Pituitary Gland
Northern Blotting
Takahashi, N., Yamamoto, K., & Kikuyama, S. (1993). Cloning of a toad prolactin cDNA: expression of prolactin mRNA in larval and adult pituitaries. Journal of Molecular Endocrinology, 11(3), 343-349.
Cloning of a toad prolactin cDNA : expression of prolactin mRNA in larval and adult pituitaries. / Takahashi, N.; Yamamoto, K.; Kikuyama, S.
In: Journal of Molecular Endocrinology, Vol. 11, No. 3, 1993, p. 343-349.
Takahashi, N, Yamamoto, K & Kikuyama, S 1993, 'Cloning of a toad prolactin cDNA: expression of prolactin mRNA in larval and adult pituitaries', Journal of Molecular Endocrinology, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 343-349.
Takahashi N, Yamamoto K, Kikuyama S. Cloning of a toad prolactin cDNA: expression of prolactin mRNA in larval and adult pituitaries. Journal of Molecular Endocrinology. 1993;11(3):343-349.
Takahashi, N. ; Yamamoto, K. ; Kikuyama, S. / Cloning of a toad prolactin cDNA : expression of prolactin mRNA in larval and adult pituitaries. In: Journal of Molecular Endocrinology. 1993 ; Vol. 11, No. 3. pp. 343-349.
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title = "Cloning of a toad prolactin cDNA: expression of prolactin mRNA in larval and adult pituitaries",
abstract = "A toad (Bufo japonicus) prolactin cDNA was specifically amplified from cDNAs constructed from the total RNA of adenohypophyses, employing the DNA polymerase chain reaction. Sequencing analysis revealed that the cDNA clone thus obtained was 602 bp in length, and encoded the C-terminal 134 amino acid residues of the toad prolactin molecule. The length of the toad prolactin mRNA was estimated to be about 1.0 kb by Northern blot analysis. The partial amino acid sequence deduced from the nucleotide sequence showed the following homologies between toad prolactin and the prolactins of other vertebrates: 69{\%} with man, 80{\%} with chicken, 81{\%} with sea turtle, 91{\%} with bullfrog and 38{\%} with salmon. Using the cDNA as a probe, developmental and seasonal changes in prolactin mRNA levels in the pituitaries of toads were studied. Prolactin mRNA in the pituitary rose as metamorphosis progressed and declined at the end of metamorphosis. During the breeding season the pituitary content of prolactin mRNA was relatively high. This finding suggests that the increases in plasma and pituitary prolactin levels in larvae at metamorphic climax and in adults that remain in or migrate into water, as reported previously, accompany the increase in prolactin synthesis.",
author = "N. Takahashi and K. Yamamoto and S. Kikuyama",
journal = "Journal of Molecular Endocrinology",
publisher = "Society for Endocrinology",
T1 - Cloning of a toad prolactin cDNA
T2 - expression of prolactin mRNA in larval and adult pituitaries
AU - Takahashi, N.
AU - Yamamoto, K.
AU - Kikuyama, S.
N2 - A toad (Bufo japonicus) prolactin cDNA was specifically amplified from cDNAs constructed from the total RNA of adenohypophyses, employing the DNA polymerase chain reaction. Sequencing analysis revealed that the cDNA clone thus obtained was 602 bp in length, and encoded the C-terminal 134 amino acid residues of the toad prolactin molecule. The length of the toad prolactin mRNA was estimated to be about 1.0 kb by Northern blot analysis. The partial amino acid sequence deduced from the nucleotide sequence showed the following homologies between toad prolactin and the prolactins of other vertebrates: 69% with man, 80% with chicken, 81% with sea turtle, 91% with bullfrog and 38% with salmon. Using the cDNA as a probe, developmental and seasonal changes in prolactin mRNA levels in the pituitaries of toads were studied. Prolactin mRNA in the pituitary rose as metamorphosis progressed and declined at the end of metamorphosis. During the breeding season the pituitary content of prolactin mRNA was relatively high. This finding suggests that the increases in plasma and pituitary prolactin levels in larvae at metamorphic climax and in adults that remain in or migrate into water, as reported previously, accompany the increase in prolactin synthesis.
AB - A toad (Bufo japonicus) prolactin cDNA was specifically amplified from cDNAs constructed from the total RNA of adenohypophyses, employing the DNA polymerase chain reaction. Sequencing analysis revealed that the cDNA clone thus obtained was 602 bp in length, and encoded the C-terminal 134 amino acid residues of the toad prolactin molecule. The length of the toad prolactin mRNA was estimated to be about 1.0 kb by Northern blot analysis. The partial amino acid sequence deduced from the nucleotide sequence showed the following homologies between toad prolactin and the prolactins of other vertebrates: 69% with man, 80% with chicken, 81% with sea turtle, 91% with bullfrog and 38% with salmon. Using the cDNA as a probe, developmental and seasonal changes in prolactin mRNA levels in the pituitaries of toads were studied. Prolactin mRNA in the pituitary rose as metamorphosis progressed and declined at the end of metamorphosis. During the breeding season the pituitary content of prolactin mRNA was relatively high. This finding suggests that the increases in plasma and pituitary prolactin levels in larvae at metamorphic climax and in adults that remain in or migrate into water, as reported previously, accompany the increase in prolactin synthesis.
JO - Journal of Molecular Endocrinology
JF - Journal of Molecular Endocrinology
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Boston Cop Allegedly Faked Citation, Sent Driver Taunting Note
The note Officer Christopher Curtis allegedly sent the victim. (Karyn Regal/WBZ NewsRadio)
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BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — A Boston Police officer is off the job after prosecutors say he wrote a fake citation and sent it to a driver along with a threatening note.
Officer Christopher Curtis, hired in 2017, is suspended from the department without pay. He's charged with making a false report, witness intimidation, misleading an investigation, among other charges.
According to court documents, Curtis tailgated a man on I-93 north of Boston in his private vehicle, honking and partially forcing the alleged victim off the road.
Later, the alleged victim got a citation in the mail, demanding $790 in fines—along with the handwritten note pictured above.
"I have a 6 min video of you driving like an ASS HAT, and pulled up next to you and took your picture. Try fighting this...I DARE YOU!" the note read. "Hope it was worth it. SEE YOU in COURT."
The man who recieved the ticket did choose to fight it in court, but no record could be found of the state issuing the citation. Investigators determined the citation came from Curtis's ticketbook.
Officer Curtis allegedly told internal BPD investigators it wasn't him.
The ticket was marked to be from State Police, but the victim described Curtis's Toyota Tundra, and cell phone records show Curtis was in the area at the time.
WBZ NewsRadio's Karyn Regal (@Karynregal) reports
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Why the federal police are..
Why the federal police are urging you to check your superannuation balance
Australians are being urged to check their superannuation balances after a huge fraud syndicate, which hacked Australian superannuation accounts, was uncovered.
The syndicate stole identities and took more than $10 million from retirement funds and share trading accounts.
Melbourne woman, Jasmine Vella-Arpaci, 21, was yesterday charged with 53 fraud offences for her part in the scam.
The Australian Federal Police has asked Australians to check their superannuation balances as soon as possible to ensure they haven’t been defrauded.
Alex Dunnin, superannuation expert and director of research at Rainmaker, said most Australians rarely check their superannuation.
“You might do it once a year. If you’re doing it more than that you’re a super keen super fund member and there’s not too many of us out there!,” he told 3AW’s Ross and John.
He said this fraud could shake up the superannuation industry.
“I think this is going to be a Pearl Harbour moment for a lot of super funds.”
Mr Dunning said the scam seems to have been relatively unsophisticated.
“The weird thing about this particular fraud is that it seems that the person went through and contacted the fund and they changed your age,” he said.
“Therefore the super fund thought you had retired and therefore they were taking out pension-type payment withdrawals.
“I wouldn’t mind wagering that some of these IDs were probably found by somebody just going to apartment buildings.
“We’ve all been there and we’ve seen how there’s all of these letters all over the pavement, particularly when it’s raining, they’re overflowing from letterboxes at apartments where no one lives anymore.
“They may have just been picked up that way. It’s so easy.”
But if your superannuation account has been plundered, don’t panic.
“I would imagine that if a super fund has had a fraud like this, and they realise it, they’ll reimburse the member,” Mr Dunnin said.
Press PLAY below for more.
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Could Brexit cause me (a UK resident) to lose a .pm domain name?
I currently reside in the UK and sport a .pm domain name. Obviously as of next year the UK will no longer be within the EU. I'm wondering where that leaves me? Is there any alternative to giving up my domain name?
For reference it's a personal domain, my emails etc. I really wouldn't like to lose this.
domains top-level-domains cctld tld-restrictions
Maximillian Laumeister
razkirazki
What does a .pm top level domain have to do with the EU? WikiPedia says that the Australian prime minister was able to register one. – Stephen Ostermiller♦ Nov 28 '18 at 21:01
Actually, the UK isn't really leaving the EU with the current proposal. The Tories have made sure that we remain, in a watered down EU membership. The only way we can leave the EU fully is to have a hard Brexit. – Simon Hayter♦ Nov 28 '18 at 22:02
@StephenOstermiller Although the Wikipedia page also says that the "Registrant must reside in the European Economic Area [EEA]...". At least the aus.pm domain has a French contact address listed in the Whois. (I would have thought they could have gotten around the restrictions by using the Australian Embassy address in Paris? Although that doesn't appear to be the case.) – MrWhite Nov 28 '18 at 23:33
@StephenOstermiller Yes requires us to remain in the european economic area according to the terms. – razki Nov 30 '18 at 10:46
.PM is the ccTLD for "Saint-Pierre and Miquelon", a French overseas territory, and is currently being run by AFNIC as registry:
https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/pm.html
https://www.afnic.fr/en/products-and-services/other-french-tlds-top-level-domains/
The latest document on eligibility rules is at https://www.afnic.fr/medias/documents/Cadre_legal/Charte_de_nommage_25052018_VEN.pdf
You can learn in its article 88 about who can own a .PM domain name:
Any individual residing and any legal entity having its headquarters or principal place of business as specified below may apply to register or renew a domain name in each of the top-level domains:
within the territory of one of the member states of the European Union;
within the territory of the following countries: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland
The emphasis there of course needs to be on "European Union". And, due to European regulations, similar restrictions applies to many other European ccTLDs (or at least registries can not discriminate between EU citizens).
The current divorce between UK and EU is not exactly settled right now, so its consequences are not clear at this level of details.
If the rule above is not changed, one may argue that you are not entitled any more to a .PM domain name. To be 100% sure you will probably have to contact the registry (https://www.afnic.fr/en/about-afnic/contact/) but it is probably too soon.
Note that there is a precedent: .EU, handled by EURid, is in the same kind of problems... except that it received already clear directives from the European Commision on how to handle UK registrants of .EU domain names and right now it does not look good for them. Have a look at https://eurid.eu/en/register-a-eu-domain/brexit-notice/ for details. Maybe .PM will be in same spot (like the 5 others AFNIC ccTLDs: .FR, .RE, .TF, .WF, .YT, the above eligibility rules apply to all 6 of them), maybe not.
Right now not much but:
as explained above you can contact the registry and share your concerns; you might not get a definitive reassuring reply, but it is a first step
probably extreme, but you may wish, at least as a safeguard, to register some other kind of domain names and "prepare" yourself to switch to it, if nothing else works
you can also transfer ownership of the domain to some other third party that will still respect the eligibility rules and will basically be your proxy. Some points to take into account for this:
some registrars may provide you (for free or not) such kind of trustee/proxy service
make sure to carefully review the agreement you will need to sign as, for the registry and on all public records (whois, etc.) the other entity will be the legal owner of the domain; in case of disagreement between you and them you will have a lot of troubles to get your domain back
trustee/proxy services are forbidden in some TLDs; it could be a good idea to ask the registry about that in advance
DO NOT suppose that you can fake your address in the hope to pass the eligibility rules: in many TLDs, and including those run by AFNIC, so .PM too, there are regular checks on domain names, and if physical addresses are deemed wrong and not corrected it is ground for domain name cancellation
Patrick MevzekPatrick Mevzek
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← The Wrong Path
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Degüello
Posted on August 28, 2014 by gcochran9
There’s a new paper out on the genetic prehistory of the Canadian Arctic. Basically, it says that existing Eskimos replaced a genetically different population less than 700 years ago, and that those earlier Paleo-Eskimos (Dorset culture) represent yet another separate migration from Asia (in addition to the PaleoIndians, the Na-Dene, and the Eskimo). They put this in such a nice way: “the genetic continuity characterizing the Paleo-Eskimo period was interrupted by the arrival of a new population.”
Which likely means that the neo-Eskimos killed off the Dorset people. Obviously they weren’t farmers, the usual suspects in replacement, but the new guys had a more sophisticated technology ( and probably greater numbers) , with bows, large skin boats, dog sleds, whale-hunting gear, etc. The neo-Eskimos have certainly done their share of fighting in recent historical times – they went at it hammer-and-tongs with various Amerindian tribes.
This is fairly obvious, so much so that even the New York Times and the Washington Post mentioned extermination by the newcomers as a possible explanation. There is no mention of that possibility in the original research article, but I’m sure that some of the authors were quite aware of it. What they said is probably influenced by the fear that saying anything negative, no matter how true, might cause the Eskimos to refuse cooperation in the future.
This pre-agricultural genocide makes you wonder just how often similar wipeouts may happened in the past. Maybe the Gravettians and Aurignacians weren’t the same people.
This entry was posted in Amerindians, Eskimo. Bookmark the permalink.
70 Responses to Degüello
There exists craniofacial discontinuity between the EUP and later Paleolithic, maybe theres a clue.
Wrath says:
I have a hunch that the Kennewick genome (when revealed) will be 100% in support of your theory. Extensive extermination, limited interbreeding.
David P. Cavanagh says:
The timing is interesting. Some have argued that the Scandinavian/Icelandic expansion into Greenland was cut off about 700 years ago because the culture failed to adapt to new conditions imposed by climate change. Maybe the indigenous inhabitants of the American and Greenland arctic at this time were supplanted partly because they also failed to adapt to climate change.
I was just thinking that ‘climate change’ probably explains why the Germans withdrew from France in 1944.
Then it was not climate change that explains why the Scandinavians withdrew from Groenland?
‘died out’ is more like it. The weather got a little worse, in a place that was very marginal for Norse agriculture, and also Eskimos showed up. Sure, climate changes matter. But I see zillions of invocations of ‘climate change’ that make no sense, like this last one suggesting that ‘climate change’ killed off the Dorset Paleo-Eskimos, when it’s damned obvious it was the advent of the Thule culture, the current Eskimos, that caused it. They even have legends about it – wasn’t that long ago.
Judging from what I see, authors of scientific papers get a blow job every time they use that phrase. And I am also sick of explanations in which everybody conveniently dies out just before the invaders arrive. What crap.
“…from what I see, authors of scientific papers get a blow job every time they use that phrase.” I think I threw a rupture laughing after reading this.
As safe and lazy as the “climate change” explanation is, it’s a bit more credible than the ‘cultural transmission’ that media-connected dullards tell us spread Indo-European and, of great historical importance to us English speakers, Anglo Saxon.
Odd how Finns in Vyborg decided to abruptly take up Russian and forget Finnish, but then all those Romano-British did that too. Must be that Russian traders were high status or something in 1940. Immigration is good for the economy!
everybody conveniently dies out just before the invaders arrive
To be fair, climate change could both drive out the current population and lure in people who had different weather preferences. But yeah, it is annoying when people jump to an unlikely explanation first.
Actually, it’s entertaining on its own. It just becomes annoying when done over and over with no originality.
This is a case of climate variation vs climate change. A fairly small number of Norse settled Greenland during a warm spell. The following cold spell not only made survival hard on Greenland, it also hurt Iceland, so trading/supply ships stopped sailing for Greenland. When the climate improved and another ship finally sailed for Greenland there were no Norse left there. As Greg said, a small population in a marginal environment failed to ride out a cold spell.
Patrick L. Boyle says:
Things have been turning sour for poor Jared Diamond lately. In his book ‘Collapse’ he tells a morality tale about how the inflexible Europeans in Greenland died out when the weather changed rather than adopted the artic technology of the natives. That seems to mean that the Scandinavians went home to their Volvos and saunas. They should have just hunkered down with the friendly natives and waited out the cold snap, I guess. Long wait.
Your news about the real characteristics of the artic peoples comes right on the heels of the new analyses of Easter Island – another Diamond collapse fantasy. If the new findings hold up that will mean Diamond got every major point about the Rapa Nui collapse wrong too.
In his latest book – ‘The World Until Yesterday’- he tells an anecdote about how the people in New Guinea reacted to a child being accidentally hit while crossing a road. Somehow we are supposed to draw a moral lesson from their bloodthirsty reprisals. In fact we need no such lesson. There was a similar incident in a black ghetto where a white off-duty cop ran down a little black girl who jumped out into traffic. The black father and cousin tried to kill the badly injured cop. That was two years ago. The YouTube video has over four million hits, most of which scream for the cop’s blood.
Diamond likes to romanticize primitive peoples. They seem to only exist for him so as to provide a moral example for wicked American whites.
a very knowing American says:
There’s actually growing evidence that climate change caused drastic declines in Amerindian populations from the late 15th century on. The direct impact of European-introduced disease and dispossession has probably been greatly overstated.
There. Now who do I get in touch with about that bj?
Toad says:
“inflexible Europeans in Greenland died out when the weather changed rather than adopted the artic technology of the natives.”
I do not like them,
Arnakua’gsak-i-am.
I do not like
seal-blubber and bowhead brain-pan.
I will not eat them in an igloo.
I will not eat them with a Caribou.
I do not like them here or there.
I do not like them ANYWHERE!
Are you off your meds today? If you had bothered to read what I wrote, you would have noticed that I wrote “supplanted PARTLY because…”. And you might also have noticed that I never suggested that the Dorset culture died out before the descendants of modern Eskimos arrived; just that an inability to adapt to a changing climate might have weakened them up for, e.g., later conquest. It seems to me that you have previously suggested something similar for Neanderthals, modern humans, and the Ice Age. Who gave you your blow job back then ?
I don’t see how anything about this can be “damned obvious” unless you have a time machine.
Anyway there is a more recent and documented example of precisely the phenomenon I’m describing: It is pretty clear from the Jesuit Relations (See Parkman’s Jesuits in North America) that the northeast woodlands tribes of North America were adapted for a milder climate than that which developed in the 16th century, probably as a result of the Maunder Minimum. The northernmost Huron were hardest hit and in their weakened state were mercilessly marauded by the more southerly and less affected Mohawks. The Mohawk raids had the dual purpose of wiping out the Huron and recruiting Huron into the Mohawk tribe, which was also experiencing some demographic decline, probably as a result of changing climactic conditions. It’s unlikely that the Huron would have caved so completely to the Mohawk had they been better nourished and clothed for the climate in which they found themselves This is very similar to the scenario I suggested for the replacement of the Dorset culture.
I never suggested that Neanderthals were done in by the weather. Where did you get that idea?
The Thule totally outclassed the Dorset culture: they could hunt whales. They had dogs, dog sleds, bow and arrows – the Dorset didn’t. The Thule could have won while standing on one foot, patting their head, rubbing their tummy, and whistling the entire Art of the Fugue.
There is no evidence for a particularly bone-crushing climatic event that happened at the same time as the Dorset were snuffed. Certainly the Thule were moving into and expanding in the same areas and at the same time, which argues against it.
For whoever is listening, which hopefully includes everyone from coast to coast and all the ships at sea, you don’t construct a scientific theory by throwing your lunch (including dessert) at the wall and hoping that it all sticks, especially the trendy juicy parts. You try to find the simplest explanation that does the entire job.
The Dorset had managed to hang on in the Canadian arctic for almost four thousand years. Then the Thule show up and the Dorset evaporate in short order, with very low, maybe zero low gene flow into the new tenants.
What’s the simplest explanation?
Brilliantly put!
This sub thread contains the funniest comment exchange I have ever read.
I must admit I am surprised that honor would go to anything I read on this blog.
Jared Diamond was wrong about the cultural adaptivity of the Greenland Norse, as well as Easter Island.
Steel and lead hail pellets encourage migrations.
But there’s no archaeological evidence of the Norse being exterminated in Greenland: no skeletons with stone arrows in them, no layer of fire damage in the old buildings. First they abandoned the northern of their two colonies, then the southern. Given the reversal of the Medieval Warm Period, it’s pretty plausible that the last Norse inhabitants just left. There are plenty of equivalent ghost towns in the US aren’t there? And, in spite of the sentimental, romanticised chatter about the Highland Clearances, there’s ample evidence of areas where the population just threw in the towel and left. Trying to farm in a sub-Arctic terrain in the Little Ice Age was too miserable a lot for many Highlanders, in spite of their advantages (e.g. the potato); why not for the Greenland Norse?
Come to think of it, the last inhabitants of St Kilda gave up in the twentieth century, and asked the government to evacuate them.
Some of them returned to Iceland. I remember many years ago the Houston Museum had an exhibit on Vikings in the New World, They had an exhibit showing photographs of an abandoned church in Greenland. In the display case they had the records of this church opened to the record of the last marriage performed there. They also had records from Iceland with the names of the bride and groom who apparently lived happily ever after in Iceland. So some of the people returned to Iceland although this may have in part been motivated by Eskimo pressure.
There was an extensive series of exhibits from L’anse aux Meadows. I don’t know if the fate of the people who lived there is known. I lived in Newfoundland as a child but that was before the settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows was discovered. We lived on the South Coast near the Grand Banks and L’Anse aux Meadows is way at the northernmost tip of the West Coast almost 500 miles from where we lived. It must have been one of the loneliest places in the world to live.
Speaking of ghost towns I drove through one in West Texas once, As I was driving through I suddenly saw a man walking up to a mail box. Maybe he was a ghost.
Dipitty Do says:
I grew up with the story of the (terrible, horrible, no good, very bad,) Highland Clearances, and a lot of resentment against the (obviously English!) people who caused them. Since growing up and learning about things like ‘actual historical sources’ and not just believing any old drivel that people say, and, hell, just reading the Wikipedia on a lot of historical subjects, I’ve come to suspect that the “Clearances,” at least as described to me, never happened.
Well, at least I didn’t get my Scottish history from romance novels.
There were some Clearances, the most notorious being on the Countess of Sutherland’s estate, but it was sod all to do with The English unless you want to make a meal about her marrying an English boy. And her activities were designed in the best PC spirit of the age. That was the problem.
Jacobite says:
There was an intense increase in local warming.
That was Hitler’s plan for the Jews; to interrupted the genetic continuity of the jews.
I think you mean El Degüello
Frito Bandito says:
Strange.
One always gets the impression that eskimoes are short,silly, and happy-go-lucky folk, while the tall and dark older natives were the ones who would be more open to slitting throats open and taking names.
The Eskimo outfits make them look like teddy bears
The Dorset people were wiped out and/or driven out 700 years ago and the Dorset people are different genetically from modern Eskimos. How do the Dorset people compare genetically to modern Athabaskans? Are they more similar to modern Athabaskans than they are to modern Eskimos or are they also quite different from modern Athabaskans.
Which likely means that the neo-Eskimos killed off the Dorset people.
That’s the usual explanation one looks for, but the NYT article (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/29/science/study-offers-clues-to-arctic-mystery-paleo-eskimos-abrupt-extinction.html) says:
Their results suggest that the Paleo-Eskimos remained genetically isolated for thousands of years, and that the Dorset culture did not vanish through assimilation. Modern Inuits, then, are descendants of the Thule and not directly related to the Paleo-Eskimos. “This is surprising, because every time people meet each other we find evidence of sex between the people,” said Eske Willerslev, an evolutionary biologist at the Center for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen and an author of the study.
If the Dorset were killed off by the Thule, why is there no descent? After all, one of the best parts of genocide from a guy’s perspective is that you get your pick of all the nubile young women…
It’s the Arctic and you’re living on the knife’s edge anyway. When food gets scarce will you share with your slave/sex toy? If she lives through the abuse will she be able to take care of a kid? If she gives birth why not toss the squalling brat onto the ice? I bet you’d find more Dorset DNA in Eskimo husky remains than in the Eskimos.
All populations expand to the point where they live on the knife’s edge. All young warlike men want slaves and kids, and there’s never enough women to go around, whether you’re in the Amazon or the Arctic. If they tossed brats onto the ice every single time, their culture would collapse. Typically when one sees wholesale genocide like the one postulated like OP, there’s plenty of women taken who reproduce.
Would many Eskimo men have been able to feed additional women and their children? In the Arctic women produced no food from vegetable gardens or gathering or such female food production activities. So maybe it was not possible to support any excess of women which might have become available
Oh for heaven’s sake – so then a bunch of Eskimo women get kicked to the curb in favor of the nubile new slaves! Or are we postulating that every single captive would be uglier and older than all the Eskimo women? Trading up – not just for houses and cars.
In the Arctic women make no significant contribution to food production. Additional females taken into the group mean the same amount of food divided among more people.
There have been places where there were enough women to go around, and the population size and possibilities for expansion were effectively set by the number of male hunters and their effectiveness. It’s certainly not the human norm – in most climates, there’s enough calories to be gained from agriculture and/or gathering that a young woman is a net calorie producer, at least until the place gets really crowded. But maybe not in the Arctic.
I recall reading that in the North American tundra when food was short only the men ate and the women and children starved. I also recall reading that if a women’s husband died she and her children were doomed at least in the winter as other hunters had nothing extra for them.
During the season of the caribou food could be abundant for a while but by the end of the winter there was nothing to spare. I’ve read that when the caribou returned the men were so weak they could at first barely manage to kill the caribou.
simontmn says:
BB you are describing a situation like the one imagined to have produced those amazing blue-eyed blonde Scandinavian hotties. I mean, strong competition among females for a spouse. Somehow, the same environment has produced Eskimo females, who have yet to win a beauty contest. Explain.
You don’t toss the real children onto the ice. Only the slave’s children. In a marginal situation who gets tossed first your cousin’s kid who’s also your wife or the slave kid who’s just going to eat your kid’s food?
The fact is they left no genetic signature the only way for that to happen is for them to be dead. Maybe the Thule folk never took slaves at all or maybe they ate them? Whatever happened wasn’t sunshine and rainbows.
Kids are expensive, slave or otherwise. There should still be plenty of survivors to leave traces.
The fact is they left no genetic signature the only way for that to happen is for them to be dead.
Yes, and you know what’s a great way for them to all be dead, even the young fertile females, which doesn’t require absurd inferences about killing all nubile females or all their offspring the warriors beget on them? Especially for people who are “living on the knife’s edge anyway” and are in a “marginal situation” where it is often the case that “food gets scarce”? Some unlucky climate variation for a few years where everyone starves to death.
Yes the entire population voluntarily starved to death rather than sacrifice slaves, marginal members, abandon children and the elderly. That makes so much more sense than simply killing the defeated enemy.
But no it has to be climate change. If it was climate change then wouldn’t we see similar results everywhere in the neighborhood? Oh, it was localized climate change? Oh, I see now I am totally convinced that humans didn’t follow human nature.
What happened to the Chimakum? Climate change I am sure. When it starts raining blood I guess that counts as climate change.
Yes the entire population voluntarily starved to death rather than sacrifice slaves, marginal members, abandon children and the elderly.
Who says they didn’t abandon the marginal members first? Remember, being a Cthulhu cultist doesn’t mean you’re saved – it just means you’re the last to be devoured!
That makes so much more sense than simply killing the defeated enemy.
And more sense than not taking any women. Where were these Dorset going to get food when they ran into their version of gambler’s ruin? The local Whalemart?
Climate change is often localized. A bad winter in the Arctic doesn’t mean a bad winter in Arizona. A massive centuries-long drought in the American Southwest can crush anyone living there without crushing tribes outside that region. And so on and so forth.
When it starts raining blood I guess that counts as climate change.
Speaking of blood, where’s the Dorset traces in the Inuit blood…? Which was my original point.
Yes, Arctic peoples don’t maintain harems. This is one theory for whites having evolved blonde hair during the last Ice Age – to make women more attractive as mates, because even a successful hunter could only afford one wife. Further south polygamy was practical, and even Arab style cloistering of women.
Weltanschauung says:
Why then no blonk Eskimos?
You don’t see a lot of Amerindian admixture in olde-tyme New Englanders.
So, I am not an expert on the state of the art of population genetics or even at the level of Razib Khan, but when you say that, do you mean ‘I know, as a technical fact, that both the Eskimos and white New Englanders show exactly zero evidence of Dorset / American Indian descent and are exactly comparable’ or ‘no one has recently mentioned American Indian descent as being a large part of white New Englanders’ genome so I will lazily assume that American Indian traces are not observable at all in the same way that the Dorset are not observable’…?
Your implicit argument only works if the former is true.
The average level in New Englanders is well under 1%. My guess is that the Dorset could have contributed a comparable amount to the modern Inuit gene pool without it being detected, considering the small sample size and not-so-good quality of the DNA samples.
But it could have been zero: some nonzero amount of admixture is likely, but people do funny things.
“One always gets the impression that eskimoes are short,silly, and happy-go-lucky folk”
Don’t believe it. The Eskimo may be short, but silly and happy-go-lucky doesn’t get you very far living in one of the most inhospitable environments on earth. People whose normal lives approximate combat are generally pretty good at the real thing.
Also, “The Eskimo Sex Toys” sounds like a rock group from the early ’70’s. Just sayin’…
apunkbandnamedluckeyhaskins says:
“a rock group from the early ’70’s”
No, a punk band from the early 80s.
You have a point, but in fairness, I do remember a band from 1973 called “Savage Sex and Yogurt Show”. But yeah, probably more 1981…
RT says:
No source given, but I foggily remember reading that the Norsemen in Greenland experienced 2+ summers that were too short for the type of grain they were growing. After that they had not much of a chance: Either hope for reinforcements, die from hunger or take the last ship back to Iceland.
Must have been tough decisions.
They never could grow grain there. Grass grew: they mainly lived off cattle and sheep.
I just tried to come up with a better reference. I am translating from the German wikipedia (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gr%C3%A6nlendingar#Untergang):
“The Norvegian educational book Konungs skuggsjá (King’s mirror) reports in the 13th century that the Greenlandic farmers subsisted mainly on meat, milk (Skyr, a sour milk product similar to curd), butter and cheese. The archaeologist Thomas McGovern from the City University of New York has examined the nutrition of the Scandinavian Greenlanders by looking at their garbage heaps. He concluded that the meat consisted of 20% cattle beef, 20% goat and sheep, 45% seal, 10% caribou and 5% other meat. The inhabitants also did regular fishing.”
“Handmills found in several homesteads of the Eastern settlement imply that in specially favoured locations, grain was grown in small quantities. Mainly it must have been imported. The “Kings mirror” reports that only the most powerful persons grew a bit of corn for their own use.”
So, maybe a little grain, but not of major importance, unlike I remembered ;-).
I never realised that the Inuit weren’t the same people as the Skraelings of the Norse sagas. Still, the Norse had their genetic revenge 600 years later. When the Antarctic explorer Wally Herbert was looking for Greenland sledge dogs in the 1960s he described his Danish boat’s crew as “in great demand as lovers all along the east coast. No wonder the features of the Greenlanders are changing”.
Skyr is really nice stuff btw – the Icelandic equivalent to yogurt.
In Newfoundland, the “skraelings’ were probably Beothuk Indians. In Greenland, Inuit
There was also a useful grass – related to rye – that grew wild (my fallible memory says).
“Kvan”, “Engelwurz”, Angelica. According to the same Wikipedia article, “a major supplier of vitamins”.
engleberg says:
You left out ‘go a-Viking.’ Still a tough decision, but one made over and over by every Iron Age European fishing village every bad year for millenia.
gunther says:
“Inuit legends recount them driving away people they called the Tuniit… According to legend, the First Inhabitants were “giants”, people who were taller and stronger than the Inuit, but who were easily scared off.” [Wikipedia]
I recall reading, years ago (sorry, no link), about a Dorset archaeological site that seemed to indicate that this particular group had met with a violent end and found with their remains were arrows and harpoons of Inuit design. In that article the researchers previously thought the Inuit legend of driving out giants was mere fancy, were now considering it oral history.
nejtysk says:
Genocide is certainly not a useful word for this. We know of no mass killings of neighboring tribes by the new arrivals. Climate change during that era is a fact and the silly deniers again show up here,too, unfortunately. Vikings back then were not adapted to it. They called Greenland Greenland and not New Iceland. It makes sense to think it might have also played a role in the issue of the disappearance of the Dorset culture. Tribes often have warfare against neighbors so bigger numbers of newcomers could have simply taken over an already weakened culture. How many genomes are there of Dorset culture individuals and is there no connections in absolute terms? I mean, we also are partly Neanderthal so there is still a connection albeit no big one.
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Henry A. says:
“This pre-agricultural genocide makes you wonder just how often similar wipeouts may happened in the past.”
It makes me wonder just how often similar wipeouts are happening now and will happen in the future.
ernpr says:
Read some place back :they spent too much time praying and importing idols and like
tokens!
So, do you believe the Sadlermiut were remnant Dorset, or some weird hybrid culture in an isolated spot?
Eskimos replaced a genetically different population less than 700 years ago
I can’t believe that nobody’s suggested a Viking introduced pathogen wiping out the Dorset, following which the Innuit just moved in with little or no resistance. Maybe a virus from the Viking sheep, to which they had no prior exposure…. no, that would be the depths of madness to even imagine such a thing. /sarcasm>
bleach says:
Its hard to imagine how people in such a hostile climate, and living so close to starvation all of the time, could have possibly had the ability to wage war against their neighbors. There must be some way but I can’t figure it.
Au contraire, bleach! Circumpolar peoples made up the Manchu hordes that conquered China five centuries ago and ruled it to quite recently. They also peopled one of the Mongol banners. In one winter storm campaign conquered all except one Russian settlements. They are undemanding, self-sufficient soldiers.
inkanyamba says:
Pretty sure the Innuits wiped the Norse out.
Ivar Bardsson’s description of Greenland, written in the 1360s tells of the heathen (Innuit) attack that wiped out the Western Settlement.
Last known record of contact is Pope Nicholas V’s letter to the bishops of Skalholt and Hole (on Iceland) in 1448 telling news of a heathen attack 30 years before on Greenland where most of the churches were destroyed and the inhabitants abducted. Letter also says some of the abductees managed to return, and instructs the bishops to investigate and if viable, send priests to Greenland. There are apparently graves from the late 1400s by the Eastern settlement.
We also know that by that century the Norse diet on Greenland was ~80% marine products, so they didn’t depend upon green pastures for survival.
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« Marathon success for SBR
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Wexford’s young guns impress in Gowran
By Senan | November 7, 2019 - 12:38 pm | November 8, 2019 Competition, News, Uncategorized
Gowran A.C. hosted the Leinster Cross Country for Even Ages, Junior and Novice on Sat, Oct 26th. Weather conditions were ideal for participants and spectators with everyone happy to see blue skies rather than the torrential rain of the preceding days. The under foot conditions were heavy with no shortage of muck to dampen the enthusiasm of the speed merchants.
The day started with the non-championship U10 races followed by the under U12 – U18 races. The U18 and Junior categories were run off together.
The U12 Girls race was run off ahead of the scheduled time which meant quite a few athletes missed the start. The meet director allowed those that missed the race to run the boys’ race. Some such as Grace Kelly of Menapians chose not to. Others, including Heather Costello and Ava Kehoe, took up the offer. One girl who was most definitely present for the start of the girls’ race was Emma McCarthy of St Killian’s. She showed she is coming into some really good form as she stormed home in 2nd place. Kilmore’s Rayna Thompson also ran out of her skin to place 13th.
In U12 Boys 2000m the first Wexford boy home in 14th place was Cian Donovan of Bree. He was followed by Max Murphy (United Striders) in 28th, Enda Byrne (SBR) 30th and Aidan Bowe (SBR) 35th. Other placings listed below.
Aoife Walsh (DMP), running up an age, had a great run in U14 Girls finishing in 15th place. Sarah Phylan (Enniscorthy), also with a year in hand, found the going tough in the same race. When in form Sarah has all the style and grace of the classic middle distance runner as she showed recently in taking both U13 and U14 county cross country titles. Her usual fluency was, alas, absent in Gowran and she was labouring at a time she would usually have been ticking over. That said she was still second Wexford girl home.
Top Wexford performer in the U14 Boys 3000m was Sean Lennon of United Striders in 7th place. This, from the US FB page: ’Sean was hanging nicely in 12th position all the way through the race. However, with 200m to go he produced an outstanding finish picking off five runners in all.’ Next home for Striders and Wexford was Ronan Shannon in 24th. The Striders team placed 6th.
Claragh Keane (DMP) looked very smooth in the U16 4000m race, cruising to a good 2nd place finish. As she showed last year she has a habit of peaking at the right time. Expect her to be in the mix at the All-Ireland’s. Next Wexford finisher was Sophia Tkacheva of Croghan in 22nd.
Myles Hewlett of United Striders took bronze in the U16 Boys race over the same distance. He will settle for that at this stage in the season, especially as the winner was turbo-charged St Senan’s athlete Tadgh Connolly with Mullingar’s talented international athlete Diarmuid Fagan in 2nd. When it came to team honours, however, the New Ross club were not to be denied. With four boys in the top 12 they easily took the title, their 4th in a row at this age. Aidan Shannon placed 8th, Ben Wall 10th and Eoin Shannon 12th with Robert Wall creeping into the top 15. The Co Wexford team also took the team title, a single point ahead of Kilkenny with another Striders’ athlete, William Parle, completing the scoring six in 17th place.
Menapians’ international Róisín O’Reilly saw her first competitive action of the season when she lined out in the U18/Junior 4000m. She was happy to tuck into the leading bunch on the first of the 2km laps. Tullamore’s Danielle Donegan made a decisive break on lap 2 which took her clear of Róisín and Holly Brennan (Cillies AC). Holly was next to throw caution to the wind when, with 500m to go, she decided to give chase. Danielle held on for the win with Holly 2nd and Róisín, keeping it steady all the way, crossing the line, untroubled, in the bronze medal position. Erin Shannon of United Striders ran a good race to place 23rd (U18) with Ciara Dolan (Menapians) just behind in 25th place. The latter’s immediate race preparation included two days of mountain walking!
In the Boys U18/Junior race, Morgan Haydon (Menapians), being more of a track athlete than a mudlark, found the sloppy ground difficult to navigate. He toughed it out, however, getting stuck into the middle of the pack and moving up throughout the race. He finished up in 19th place (U18). Enniscorthy’s Ryan Basele came through in fine fashion to place just behind Morgan in 20th while Adam O’Connor (United Striders) was 27th. Race-walker Ryan Kielthy took a tumble mid-race but he was up and way again with no ill-effects.
Wexford’s newest running sensation, Clodagh Kelly of Croghan AC, continued on her upwards trajectory with a fabulous gutsy run in the Novice Women’s 4000m race. She rounded the final bend into the final uphill 200m stretch in 3rd place, only to be pipped at the post. She can be very happy with her 4th place finish. Alan O’Connor of United Striders was best of the Wexford athletes in the men’s race, crossing the line in 11th place.
Wexford Results
2 Emma McCarthy (St Killian’s), 13 Rayna Thompson (Kilmore), 29 Ava Wolohan (Croghan), 32 Heater Costello (United Striders), 38 Éabha Keane (DMP), 44 Ruby Gallagher O’Neill (Croghan), 47 Sarah O’Mahony (DMP), 61 Stephanie O’Connor (Enniscorthy), 81 Cora Finn (Bree), 87 Lea Bolger (Bree), 91 Erin Byrne (Bree).
Wexford placed 5th in inter-county competition.
14 Cian Donovan (Bree), 28 Max Murphy (United Striders), 30 Enda Byrne (SBR), 35 Aidan Bowe (SBR), 46 Cormac Delaney (US), 56 Tom Finn (Bree), 64 Cathal Ennis (Bree), 66 PJ Breen (Bree), 73 Éanna Greenan (US).
15 Aoife Walsh (DMP), 48 Sarah Phylan (Enniscorthy), 55 Abbey Wolohan (Croghan), 60 Freya Thompson (Kilmore), 78 Cara Kelly (DMP), 92 Nicole Lageu (DMP).
7 Sean Lennon (United Striders), 24 Ronan Shannon (US), 57 Joseph O’Flaherty (Croghan), 60 Luca O’Connor (US), 63 Tomasso Hickey (US), 70 Olann Delaney (US), 77 Jarlath Kelly (Bree).
United Striders were 6th best club.
2 Claragh Keane (DMP, 22 Sophia Tkacheva (Croghan), 45 Kate O’Flaherty (Kilmore), 49 Arwyn Thompson (Kilmore), 51 Isabel Bawden (US), 58 Aoife Lyng (US), 65 Aisling Ryan (US).
3 Myles Hewlett (United Striders), 8 Aidan Shannon (US),10 Ben Wall (US), 112 Eoin Shannon (US), 15 Robert Wall (US), 17 William Parle (US), 32 Alex Lafferty (DMP), 33 Alex Gregg (DMP), 34 Eoin Lennon (US), 37 James Hegarty (DMP), 55 Daniel Byrne (Croghan), 57 Darragh Ennis (DMP), 58 Jack Byrne (SBR), 67 Ben Redmond (DMP), 69 Daithí Murphy (DMP), 73 Senan Murray (Kilmore).
1st club: United Striders. 1st county: Wexford.
U18/Junior Girls
2nd U18 and 3rd Junior Róisín O’Reilly (Menapians), 42nd (J) Rebecca Bawden (United Striders). Following are all U18: 23 Erin Shannon (US), 25 Ciara Dolan (Menapians), 27 Aoibhinn Crean (Adamstown).
U18/Junior Boys
Following are all U18: 19 Morgan Haydon (Menapians), 20 Ryan Basele (Enniscorthy), 27 Adam O’Connor (United Striders), 40 Ryan Kielthy (US).
53 (J) Rory Cassidy (Kilmore)
4 Clodagh Kelly (Croghan), 22 Nicola Murphy (United Striders), 63 Christine Hill (SBR), 64 Catherine O’Connor (Menapians), 72 Áine Cullen (US)
11 Alan O’Connor (United Striders), 71 John Murphy (DMP), 78 Pat Murray (US), 81 Ted Flannelly (US), 90 Nicky Foley (Kilmore)
Complete and final race results.
Tagged Leinster Juvenile Cross Country 2019, Leinster Novice Cross Country 2019. Bookmark the permalink.
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